A Doubt about Mujahideens' Sniper Weapon

[billsnavycareer]

After several days playing, I've finished the two original campaigns and several standalone mission. It felt real for most of the time that the game reveals the real combat situation in the 1980's. However, there was some doubts of mine about overwhelming sniper threat from the Mujahideen force. The G3 sniper rifle brought such superior advantage for the bandits and caused some serious casualties. While such problem became harder to solve

From the historical resources I've looked, the underground small arms factories were definitely unable to produce this kind of “hi-tech” toys. Although the smuggling from Pakistan may provide Mujahideen some western rifles, the large deployment of these rifles down to each combat group remains some discussions. I also noticed that some sniper groups use SVD. This reflects a more realistic history while large number of Chinese clone version of Soviet weapons in Mujahideens' hands.

[black_prince]

Given that both Pakistan and Iran both use the G3 and were supplying various factions of the Muj at the time I would be more surprised if they did not posess significant numbers of G3s. However, I think the Lee-Enfield would probably have been more commonly used in a sniping role. In fact, a scoped Lee-Enfield is used by Mujahideen snipers in game but the G3 and SVDs seem to be more common ( the Lee-Enfield is only used by snipers when the equipment quality is set to low).

I've always felt that there were a few things that were missing from the arsenal of the Mujahideen that should have been included and others that shouldn't be there. For example, I think an error was made when including the Bren gun. From what I've read the weapon the Mujahideen were actually using was the ZB26. I think they may have conflated the ZB26, the Bren and the Sten gun which apparently was used by the Mujahideen as it was easily and cheaply manufactured by Pakistani gunsmiths.

[Sakai007]

I'll be honest, one of the things I have learned from my studies inspired by CM:A is the variety of weapons the muj had access too from the pakistani gun smiths. I had no idea, none at all, and was blown away. I just didn't think that small operations in the middle of no where could produce decent fighting weapons. And do so in quantity! Everyone is always talking of the Stinger MANPAD like it won the war for the muj, when in fact pakistani built weapons probably killed far more soviet soldiers then did anything else. I do see a larger number of AK-74s in muj units later on in the war, is this due to having far more of them captured from the soviets???

[billsnavycareer]

I'll be honest, one of the things I have learned from my studies inspired by CM:A is the variety of weapons the muj had access too from the pakistani gun smiths. I had no idea, none at all, and was blown away. I just didn't think that small operations in the middle of no where could produce decent fighting weapons. And do so in quantity! Everyone is always talking of the Stinger MANPAD like it won the war for the muj, when in fact pakistani built weapons probably killed far more soviet soldiers then did anything else. I do see a larger number of AK-74s in muj units later on in the war, is this due to having far more of them captured from the soviets???

Yeah, mate. Actually, u won't believe there are numbers of FAMAS and M-16/4 family in the bandits hands right now in Afghanistan, but this is what is happening now. CIA admitted that 2-3 million dollar worthing armament flowed into the country when the war was against the Soviets. One stinger costs $38,000 nowadays and maybe the price would around 10k I think. So the MANPAD were probabily not the No.1 killer for the Red Army for its small number of deployment.

[billsnavycareer]

Given that both Pakistan and Iran both use the G3 and were supplying various factions of the Muj at the time I would be more surprised if they did not posess significant numbers of G3s. However, I think the Lee-Enfield would probably have been more commonly used in a sniping role. In fact, a scoped Lee-Enfield is used by Mujahideen snipers in game but the G3 and SVDs seem to be more common ( the Lee-Enfield is only used by snipers when the equipment quality is set to low).

I've always felt that there were a few things that were missing from the arsenal of the Mujahideen that should have been included and others that shouldn't be there. For example, I think an error was made when including the Bren gun. From what I've read the weapon the Mujahideen were actually using was the ZB26. I think they may have conflated the ZB26, the Bren and the Sten gun which apparently was used by the Mujahideen as it was easily and cheaply manufactured by Pakistani gunsmiths.

Cant agree more on the ZB26. This remarkable light CZ machinegun was very popular since WW2 in Asia. But maybe the game designer thought Bren is enough for the Mujahideen. This also brought many realistic case of low ammo problem for the Muj, because of different 7.62 mm balls.

[Sixxkiller]

Actually, from the time I was deployed in Afghanistan, the G3 was quite common to find these still, especially in the Korengal region. They never seemed to be low on ammo for anything to me LOL. We even found G36K and C from time to time. I wanted to take a few of them home to be honest. And Bill is correct about the M16 variants there. That was an instant clue they werent a friendly if they had a M4.

