US Army Considers Adopting an Interim Battle Rifle in 7.62NATO: eventually adopt 6.5

[stanc]

I am one of those who feel tha this was only one of multiple bad decisions by our senior leadership that ultimately cost our country dearly during Wold War II.

I am not one who shares the view that it was a "bad" decision, because the .276 Garand offered only marginal improvement in weight and ammo capacity compared to the .30 M1 rifle.
IMO, the bad decision was to develop a clip-fed, semi-auto battle rifle to replace a clip-fed, bolt-action battle rifle, instead of creating a mag-fed assault rifle and intermediate cartridge.

The Garand rifle -- in either caliber -- was truly a classic example of "designing for the last war," instead of the war that was to come; preparing for trench warfare, instead of blitzkrieg.
With just a little bit of vision, the US Army could have opted for a two-caliber system, keeping .30-06 for machine guns, and developing a cartridge similar to 7.62x39 for assault rifles.



If designed for such a cartridge, the resulting Garand assault rifle could've been at least 8 inches shorter and 2 pounds lighter than the M1 rifle, with almost 4 times the ammo capacity.