Parents worried their kids will consume some unseemly content on Netflix have been able to block all the content that falls under a particular rating. Now, Netflix’s latest update gives you a little more control, allowing you to prevent your young viewer from watching particular programs you deem unsuitable for them, even if it falls in your selected ratings range. Not everyone wants their kid watching Stranger Things, no matter how many games of D&D they play. To keep them away from questionable content, all you need is a PIN and a list of movies you don’t want your child to see.
Add a PIN, Add Some Banned Movies
Go to Netflix to visit your account page and select the Parental Controls link. Enter your password and choose a PIN, which you’ll need to unlock the restrictions should you want to watch a previously restricted title. From there you can drag the rating slider from “Little Kids” to “Adults” and restrict by maturity level. If you just want to restrict a few particular movies and don’t want to put an entire category of films off-limits, you can add the name of the show or movie you want to block under the Restrict Specific Titles section.
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Netflix also made it easier to figure out a movie’s rating before that first channel-changing scene. Now, when you start a show, you’ll see the film rating prominently displayed in the corner. Reconsidering your viewing ban on a few programs? Just enter the PIN when you select the banned title.
A 5-inch gun on the USS Lexington as it is seen at the bottom of the Coral Sea, off the coast of Australia. (Vulcan Photo)
A team led by Paul Allen has done it again at the bottom of the sea, locating the wreckage of another long lost U.S. Navy warcraft.
A crew working with Allen’s Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel found the USS Lexington on Sunday, 76 years after it sank in the Coral Sea, more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia. The aircraft carrier — one of the first ever built in the U.S. — was located about two miles below the surface.
We’ve located the USS Lexington after she sank 76 yrs ago. #RVPetrel found the WWII aircraft carrier & planes more than 3000m (~2mi) below Coral Sea near Australia. We remember her brave crew who helped secure 1st strategic US win in the Pacific Theater https://t.co/20ehjafD7dpic.twitter.com/HIvxNUDbsX
According to a post on the Microsoft co-founder’s website, the ship, which went down with 35 aircraft on board, took part in the Battle of the Coral Sea from May 4-8, 1942. The Lexington was hit by multiple Japanese torpedoes and bombs, in a battle alongside the USS Yorktown and three Japanese carriers. A secondary explosion and fire ultimately led to calls to abandon ship, and 2,770 crewmen and officers were rescued, while 216 were lost.
The USS Phelps delivered torpedoes that sank the crippled ship, the first aircraft carrier casualty in history.
“To pay tribute to the USS Lexington and the brave men that served on her is an honor,” Allen said in a statement. “As Americans, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who served and who continue to serve our country for their courage, persistence and sacrifice.”
The USS Lexington off Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, with Diamond Head in the background, on Feb. 2, 1933. (U.S. Navy Photo)Damage is shown to the port forward 5-inch gun gallery on USS Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea, May 8, 1942. The view looks aft, with the ship’s number two 5/25 gun in the foreground, still manned and in operation. The number four 5/25 gun is immediately beyond, trained out to port and aft. (U.S. Navy Photo)
Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Allen, said that the ship was on a priority list of those lost during World War II.
“Based on geography, time of year and other factors, I work together with Paul Allen to determine what missions to pursue,” Kraft said. “We’ve been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months and it came together nicely.”
Underwater images and video taken by a subsea vehicle launched by Petrel show the large guns on the carrier as well as some of the airplanes resting on the ocean floor. The Petrel’s state-of-the-art subsea equipment allows it to dive to 6,000 meters, and since being deployed last year it was active in several missions in the Philippine Sea before moving to the Coral Sea.
Last year, Allen-led expeditions led to the discovery of the USS Indianapolis and USS Ward, as well as the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere. In 2015, the USS Astoria and Japanese battleship Musashi were located.
Check out more images of the Lexington site, released by Allen’s team on Monday:
The USS Lexington nameplate. (Vulcan Photo)An aircraft on the bottom of the Coral Sea. (Vulcan Photo)A blast shield is shown, with writing, on the USS Lexington. (Vulcan Photo)The control room onboard Paul Allen’s R/V Petrel. (Vulcan Photo)
This video from the YouTube channel, This Old Tony, is one of the most inspiring I’ve seen in a while. Which is kind of an odd thing to say since the results are something of a fail. Or are they?
Tony was fascinated by his ultrasonic cleaner. He wanted to learn more about how it works and was curious to see if he could re-direct the soundwave hardware in such a cleaner to do something else useful. So, he bought a smaller $60 cleaner to take apart and to better understand its inner workings. He takes us along for the ride.
With his newfound knowledge of how the cleaner and its hardware works, Tony decides to see if he can turn the unit into a ultrasonic cutting knife. He knows that the engineering of the horn will be crucial, but he doesn’t fully understand the acoustical engineering involved. No worries. He just tinkers towards his solution.
At one point, the video appears to end; the project a failure. But Tony comes back, presses on, and eventually comes up with something that actually kinda-sorta works. Proof of concept, anyway.
This video is a glorious example of the joys and value of tinkering. Tony’s curiosity led him to learning more about the inner workings of a tool he regularly uses, the underlying acoustical properties behind ultrasonic technology, and how an ultrasonic knife works. Tony also has a great low-key and funny presentation style which makes his videos fun to watch.
