It's not a piston never will be.
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It's not a piston never will be.
It actually having a piston.
Do you know what a piston is? "a sliding piece moved by or moving against fluid pressure which usually consists of a short cylindrical body fitting within a cylindrical chamber or vessel along which it moves back and forth"
The bolt and carrier of an AR15's BCG are, by definition, a piston. You can disagree, but you'd be objectively incorrect.
Interesting video. It just goes to show that assault rifles and light-machine guns are two different firearms intended for two different purposes. Assault rifles are not designed for sustained fully-automatic fire, and this cooking-off of rounds after 9 magazines proves it. SOCOM ran into trouble with M4 rifles blowing up on them... because they were misusing them as impromptu light-machine guns for sustained, fully-automatic, suppressive fire.
That turns every DI guns bolt on the planet into a piston.
That's actually a really good point to bring up. Every DI gun, on the most technical level, utilizes a piston in some capacity. Even if it's just where the gas tube interfaces with the carrier, that's still technically a piston. So what then separates a DI gun from a gas-piston gun? There are a lot of different contradictory definitions of "direct impingement" and "gas piston" that really muddles the topic; someone could quote different sources for different definitions to support either case. Someone could also attempt to argue that many clearly gas-piston guns are direct-impingement if the piston is not separate from the carrier.
Everyone can agree that the MAS49 is a DI gun and the SKS is a gas-piston gun. In the MAS49 the redirected gasses directly impinge the carrier rearward. On the SKS the redirected gasses impinge a separate piston which then impinges the carrier rearward; the gasses indirectly impinge the carrier via a gas-piston. The issue is that most available definitions of direct impingement or gas piston guns will include firearms which are clearly not intended to be included.
Let's say that you try to define direct-impingement as any gun in which the gas directly impinges upon the carrier. Technically speaking, any long-stroke gas piston firearm in which the piston is integral to the carrier would then qualify as direct-impingement as the gasses would then be directly impinging upon the carrier. The main example of this would be the AK. Although the piston and carrier are two different pieces, when in use they are arguable held together as one piece. This would mean that the gasses directly impinging upon the AK's piston would arguably be imping upon the carrier itself. A good thought experiment would be if someone where to machine their own AK carrier so that the piston and carrier truly were one solid piece wouldn't that mean the AK would then be a direct-impingement firearm?
Now let's say you try to define a gas-piston gun as any gun in which the piston is external to the carrier itself. The AR15 then wouldn't qualify as a gas-piston gun despite cycling via a gas powered piston, but at the same time it wouldn't be a direct impingement rifle as the gasses do not directly impinge the carrier. So this definition would mean that even though a rifle's carrier is cycled via a gas powered piston wouldn't meet the definition of a gas-piston firearm.
The only definition which allows for clearly DI guns to be DI and clearly gas-piston guns to be gas piston isn't pretty, but it's this: a direct impingement firearm is one where both the gas piston is integral to the carrier and the redirected gasses directly impinge the carrier to cycle. The MAS49 would meet this definition, and both AK and AR pattern rifles would not.
Regardless of all of this, the AR15 is clearly not direct-impingement as the redirected gasses do not directly impinge the carrier like the MAS49 does. The redirected gasses in an AR15 indirectly impinge the carrier by using the bolt and carrier as a gas-piston.
From military wikia.org
It is incorrectly believed that the AR-15/M16 rifle designed by Eugene Stoner uses a direct impingement action. In the Stoner system covered by U.S. Patent 2,951,424 Stoner specifically states that the action is not direct impingement saying ″This invention is a true expanding gas system instead of the conventional impinging gas system.″[1] Gas is routed from a port in the barrel directly to a chamber formed in the bolt carrier. The bolt acts as the piston and is sealed with small automobile-style piston rings. It is a gas piston system without an operating rod.
It is incorrectly believed that the AR-15/M16 rifle designed by Eugene Stoner uses a direct impingement action. In the Stoner system covered by U.S. Patent 2,951,424 Stoner specifically states that the action is not direct impingement saying ″This invention is a true expanding gas system instead of the conventional impinging gas system.″[1] Gas is routed from a port in the barrel directly to a chamber formed in the bolt carrier. The bolt acts as the piston and is sealed with small automobile-style piston rings. It is a gas piston system without an operating rod.
....which happens to **** where it eats....
Yes, yes it does....
