Kyle Rittenhouse narrating events happened at Kenosha that day, here mentioning how he used Forward Assist of his AR to (push the bolt carrier forward and) close ejection port etc which later was fired on certain antifa supporters...
Case in point, forward assist feature potentially saved his life,
while Stoner himself and USAF etc were not so supportive towards putting this feature on M16, it seems that having it is still better than being sitting duck when situation arises...
I personally believe choosing non-reciprocating charging handle for INSAS was kind of a mistake, sure it helped with 'training' as previous 1A SLR had same charging handle albeit at slightly different location and gave them a chance to seal up that rifle by eliminating charging handle slot that would have been there in case they followed simple AK design, but they also removed direct forward assist that an AK style charging handle would have provided, or some other non-reciprocating design like AUG A1 had that button on charging handle to grab extension rod (here it would be gas piston itself) while pulling it back//pushing it forward to make it act as forward assist...at least some jams that INSAS suffered could have been solved this way and god knows if some lives could also have been saved or what not...
also, looking at rifles tested by the Army back then,
>AUG - had indirect forward assist feature with that button on non-reciprocating charging handle
>H&K 33 - no forward assist but bolt carrier had these serration like cuts near bolt face so 'in theory' an operator could push it manually forwad using his thumb
>H&K G41 - had AR style forward assist button on receiver with bolt carrier having cuts for it
>Stg-940 - was practically an AK what else to say, just slam on its charging handle
>Galil (?, saying ecause Rifle Room of Ishapore had it there so i guess it was tested out at one point ?) - same as above
>SIG-550 (again, RFI rifle room had it there so...) - same as above
and so,
almost all of them had one way or other to manually force bolt carrier forward in case it is not in battery, but somehow INSAS was not given it, "just charge the rifle two-three times" doesn't always work...