Weapon Of Choice: Small Arms And The Culture Of Military Innovation

235 Pages·2017·1.75 MB·English

by  Matthew Ford

WEAPON OF CHOICE
MATTHEW FORD
Weapon of Choice
Small Arms and the Culture of Military
Innovation
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press Copyright © Matthew Ford 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Matthew Ford.
Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation.
ISBN: 9780190623869
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Glossary of Terms
Introduction: From My Cold, Dead Hands
1. Technology and Culture: Guns and Innovation
2. Battlefield Demands: The Views of the Infantry
3. Engineering the Battlefield: Defining the Requirement
4. The Science of Killing
5. The Bureaucracy as Battlefield
6. Alliance Politics and NATO Standardisation: Interests, Power,
Rationality
7. Is It Gucci? Industry, Status Anxiety and the FN Minimi
8. From the Mundane to the Sophisticated: Military Innovation Studies
and the Question of Power
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to everyone I have worked with in
academia, at the Royal Armouries and at the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
In particular, the following people have generously offered their time and
expertise, for which I am extremely grateful: David Vassallo, David Parker, Pete
Warden, Roy Brenton and Ian Passingham. I thank John Starling for helping me
navigate and access the Ezell Archive at Cranfield University. I thoroughly
enjoyed long discussions on small arms matters with David Benest, Tony
Thornburn, Alex Watts and William F. Owen. I am particularly grateful to
Major-general Colin Shortis, who helped me understand the decision-making on
the adoption of SA80. Dr Dick Cave and Bob Evans have been instrumental in
the latter parts of my research efforts, and I would like to thank them for
encouraging me to work on more recent issues on small arms.
I would also like to thank a number of former RSAF employees and
apprentices, including: Frank Vowles, Geoff Ellis, Paul Ellis, Ken Wilkes,
Malcolm Slater, John Henshaw and Ray Tuthill. Each of them has been very
generous with their time, helping me to understand what it was like to work at
Enfield and offering me invaluable insights into the problems of large-scale
small arms manufacturing.
In the early days of my research, there were a number of people who were
crucial to making this project possible. All connected to the Royal Armouries,
these people made research fun while keeping me true to my salt. I would
particularly like to thank the last custodian of the MOD Pattern Room and now
editor of Jane’s Infantry Weapons, Richard Jones. Apart from making me lug
boxes of weapons from place to place while the National Firearms Centre was
being set up, Richard gave me the benefit of his exhaustive firearms’ knowledge.
Writing about small arms is made complicated by the unwilling ness of
commentators to cite primary sources and the use of the Internet to propagate all
sorts of myths. Richard helped me navigate my way through the pitfalls and kept
me on the straight and narrow.
Apart from Richard, Jonathan Ferguson, curator of firearms at the National
Firearms Centre, has regularly made time for lively and sometimes heated
discussion. I would also like to thank my fellow honorary historical consultant
colleagues at the Royal Armouries, Professor David Williams and David Penn.
Both have generously given their time and offered detailed and invaluable
observations. I would also like to thank the librarians at the Royal Armouries
and especially Philip Abbot and Stuart Ivinson as well as a fellow regular reader
in the library, Stuart Taylor. All of these people helped me stay focused on my
research. Thanks go to them all.
A number of academic colleagues have also given their time to help me
bring this project to fruition. To start, I would like to thank my PhD supervisor,
Dr John Stone. Given the subject matter, most academics would not have been
so generous, but John created an intellectual space that allowed me to take guns
seriously. I am very grateful to him for this. Apart from John, I would also like
to thank: Professor Anthony King, Professor John Buckley, Assistant Professor
Matthew Barlow and Drs Tim Gale, Phillip Blood, Glenn Flint, Jeff Michaels,
Andrew Hargreaves and Patrick Rose. I should also thank two very smart
students, Jeremy Levett and Alexander Gould, who found a couple of things I
did not have time to identify. Thanks also go to my colleagues at the University
of Hull and the University of Sussex. I’d especially like to single out Dr Anna
Stavrianakis and Professor Jan Selby for taking the time to read and comment on
my manuscript.
Lastly, I’d like to thank my family and especially my mum, Gillie, and my
daughter, Sarah; but most importantly, my wife Dr Sally Drayton.
Sally made this project. This book is dedicated to her.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ABC America–Britain–Canada
A/CEAD Assistant Chief Engineer Armament Design
ADE Armament Design Establishment
BAR Browning Automatic Rifle
BAOR British Army of the Rhine
BBC Britain–Belgium–Canada
BJSM British Joint Services Mission
BSA Birmingham Small Arms Company
CEAD Chief Engineer Armament Design
CGS Chief of the General Staff
CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff
CISA Chief Inspector of Small Arms
CS(M) Controller Supplies (Munitions)
DCIGS Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff
DGofA Director General of Artillery
DInf Director of Infantry
DMT Director of Military Training
DofA (SA) Director of Artillery (Small Arms)
DoD Department of Defense
DWD Director of Weapons and Development
EM-1 Experimental Model No. 1
EM-2 Experimental Model No. 2
FAL Fusil Automatique Léger
FARELF Far East Land Forces
FN Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre: Belgian manufacturer
GPMG General Purpose Machine Gun
GSR General Staff Requirement
H&K Heckler & Koch: German manufacturer
IGO Inspector Government Ordnance
IRA Irish Republican Army
IW Individual Weapon
IFV Infantry Fighting Vehicle
LMG Light Machine Gun
LSW Light Support Weapon
MCV Mechanised Combat Vehicle
MG Machine Gun
MGO Master General of Ordnance
MGO Master General of Ordnance
MMG Medium Machine Gun
MOD Ministry of Defence
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
OWPC Organisation and Weapons Policy Committee
RSAF Royal Small Arms Factory
SA80 Section Small Arms Post 1980
SAA Small Arms Ammunition
SAG Small Arms Group
SSK Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
SLEM Self-Loading Experimental Model
SLR Self-Loading Rifle
SMG Sub-Machine Gun
SMLE Short Magazine Lee–Enfield
SST Social Shaping of Technology
STANAG NATO standardisation agreements
VCIGS Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff