Focus on Basics, Urges Small Arms Designer.

• Author: Ezell, Virginia Hart
• Position: Internal function of small arms needs attention - Brief Article

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 Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Executive Committee of NDIA's Small Arms Systems Section, in recognition of four decades of design and engineering achievements.

George Chinn is considered by many as the master of military small arms.

Sullivan is known for his work on the Ml 6 family of weapons. He is credited with adapting the design of Eugene Stoner's 7.62mm AR10 assault rifle to a smaller 5.56mm version, which ultimately became the now ubiquitous M16.

From his work with Stoner on the M16, Sullivan moved to Singapore, to work on a new light machine gun for Chartered Industries, now known as Singapore Technologies. The outcome was the 5.56mm Ultimax light machine gun, noted by experts as one of the most manageable light machine guns in the world. The secret of its manageability is in Sullivan's patented counter recoil mechanism, making the Ultimax not just a manageable full-automatic weapon, but a machine gun that can be aimed.

From Singapore, Sullivan continued to move West, to Italy's Beretta, where he worked on that company's assault rifle program. Although not adopted, he did complete the design for a 5.56mm assault rifle. Returning to the United States, Sullivan went to Sturm, Ruger & Company, in New Hampshire, to work on the design of the Mini 14 rifle, which is still in service today with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as...