I have not heard of this Rodman weapon – it does not appear in any of my books.
The EM2 tests, by the way, were carried out in the 1950s, not the 1960s.
Student scaley – 7.62 mm was adopted long before the AR 15 appeared on the scene – don’t forget that the forerunner of the AR 15 was the AR 10, which was chambered for 7.62.
Hatcher, page 489:
An early contender for the honour of NATO adoption was a cartridge of .280 inch calibre proposed in 1947 by a “small arms ideal calibre panel” which had been convened in Great Britain in 1945. This small light cartridge had a 140 grain bullets with a muzzle velocity of 2300 fps. The British offered it to the United States, but our authorities decided that it did not have as much power as was desirable for our service cartridge, and declined to adopt it.
In refusing to go along with the British in adopting the .280 cartridge, our authorities were thinking not simply of a cartridge for an infantry rifle, but rather of a cartridge to be used in unarmed taking the place of all shoulder weapons – rifle, Carbine, submachine gun and automatic rifle – and also to be used in all rifle calibre machine guns as well. In other words, from the thinking of our authorities on the subject, there was beginning to emerge abroad new concept of an entirely new weapon system for the armed services, which was finally embodied in an announcement by the secretary of the army on May 1, 1957…
Our officials admitted that the uses of the rifle in cases where only the Carbine or submachine gun would now be employed, the light and comparatively low powered British .280 cartridge with its 140 grain bullet at 2300 fps muzzle velocity would be adequate, and would even be advantageous; but for the rifle proper and for the substitute BAR and the machine gun they considered that it would be entirely inadequate. But it was considered that our T65 cartridge would be adequate for machine gun use and not too burdensome for the lighter duties mentioned above.
The official US view is further indicated in the following quotation from an official statement released in 1951:
“the army is firmly opposed to the adoption of any less effective smaller calibre cartridge for using either its present rifle or in the new weapons being developed. Any new rifle cartridge must have winding power, penetration performance, and ballistics at least equal to that in use today [i.e. .30M2]. Battle experience has proven beyond question the effectiveness of the present rifle and ammunition, and there have been no changes in combat tactics that would justify a reduction of rifle calibre and power.”
NATO agreed on the adoption of this cartridge in February, 1954 – significantly before even the Armalite AR 10 had been thought of! Judging from what Hatcher writes, the US completely missed the point of the .280 cartridge! What is especially galling is that they then went on and adopted a significantly less powerful cartridge later…
The idea of the .280 cartridge was that it was to be used in the assault rifle and light machine gun, and in nothing heavier. But, having been in a situation where there were so many types of ammunition even at squad level, and “one size fits all” for all weapons must have seemed extremely attractive, even though it was far too heavy and high-powered for most of the roles which it replaced.