Not content to rest there (or leave his poor cannibalized cleaner alone to die with dignity), Tony decided to try turning the knife into an ultrasonic welder. Again, not a certifiable success, but the experiments are interesting and tantalizing. With more work, better engineering, and lots more futzing, it looks like you could possibly make your own ultrasonic hand tools.
One of the positive side-effects of the Trump administration is that citizens are far more informed on the issues than at any time in my memory. The public seems to be getting into the details on a lot of topics lately. Gun control is a great example. I consider myself under-informed on that topic, but improving daily, as are most of you who follow the news. And I thought it would be useful for some of you to compare your views on the topic to where I’ve evolved so far.
What follows is my public confession of ignorance on the topic. I will list the things I believe to be true, while asking readers to fact-check me. I’ll modify my list as corrections come in.
In no particular order, here’s what I think I know.
Gun control works. If it didn’t work, the Vegas shooter and the Florida school shooter would have used fully-automatic weapons and killed far more people. The one-time mass shooters are clearly using the most lethal weapons they can get without too much friction. Fully-automatic weapons are expensive, less available, and can create a paper trail with purchase. That’s evidently enough friction to make them not the weapon of choice. Therefore, the existing gun controls on fully-automatic weapons seem to work.
Professional criminals can always get weapons. But they are not the topic of most gun control conversations for that very reason.
States with tight gun control have lower gun violence. But those states are also blue states. The obvious correlation here is that liberals vote for gun control no matter how many or how few problems the state experiences. The state-to-state comparisons do not tell you if gun control works.
Comparing gun ownership in the United States to other countries is more misleading than illuminating because no two situations are alike. The United States isn’t Switzerland and it isn’t Japan.
Chicago has strict gun control and yet it has high gun violence. But that doesn’t tell you gun control doesn’t work. It might tell you Chicago is a blue (liberal) city with a gun violence problem. But that’s all it tells you. We can’t know if Chicago would have even greater problems without the existing gun laws.
Gun ownership is a safeguard against the government turning on citizens. While the professional military will always have overwhelming firepower compared to citizens, private guns would instantly be turned on the unprotected assets and family members of anyone involved in a coup attempt. That’s a safeguard.
The NRA opposes universal background checks for gun purchases because it creates a list of gun owners that would be useful for a government that might want to later confiscate guns. Yet the NRA itself is a list of gun owners, in effect. And any gun owner who buys a weapon, ammo, gun accessories, or uses a gun range is discoverable by their credit card or check purchases. If you subscribe to Guns & Ammo magazine, or visit gun websites, or say pro-gun things on social media, that’s discoverable too. So 98% (just a guess) of gun owners are already discoverable by the government.
There’s probably no practical way to effectively regulate or ban private person-to-person gun sales. But you could pass a law putting some liability (say a $10,000 fine for example) on the private seller in case the gun is used by the buyer for a crime within, let’s say, one year. Under this scenario, you also want to have legal ways to privately sell guns without the liability risk. That could include buying a one-year surety bond, or selling the gun to a licensed dealer. Just brainstorming here.
Gun owners worry about a slippery slope from background checks to gun confiscation. But with hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation, and a gun culture in our DNA, we already have Mutually Assured Destruction if the government were to attempt confiscation. The government itself would fall within a week, in my opinion. I judge the slippery-slope-to-confiscation argument to be a real risk, but a smaller risk than just about any other risk the country routinely discusses.
Politicians and citizens often refer to AR-15 rifles as assault weapons, or assault rifles. But a more accurate description, by far, would be “defensive weapon.” I would imagine that for every 10,000 AR-15 sales, perhaps one nut is buying for actual assault purposes. The rest are for sport shooting and defense. Words matter in political conversations.
According to at least one ER doctor who has seen many gunshot wounds, the high-velocity rounds of an AR-15 will explode organs and make wounds unsurvivable, whereas the typical lower-velocity handgun wounds often leave cleaner holes that can be less lethal. This generality assumes most handguns don’t have special rounds that could also explode organs. And distance from target makes a difference, I hear.
Gun owners say handguns are just as effective as AR-15s for mass shootings. This is clearly untrue for special cases such as the Vegas event where shooting distance was a variable. And I would expect human psychology to favor AR-15s for any “make me famous” killings such as the recent school tragedy. I hate to say it, but a military-looking weapon is going to be more appealing, and feel more dominant, for such killers. It would also be an advantage over police on the scene if the first responders had only handguns and shooting distance is a factor. So while it is true that handguns can produce mass casualties, and have, it is also probably true that access to AR-15s raises the risk of mass shootings and the death count too. No one can estimate how much of a real difference it would make. My best guess is “some,” but a small improvement might be enough to matter.
Gun owners say gun control doesn’t work because any law can be skirted. You can’t plug all of the holes in the system. But gun control doesn’t attempt to plug every hole. It attempts to add some useful friction in places that might improve things by 2%, for example. When it comes to life and death, small improvements count.
Some people tell me there are already universal background checks in the law (and therefore existing lists of gun buyers) but I assume that system is incomplete or we wouldn’t be discussing it. I could use some fact checking there.
If universal gun background checks are objectionable to the NRA, would a no-buy list also be objectionable? A no-buy list also carries the risk of identifying legal gun buyers simply because you have to do a search with the buyer’s name to know if he or she is on the no-buy list. But maybe we could mitigate that risk by designing a system that automatically sends a thousand random names of real people with every query so the government can’t tell who the search was for. The gun store owner would get back only the no-buy names from the thousand, in alphabetical order, so it would be easy to check if the customer in front of you is one of them. Or perhaps the gun story owner can see a list of no-buy people in the buyer’s zip code so no query with the buyer’s name is ever used. Just brainstorming here. Might be other solutions that are better.
