You're telling me we had the AR-10 back in 1956, but we didn't replace the M14 until 1969?
I am not telling you this.
>>64559495sir, i've never met you before... please, leave me and my family alone
It was vaporware until 1957 when General Maxwell Taylor resolved the dispute between the Army Infantry Board and Ordnance Department in favour of the M14. Production issues lead to Springfield Armory struggling to fulfill orders so Army command turned to the AR-15 as a stop gap in 1963. By the time the second Indochina War escalated, they realised their mistake and pulled the plug on the Springfield Armory and M14 after officially adopting the M16A1 in 1967
7.62x51 was a mistake.
>>64559495shame brownels stopped making those ar10 repros
>>64559893If anybody in the gun world had any sense, they'd make a copy of the Portuguese model.>that's just because you want oneYes.
The M14 basically existed in its basic form as early as 1945 with the T20, they were about to make 100k of these new select fire box mag fed garands and then the war ended. Basically Springfield and the Ordnance Department had developed the M14 on a shoestring budget slowly, over 13 years, by reusing a large portion of the leftover Garand tooling and fixtures. Unfortunately only Springfield (who did not operate on a profit based business model) could make them acceptably, H&R and Winchester failed spectacularly, mostly because the US gov was not actually willing to pay them what it actually cost to make the rifles to an acceptable standard. They had to cheapen the rifles just to not lose money.Most of the M14s that actually saw service in Vietnam were either Springfields or the few H&R/Winchester rifles that weren't complete ass. Nobody ever actually saw the terrible M14s in service. Anyway the AR10 is obviously superior but it missed the M14 trials by several years and it was not in a refined enough state of development to win anyway.
>>64559939>Anyway the AR10 is obviously superior but it missed the M14 trials by several yearsit was in the same 1956 "Garand Replacement" trial as the M14
holy shit we missed the opportunity to go straight from the Garand to an AR, what a fucking fumble in retrospect
>>64559965And failed spectacularly.
>>64559909I'd be right beside you with my open wallet.
>>64559968>M14 adopted in 1959>AR15 invented in 1959we were this close
>>64559590(You)
>>64559495M14 worked, AR10 didn't.
>>64559985>inb4 alloy barrel Was the only way they could go under the 9lb weight limit. >i-it was only onceThe AR10 failed so spectacularly in Nicaragua that it nearly killed the chief of staff for their army, and this was with a hand picked rifle.
>>64560047Teething problemsWorked spectacularly in Portugal's colonial ventures in harsh environments
>>64560064By then it was too late. We wanted a replacement in 59 and AR wasn't ready>just keep using the GarandSure, let the small arms gap widen because Eugene might unfuck his gun in a year or two. Let's not adopt a rifle based on a design that has already shown itself to be solid, that'd be stupid. You're so smart captain hindsight
>>64560098The M14 wasn't solid, it was a desd-end stopgap
>>64559985That wasn't the M14 trial. The FAL T48 and M14 T40 were already downselected as the final two competitors in 1955, testing was done in 1954 and then again in 1955 after the fal failed the sand test and the US ord dept was nice enough to give it a second (third) chance. The AR10 was evaluated separately for some other contract not related to the M14's adoption
>>64559495Blame the jews running the military complex after ww2. Most of whom were soviet/vanigger spies.
>>64560047Yeah the AR10 was a fucking basket case until the Dutch got their hands on it and turned it into a functional military rifle. But Colt was already refining the AR15 by then so it was completely obsolete.
>>64559495M14 was ready to go. Kinda.AR-10 was not ready to go. Kinda.M14 was adopted. Kinda.AR-10 was ultimately adopted. Kinda.It kinda worked itself out in the end. The real world is kinda funny how it works. The whole cycle of weapon development to weapon requirement to weapon acquisition cycle can be very time dependant, which is kinda what happened here. In this case, the good guy finished last.
>>64559590
>>64559965>>64559985>>64560906That was the earliest form/development of the rifle. As >>64560064 points out with focused engineering development and trials it turned out excellent.The amount of procurement and development effort poured in over years to the M14: if that had ? been devoted by U.S. Army to ArmaLite's rifle it might have been better than picrel, and would have developed even further had it been adopted officially circa 1960-61 by the United States.>thus concludes another episode of Alternative Timeline
>>64559590this
>>64559985Just replace the barrel with a conventional one.Easy and obvious fix. No reason to disqualify an otherwise excellent gun.
>>64561608That was the first thing they did afterwards, and it still didn't make the cut.>Mr. Dorchester learned of some of the excellent work Dave Mathewson in New Haven had done for us on the T44, so he approached Dave for assistance. Dave had some T44 barrel blanks on hand, and together [he and Stoner] worked up an all steel barrel design for the AR-10 as light as the original composite design by the technique of milling long slots or flutes in the barrel, in effect creating longitudinal stiffening ribs. By calling in some of his model makers to work overtime, Dave completed fabrication of the barrels over a weekend. >Early the next week Mr. Dorchester was back at the Armory with the AR-10s now equippped with the new barrels and anxious to resume the tests. Before resuming tests we examined the design in detail, and checked it out theoretically for strength. Our calculations indicated the design was safe to fire, and the testing was resumed. This time the testing was completed without further serious incidents, but a number of malfunctions were recorded. >We were being urged by the Pentagon to complete our report and send it in, so by the end of February [1957] the report was finished. The ArmaLite engineers freely expressed their feeling that they had been rushed into this test prior to a chance to really work out many of the bugs in the rifle. Apparently Fairchild could see the Army was on the verge of selecting a new rifle and felt they should immediately submit the [AR-10] for Army tests. The report could do little more than record the various troubles we had experienced, and indicate that in its present form the rifle was not satisfactory as a military service rifle.
>>64561627It was a short-sighted decision
