War

The Military

2018.09.21 - YouTube - SmallArmsSolutions - Why I Despise the M14...
- I thought this was a very interesting history of how, after WW2, the US Army Ordnance Department tried to stop the M16 and FN FAL from getting adopted because they wanted to continue to make the Army's weapons in-house, so they instead pushed for the M-14, which is basically just an M1 Garand with a 20-round magazine, which was far inferior. Specifically, the rifle prioritized accurate rifle fire at long ranges (up to 1000 yards?), which meant rounds leaving the barrel faster, which meant more kick, which meant less ability to give accurate full-auto fire at shorter distances, which was a big problem in Vietnam, where their opponents had AK-47s which used less-powerful rounds that could be fired full-auto. Even before the M16 arrived on the scene (originally in the form of the AR-10), the Army was supposed to switch over to the FN FAL as part of a deal with NATO where all the NATO countries would use the same weapon (to make it easier for member countries to resupply each other), but the Ordnance Department was somehow able to prevent that from happening (at least that's my understanding of what he said), again for the same reason of wanting to continue to produce the weapons in-house and also from not wanting to deviate so drastically from the weapons they'd had before (e.g. wooden stocks).