I will correct and update this list as I learn more on the topic. How close is my understanding to yours? Let me know in the comments or on on Twitter at @ScottAdamsSays.
I started a Patreon account so my audience can influence my content — via micro-donations as low as one dollar.
Writing about persuasion and politics reduced my income by about 30-40% because of tribal effects. I took that risk with full understanding of the outcome because I thought it was worth educating the public on what they were witnessing.
Patreon funding will persuade me to express my opinions as often as practical without worrying about the sensibilities of sponsors, advertisers, or corporate bosses. I appreciate all of you who are making this happen.
While the AR-15 is being vilified left and right, it’s important that people be reminded why it’s a great rifle and why the average, law-abiding civilian should own one. While we can easily say that we should be able to own one because the Second Amendment says we can, let’s be honest here. That’s not enough right now. We also need to present arguments why the rifle should be available beyond 2A protections.
Her name is Carrie Lightfoot, and she is a NRA certified pistol instructor.
At one point in the panel, a man named Scott Pappalardo said, “An AR-15 should not be used as a home protection weapon.”
Lightfoot said, “Do you know what a fabulous gun that is for women?”
“It’s a fabulous gun. So is a shotgun,” he said.
She responded by saying that a shotgun is “much harder to handle.”
Lightfood also took up an impassioned defense of the Second Amendment.
“This is a constitutionally protected right–this is not a government legislated privilege, such as driving a car.”
She nailed it.
Lightfoot is right about shotguns. Not only are they harder to handle, they’re also harder to master. The image most people have in their heads of a shotgun is a forgiving piece of hardware that hides your faults as a shooter, and to an extent, that’s accurate.
However, shotguns kick harder than almost any rifle and being able to utilize them to their fullest potential requires more knowledge and skill than most could believe. They’re hella versatile, but only if you know what you’re doing.
But the AR-15 has a light recoil and is handy inside or outside the home. With some kind of rail system, it can have a light affixed to it that makes the weapon even more useful.
Of course, Lightfoot besting Pappalardo isn’t any great feat.
For those who are unfamiliar with Pappalardo, he’s the guy who made a video you may have seen circulating around on social media where he “destroys” his AR-15 in protest of what happened in Parkland. Of course, he does it by chopping down the barrel of the rifle, not the receiver. That’s a no-no.
Still, Lightfoot’s comments were perfect regardless of who she was debating. They’re perfect because they’re right.
What gun control advocates never seem to grasp is that disarming Americans hurts women far more than it will ever hurt men. It takes away the tools that will help them combat violence directed at them. Further, don’t buy the hype that being armed somehow hurts women. It doesn’t. Not at all.
The AR-15 is actually the perfect gun for many women. It’s light, adjustable, and has minimal recoil while still being sufficient to take down bad people intent on doing bad things.
Lightfoot’s argument is one of those that might well make it that much more difficult for the gun grabbers to snatch this one away from the law-abiding.
MySQL 8.0 will be GA soon (just my assumption: Oracle doesn’t tell me anything about its release plans) and it’s time to think about having a look at it. If this is your first try of MySQL 8, get prepared for several impacting differences from previous versions.
In this article I won’t tell you what you can do with MySQL 8: there is plenty of material about this, including in this very blog. I will instead concentrate on differences from previous versions that users need to know if they want to avoid surprises.
Data Directory
Let’s start with an observation of the data directory. After a standard installation, without any additional options, I see the following:
Now the MySQL generates all the certificates needed to run connections securely. This will greatly simplify your task when setting up a new instance.
mysql.ibd
This was completely unexpected! The mysql database has now its own tablespace. This is probably due to the new Data Dictionary, which is implemented in InnoDB. You will notice that all the InnoDB tables in MySQL use this tablespace, not only dictionary tables. This will help keeping administrative data separate from operational data in the rest of the server.
undo_001 undo_002
The undo logs have now their own tablespace by default.
Global variables
There are a lot of changes in global variables. Here’s the list of what will impact your work when you use MySQL 8.0 for the first time:
This is huge. Using this plugin, passwords are stored in a different way, which guarantees more security, but will probably break several workflows among the users. The bad thing about this change implementation is that this password format contains characters that don’t display well on screen, and you can see garbled output when inspecting the "user" table.
local_infile OFF
Loading local files is now prevented by default. If you have a workflow that requires such operations, you need to enable it.
log_bin ON log_slave_updates ON
We’ve seen from an inspection of the local directory that binary logging is enabled by default. But also very important is that log_slave_update is enabled. This is important to have slaves ready to replace a master, but will severely affect performance in those scenarios where some slaves were supposed to run without that feature.
Also impacting performance is the setting for replication repositories, which are now on TABLE by default. This is something that should have happened already in MySQL 5.6 and was long overdue.
Surprisingly, something that DOES NOT get enabled by default is Global Transaction Identifiers (GTID). This is also a legacy from decisions taken in MySQL 5.6. Due to the GTID implementation, enabling them by default is not possible when upgrading from a previous version. With new data in a fresh installation, it is safe to enable GTID from the start.
Users
There are two new users when the server is created:
mysql.infoschema mysql.session
Theoretically, mysql.session also exists in 5.7, but it was introduced long after GA, so it still qualifies as a novelty.
