ARMED FORCES: The Aluminum Rifle

On most fronts the U.S. has moved ahead with giant strides in the development of new weapons. In the 15 years since Pearl Harbor its scientists have gone from TNT to the A-bomb to the H-bomb; its armed forces have gone from propeller-driven airplanes to supersonic jets to guided missiles; the Navy has moved from steam turbine to nuclear power to drive new ships. But the U.S. Army last week was still marching earnestly forward in search of a weapon it has been unable to perfect through ten years of research and testing: a new infantry rifle.

The need for improving this most basic of all weapons was pointed up by research, which established that during World War II 1) fewer than one out of four front line soldiers fired a rifle in the direction of the enemy, 2) some 10,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition were fired for every enemy soldier wounded. 3) some 50,000 rounds were fired for every enemy killed. The burden of infantry fighting therefore fell upon the skilled, tough soldiers who operated such deadly weapons as automatic rifles, submachine guns, machine guns and mortars. Obviously needed: fewer but better infantrymen equipped with weapons of maximum firepower.

Challenge from Belgium. Out of habit the Army spurned the chance to tap private industry for new ideas, turned instead to its arsenal at Springfield, Mass., which developed such trusty performers as the bolt-action Model 1903 of World War I and the M 1 Garand of World War II.

Springfield’s answer to the demand for more firepower was the T 44, a fully automatic, .30-cal. rifle weighing one pound less than the unwieldy, semiautomatic 9½-lb. Garand, and carrying 20 rounds in its magazine clip to the Garand’s eight.

The T 44 might well have become the Army’s basic infantry weapon, but while it was being developed and tested Belgium’s famed Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre also brought out a new automatic. Dubbed the F.N., it was quickly adopted as the standard rifle of such NATO partners as Britain, France, Canada and Belgium. Rather than fall completely out of step, the Army ordered the Springfield T 44 and the Belgian F.N. tested competitively, wound up deciding the T 44 was still the rifle it wanted. From the Army’s research and development staff came a recommendation that the T 44 be manufactured (at $95 apiece) in sufficient quantity to replace the M 1 Garand as the Garands gradually wore out.

It Floats. But before the Army could act on the recommendation (and after it had spent an estimated $12 million developing and testing the T 44 and F.N.), a new-type rifle appeared on the Pentagon’s horizon that gave promise of being superior to either. It was developed (at no cost to the taxpayer) in a Los Angeles machine shop by George Sullivan. 46, a Lockheed Aircraft Corp. patent attorney and engineer, whose hobby is guns. After Sullivan had produced a successful experimental model, he was taken under the wing of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corp. and turned out 30 copies of a highly efficient, 2¼-lb., unsinkable, survival-kit, .22-cal. rifle for the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command crews.

His bigger, more powerful infantry weapon is known as the Armalite (for “light armament”). Firing a .308-cal. round, it has the hitting power and range of the Springfield T 44 and the Belgian F.N. but weighs only 6.8 pounds because it is made of lightweight aluminum alloy and plastics, is so soundly constructed that it sacrifices neither accuracy nor sturdiness. Unlike almost any other rifle, the fully automatic Armalite can be manufactured on an assembly-line basis; it discards the traditional drilled steel barrel for a barrel liner made of stainless steel tubing, and swaged, i.e., forced by machine, into the aluminum-alloy barrel.

The Army has begun vigorous tests of the Armalite at Springfield and its Aberdeen Proving Ground. Keeping an eye on the tests. Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor said he would delay a decision on pushing the Springfield T 44.