The Interview: Mark Westrom

Written by Jason M. Wong Sunday, 12 April 2009 00:00

Mark Westrom, owner of ArmaLite, Incorporated sat down with Small Arms Defense Journal to discuss his background, his involvement with the AR15 rifle, and current developments within the industry.

SAR: How you got started in shooting?

Westrom: My father was a master gunsmith, so from my youngest days I’ve been around firearms and technology. I bought my first pistol at the age of 16. It was a Ruger Mark I .22-caliber pistol. I had a nice little coin collection, but there was a fellow at the coin show with this pistol, so I became a pistol shooter.

SAR: You traded your coin collection?

Westrom: Yeah. We both got good deals on that. In those days, I would drive up to the Ankeny, Iowa Police Department and they would allow me to sign out the key to their police pistol range. I’d drive out to the pistol range, and I would put up targets and I would shoot and, by accident, I put myself through a good training program.

SAR: Did you have formal training?

Westrom: I had a little training at Boy Scout camp, under the tutelage of a Marine Corps NCO, and a little training from my father. I graduated high school enrolled at Iowa State University, joined ROTC, and started competitive shooting on the university pistol team, which was sponsored by the ROTC. I was already a pretty sharp pistol shooter.

I was commissioned in 1973 into the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, and in 1976 was picked up by the All-Army Pistol Team. I shot with All-Army for a number of years. In the ordnance world, I was a rare creature; I was an armament maintenance officer. They don’t even have that specialty anymore.

SAR: What were you shooting at the time?

Westrom: M14s. After leaving the Army, I entered Civil Service, and the Army Reserve. At the time, I switched to shooting rifles competitively. While shooting in the Reserves, it became apparent that it was time to switch to an M16 Match rifle.

I started an ad hoc, unfunded program at Rock Island to develop a rifle that could be used as a National Match gun, or as a designated marksman’s rifle. In those days, there was huge resistance to the M16 rifle. I did not think the M16 could compete with an M14 in service rifle competition, but I thought we needed try it.

In 1994, I was offered the chance to buy ArmaLite. I bought the company and I carried my ordnance project into the company. That became the basis of our National Match M16 rifle. Basically all of the other modifications on the market are because of the things we did at that time - the two-phase trigger, the free-floating barrel, and the Match sights.

Eventually the Army Marksmanship Unit picked up on what the Army Reserve Rifle Team was trying to do. They carried the rifles forward into stunning victories from 1994 through 1997. We got a head start on the other services.

SAR: The other services were still using M14s.

Westrom: Yeah, the other services were still using M14s. Now, if you want to win the national matches, you don’t shoot an M14. You’re at a disadvantage with an M14.

SAR: You bought ArmaLite in 1994. Tell me about that experience.

Westrom: When I bought the company in January, 1994, there were 6 employees. We were under threat of an assault weapons ban. I bought the company, and in September 1994 was enacted. How’s that for bad timing? (laughs)

The assault weapons ban turned into a great opportunity. Once I took over, we went to work on building a strong development program. There were times that we went to the SHOT Show with more new models anybody else at the show. After starting out with the AR15, I brought the AR10 back. After the AR10, I went on to the AR50, ArmaLite’s second bolt-action rifle.

The AR50 was inspired by things that my wife Judy and I saw at the SHOT Show. The V-block bedding and the receiver, mounting the receiver in the stock, use of the metallic stock— those were all suggested by things we saw at SHOT, although nobody was doing those things. The muzzle brake came later. I first sketched the AR-50 out on the back of a napkin. And with only two real changes, that’s what went into production.

SAR: Who was making .50-caliber rifles at the time?

Westrom: Barrett, and a couple other companies were making 50-caliber rifles. They were very inexpensive firearms. To a degree, you still see the same tradition in the .50-caliber market. Manufacturers are making very simple guns. We went with an expensive design with a powerful receiver. The receiver was designed to accept the 12.7 x 109 cartridge, the standard Soviet Bloc cartridge so that we could pursue overseas sales.

