Focus on Basics, Urges Small Arms Designer.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 November 2001
• Author: Ezell, Virginia Hart

The small arms community should remember its roots and work on improving the internal functioning of weapons, rather than developing peripheral products, such as laser designators and fire-control devices, according to L. James Sullivan, a veteran small arms designer.

It takes longer for a soldier to reload-well over one minute-than it does to expend all of the rounds in a single magazine, Sullivan reminded a conference sponsored recently by the National Defense Industrial Association in Little Rock, Ark.

Why not, he asked, rake a look at some of the basic issues of the design to help the soldier increase his ability to hit a target, rather than invest millions of dollars in a weapon that is rapidly becoming a Swiss Army Knife of rifles?

"Let's fix the inside before we start trying to fix the outside," said Sullivan.

At the Joint Services Small Arms Symposium, Sullivan received the Chinn...