The Army Ordnance Department showed little interest in machine guns until war were declared in April 1917. At that time, the U.S. arsenal included only 1,100 machine guns, and most of those were outmoded. The government asked several designers to submit weapons. Browning arranged a test at the Springfield Armory in May 1917. In the first test, the weapon fired 20,000 rounds with only a few malfunctions mostly related to poorly loaded cloth belts. The reliability was exceptional, so Browning fired another 20,000 rounds through the weapon with one broken part: a broken sear at about 39,500. The Ordnance Board was impressed, but was unconvinced that the same level of performance could be achieved in a production model. Consequently, Browning used a second gun that not only duplicated the original trial, but it also fired continuously for 48 minutes and 12 seconds (over 21,000 rounds).