<story><title>M-16: A Bureaucratic Horror Story (1981)</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>azernik</author><text>A factor that the article doesn&amp;#x27;t emphasize enough is the extent to which schedule pressure contributed to the bugginess of the released rifle.&lt;p&gt;The Kalashnikov had been designed in 1947, (hence, AK-47), but it took more than a decade before a bug-free version (the AKM) was considered reliable enough to make standard-issue. (When this article refers to &amp;quot;AK-47s&amp;quot;, most of the actual weapons involved were actually AKMs.)&lt;p&gt;The US, by contrast, had spent the decades since WWII resisting the assault rifle concept, so that when Vietnam rolled around their fantastically rich and well-funded military found its infantry outgunned by peasant militias wielding second-hand Soviet rifles. So the rifle went from initial acceptance, including these kinds of stupid last-minute design changes that are common in any project, to large-scale combat deployment within a year; normally, there would have been years of incremental usage to catch these bugs, but the rifle was so desperately needed that it was rushed to the front.&lt;p&gt;A book I&amp;#x27;ve recommended in another thread, which gives a great introduction to the history and impact of the Kalashnikov in particular and assault rifles in general, is C.J. Chivers&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The Gun&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Gun-C-J-Chivers&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0743271734&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Gun-C-J-Chivers&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0743271734&lt;/a&gt;), or this shorter-form article he wrote in response to recent msas shootings (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;interactive&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;ak-47-mass-shootings.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;interactive&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;ak-47-mass-sh...&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>M-16: A Bureaucratic Horror Story (1981)</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ethbro</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m reading through &lt;i&gt;Human Error&lt;/i&gt; by James Reason [1], on the basis of a HN recommendation. It&amp;#x27;s been excellent so far.&lt;p&gt;As regards software error, we do so many things (standard style guides, pair programming, code reviews) to limit error, yet give so little thought to where and how errors come to be. And specifically, what methods would best combat them.&lt;p&gt;This article and the procurement process it documents is a great example of &amp;quot;intentional but mistaken actions&amp;quot;. Which is to say the actions taken were intentional, the actions were realized as intended, but the original formulation was flawed.&lt;p&gt;Reason notes these errors tend to thrive in overly compartmentalized, deep, bureaucratic environments. Everyone is doing their job, but there&amp;#x27;s no one keeping an eye on the big picture when the train heads off the rails.&lt;p&gt;The difficulty, according to him, is that higher-cognitive checks needed to short circuit these kinds of errors tend to be less effective (than lower, more primitive ones). IOW, we delude ourselves that everything is fine as often as we recognize the issue.&lt;p&gt;I expect this is part of the secret effectiveness of pass&amp;#x2F;fail unit testing. It&amp;#x27;s hard to rationalize a red indicator into a green one.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Human-Error-James-Reason&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0521314194&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Human-Error-James-Reason&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;052131419...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>