Then, when the server starts, you get a grand total of 4 users (root and mysql.sys are inherited from MySQL 5.7.)
Mixed oddities
When MySQL initializes, i.e. when the server starts for the first time and creates the database, you will notice some slowness, compared to previous versions. This is in part due to the data dictionary, which needs to create and fill 30 tables, but it is not a big deal in terms of performance. In some systems, though, the slowness is so acute that you start worrying about the server being stuck.
I noticed this problem in my Intel NUC running with SSD storage. In this box, the initialization time took a serious hit:
Version
time
5.0.96
1.231s
5.1.72
1.346s
5.5.52
2.441s
5.6.39
5.540s
5.7.21
6.080s
8.0.3
7.826s
8.0.4
38.547s
There is no mistype. The initialization for 8.0.4 lasts 6 times more than 5.7. This doesn’t happen everywhere. On a Mac laptop running on SSD the same operation takes almost 9 seconds, while 5.7 deploys in less than 5. It is still a substantial difference, one that has totally disrupted my regular operations in the NUC. I investigated the matter, and I found the reason. In 8.0, we have a new (hidden) table in the data dictionary, called st_spatial_reference_systems. Up to MySQL 8.0.3, this table was filled using a single transaction containing roughly 5,000 REPLACE INTO statements. It is a lot of data, but it happens quickly. For comparison, in MySQL 8.0.3 the initialization is only 2 seconds slower than 5.7. The reason for the slowness in 8.0.4 is that there was a new command added to the syntax: CREATE SPATIAL REFERENCE SYSTEM, which is now used 5,000 times to fill the table that was previously filled with a single transaction. I don’t know why someone in the MySQL team thought that changing this operation that is hidden from users was a good idea. The data is contained in the server itself and it goes into a data dictionary table, also not visible to users. I am sure I can find at least two methods to load the data faster. I was told that this glitch will be fixed in the next release. I’m waiting.
Speaking of initialization, the mysql_install_db script has been removed for good in 8.0. If you are still using it instead of the recommended mysqld --initialize, you should adapt asap.
This list is far from being exhaustive. I recommend reading What’s new in MySQL 8 before upgrading. If you are impatient, dbdeployer can help you test MySQL 8 quickly and safely.
Today, we often talk about body armour in both military and civilian contexts. Advanced modern body armour is now capable of stopping powerful rounds but the use of armour in warfare dates back centuries. Overmatch is no new concept. This week I came across a great slow motion video showing just how effective plate armour […]
The crazy slingshot-loving German is back, and he’s up to his old tricks. Doing weird stuff with slingshots, that is! And this time he’s stumbled onto something pretty sweet.
Take a dart — you know, like the ones used in pub games — and throw it sideways, and it aligns itself during flight, because the tip is so much heavier than the vanes in the rear. So why not do the same with a slingshot?
Mwahaha!
It works pretty well, burying the tips deep in solid wood from 15 meters. But is he satisfied? Nah.
So, he built a crossbow for shooting darts! With a red dot scope, of course. And it works pretty slick, too.
Is he satisfied? Of course not! So he conjures up a repeating crossbow to fling darts.
Firearms Instructor Uses AR-15 to Stop Knife Attack
Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- On 26 February, 2018, Dave Thompson, a firearms instructor, used an AR-15 type rifle to stop a knife attack he witnessed in the apartment complex where he lives. From patch.com:
Police said a witness to the stabbing incident retrieved an AR-15 rifle from their home and stopped the attacker “with only a threat of force.” The witness had both a valid firearm owner’s ID card and a concealed carry permit, according to the sheriff’s office.
The witness, who spoke with WGN-TV, said he ran to grab his AR-15 after hearing the commotion and spotting a “pool of blood” in his apartment building hallway. “Blood was everywhere,” said neighbor Dave Thomas, adding that he chose the AR-15 over a handgun, saying, “Bigger gun, I think a little more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually stopping.”
Dave Thompson, Firearms Instructor
The AR-15 is one of, if not the most popular type rifle in the United States. Its many advantages have made it the rifle of choice for millions of Americans. Dave Thompson already mentioned the rifle, because of its easily recognized profile, has a high intimidation factor. Most defensive uses of guns do not require a shot to be fired. That is exactly what happened in Dave Thompson’s incident.
AR-15 rifles are easy to control, have low recoil, sufficient stopping power, and magazine capacity to handle multiple assailants, with a reserve for misses, “warning shots”, and the potential of drugged or drunk assailants. Thompson recognized these advantages. From wgntv.com:
Thomas says he is also a firearms instructor.
“The AR-15 is my weapon of choice for home protection,” Thomas said. “It’s light, it’s maneuverable. If you train and know how to use it properly, it’s not dangerous. And this is just a perfect example of good guy with an AR-15 stopped a bad guy with a knife. And there were no lives taken, so all in all it was a good day.”
The same advantages that make the AR-15 a good choice for home defense make it a good choice for police officers. The AR-15 platform is one of the most commonly used by numerous police departments and sheriff offices around the country. Conversely, citizens have always looked to police for examples of what are reliable and effective firearms for defense of self and others.
There are numerous choices of caliber and projectiles for AR-15 type rifles. The most common caliber used by citizens and police alike is the .223 or 5.56 X 45 cartridge. While there are small differences between the two designations, most rifles will handle both cartridges interchangeably.
