WI: U.S. Military Retains M-14 Rifle

Either that or the Pederson .276. Having an actual intermediate cartridge would mitigate many of the issues with the M14, and it'd be more likely to continue on.
By the 1950s, the Pedersen needs quite a few improvements to make it up to spec. Ammunition design made quite the number of developments around that time. Now, it would've been an amazing and modern calibre for the M1 Garand, 20 years earlier, hadn't it not been cancelled for a variety of political and economic reasons.

And that bastard MacArthur! :p
 
Only problem I can see with the Pederson round is its sharply tapered case would this cause problems with feeding from a big magazine.

This problem is easily solved by using a curved magazine similar to the kind used with the British .303 and 7.62 M43. It is actually the nearly parallel case walls that caused trouble with the 30-06 and 7.62 NATO in feeding and extraction.

The Pedersen .276 would have been good cartridge for its time. By the early 1950s it and the M1 Garand rifle that chambered it would have needed significant updating. If this could have helped the powers that be in the US military to allow the adoption of cartridge with a 45mm case is open to debate.

And I do have to agree that MacArthur was key to killing the Pedersen cartridge, in the process he came very close to killing the Garand as well.
 
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