S&W M&P15T Epic KABOOM
An ARFCOM readers S&W M&P15T suffered an incredible catastrophic failure, probably the worst I have seen.
NVCapCop reports …
My S&W M&P15T was destroyed today with an epic Kaboom (catastrophic failure).
I did not suffer any major physical injuries – received a welt on my left bicep (MagPul AFG hold) that looks like a bad bug bite or bee sting from shrapnel impacting my skin. A tiny little cut on the left forearm as well as lots of tiny red dots on inner side of elbow. The injuries felt kind of like a rug burn a few hours after the event.
Cartridge #45 out of the first 50 round box. USAammo 223 55 gr FMJ Lot #2906113.
The ammo was recently purchased USAammo, remanufactured on once fired LC brass. As you can see from the pics, the usual parts suffered catastrophic damage. The Troy quadrail seems to have helped keep the upper receiver from completely coming apart.
The destruction: Both sides of S&W factory upper assembly, the dustcover, both front corners of the magwell, hairline fractures directly under the left and right sides of the picatinny rail, cracked barrel extension in the middle of the feedramp, factory lower bulged on the bolt catch side. The PSA MPI bolt, the Failzero bolt carrier, and the PMag were completely damaged also.
Possible damage: BCM vltor gunfighter CH, RRA 2 stage trigger/hammer, pivot pins.
…
Update 7/26/11: Spoke to the CEO this a.m. He is eager to investigate the ammo lots so KBs don’t happen to other purchasers. He admitted that some of his ammo has been overpressured due to “Western” powder supplier using powders with faster burn rates. The overpressure would also explain why my buddy had so many stuck cases of .308 175 gr. match ammo in his ArmaLite AR-10.
[ Many thanks to Nathan for emailing me the link. ]
I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
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To everybody saying "too many ARs, too little AUGs, not a statistically sound comparison":
Remember, Google searches all over the world, not just in the US of A. Make a google search and you'll find the AR-15 kb! all around the world, and the AUG kb! in the same planet. And there are quite some AUGs being used here, in the rest of the world.
To jdun1911: "no gun is safe from kB!".
True, but not all guns take kB! the same way. Look at the pics from the blown M&M15T, and you'll see that it exploded from inside it's bolt assembly. That's because of it's inherent design flaw: pumping hot, high-pressure combustion gasses right into the bolt carrier -which simply cannot take the overpressure we saw-. In any piston-operated gun -including the AUG-, the overpressure never goes inside the bolt carrier. Think about it. In the only documented kb! I found with a simple search -with not even a Steyr AUG, but with a MSAR-, the overpressure tore some lugs from the bolt -and it takes a whole lot of power to do so-, but even so, the bolt held locked and didn't explode.
@Lance
"overpriced AUGs"
There's a common misconception. The price is set by the demand. If there are few rifles, and people want them, the price will go up. And people might want them -willing to pay high prices, and so pump up their prices- because they're cool rifles, or simply because they actually ARE great rifles.
The same thing happens with SIGs: they're quite expensive in the US, but that's not because the factory makes them expensive: it's because there are few SIGs, and people want them badly -most likely, because they are actually GOOD-.
If the SIG or the AUG were bad guns, people wouldn't want them -no matter how rare they were-, and their prices would plummet. But we don't see that: we see rifles that keep their values, and even gain some. There's a reason to that: people want them, because they're actually GOOD.