Sipsey Street Irregulars: I reject the notion that there was ONE reason the M14 was superceded, but this makes interesting reading.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

I reject the notion that there was ONE reason the M14 was superceded, but this makes interesting reading.

The United States Army Ordnance Department procurement system has always been its own (and the troops they are supposed to serve) worst enemy: Berlin Crisis, 1961: The Beginning of The End of The M14

6 comments:

Pericles said...: Meh - the US troops don't have the M1956 field gear either, that had also been in production for over four years as well. In the Eisenhower years, the Army was not a priority, as the military policy was massive retaliation with nukes, not to roll around in the mud like in Korea. The article was a focus on one detail to the exclusion of the larger view.

The first four years of M1 production was not spectacular either, especially the need to solve the 7th round stoppage problem, and certainly after September 1939, one should be able to predict that M1s were going to be needed in mass quantity. It looks like some 300,000 Garands were produced in the first four years, and the pre September 1939 production, (two years) was 14,623. Even at wartime production rates of over 100,000 per month, only infantry troops in rifle companies got Garands, everybody else got 1903s, or 03A3s. The Marines never got Garands to all of their infantrymen.

There has never been a standard Army infantry weapon that could be produced in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of a major war (one might say the 1816 used in the Mexican War was an exception, but the 1842 should have been the standard arm, but had not yet been issued).

If I went on about how this is more typical rather than exception, I would write a book.; August 22, 2015 at 9:39 AM
Dutchman6 said...: Yeah, I noticed the World War II webbing also. There is also no mention of McNamara's psychology, "Move over old man, the whiz kids are here and we'll show you how to procure a rifle," which led to the M16.; August 22, 2015 at 9:50 AM
Anonymous said...: When studied in a vacuum, Luger's P08 is one of the finest pistols ever introduced. But it was expensive to produce, doesn't like dirt, doesn't like to run dry, and it's very finicky about the ammo it's fed. It was withdrawn and replaced by the P38 which didn't have those faults at least to the same extent.

The M14 tried to be a little bit of something to everyone and didn't really do well at replacing some of the weapon systems that it was supposedly replacing. Those problems probably could have been worked out if the attention and money had been there and not squandered. If they had had some ham they could have had some ham and eggs if they had had some eggs. Just look at the way some but not all of the AR15/M16/M4 problems have been sorted out. Our problem was that there was no proven replacement waiting in the wings when the M14 was withdrawn.; August 22, 2015 at 9:57 AM
JC Dodge said...: As SM Barry told me a long time ago. If it's between the M16 and the AK, give me an AK. If it's between the AK, and the FAL, give me an FAL, and if it's between the FAL and the M14, give me an M14.; August 22, 2015 at 12:03 PM
Ed said...: Two things:
1. Cost per rifle to produce and annual maintenance cost
2. Weight of rifle and ammunition load per soldier

http://looserounds.com/2015/01/30/the-m14-not-much-for-fighting-a-case-against-the-m14-legend/; August 22, 2015 at 6:00 PM
Anonymous said...: The undestroyed stock of M-14's have a purpose as the upgraded best-ever DM semi-auto rifle.

If only DCM had been allowed to make them into M1A's instead of "de-mil" receiver cutting/part kits that we got.

pdxr13; August 23, 2015 at 5:09 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, August 22, 2015

I reject the notion that there was ONE reason the M14 was superceded, but this makes interesting reading.

6 comments:

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