Problem with Microtec's AUG

26 Dec 07

Magazine problem with Microtec's AUG:

I talked with the formally-proud owner of Microtec's new version ofthe AUG today. We were at the retailer where he bought it. It runs fine, but the familiar waffle-pattern AUG magazines don't fit into it! Two, ten-round magazines were supplied with the rifle, and they look, for all the world, like the AUG magazines we're all used to. But, they're not the same, and this unhappy ex-customer of Microtec's decided to the take the whole package back to where he bought it.

The AUG is a handy rifle, but, when magazines aren't interchangeable, it's an obvious deal-buster!

It's hard to understand how gun makers can commit such a faux-pas. There are many people, with AUGs, who would be delighted to have another copy of the rifle, but not when they can't share magazines.

/John

Marlin absorbed

26 Dec 07 More developments in the Industry: Cerebus, the company that owns DPMS, Bushmaster, and Remington is absorbing Marlin as well! /John

Guns and World History

26 Dec 07

Guns, Government Procurement, and World History:

It had been a hundred years since Western Eurasia had been involved in an all-inclusive conflagration, and, by August of 1914, the War, for which Europe had been so enthusiastically mobilizing, to no one's surprise, abruptly burst forth. The Great War was probably inevitable, and ever-hesitant US President Woodrow Wilson, a dedicated pacifist, was committed to the patently impossible task of keeping America neutral. His incessant dithering squandered valuable time. Indeed, after running under the banner, "He kept us out of War!" Wilson himself was forced to ask Congress for a declaration of War against Germany on 2 Apr 1917, shortly after his narrow reelection.

In 1898, Under Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, John J Pershing command a troop of black cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, from which he gothis permanent nickname, "BlackJack." In 1905, then PresidentRoosevelt promoted then Captain John J Pershing to the rank of Brigadier General, skipping three ranks and bypassing hundreds of other officers! Pershing's personal friendship with Roosevelt, and his marriage to the daughter of a powerful US Senator, probably helped, but the rash move understandably angered many. President Franklin D Roosevelt would do something similar with Lt/Col Dwight D Eisenhower a generation later. It was at a naive Pershing's insistence that American soldiers be issued French machine guns and automatic rifles. It would prove a disastrous blunder!

American inventive genius, Hiram Maxim, demonstrated his fully-automatic " machine-gun" as early as 1884. No cranking (which was necessary toget the Gatling Gun to function)! All one had to do was hold down the trigger. However, Maxim was unable to interest the US Army in his invention and immediately got embroiled in patent disputes which consumed the rest of his life. In the interim, a friend in Vienna told him, "You want to be rich, Hiram? Just show these Europeans how to murder each other more efficiently than they do already, and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams!" The rest is history! Maxim migrated to Europe. The British Vickers, and the dreaded German Maschinengewehr were both based on Maxim's patents, and both ran fine! Maxim himself, never rich, died in London in 1916.

Yet another American design genius, Issac Newton Lewis, fared no better than Maxim! The "Lewis Gun," invented in 1911, was the originallight machine-gun. Rugged, reliable, potent, and enduringly reliable, Americantroops loved it. Everyone loved it! However, Lewis himself was brilliant, had a abrasive personality, and did not suffer fools! Not surprisingly, he developed an immediate personality conflict with the gallery of shallow, self-serving political hacks at the War Department. Like Maxim, in disgust and frustration, he took his gun to Europe, where it was enthusiastically received by the British and Australians. Wasting no time, they mounted the Lewis on bi-planes, converting aircraft from merely observation platforms to weapons of war!

John M Browning, probably the best-know gun designer of his generation, did no better at the War Department than had Lewis, and Maxim! The Army adopted his pistol (M1911), but his wonderful Browning Automatic Rifle did not reach American soldiers until the fall of 1918, just three months before the end of the War. The BAR was considered by Pershing to be so advanced, general issue was actually held back for fear Germans might copy it!

So, American Troopers, hastily sent to France in 1917, were equipped with, not superior American-designed machine guns and automatic rifles, but with the vastly inferior, French Benet-Mercie and CSRG (Chauchat) automatic rifles. Both French guns looked great in the showroom, and they were popular among parade-ground soldiers, because they were light and easy to carry. But, both incessantly demonstrated themselves to be worthless in actual use, with endless stoppages, failures to extract, and reloading procedures that were slow and tedious. In the field, both the Chauchat and the Benet-Mercie were thus quickly and contemptuously discarded by American troops, who considered them useless junk. A vile curse or two, ending with "Pershing" and "Wilson" were commonly heard among American soldiers in those days!

It should have been a hint that, in mid-1916, when Mexican warlord/thug, Pancho Villa, invaded Columbus, NM from Mexico, shooting up the town, murdering soldiers and civilians alike, hardly a shot was launched by Americans in response. Townspeople expected the Army to protect them, and the Army could not get their Benet-Mercie guns running. As a result, Villa's raid was nearly unopposed.

The problem was, and still is, large companies, with the aid of politicians, heavily "influencing" naive generals and the sprawling, self-promoting, procurement bureaucracy. Clever marketing departments write specifications to their favor (ie: low production costs). They then claim their product to be " superior," because it always meets these dubious "specifications." Input from the field is, of course, routinely ignored. Once momentum gets traction, bad news is not tolerated! This "large-company/cheap-price" model is a perfect match for intentionally ignorant purchasing practices of government agencies, particularly in time of war. Companies help themselves to the Federal Treasury, while end-users (ie: our troops!) are cheated.

Recently, then Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld said, "You fight wars with the Army you have, not the Army you wish you had." The obvious retort is, " Well, why don't we have the Army we wish we had?" The answer is always (1) too many generals who act like politicians, (2) too many politicians who think they are tactical geniuses, and (3) too many career bureaucrats who are only too happy to cater to both.

Not enough heroes!

/John