So they say "Don't judge a book by its cover,"
And Weapon of Choice by Dr. Matthew Ford is an excellent example of why you should not judge a book by its cover.
I'm Ian McCollum, thanks for tuning in to another book review on ForgottenWeapons.
What we have here is, really, an academic thesis.
I mean, this thing, it's beyond the level of PhD thesis, but this is a seriously academic, historical study.
And it's been given a title and a cover image that makes it look like, honestly, like an airport thriller novel.
And so what I would recommend
U.S. Navy Seal on the front with that totally tacticalled-out SCAR-H is pretty cool,
But irrelevant to the actual book, so I would say take the dust jacket
And remove it
And now we can talk about this with an appropriate plain black cover
Because this is a seriously academic book and there's a ton of fantastic information in it.
If you are interested in firearms procurement by the military, I cannot recommend this highly enough.
So, what this book really is, is just that, it's a study of small arms procurement through the lens of the
the British military in the 20th century
And it's going to look at the questions of how do various guns get adopted,
How do they go from concept to development to adoption and use
Through all the various different groups of people who have a stake in that sort of decision.
So, politicians, army officers, army officials, army committees that are set up to pick weapons versus
Actual troops on the field who are using them, versus private industry that may be designing
Or developing or just producing small arms,
All of these different groups have a hand in the development and adoption process
And what Ford does is really analyze how that whole system works.
So, the book is set up chronologically, it's going to start with the Boer War
And the adoption, the British adoption of the SMLE
And what was involved in that. Even that rifle is a very interesting change in British military policy in that
It shows the, uh... It's the change from having infantry and cavalry rifles separate
To having one standard universal rifle for all the different branches of service.
From there, it's going to look at weapons development during World War I.
Probably the biggest single chunk of this is about the NATO... Post-World War II NATO standardization.
In large part, the fight over .280 and the British EM-2 rifle versus what became 7.62 NATO, the T65 cartridge
in the American M14, the American T65, and also the Belgian FAL.
How that, there's so much information on that process
And from a perspective that I have rarely seen anywhere else.
I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler, a big part of that was cartridge lethality.
So, the whole basis of adopting a rifle cartridge is largely based on what's going to actually be effective at
Killing a bad guy with a rifle bullet.
And while the commonly accepted standard was an American standard,
And by accepting that standard, the British set themselves up to be playing on an uneven playing field,
Where they had to compete with a cartridge that was designed for one thing,
against an American standard that was pretty explicitly designed to favor something else
And, in the long run, or in the short run really, we got 7.62 NATO for several decades.
The book does go on, it discusses the development of the Enfield weapons system, an SA80
And then it also actually talks substantially, in one of the last chapters, about British use of the FN Minimi
Or, in the US, we would know it as the M249 SAW,
How that weapon replaced the light support weapon, the SA80 Light Support Weapon.
So, what Ford is looking at here is this interplay of all the different groups.
You'd think everyone involved has one common goal, it is to find the best weapon for the military,
Develop it in the most effective way possible, and
Presto, that's the goal. Well, in reality, everybody's got slightly different and sometimes competing goals.
What the soldiers in the field want is not always what the officers in high command want
And neither of those may be the same thing as what the officers in a weapons selection committee
Are trying to find.
Private industry may want something to be adopted because it's better from their perspective,
All of these issues are the things that Weapon of Choice is discussing in depth.
Now, there are really two layers to this book.
There is, at one layer, the history of all these things that I've been discussing,
And then at a somewhat deeper level, Ford is also studying this on a very academic and sociological scale.
To a point that, I'll be honest, often sounds like complete gibberish to me.
Allow me to present one example.
Let's see here...
By rights, however, the approach should also call into question the very categories I have used
To examine small arms development.
Indeed, although notions of marksmanship, firepower, willpower, and stopping power
Are commonly recognized within shooter circles as labels, they define themselves
They are, themselves, reifications of complex sociotechnical phenomena
That, in some ways, mask the dynamic relations between weapon, engineer, and soldier.
While deconstructing the underpinning ideas that frame these terms, I have stuck to the recognized linguistic conventions
For the sake of advancing an accessible and not overly theorized arguments.
Argument.
For STS scholars, however,
The approach might smack too greatly of treating the social and the technology as, in some ways, separate
And that I am, therefore, reintroducing bifurcations or essentialist perspectives
That do not do justice to the theory that has informed this study.
So, if that made sense to you, you should immediately buy a copy of this book
Because you will like it on all levels.
If that couple of paragraphs sounded like gibberish,
But you're very interested in the actual history of the adoption of the FAL,
Or the Enfield Rifle, or the Minimi, or the SA80 Program,
You should also get a copy of this and just recognize in advance that you're going to have to dig through
Some text like that.
But, I can assure you that the historical veins of precious metals that run in this book are absolutely worth
Digging through some of that overly academic prose.
Now, I freely admit that I do not have the sort of educational background that may be required to really make sense of
What Ford is discussing here, and I'm not saying that it doesn't actually have a very valid and useful point to it,
Just, it's a little beyond me.
But, I love the history that was in here.
Highly recommend it. It's not an expensive book, I don't remember the price off hand, but it is currently in print
So if you take a look at the description text below, you'll find a link to a copy you can pick up on Amazon
And if this is a subject you're interested in, as always, this is definitely one I would recommend.
Thanks for watching!
Tune in again next week for another book review and, of course, tomorrow we'll be back with a cool Forgotten Weapon.
Thanks for watching!