The Military Channel has a new show, GI Factory, about our military equipment contractors. Tonight, on episode 2, they are at the General Dynamics plant in Lima Ohio, where they refurb M1s – cool!

Update: Oh man, I wouldn’t wan’t this guy’s job! In the second half of the show, they visit the Beretta USA plant where they make the M9. At the end of the line, they have the government “lot test”. They take 3 pistols at random off the line, and fire 5000 rounds through them (they didn’t say if that was total, or each). But it’s just some guy (with another taking notes) who slaps a magazine in, sticks the muzzle in a hole in a hopper, pops off all 15 rounds, and then slaps another in, and repeats. Jeeze, I don’t care if it is just a little 9mm – 8 hours of that has got to be hell on your wrist. They’ve got to be rotating, and/or taking some extended “cleaning breaks” every couple of hundred rounds, or something. Why don’t they have a fixture to do this?