Lethality Vs. Logistics
Charles W. King
At the recent National Defense Industry Association Armament Systems Forum in Indianapolis Retired Major General Bob Scales criticized the American defense industry for not producing a new service weapon to replace the M-16, which Scales has been critical of for decades. The Department of Defense has repeatedly looked into replacing the M-16 and its derivatives, as early as the 1990s, but has never done so. The development history of another iconic American service rifle demonstrates why.
When the U.S. entered World War Two in 1941 it did so with arguably the most advanced service rifle in the world, the semi-automatic M1 Garand. Germany and the Soviet Union would both adopt semi-automatic service rifles over the course of the war, the Gewer 43 and SVT-40, but neither saw more than limited issue to their respective services. In addition the Gewer 43 was resource intensive and a significant drain on Germany’s damage industrial capacity late in the war. The Garand on the other hand was ubiquitous, being issued to the majority of American troops and also provided in large numbers to other Allied forces. Today the decision to adopt a semi-automatic rifle in the 1930s is widely seen as progressive and forward thinking on the part of the Army, but the adoption of the M1 was not as radical as it might have been.
Garand designed two versions of his rifle. One in .30-06 and the other in a promising new round; .276 Pedersen. The modern terminology for calibers smaller than “full size” rifle cartridges like the .30-06 and 7.62 NATO is “intermediate” and 5.56 NATO is such a round. Had the .276 Pedersen been adopted it would have been the first adoption of an intermediate caliber round for military use, but that would have to wait until the German army put the StG 44 into limited use late in World War Two. The United States Army has always been good at math, and its analysis of after action reports dating back to the Spanish American War in 1898 told them that high volumes of accurate fire was more important than individual round lethality. Intermediate cartridges provide this. As the 1930s began the clear leader in the joint Army, Navy, and Marine trials was the Garand in .276 for these reasons, but they were not enough.
In 1931 Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur intervened and ordered a halt to all development of service rifles not in .30-06 caliber. This was for a number of reasons, almost exclusively logistical. The .276 Pedersen cartridge had to be lubricated, which the Army had never liked but was willing to deal with. The greater problem was that all of the Army’s light machine guns were in .30-06. One of the fundamental features that makes a light machine gun light is that it fires the same ammunition as the service rifle. Accepting a new rifle caliber in the 1930s would have precipitated a replacement of not only the Army’s rifles but also all of its light machine guns, which it did not have the funds or wherewithal to do.
This is also why the Army’s current Next Generation Weapons program begins with the development of a new cartridge followed by a new light machine gun before either a new rifle or carbine. Rifles and light machine guns are not the only American weapons systems chambered for 5.56 NATO, let alone what is fielded by the U.S.’s NATO allies. It also prompts the question of what the performance gains of phasing the M-16 and its derivatives would be. For some the M-16 should have been ditched years ago, but from a broader policy perspective the question must be asked; what are the larger logistical and even diplomatic costs of that switching to a new weapon system would impose?