invited AAI to enter against General Electric's Dual Cycle Rifle, a derivative of the Springfield SALVO design. (Springfield had closed in 1968.) Additional entries with multiple flechettes or bullets ("micro-caliber") were also entered, mirroring the original SALVO tests of the 1950s. However, the program came under attack by the United States Congress as a waste of money, and was forced to scale back. Testing finally began in 1974. The AAI design never managed to fire more than six bursts before jamming. A possible entrant was the French designed VFIW assault rifle. Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) The concept of firing flechette ammunition was revived for the last time during the 1986 Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) trials in the late 1980s. Several designs were entered, from the simple Colt ACR to the more exotic flechette designs, such as the Steyr ACR. Although the basic problem of a single-dart flechette round had finally been solved by this time, none of the weapons entered offered the 100% improvement over the M16 that the Army tests required. It was based on the assumption that accuracy errors made by stressed soldiers could be made up for by launching multiple rounds per trigger pull. The conclusion of the ACR program was that even firing multiple projectiles could not substantially compensate for shooter error. See also Attached grenade launchers List of bullpup firearms NIVA XM1970 Advanced Individual Combat Weapon Objective Individual Combat Weapon program Lightweight Small Arms Technologies References http://www.rediscov.com/spring/VFPCGI.exe?IDCFile=/spring/DETAILS.IDC,SPECIFIC=594,DATABASE=objects, Article title SK Janson Salvo machine gun Infantry Weapon adapted to fire a plurality of cartridges simoutaneously Watters, Daniel "A Brief History of Fléchette and the SPIW Project" thegunzone.com Further reading Abandoned military projects of the United States Bullpup firearms Flechette firearms Multi-barrel machine guns Multiple-barrel firearms Trial and research firearms of the United States