Quoted: Stoner sold the idea that no cleaning kits were needed.
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And as I said, in a standard Ordnance adoption process all of these idiot things the designers did would have been found out and rectified. No weapon is good to go right off the builder's bench and the military, of all organizations, knows this. The military, more accurately, the government, failed in its duty to protect this nation.
One need only look at the lack of fully curved M16 magazines, and the ability to upgrade to same, and a too thin extractor rim on the 5.56 to see that the knowledge base of most small arms designers is limited. This has always been the case and is the reason for the overly conservative, unduly lengthy, and incredibly thorough testing that military weapons receive before they are adopted.
I'm not arguing that Stoner had a limited grasp of small arms useage in military combat or in weapons
system design. I am arguing that past a certain point it wouldn't have been his decision to make in a standard adoption scendario.