After the AR50, we brought the AR180 back, and then later we scaled the AR50 down into the AR-30. We have a heavy emphasis on product line expansion of our guns. ArmaLite’s focus and reputation has always been on new product developments and advanced armament concepts. Everything ArmaLite did was advanced in its day - the AR5, the AR7, AR10, the AR15, AR17, and the AR18. They all were all groundbreaking projects.

Brands are both powerful tools and powerful limitations; you have to live up to your brand.
SAR: Where do you see the market headed in the future?

Westrom: Right now, the firearms market is similar to the computer industry 20 years ago, where you had local computer shops that would build up computers out of a standard palette of parts. Most of the outfits making semi-automatic firearms today don’t actually make the parts.
They buy parts and assemble rifles.

One of the advantages of doing your own technical work and your own manufacturing is the development of technical experience that you can’t when assembling a rifle from parts. It’s intensely important. If you stop and think about it, you never know when your rifle design is fully finished — if you aren’t doing the engineering, you never know what the design really entails. That’s proven to be a substantial technical advantage to us.

SAR: What are your thoughts on the current M4 controversy?

Westrom: The criticism of the M16 family rifle comes from basically two places: One, it comes from commercial guys who bad-mouth the weapon so that they can sell their product. The other comes from weak maintenance - things as simple as bad magazines. Virtually all of the problems with M16 rifle malfunctions could be solved by throwing away bad magazines.

When I was assigned to Rock Island, I hated the M16. And I had a lot of time on my hands, so I initiated a study of the M16. I had access to the technical library at Rock Island, and researched deeply into historical documents that hadn’t been accessed since the 1960s.

Eventually, I threw up my arms and had to admit that I understood the concept. The concept ensures reliability, supportability, and cost. It’s a logical choice. Despite my initial prejudice, I came over to the M16, came over to the dark side. One of the things that bothered me with the M16 was that gas tube.

I’ve since realized that the gas tube is a brilliant piece of engineering. People talk about going to a piston gun. The M16 is a piston gun. The piston on an M16 is in the bolt carrier, but the M16 system is still a piston gun. The gas tube system keeps recoil forces in a straight line. The M16 gas tube system does not have an issue with moving masses that arise when using a connecting rod or a piston. The gas tube system is a brilliant design, but I didn’t like the dust, dirt, and carbon that was deposited in the receiver.

The carbon in the receiver—that bothered me. I took two M16 rifles that were properly cleaned and lubricated. Over two days, we conducted heavy firing of these two rifles, with no cleaning, and no lubrication. The rifles fired at 2,000 rounds per rifle with no malfunctions. I couldn’t argue with the results.

The problem with the Army is that they have a white-glove mentality, and they their rifles clean. It’s easy to tell when the rifle is absolutely clean. It’s hard to tell when the rifle is clean enough. That white-glove mentality is a powerful influence within the U.S. armed forces. Soldiers don’t realize that wiping down and lubing the rifle components is enough on an M16. Instead, they overdo it.

What’s the purpose of the gas tube? To get the bolt carrier moving. What’s the purpose of the piston?

SAR: To get the bolt carrier moving.

Westrom: How does the bolt, or any other part, know how it got moving?

SAR: It doesn’t. It has a force applied to it.

Westrom: That’s right. What we have in the current marketplace is a combination of prejudice and commercial hype. Several years ago, I received a call from SOCOM. SOCOM wanted to build the SCAR, and I agreed to participate. During that period, the single-manager concept in the ordinance community was breaking down. Under McNamara, the Secretary of Defense’s office discovered that the services were competing against each other. Under procurement reforms, the single-manager concept was developed so that one defense agency would buy all the equipment for the U.S. military. The Army was the single manager for conventional munitions and was tasked to buy the rifles for all of the armed services.

SOCOM isn’t covered under the original procurement reforms. A few SOCOM guys declared that there was a crisis, and that they needed a new gun. They wrote up a requirement for the SCAR. At the time, I was told, “The gas tube has to go.” There’s nothing wrong with the M16 gas tube. There are substantial advantages to using a gas tube, but servicemen dislike the gas tube.

