And there is still a great affection for the M-14, probably the finest long rifle in the tradition of the heavy caliber rolling block rifles of the Indian Wars, the Little Big Horn being the exception that validated the medium caliber high-volume assault fires that characterizes the modern assault rifle everybody ignored because the Nations won.
But the studies of the small caliber weapons of Japan showed they had the virtue of not being as lethal, thereby adding to the 12-to-1 logistical burden of their opponents with crippling but non-lethal wounds. The US Army liked large bore weapons on the frontier because they preferred their opponents dead as opposed to capable of further mischief.
And, of course, the pristine virtues of aimed fires versus just spraying the horizon with your eyes closed was probably the most compelling straw man that military necessity and emperical evidence finally chopped down to introduce the Stoner system into the inventory, with th AR-15/M-16 being coughed up out of the R&D program.
I, personally, don’t like the gun, but, intellectually, it is a pretty elegant, and effective, response to the requirement. It is chambered for a rifle round, as opposed to the.45 pistol round of the M-3 grease gun, but nearly as compact and has a very hot round with a point and shoot trajectory out to its maximum effect range of 350 metres. A big selling point was that you could carry up to 30% more rounds of ammo for the same weight and it introduced ergonomics into the heads-up plane of sight across the carry handle.
Vietnam was the shake down cruise for the Stoner system as the general issue infantry weapon. It is no longer Stoner except in modular concept. If you start with the core action and pistol grip, you can build a gazillion different configurations to keep the troops happy where the costs come down to minimal engineering and industrial design and virtually no R&D burden.
So, I’d say the Army got it about right, all things considered. The AK-47 family is the only weapon system with a wider distribution and the differences come down to whether you get more ice cream in a hand-packed quart of ice cream or two pounds of slurried production run ice cream.
Strictly speaking, the slurried ice cream is probably more dense but a pint’s a pound the world around. The chicken is the egg.
Just for the record, the ultimate assault weapon is an Airborne Ranger in a jock strap and light coat of oil armed with a P-38 can opener and a bad attitude, but I, personally, would settle for an M-14 with a fixed bayonet.
So there!