The easy customization of the rifle, the availability of numerous accessories such as telescopic sights, lasers, bi-pods, stock configurations, muzzle brakes and suppressors all add to the appeal of the rifle. The ability to change the rifle to different calibers, with a change of upper receiver, is another reason for the popularity of the AR-15.
Semi-automatic rifles have been common and legal in the United States for over a hundred years, but the AR-15 has come to be the American rifle for all.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Mud-soaked GIs desperately field-stripping jammed guns in failing light. Businessmen-turned-bureaucrats facing off against dogged Pentagon officials in costly tangles of red tape. Meanwhile, a brilliant self-taught engineer struggling to maintain his invention’s integrity amid old-school bias. The story of the M16 is as dramatic and memorable as they come.
M16 Being Used in the Vietnam War
No other gun so captures the human condition, where need, drive and ego met error, ingenuity and hard-earned survival.
It’s a story to make your head ache, your heart swell and your eyes blink. And while it’s from decades past, it carries all the markers of an equally conflicted present facing technological leaps and political division.
The Quest for the All-In-One Military Firearm
Most historians point to the Korean conflict as a change point in defining optimal firepower in battle and in turn, what was then termed the modern battlefield.
U.S. infantry soldiers armed with World War II-era semi-automatic M1 Garands and M1 carbines quickly found themselves both outmanned and outgunned.
Outgunned, Outmanned, Outnumbered, Outplanned
Picture it:
An M1 semi-automatic rifle weighed 9½ pounds, was over 43 inches long and relied on en bloc eight-round clips of .30-06 ammo. It was powerful and accurate but no match for sheer numbers of enemy.
An M1 semi-automatic carbine was lighter—just under 6 pounds—with a 15-round clip of .30-caliber carbine. The M2 carbine offered selective fire and a 30-round banana clip. However, neither was able to stop a swarming enemy.
With lessons learned in Korea and the Vietnam conflict building, the Army knew it needed something better. The challenge was what that “better” would be and how it would be done.
The overall goal was to have an all-in-one, one small arms weapon that—in the words of the M16’s creator Eugene Stoner—“could take the place of the M1 rifle, the carbine, the grease gun . . . the .45-caliber submachine gun and the BAR.”
M1 Garand with Bayonet
Gee, is that all you wanted? Why didn’t you just say so, right?
Rethinking Effective Range and Caliber
Researchers at Aberdeen Proving Ground’s Ballistics Research Laboratories (BRL) had been analyzing the lethality of ammunition, looking at mass and velocity since 1938. This may seem like dry stuff now, but then, these were radical ideas.
First Meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the Ballistic Research Laboratory
In particular, BRL engineer Donald Hall’s Effectiveness Study of the Infantry Rifle released in March of 1952 revealed some unexpected realities unique to the modern battlefield:
The range of rifle fire rarely exceeded 500 yards.
Rifle fire was most effective at about 120 yards or less.
The most lethal bullet would be high-velocity but small-caliber.
To second the motion, Johns Hopkins University’s Operations Research Office (ORO) released its Operations Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon just three months later. Known as the Hitchman Report, its results were equally startling:
Military rifles were effective only at 300 yards or less.
Most kills happened at less than 100 yards.
Small-caliber ammunition best performed the task.
Additional ORO research revealed two more crucial facts:
Soldiers aimed only the first of their eight M1 rounds.
Despite aim, wounds inflicted in battle were not concentrated in targeted body parts but instead were surprisingly randomly distributed.
Again, the answer seemed to lie not in a long-range, highly accurate step-stopper but in a weapon that would fire a small-caliber bullet with high-velocity lethality—many of them in fact.
M14—The First Try
At first, the story seems simple enough.
Reluctant to accept the idea of small-caliber efficiency, the Army basically remade the M1 into the M14 by attempting to make it fully automatic.
M14
The M14 had selective fire and a 20-round box magazine. It used the new 7.62x51mm NATO rounds, but that firepower still meant that a soldier on full automatic could aim only the first round. After that, recoil steadily forced the barrel up and up.
To boot, it was long—over 44 inches long—and heavy, weighing in at over 10 pounds loaded.
Nevertheless, the Army began issuing them in 1959 only to determine a few years later that their performance in the Vietnamese jungles just didn’t cut it when facing an enemy armed with AK-47 assault rifles. By 1963, the Department of Defense was seriously revisiting the M14’s former competition, a lightweight known as an AR.
AK-47
Wait, you say. “Revisiting?”
Yes. Revisiting. You see, the AR had been around for a while, but the casting calls for the high-performing outsider hadn’t gone particularly well.
AR Is for ArmaLite
In the 1950s, the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation decided to branch out into small arms. By 1954, ArmaLite was the start-up division, intent on designing and manufacturing a new generation of small arms from its base in Hollywood, California.
Its first almost-sale was its AR-5, a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle designed for the Air Force. It weighed less than 3 pounds and could be broken apart to store the barrel and works in the plastic stock. It was to be the MA-1, but the sales never really happened.
An AR-5
Wanting to be taken seriously, ArmaLite recruited Eugene Stoner to become its chief engineer. Using his past experience in the aircraft industry, he’d been experimenting with using strong yet lightweight materials for firearms.
At ArmaLite, he started with the gas-operated AR-10, completing it in 1955. At barely 7 pounds, it shot 20 rounds of 7.62x51mm NATO and had anodized aluminum receivers and a fiberglass composite stock. To reduce recoil, the barrel was in line with the stock and the sites raised to eye level. While the newcomer’s novel construction failed to sway ordnance officials in 1955, it didn’t disappear.
