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The Colt Automatic Rifle-15 Military Weapons System or CAR-15 was a family of AR-15 and M16 rifle–based firearms marketed by Colt in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Due to their compact size, the short-barreled Colt Commando and XM177 versions of this family continued to be issued to the U.S. military after the Vietnam War. The CAR-15 name was an attempt to re-associate the AR-15 name with Colt, since the AR initially stood for ArmaLite Rifle, the original manufacturer. Colt later abandoned the CAR-15 concept, but continued to make variations, using the M16 brand for military-oriented models and the Colt AR-15 brand for law enforcement and civilian models. However, in present usage, CAR-15 is used as a generic name for carbine-length M16 and AR-15 variants from before the M4. Specifically, "Colt Commando" currently refers to the ultrashort 11.5-inch barrel assault rifle of the Model 733 series. By comparison, the M4 Carbine has a 14.5-inch barrel, while the M16 assault rifle series has a 20-inch barrel. It is said that the People's Army of Vietnam's M-18 was designed based on the captured Colt Commando in the Vietnam War.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Việt Nam sản xuất "phiên bản Việt" của súng tiểu liên Mỹ? )〕 ==History== Following a long series of tests by the U.S. Army and U.S. Air force, resulted in an order for 8,500 AR-15 (redesignated M16) rifles for the Air Force in 1962. About the same time, the Advance Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense became interested, and 1,000 rifles were procured for field test in Vietnam.〔Musgrave, Daniel, and Thomas Nelson, ''The World's Assault Rifles'', vol II, Goetz Co.(1967) p.442.〕 Starting in 1965, Colt attempted to market the M16 rifle as a modular weapons platform that could fulfill all of the various needs of an army, similar to the marketing plans for the AR-10, its predecessor, and the Stoner 63, its rival. In order to compete with the Stoner 63 which could be converted into a belt-fed light or medium machine gun, Colt also included the short-lived CMG-1 and CMG-2 machine guns in the CAR-15 Military Weapons System, though the CMG-1 and CMG-2 had few parts in common with the CAR-15s. By using various upper assemblies, buttstocks, and pistol grips, the weapon could be configured as an assault rifle, a heavy-barreled automatic rifle, a carbine, a submachine gun, or as a survival rifle. Each variation had a Colt model number, meant for internal identification usage. The members of the CAR-15 family, with the exception of the Rifle and Commando, only existed as toolroom prototypes and never entered full-scale production. As a result, wide variation due to experimentation exists within each model. The U.S. military only made significant purchases of the Rifle and Commando versions, so Colt abandoned the CAR-15 family concept. The CAR-15 Rifle was already identified by most users as M16s or AR-15s, and the CAR-15 name was similarly associated with the short-barreled Submachine Gun and Commando models. Because of that, the term "CAR-15" has been used to describe any M16-based carbine, even if the particular weapon is not officially named thus. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「CAR-15」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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