One of the things that blew my mind, reading about the L85 deal? That the arrogant bastards over the folks at the Royal Ordnance plant Enfield were told in the middle of the development that they were to made redundant, and that production would be moved to Nottingham (that notorious center of firearms production expertise…) after the facilities at Enfield were shut down. Basically, the people running things were like “Here, develop this for us, and we’ll have someone else build it… Meanwhile, you’re fired…”.

Not. Smart.

There’s so much of this crap going on in the world, I have to wonder how the hell anything of quality ever gets done, and truly cherish those small things where we manage to build something truly good.

It’s like with Toyota; the guys at Toyota USA were telling the executives in Japan that the 4-door pickups that Toyota sold around the world would sell like hotcakes here in the US. No, no… We know the American market better than you do, they will never sell, said Toyota Japan. Cue Nissan bringing in the 4-door Frontier, and having those things fly off the dealer lots? Oh, yeah… Now Toyota Japan authorizes development of the 4-door Tacoma.

It’s like centralization is a bad thing, or something…

Look at eh British L-85 program. I have the Collector Grade Publications book on the subject, and Ian at forgotten Weapons deals with it in detail. It was a complete fiasco, and pretty much every mistake made in the adoption of the M-16 is repeated, AND THEN SOME.

I was absolutely flabbergasted to read that the powder was also a problem. At some point, the British looked into adopting the Beta C Mag for the LSW (SAW) version of the rifle. The manufacturer was lent an L-85 LSW and given a bunch of ammo for testing, and they had issues. When they used US and other NATO ammo, it worked much better.

The L-85 was basically a bullpup version of the AR-18, blatantly ripped off from Sterling/Armalite without license or permission. Sterling engineers got a look at one, and noticed that the cam pin track was the wrong shape, and didn’t give enough dwell time.

I could talk for hours about Canadian examples of procurement folly.

Handwriting was on the wall, for Vietnam, if anyone had bothered to note the real lessons. The M1 was only successful because it was going up against an enemy armed mostly with bolt-action rifles and an overweening faith in the efficacy of their men’s morale. Had the Japanese in the Philippines had access and widely issued the AK? LOL… It would have been ugly. Fortunately, they were pretty delusional, themselves. Bayonets on an LMG delusional…

If the morons who gave us the M14 and M60 had actually bothered to consult with men like Dunlap and other actual combat veterans, I think that the solution set for what they came up with would have looked a lot like the eventual AK and Sturmgewehr solutions. Unfortunately, big bureaucracy and stultifying hierarchy won the day, and we got the ultimate rifle for the National Matches, along with a truly half-ass implementation of a GPMG.

Big is bad. You can do moon shots with it, but the actual long-term progress is going to come from things like the current ferment in the space launch industry, which NASA is clearly not out in front of.