Quote Originally Posted by AlexTX ret View Post
... politics was becoming the great battleground and it was sort of becoming a battle of "theologies" sort of like the 9mm vs the 45 cal. It is a battle that has never been won and there is still fanatics that are fighting the good fight today.
That's sure the truth. Plenty of logic and studies to back up any position and most will work to at least some degree; it boils down to politics and preferences.
...the present bias against infantry rifles because the powers at be still think that MGs and Artillery are the real killers of the enemy. This is done from studies done in WW1, WW2, Korea and actually some done in Vietnam which I would of thought impossible because of our objectives and the reliance on the rifleman to hold ground.
Function of the type of warfare. In medium to high intensity combat, Artillery may again be the big killer. What is problematic in my view is that a well armed and trained infantryman has not been available to the US in large numbers really since the end of WW II -- and those infantrymen mostly came out of Italy and the Pacific, the northwest European battles were, after July 44, not Infantry battles but combined arms in the greatest sense; infantry skills were of marginal value except for the period in the Ardennes -- and we payed heavily for not having them. In any event, the senior leadership of the Army will invest heavily in the Infantry but the priorities get skewed and tend to emphasize technology as a substitute for training.

We'd be far better off without laser pointers and with a better cartridge. Not weapon, it's adequate -- the cartridge isn't. However, that would require better marksmanship training...
The only problem with that it requires a change in tactics and politics of the military. There are various studies that are positive about the 6.5 MPC. The problem is that can the cartridge over come the prejudice of the procurement system of the military.
Agree on politics but I believe the tactical changes would be quite minor.
LeMay wasn't an idiot, he was head of the Air Force with a political agenda. ... he just brow beat the Army and Marines into accepting that they were lower on the feeding chain and would have to accept what the Air Force wanted... All he had was a set of data points and it showed him that he wanted the AR15/M16.
LeMay was not the big Kahuna; he was a peripheral player but was an asset to McNamara in the decision. The determinant factor well known at the time, though it obviously didn't make the mainstream press.

The M-14 contacts had gone from Springfield Armory (the government original and the developer of the tooling who also manufactured some 50K or so for issue) to Harrington & Richardson with a contract for 150K (IIRC) ~$145.00 each; Winchester got the contract for the second batch of the same size at about $109. each. Having completed proofing test production runs, DA was going to let a contract for 1M. TRW had never made a weapon before but wanted in the defense business and they had some good Engineers; they said we won't bid on 1M but if you'll give us a contract for 2M, we'll make them for $90.00 each (and that was four dollars cheaper than the M1 at the time...). So they got the contract and were in mid stream when McNamara decided to kill the contract (paying a cancellation penalty) and buy the M-16 for about $210.00 apiece.

The decision was based as much or more on the fact that TRW had contributed to Nixon's campaign and were big time Republican supporters while Colt had contributed to Kennedy's campaign. Bobby Kennedy was a vindictive little guy.

It is also noteworthy that McNamara repaid the Army's insistence on not going to a varmint cartridge by insuring Sprigfield Armory was closed in 1968.
...The Army is not blameless here. When the M16 was problematic when the main supplier of the rounds being use changed the powder that was specified to save money, they said it was the soldiers fault and he needed to keep up the maintance on his rifle. It took too long for this problem to rectify itself.
Not exactly. Olin didn't do that on their own, the Army dictated the powder change to get a lower chamber pressure. That also resulted in lower energy and more powder fouling. Regrettably, the first year of service in Viet Nam did see a lot of failure due to not keeping weapons clean.

The M16 and M4 are adequate combat weapons; they aren't great but they're okay. They DO require, IMO an excessive amount of maintenance.