ARMY AL&T


self-loading service rifle. In the intervening years between the rifle’s adoption and the U.S. entry in WWII, the Army had an opportunity to sort out the “bugs” before putting the rifle to the ultimate test of combat. Tat was time well spent. While it may have been a “good” design, the gas trap Garand was not great— it had too many problems. Te relatively minor modification, from a gas trap design to a gas port design, made all the differ- ence in the world.


CONCLUSION What lessons should one learn from this experience? First, despite years of developmental effort by the best designers in the world, the first product may not turn out to be quite what we expect. Low-rate initial production (today’s term for producing an initial batch of approximately 10 percent of anticipated production) is an excellent practice. Te U.S. Army is doing exactly that right now with the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Putting a new prod- uct in the hands of troops and paying attention to their feedback based on experience creates an opportunity to detect and correct unexpected shortcomings.


Tese days, the U.S. does not design and produce its small arms in the arsenal system any longer. It outsources that function to industry and relies on commercial sources for meeting its needs. Tat makes prototyping and competitive testing even more important than ever.


Te complex story of the M1 Garand’s development provides good cause for encouragement. Te rifle’s groundbreaking design wasn’t quite perfect at birth, but it was close. Although field performance of the gas trap design was sorely disappointing, with just a little bit of tweaking it became a great rifle—the stuff of legend, and the very best, most reliable “friend” for millions of GIs.


For more information on the Springfield Armory and the develop- ment of the M1 Garand, go to https://www.nps.gov/spar/index. htm.


DR. THOMAS E. WARD II is an associate professor in the Department of Sustainment and Force Management at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has a Ph.D. in organization and management from Capella University, an MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.A. in political science from the University of Oklahoma. He served 26 years on active duty as a U. S. Army ordnance officer, and has taught force management at CGSC for 14 years.


THE PRECURSOR


James Speraw, an Army curator, shows Joseph W. Westphal, then undersecretary of the Army, a T3E2 semiautomatic, .276-caliber experimental rifle at the Army Center of Military History's Museum Support Center Facility at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in 2012. This rifle, developed by John Garand at Springfield Armory, was the precursor to the M1 rifle of WWII fame. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Bernardo Fuller)


FIGURE 1


GAS TRAP AND GAS PORT DESIGNS


In the gas trap design, hot gas is trapped after the projectile leaves the muzzle. In the gas port design, hot gas is ported to the gas cylinder before the projectile leaves the muzzle. (Graphic by the author and USAASC)


https://asc.ar my.mil


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