Colt Automatic Rifle - Overview

Overview

The Colt Automatic Rifle is the name of a current product, but Colt has developed a number of similar weapons since the company obtained the rights to produce the Armalite AR-15 family at the end of the 1950s. The name "Colt Automatic Rifle" should not be confused with Colt's original CAR-15 weapon family. Originally known as the Colt M16 LMG or simply as the Colt LMG (LMG standing for Light Machine Gun in this context), this weapon was developed as a join venture by Colt and Diemaco, a Canadian firm licensed by Colt to produce variants of the M16 family. Diemaco was recently purchased by Colt bringing that story full circle.

The Colt/Diemaco weapon can trace its lineage back to a number of weapons developed both at Colt and by the US military. These weapons were all designed to fill the role of the Browning Automatic Rifle. The BAR was originally planned to have been replaced by the M15, a variant of the M14 designed to fill a similar role. With the cancellation of that weapon, the BAR was initially replaced by the M14 itself, and then by a variant of that weapon, the M14A1. When the M14 was removed from frontline service the US automatic rifleman was given an M16A1 and was supposed to use this weapon set to the fully automatic setting while the rest of the squad used the rifle in the semi-automatic setting. Throughout the period between the introduction of the M16 and the introduction of the M249 as a purpose built squad automatic weapon at the end of the SAW trials, interim weapons were developed and tested in order to fill the gap.