I spoke to SOCOM and was told the gas tube had to go. I took my AR-180, went down to Orlando, and showed the concept. Connecting rod? I’ve got a connecting rod. ArmaLite knows connecting rods. ArmaLite sold the rights to the Schooner gas system to Colt, and soon realized the error in selling the AR-15 to Colt. ArmaLite developed the AR-18 in response. The connecting rod used in the AR18 was adopted by ArmaLite in the ‘60s due to a patent issue, not because of any technical issue. ArmaLite couldn’t use a gas tube in the AR-18; the system had been sold to Colt. That’s where the connecting rod and the Tokarev-style gas cylinder came from. The piston system wasn’t based on a technical advantage. The development of the piston system was based upon a legal requirement.

I briefed the AR-180 piston system to SOCOM. At the end of the presentation, I went home and looked at my AR18 and my AR15. I concluded that that the gas tube was the superior system. Under the requirements, I would not submit a “piston” system to the U.S. military, even though the prejudice is currently in favor of that system. I will not provide a piston system to a Solider or a Marine. Commercial hype is fine in the commercial market.

I made the decision was I couldn’t support the AR18 or the gas piston system requirement. I withdrew my interest from the SCAR-L project. Instead, I cooperated with other companies in the industry and coordinated a project to work on SCAR-H chambered in 7.62.

SAR: What are your thoughts on the M4 carbine?

Westrom: I'm a little suspicious of the M4 carbine. The M16 system was designed for a specific family of cartridges, a specific barrel length, a specific forward pressure and specific timing. The rifle was designed as a system. When you shorten the barrel, you destabilize the system. The M16 rifles tend to be more reliable than the M4 carbine. If the military believes that the advantage of a compact carbine is important enough to sacrifice a little bit of reliability, that’s fine by me. That’s reasonable. The M4 is a fine rifle when you take reasonable care of it—not white-glove care, just reasonable care—and you use good magazines. That’s the biggest problem with the M4.

There are reports that some rifles did better than the M16 in testing. I’ve seen the tests. The tests confirmed that with reasonable maintenance, the M4 is reliable. You can cherry pick from the results, but overall I saw nothing in the test results that indicated that the M4 should be replaced.

The latest tests pushed by Representative Coburn involved a dust test, with the unstated intent to replace the M16/M4 system. A couple of issues arose there. First, the dust chamber was so severe that under those conditions, the operator would be killed. That wasn’t a realistic test.

Second, a virtually identical test was performed a couple of years prior to the dust test. That test was known as the lubrication test. The lubrication test was performed by unbiased parties. If the test conditions are virtually identical, the results should be the same. Instead, the results between the lubrication test and the dust test were different, and the M4 didn’t perform as well in the dust test. That tells me that something changed in the testing protocol, and the test itself is suspect. I suspect that the test used old M4 rifles or bad magazines, while the competing guns were hand picked.

None of the new firearms being proposed does what the M16 did in its day. The M16 led to a new marksmanship doctrine and provided a substantially new combat capability. The M16 provided an intense, close-in fighting capability. Merely changing from one compact system to another compact system doesn’t give you any fundamental change. The weapons systems being considered only offer a suspect or theoretical difference in performance. The reliability of the M16 when in good condition—cleaned and lubed—is so high, I don't believe that it’s worth the money to change to a new weapons system. You would have to see a substantial improvement in performance, and the performance with the M16 and M4 is very good.

SAR: The Army is proposing a solicitation for a new rifle, possibly in early 2010. What are your thoughts on the solicitation?

Westrom: The political snarl has become so deep that the Army is soliciting a new carbine to take a look at everything available. The solicitation is being stimulated by commercial and political pressures, and I doubt if we’ll see anything new. It’ll be too expensive. I'm going to make a prediction. The prediction is that while one rifle or another may have a feature that is liked, in the end a few minor changes will be made to the M16 and M4 system, and that’ll be as far as it goes.