AR-10s
It was simply the first time it fell beneath the heel of the Springfield Armory’s T44—or M14.
W Is for Wyman
Meanwhile, General Willard Wyman, a West Point graduate turned four-star Commanding General of Continental Army Command (CONARC), was impressed with ArmaLite’s AR-10. In fact, he was so impressed that in 1957, he visited Eugene Stoner, invited him to try again and offered funding in exchange for proprietary rights to create the AR-15.
Wyman is a name worth knowing in this context because he integrated the Trainfire program and its then-novel ideas of modern warfare—lots of ammo at terrifyingly close ranges—into the Army’s basic training. He even requested delays on the T44 decision to allow time for the AR-15 under development, but it was not to be.
Willard Wyman
While Wyman ordered 10 of Stoner’s AR-15s, Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker publicly adopted the T44 as the chosen M14. Wyman, however, kept the faith, and Stoner and ArmaLite kept working.
In 1958, Wyman ordered the Army to test his AR-15s.
ArmaLite’s AR-15
So, you ask, what were they testing?
Stoner’s first AR-15 weighed just 6 pounds or so and was 37½ inches long. The hand guard around the barrel was Bakelite, and a three-pronged flash suppressor graced the tip of the skinny barrel.
Miss America 1962 with an Original AR-15
Crafted from fiberglass, hard-anodized aluminum and steel, the AR-15 design was gas-operated. It cleverly ported gas from the charge through a tube to force the bolt carrier to the rear and eject the spent cartridge so that a fresh round could load.
Selective fire, it had a 25-round magazine but used the smaller caliber .22s, making it highly controllable whether set on semi-automatic or fully automatic.
Because of the pressures involved, the AR-15 needed a stronger case. Aberdeen Proving Ground and Robert Hutton helped design the 222 Special—a 55-grain full metal jacket boat-tail bullet made by Sierra Bullet Company and loaded by Remington Arms.
Now Widely Known as 222 Remington
In operation, both the AR-15’s selective fire lever and its straight-drop magazine release were easily accessible from the pistol grip. All it took was the flick of a thumb or the press of a finger.
The smaller caliber ammunition also helped with weight. Whereas an M14 and a standard 100 rounds weighed about 17 pounds, for the same load, you could carry an AR-15 and 280 rounds—nearly triple the ammo.
A slick, light weapon plus plenty of rounds—what was not to like?
The Politics of Firearms
New ideas can be problematic, and the AR-15 was no exception. In addition to General Wyman, several other personalities played significant roles in the M16’s path to service.
Dr. Frederick Carten, head of the Army Ordnance Corps, wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about a small-caliber weapon made of plastic that felt—and looked—like a toy.
Too Much Like a Toy Then, Too Scary Now
By reputation, he was resistant to the idea of a small-caliber weapon developed outside of traditional channels—that is, Springfield Armory—using unproven materials like plastic and aluminum. He is often credited with obstructing the AR-15’s progress during testing and demanding modifications that degraded performance—primarily due to the Army’s distaste for a small-caliber weapon.
When the AR-15 was put to the test in the Arctic in 1958, for example, Army Ordnance’s words of the day were inaccuracy and malfunction.
However, when Stoner flew to the location, he found that sites had been purposely disassembled and welding rods put in their place to misalign the firearm. A senior officer also put him on notice for trying to advance a small-caliber weapon that would surely endanger the soldier carrying it.
Both the Army Infantry Board and the Arctic Test Board—in 1958 and 1959, respectively—recommended that the AR-15 be “considered as a potential replacement for the M14.”
Headquarters of the Arctic Test Branch
By the end of testing, Carten assessed that the AR-15 “had not demonstrated sufficient technical merit and should not be developed by the Army,” In 1959, Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor decided to play it safe, following the Ordnance Corps’ lead, and the M14 continued its reign.
Colt Owns the AR-15
The AR-15’s future was looking grim. Fairchild was unhappy with its nearly million-and-a-half-dollar investment. By the end of 1958, Fairchild had claimed losses well over $17 million.
On February 19, 1959, Fairchild sold the exclusive manufacturing and merchandising rights for the AR-15 to Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company for $75,000 and a 4.5-percent royalty on future sales.
In addition, Colt agreed to pay Cooper-MacDonald—a marketing group with ties in Southeast Asia—$250,000 and a 1-percent royalty per weapon as a finder’s fee.
Early Colt AR-15
No, I didn’t mess up any zeroes. A very discouraged and in-debt Fairchild sold its $1.5-million baby for bird shot. By the way, Colt was still in the black but not by much, so the AR-15 investment and partnership with Cooper-MacDonald would be a gamble.
Interestingly, in May of 1959, three months after Army Chief of Staff Taylor’s announcement, a report from the Combat Developments Experimentation Center at Fort Ord in California surfaced. It detailed stunning simulated battlefield test results for the AR-15 and even proposed the “early replacement of current rifles”—the M14s—with AR-15s.
Did Colt have a clue? Who knows? What we do know is that Colt put its sales reps to work and petitioned the Ordnance Corps for a retrial. Initially, Ordnance denied the request, but events continued to stir the pot.
