Quote:
Originally Posted by mwtdvm
IIRC Stoner designed his weapon system with a certain brand of DuPont powder and a certain cyclic rate of fire. McNamara and his clan that he brought with him from GM to the DOD decided that some of the production steps Steiner specified were not needed and changed the rate of fire. Then DuPont quit making the powder and the replacement Winchester-Olin ball powder was responsible for the jamming rather than the gun's construction.
I find it ironic that a problem caused by the GM whiz kids changing the specs had to be fixed by a GM plant. Now the big question, how much did these "cost savings" actually cost in troops KIA and the $$ cost to the American taxpayer?
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Say what you want about McNamara but I don't think you can pin the M-16 on him. It was the Ordnance Dept that made the decision to use ball powder, it was the US Army that witnessed the jamming problems at Colt and it was the US Army Program Manager that decided to hide the reliability problems until the deaths in Vietnam instigated the Congressional investigation.
Stoner designed the AR-10, not the Ar-15/M-16, tow other Armalite engineers designed the AR-15/M-16, but I forget their names.