There’s another issue too - the ammunition. There’s no magic bullet. The 6.8mm bullet is heavier, so you can’t carry as much. That means something. The 6.8mm recoils a little bit more, so it takes a little more time to come back on target. But the big thing is for a Geneva-compliant bullet, the difference in lethality is unproven. The lethality of Geneva-compliant 7.62mm ammunition is not horribly greater than that of Geneva-compliant 5.56mm ammunition.
We see similar issue with hunters. There are hunters who love the 6 millimeter cartridge and insist that it’s the best in the world. There are others who insist on the 7 mm cartridge. There are others who insist on the 6.5mm cartridge. There’s no silver bullet. The main issue is shot placement. The cost of switching from one cartridge to another by the U.S. military will be huge. Personally, I don’t believe that a switch to a different cartridge, without a corresponding switch in doctrine will result in a substantial improvement in performance.

SAR: What do you predict if a new assault weapons ban is enacted? Where do you see the industry going?

Westrom: The industry will always build rifles as interesting and sexy as the law allows. If semiautomatics aren’t allowed, the industry might go back to straight-pulls. Before the semiautomatic rifle, the straight-pull was the hot military rifle. The industry will build exotic-looking firearms, like our AR-30. Some people find it sinister-looking. It’s built that way to be extremely resistant to climate influences, a very tough gun. It’s something people think of as a hostile-looking gun, but some people are attracted to those rugged looks.

I think a lot of the little garage shops, the boutique manufacturers, will cease operation. They were formed in anticipation of this panic, and they’ll go away. ArmaLite has maintained our R&D process to make sure that we’ll survive any political changes. We’ve got new stuff on the books or on the drawing boards now. We’re also continuing to make some changes in our semiautomatic rifles.

This is a very historic period in regulation. I think a more significant threat comes from registration and licensing. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that reasonable restrictions to firearm ownership are acceptable. The Court talks about training, but in context, the Court is referring to licensing. A huge percentage of the U.S. population already lives under registration and licensing that is not reasonable—Chicago, New York, San Francisco all have firearm laws that are not reasonable. The discussions will be over what restrictions are reasonable. I think the argument will be over reasonable restrictions.

We’re also facing influence of the United Nations, via the UN Arms Trade Treaty. I’ve been to Geneva twice to try and influence the process. We’ve been to the UN in New York. A basic arms trade treaty, if it’s done right, basically brings the world into agreement with the U.S. procedures already in place. But there are non-governmental organizations that want to add provisions against private firearm ownership onto an arms trade treaty.

There’s a second effort to create a UN standard for firearms. A standard is different than a treaty. Treaties generally require unanimity in the UN. In order go into effect for the U.S. it requires a heavy vote in Congress. A standard doesn’t require that. With a standard, a few UN organizations write up the requirement, agree to the terms, and terms become a UN standard.

A standard can then become influential in legislative battles later; there’s a lot of pressure from anti-gun Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to make the proposed UN standard governing firearms a very harsh program. The Defense Small Arms Committee attends UN meetings to provide technical expertise and advice to organizations that are very inexperienced in technical issues on small arms.

There are many NGOs that want to pass standards or treaties but have no concept of the implications of their proposals. There was a government official who made a very interesting statement at the last meeting in Geneva. He said, “There are different philosophies concerning small arms around the world. In many nations, the right to small arms belongs exclusively to the government, which may allow individuals to share in it. There are other societies in which the right to keep and bear arms rests with the individual and may be limited by government.” The Government official used that term – “the right to keep and bear arms.” Those two philosophies have to be fit into whatever proposed language is proposed, and it’s a very hard task.

Most Americans don’t realize what a device our revolution was. It came at the height of the enlightenment, and it really does pose power in the people, the Jeffersonian concept of firearms being a way of protecting from government excess. Even Hubert Humphrey was strong supporter of this concept. That’s entirely foreign in most of the world. If you’ve got a dictatorial regime, the last thing the regime wants is a resident public that could resist.

SAR: Very few countries have a similar system or similar availability.

Westrom: Almost none.

SAR: Thank you very much for taking the time to discuss ArmaLite and your involvement and the development of small arms. I appreciate your talking about the issues.

Westrom: My pleasure.