“...The AK family is built on a turnbolt design, similar to the Garand but inverted. The tolerances of the critical locking surfaces are excellent as they have to be for the cartridge’s chamber pressures. In 1978 I built the world’s first semiauto AK - and I have a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering, so no smoke-blowing, please. The AK’s “accuracy” issues relate to the limitations of the Type PS ball ammunition ...”
Chainmail fails to convince that he’s seen the insides of a Kalashnikov or an M16-pattern arm. Both are based on a rotating bolt.
“It was the army civilian engineer’s infatuation with the concept of throwing huge masses of lead out of the weapons in the theory that they might hit something...”
Engineers had nothing to do with it.
Based on WWII after-action reports (the most convincing of which were composed by SLA Marshall and his staff from the Army History Office) and studies conducted by the US Army Operations Research Office, senior Army leaders concluded that aimed fire from small arms - rifles - contributed next to nothing to hits on enemy troops. Thus it became the conscious choice of these “experts” that Chainmail deems so unworthy to formalize into Army doctrine the definition of “firepower” as shots per minute.
Whether those leaders decided wisely isn’t the point. The fact that they did so cannot be controverted, and it has affected the course of small arms design ever since. Chainmail free to dislike that course - can’t say I like it much myself - but it happened that way. The oddball concepts evaluated in pursuit of doctrine described so colorfully barely hint at what went on.
“All that means is that we tricked the Soviets into following our dumb lead.”
A common conceit among Americans, but mistaken. Russians - before, during, and after the Soviet period - have a better record of not being misled by trendiness. They are also more patient, more mature, more inclined to take a longer view: their record of hoodwinking and misleading puerile, impatient Americans shows more success.
“...shoddy operational R&D. I have worked for a Battle Lab for a long time ...”
Which Battle Lab?
Gotta say, I hadn’t heard of “operational R&D.” I spent 29 years in uniform, 13 of them in operational testing, and didn’t stumble over it.
There is only R&D, sometimes accompanied by developmental testing, and operational testing. By law. System program offices always yearn to shorten the process, and often attempt to force-fit operational testing onto earlier phases, but it never turns out well. Some constraints cannot be evaded: akin, one gathers, to laws of physics.
Yes, you're correct, the M16 has a turnbolt design - but with a deeply recessed chamber, inaccessible from the outside and I expect that you know that.
Any part of those 29 years in combat - real combat, like in the infantry? If you had that experience, then you'd know that SLA Marshall cooked his study results. The most effective men in combat are the ones that aim and kill deliberately. "Spray and pray" only wastes ammunition. You'd also know that what happened with the introduction of the M16 and for 6 months after in Vietnam was an atrocity. R&D in an operational environment - the operational environment of Vietnam - was insufficiently done in the race to get the M16 mass produced and fielded.
The story of my last day in Vietnam is here:Link Here
You can say anything you want, but I was there and witnessed what happened and saw some our young men dead as a result. Then I saw the upper echelons fall all over themselves to hide from blame and try to either blame us or just treat it as an accident.
I worked for the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab for 13 years, so I have had years of work with the different parts of our research and engineering centers. I have worked with JSSAP and seen first-hand how little operational experience the developers of small arms and crew-served weapons have.
The M16 and its mismatched ammunition caused the needless deaths of hundreds of our young men. it remains one of the sorriest episodes in R&D/procurement history.