For one, Colt co-hosted a Fourth of July AR-15-meets-watermelon extravaganza in 1960 that impressed then-Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, who had documented the need for a more effective small arms weapon. When he became Air Force Chief of Staff in the summer of 1961, he applied his $2-million budget to an order of 80,000 AR-15 rifles to be procured over the next five years.
Field-Stripped M16A1
Despite repeated favorable tests, what should have been an in-house no-brainer met opposition from the Pentagon, the House defense appropriations subcommittee and even eventually President Kennedy thanks once again to Army Chief of Staff General Taylor and the Department of Defense’s penchant for one large-bore caliber.
On May 15, 1962, Congress finally granted the Air Force’s request. The Air Force had its AR-15s within 72 hours. It included orders for more in its budgets for 1963, 1964 and 1965 for the 80,000 total—all this for a firearm it had formally adopted as its standard basic weapon on January 2, 1962.
The Air Force was on board, but the AR-15’s story was still developing.
ARPA, AGILE and the AR-15
In 1958, the Defense Department had created the Advanced Research Projects Agency — DARPA — to supply the military with game-changing technology.
You may be familiar with DARPA from their work with Boston Dynamics on the Spot project:
In 1961, DARPA launched Project AGILE to identify, fund or develop weapons that might prove effective for special operations in Southeast Asia.
DARPA’s William Godel took note of Colt’s AR-15s and decided to send 10 to Saigon as a test. The response was enthusiastically positive, and in 1962, another thousand went to South Vietnam. Field test results from military advisers and a Ranger battalion praised the weapon’s stopping power and the round’s devastating effectiveness, citing it as “the best ‘all around’ firearm in existence.”
Initially, the troops liked it! They really, really liked it!
That alone, however, wouldn’t be enough.
The McNamara Factor
The M16’s story simply cannot be told without a nod to Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He was aware of conflicting assessments of the AR-15 and the Ordnance Corps’ decided lack of impartiality. As a former Ford executive versed in assembly-line efficiency, he also was an avid proponent of having one universal weapon for all services.
McNamara and JFK
McNamara had authorized the Project AGILE shipment of 1,000 AR-15s to South Vietnam and along with his famous “whiz kids” had determined that the AR-15 should be that universal weapon.
There was also an evaluation of the AR-15 compared with the M14 and AK-47. While results were mixed and analysis somewhat biased yet again, the report recommended that 1964’s budget include
50,000 to 100,000 AR-15s for special forces, airborne and air assault units and
“a sufficient number” of M14s to provide infantry squads with “automatic rifle capability.”
It also suggested reducing the M14 program while expediting further development of the AR-15.
McNamara halted M14 production in January of 1963 and adopted the AR-15 in its current state as the weapon of issue for all services. McNamara designated the Army as the purchasing agent while ordering the services to cooperate. However, nothing is ever that easy. That word choice—current state—would come back to haunt everyone.
Over the ensuing months, Ordnance, the services and McNamara’s staff haggled over more than 130 changes to the AR-15’s current state to launch the M16.
Key among them was that the Army insisted upon a forward assist that would allow a round to be forced into the chamber. Think about this a minute. If the gun jammed, the forward assist would give you a way to double down—likely on a dirty or fouled chamber that was causing the problem in the first place. Anyway, this resulted in two different models—the M16 and the M16A1 with a forward assist.
M16 (Top) vs M16A1 (Bottom)
The other significant change affected the ammunition. Stoner’s original design called for IMR 4475 propellant. However, production issues and that overpowering military need for standardization and more oomph resulted in a 5.56x45mm M194 ball powder cartridge that burned brighter and reached peak pressure faster than the intended IMR 4475 stick powder.
To compensate for the change in ammunition, the barrel was also altered from a twist rate of one turn in 14 inches to one turn in 12 inches.
Despite these modifications and additional tweaks, other features of the weapon remained unchanged—namely, the chamber remained unchromed. Remember that these firearms were destined for the humid, steamy Vietnamese climate.
Not Exactly Dry
Just go ahead and say it now: “Uh-oh.”
Nevertheless, at the beginning of November of 1963, Colt received a $13.5 million tasty government contract for 104,000 rifles—19,000 M16s for the Air Force and 85,000 M16A1s with a forward assist for the Army and Marines.
Hooah! The AR-15 was all grown up into an M16. Now, was it ready to serve?
Using M16s in Vietnam
Trial by Fire
By 1963, the U.S. had between 15,000 and 21,000 advisers and special forces troops in Vietnam. So far, the approach had been special ops, paramilitary training and insurgency. However, the North was determined to expand its power base, and the South was ever more reliant on U.S. support as conflict intensified.
When the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964, Congress quickly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—giving President Johnson unilateral power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia.
Johnson Signing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
In February of 1965, Johnson ordered sustained bombing on targets north of the 17th parallel. In March, he dispatched 3,500 Marines.
By January 1966, the U.S. had 200,000 troops in Vietnam and over the course of the year doubled that number. All of them needed guns, and Colt was supplying them, at one point turning out 45,000 M16s a month.
Vietnam became the M16’s crucible, and initially, the results weren’t pretty.
The weapons became notorious for jamming—a soldier’s only option to field strip the M16 on the spot and hope to survive the experience. Pinned under enemy AK-47 fire, many tried, but it was an impossible task.
Comic Given to Troops in Vietnam to Teach Them How to Clear a Jam
In May of 1967, Representative James J. Howard of New Jersey presented a letter from a Marine detailing how soldiers killed in the battle for Hill 881 died because their M16s had jammed.