[Sakai007]

Wow Six and Bill!!! All the vids I see from the bad guys have them saying 'god is great' and letting loose some AK rounds at a coalition position a mountain top over. Then receiving return fire and hiding. Is it more common for the average afghan farmer type to have his one AK in the home then it is to find enemy fighters armed with AK series weapons??? It's a scary though to be under M4 fire from someone who knows how to use it. My time with the M4 taught me that, even with iron sights, you can hole someone at 300 meters if you have her zeroed correctly. Also very interesting that you come across G36s. Are they captured weapons or are the Pakistanis buying them and then supplying the Taliban???

[Glukx Ouglouk]

Cant agree more on the ZB26. This remarkable light CZ machinegun was very popular since WW2 in Asia. But maybe the game designer thought Bren is enough for the Mujahideen. This also brought many realistic case of low ammo problem for the Muj, because of different 7.62 mm balls.

I don't know which one was most commonly used by the Mujahideen, but I wanted to point out that the Bren and the ZB26 would be pretty much the same thing in game terms, since the Bren was a license-built ZB26 with some minor modifications to fit British requirements... There were some differences, but I don't see how they would change anything at CM:A's scale, except for the type of ammunition used.

And even in terms of ammunition used, it would depend on which exact variants found their way into Afghanistan: the Bren was originally produced to use British .303 but was later converted to use Nato 7.62 ammo (as the Bren L4); the ZB26 used the German 7.92 ammo, but there were export variants using other calibers too. To make matters worse, there were other variants too: the ZB30 (a ZB26 with some improvements) and the ZB39 (based on the Bren, but offered for export by the Czech after WW2)... And of course, a Pakistani copy may not even fit any of the "official" versions anyway, if it was a local variant.

[black_prince]

I don't know which one was most commonly used by the Mujahideen, but I wanted to point out that the Bren and the ZB26 would be pretty much the same thing in game terms

The main difference would be more frequent re-loads due to a 20 round magazine on the ZB series vs 30 round on the Bren, the ammo used and also some differences in appearance.

[Sergei]

The Afghan/Pakistani gun workshops are just incredible in how closely they copy their guns. You can even track Lee-Enfield rifles copied from other copies from serial numbers or distinct errors in the stamps:

Since Khyber Pass rifles are usually copied exactly from a "master" rifle (which may itself be a Khyber Pass Copy) markings and all. It's not uncommon to see Khyber Pass rifles with numerous errors and particular identifying factors, notably:

Spelling errors in the markings (the most common of which is EИFIELD for ENFIELD)

V.R. (Victoria Regina) cyphers dated after 1901 - Queen Victoria died in 1901, so any rifles made after this should be stamped "E.R" (Edward Rex, referring to King Edward VII)

Generally inferior workmanship including weak or soft metal, poorly finished wood, and badly struck markings.

Afghanistan was a point of conflict between the British Empire and Imperial Russia throughout the 19th Century, from which it is reasonable to assume that tools and expertise relevant to both cultures were accumulated by native gunsmiths. Hence despite an untrained eye assuming that a reversed "N" or "L" in ENFIELD is simply a transcription error, a toolmaker or linguist will recognise that they are actually the Cyrillic "И" and "Г" characters, with the gunsmith using whatever letter punches he had available.

This reminds me of a much older case of copied weapons. At the end of stone age stone tools and weapons were still being made in areas where copper and tin were not available. Skilled craftsmen would create ceremonial axes that were made to resemble the more fashionable bronze axes - down to the mold seam:

[Glukx Ouglouk]

The main difference would be more frequent re-loads due to a 20 round magazine on the ZB series vs 30 round on the Bren, the ammo used and also some differences in appearance.

The ammo difference would depend on the exact version used for the ZB series, so it would be a bit of a mess to implement (unless there are good sources on which exact versions found their way to Afghanistan - I honestly have no idea). The relatively small difference in magazine capacity would probably make a very small difference on gameplay at CM's scale, which is why I said they would be "pretty much" the same thing - I do agree that it would add some different flavor to the game and would be nice to have, I just don't think the difference was big enough for the developers to bother...

[black_prince]

Agreed, the differences would have been pretty minimal and I realise that nothing is really going to be changed now but it would have been nice if this was used instead of the Bren to begin with.