American Rifle - Alexander Rose [203]
But they just might work. Could any secretary of defense leave himself open to the charge that he had passed over what might have been the greatest rifle of all time? The SPIW revelation left McNamara with three options. Safe: he could ignore the AR-15 and continue M14 production until the SPIW came online, if it ever did. Risky: terminate the M14 now and issue AR-15s until the SPIW was ready, if it ever was. Moderate: temporarily suspend M14 production and make a onetime purchase of AR-15s to keep Colt in business and the Special Forces and LeMay off his back until the SPIW came along. If it didn’t, then reactivate the M14.
McNamara settled on option three. In mid-1963 he approved a single procurement of 85,000 AR-15s for the army and 19,000 for the air force. The army’s rifles were for “specialized” use, a euphemism for Vietnam-theater Special Forces, airborne units, and CIA operatives who reassured nervous State Department officials and American representatives at NATO headquarters that there was no danger of the AR-15 being distributed “universally” among troops—an act that would have enraged the European allies, now lumbered with the .30/7.62mm. As for the air force’s consignment, it would serve to appease the combustive LeMay until he retired in January 1965.
Accordingly, McNamara suspended production of the M14 come July 1, 1964, and the military version of the AR-15 was dubbed the M16.60The M14 was, nevertheless, not quite dead. More than a million had either been manufactured or were on order, and Massachusetts legislators (including both its senators, new boy Edward Kennedy and old-timer Republican Leverett Saltonstall) were gearing up to defend their constituents’ jobs at Springfield Armory and at Harrington & Richardson.61 Even so, a Wall Street Journal headline nicely summarized the story: “Order of $13,296,923 for New-Type Rifles Reflects Army’s Growing Dislike of M-14.”62
The growing “like” for the M16 stemmed from two factors: the failure and cancellation of the SPIW and the mounting U.S. commitment to Vietnam. When McNamara had scheduled M14 production to cease in July 1964 and had put the M16 in stasis until the SPIW came along, the fighting in Vietnam still seemed more like a contained, controllable conflict than an escalating, expansive war. As late as the spring-summer of 1964, there was little reason to believe otherwise. Indeed, so confident was he that most of the 15,000 U.S. troops would be out of Vietnam within eighteen months, that on April 25 the secretary of defense told reporters he was “pleased” that Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) was calling it “McNamara’s War.”63 A week later McNamara declared that his staff was studying 8,000 defense installations and bases to see which ones could be closed.64 Two weeks later a May 15 memorandum, in hindsight ironically entitled Study of Rifle Readiness, con-firmed that there was to be “no more procurement of XM16E1 (AR15) rifles after the FY64 buy of 85,000.”65 There would be no need for them, apparently, in Vietnam or anywhere else.
Few predicted how rapidly the situation would change. On August 5, in response to two alleged attacks by North Vietnamese vessels on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Johnson put before Congress a resolution to allow him to take all necessary measures to prevent attacks on U.S. forces. Two days later it passed, in the House by 414 votes to nil, and in the Senate, 88 to 2. Henceforth American troops would be sent abroad in ever-rising numbers. Within the year there would be 60,000; by the end of 1965, 184,000; of 1966, 385,000; and of 1967, nearly half a million.66
All of these soldiers