Additional reports of Marines found dead with cleaning rods in place to clear cartridges that refused to extract haunted the Hill Fights of Khe Sanh. Morale sank as survivors lost faith in the weapons that were supposed to protect them and instead left them vulnerable.
In a letter, one soldier warned that “50 percent of the rifles fail to work” and cited “two Marines who died within 10 feet of the enemy, with jammed rifles” to prove his point.
Another simply stated, “Practically every one of our dead was found with his rifle torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it.”
As the war progressed, time constraints meant that infantry troops often had insufficient training and experience with the M16 prior to having to use it. Making matters even worse, the firearm was initially touted as self-cleaning, with cleaning kits few and far between.
But at Least They Had Comics Telling Them What That Cleaning Kit Should Contain
The failures, however, were staggering, with 50-percent malfunction rates and countless requests for replacement weapons and ammunition. Estimates have attributed up to 90 percent of all malfunctions were due to failures to extract—that is, the bullet flew, but the cartridge remained stuck in place, jammed, and no forward assist was going to fix it.
Something needed to be done—and fast.
The M16 Quickly Became Notorious for Jamming
Failure To Extract
Numerous investigations began—some within Colt itself while others began within the Marines, Army and even Congress.
Some—including generals—claimed nothing was wrong with the M16, going as far as to point the finger of blame and inadequacy at the soldiers themselves.
I mean, using comics as a training substitute probably didn’t help, though.
However, certain facts remained, and the Congressional Report of the M16 Review Panel: History of the M16 Weapon System painstakingly and in great detail sussed them out. Of note was the observation that “over 250 tests [had] been conducted” with “conflicting results,” varying validity and often little time. The battlefield, however, had proved quite conclusive, and the report homed in on two key inadequacies:
The ball powder burned too fast, fouling the chamber as it pushed the cyclic rate from 700 to 800 rounds per minute to more like 1,000. It was also moisture-sensitive, swelling or even bursting cartridges in tropical humidity.
The seemingly cost-saving decision not to chrome-plate the chamber exacerbated the problem as the resulting rust, pitting and corrosion increased the likelihood of a malfunction.
In answer, cleaning kits were widely issued for the once-supposedly self-cleaning rifles, and retrofitting M16s with chrome-plated chambers and then chrome-plated bores as well became a priority.
A few other changes helped to resolve issues and improve the M16 while allowing continued use of the ball powder:
Lighter firing pins replaced the original, heavier ones that were prone to unintentional slam firing.
Weights and spacers added to the buffer eliminated the problem of cartridges struck but not fired and helped to slow the cyclic rate.
Parts like the bolt and disconnector were strengthened to better withstand the high velocities and impacts involved.
The more expensive 7075 T6 aluminum that Stoner originally intended to use for the receivers replaced the inferior 6061 T6 aluminum that corroded over time.
By 1968, the M16 was finally a gun that a soldier could take into action and depend upon.
Soldiers with M16s
Ammunition Revisited
Throughout the M16’s development, ammunition played a key role, and that didn’t stop in 1968.
In 1953, the 7.62×51mm NATO rifle cartridge—the round that both the M1 and Eugene Stoner’s original AR-10 fired—became the first standard NATO rifle cartridge. This was a large part of why Army Ordnance proved so resistant to Stoner’s AR-15.
To achieve the performance levels required for the AR-15, Stoner worked with Sierra Bullet’s Frank Snow, Remington and Robert Hutton to devise the .222 Special, which became the .223 Remington and eventually “Cartridge, 5.56mm Ball, M193.”
223 Remington
In 1977, NATO decided that it wanted a smaller caliber round to replace the 7.62x51mm cartridge. The .223 Remington was the inspiration, and the result was of Belgian design thanks to Fabrique Nationale Herstal and what came to be known in 1980 as the 5.56×45mm NATO round.
By 1980, the Marines were requesting modification of the M16A1 so that it could fire the 5.56x45mm NATO round.
The M16A2
Marine Using an M16A2
By November of 1983, the Marines had their M16A2, and by May of 1986, the Army had adopted it as well. The main differences entailed
the option of a three-round burst rather than full automatic selection,
a heavier barrel,
rifling of one turn per every 7 inches,
a muzzle brake with a solid bottom rather than a vented flash suppressor,
a square front sight post,
canted slip ring for easier hand-guard removal,
a brass deflector,
a redesigned rear sight allowing adjustments for windage and elevation, and
a button-style forward assist.
Since Vietnam, the M16 has
seen action in conflicts like Granada, Haiti, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq;
gone through changes and iterations, from carbine Commandos to the M16A2; and
served as inspiration for its replacement—the M4.
The evolution of the M16 and its offspring, the M4 (second from bottom)
Each new development has demonstrated strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and flaws, yet as a whole, the story remains eternal. America is but one part of a world powered by conflict and but one player on an ever-changing battlefield. Innovation often comes at a price, with a learning curve and the impediments of bias. The M16 is a reminder of the dangers of a house divided against itself and the hope of what can be accomplished in unity. It is a reminder of the power of one gun in one soldier’s hands alone against an enemy who never entirely gives up or ceases to exist.
Today, we often talk about body armour in both military and civilian contexts. Advanced modern body armour is now capable of stopping powerful rounds but the use of armour in warfare dates back centuries. Overmatch is no new concept. This week I came across a great slow motion video showing just how effective plate armour […]
