Weapons review from Iraq veteran

[Wisbech_lad]

"Problem is, some genuis in the upper ranks decided that our military doesn't use them. You can probably thank a bleeding heart liberal somewhere for that."

They've been banned for military use since 1899 now - Hague Convention and all that. Do a search on Dum Dum bullets (Indian Army designed hollow point/ flat head bullets in the 19th C)

Not sure I would call pre WW1 European armies bleeding heart liberals.

Ironically, the 0.303 dum dum was developed by the Indian Army for use on the NW frontier (Afganistan/ Pakistan) - so putting down jihadis (Afridi police action ISTR) fast was seen as a problem then too...

[ December 06, 2005, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: Wisbech_lad ]

[Kurtz]

I really touched a nerve, didn't I?

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

...dead soldiers are also a logistical burden.

But the logistical issue isn't an issue, right?

The main difference is that the dead doesn't need as much attention as the wounded. And they don't need it this very second. Once you have found out that your buddy is dead, you can continue the fight. But if he's still screaming and bleeding all over the place, it would be quite rude not to help him.

And just to make things clear: I have never said that the 5.56 is specifially designed to wound, not to kill. That's you trying to put words in my mouth again. (unless I have been unclear in some post).

Anyway, as I have mentioned before, the logistical issue applies in a conventional war, and so do a lot of the other factors considering 5.56 vs 7.62.

In a situation like Iraq, other factors may be more important.

Come to think about it: the 5.56 wepaons are probably cheaper as well, which I guess mostly is from a shift in production techniques (e.g. from machined to stamped metal). Some armies were in the process of replacing older weapons, and had to make a decision whether to relace them with the standard rifle at the time (7.62) or replace all weapons with 5.56. Since 5.56 weapons generally are lighter and smaller (especially if they have a folding stock), they can replace the submachinegun for vehicle crews, cooks and officers.

With 7.62 for the infantry, you probably need someting ligther for REMFs. With 5.56, the entire army can have the same weapon.

[Kurtz]

In the 1970's, when the Swedish military contemplated buying more G3's or switching to 5.56, the calculations indicated a 40% lower cost during the weapon's expected lifetime for the 5.56 alternative.

Lower cost / weapon, less ammo needed for training, cheaper ammo and a longer expected lifetime (!) were the factors in this calculation.

There are of course costs when introducing a new system, but in the long run it'll be cheaper.

[Nerd King]

Originally posted by Wisbech_lad:

"Problem is, some genuis in the upper ranks decided that our military doesn't use them. You can probably thank a bleeding heart liberal somewhere for that."

They've been banned for military use since 1899 now - Hague Convention and all that. Do a search on Dum Dum bullets (Indian Army designed hollow point/ flat head bullets in the 19th C)

Not sure I would call pre WW1 European armies bleeding heart liberals.

True, and I was aware of that, but we are the dumbasses that decided to follow that ruling.

[Nerd King]

Originally posted by Bruce70:

Nerd King: Just out of curiosity. You mention that you have not seen one instance of an enemy wearing body armour. Do you have any direct knowledge of a non-instantly-fatal 5.56 wound resulting in the loss of life to the firer or his comrades? (I apologise if this is a sensitive question)

Yes, I do.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kurtz:

I have never said that the 5.56 is specifially designed to wound, not to kill. That's you trying to put words in my mouth again. (unless I have been unclear in some post).

Page 2:

Originally posted by Kurtz:

J Ruddy: You are talking about situations where you want the target to die as quick as possible, which is not was the 5.56 is designed to do.

As I mentioned earlier, in a conventional war it's preferable to wound the enemy, not kill him instantly.

No nerve struck; just like to stamp out this bit of urban myth wherever I encounter it. The direct quote is above. I interpreted these remarks to mean that your understanding was that the 5.56 mm round was designed as a wounding agent rather than with the intent to be fatal. That's certainly not the case. You implied the 5.56 mm round was adopted for either its non-lethality or that is was in some way designed to be less lethal than the older NATO round. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[ December 07, 2005, 07:36 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Nidan1]

A 3 round burst from this weapon will deliver 9 projectiles (6 sabots and 3 penetrators). All forming a cone of destruction. Against someone with no body armor, it will tear them apart.

That's pretty cool, except if you are battling aliens, the caustic blood and body pieces could theoretically get on the shooters at close ranges.

Does anyone know if there is body armor available that is good against acid like alien blood?

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

It's failed to replace the 7.62mm x 43 calibre AK-47 which remains in use worldwide - perhaps "very limited" is a bit harsh, but it's not popular or as widespread as its predecessor.

I was talking about Russians (the artists formerly known as Soviets), not some gangstas in the tropics to whom T-54 is still state-of-the-art in tank development. To third-worlders, all this debate about relative effectiveness is irrelevant, as clearly both calibres are just as capable of killing a person.

But in Russian military these days, the availability of AK-47 is very limited.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

Does anyone know if there is body armor available that is good against acid like alien blood?

Preferably one made of the alien's own skin. E.g. the shell of space lobster.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

It's failed to replace the 7.62mm x 43 calibre AK-47 which remains in use worldwide - perhaps "very limited" is a bit harsh, but it's not popular or as widespread as its predecessor.

I was talking about Russians (the artists formerly known as Soviets), not some gangstas in the tropics to whom T-54 is still state-of-the-art in tank development. To third-worlders, all this debate about relative effectiveness is irrelevant, as clearly both calibres are just as capable of killing a person.

But in Russian military these days, the availability of AK-47 is very limited. </font>

[Sergei]

I think so too, but maybe the Kiwi variant of Kalashnikov is different... [shrugs]

[Nidan1]

The cartridge was developed in 1943, maybe that's what he means? Yeah, I'm sure that must be it.

All this talk of gun shot wounds, and hydraulic trauma and the like is making me squeamish, can we please stop this now?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Bruce70:

[snips]

Incidentally, we were given a demonstration of the 5.56 round (from an austeyr) to convince us that it did in fact have stopping power. The demonstration consisted of firing a round at an 80L drum of water and watching it go flying in the air. Pretty silly demo when you think about it...

What's silly about it? When I was shown something similar with a single 7.62 round from an LMG, it was pointed out that the water-filled drum is about the same mass and density as a human target.

If nothing else, it demolishes the silly argument I've seen someone make that people only fall over when shot because they are conditioned to by what they see on TV.

All the best,

John.

[Bigduke6]

Call me a small arms weenie, but I thought the standard 7.62mm Kalashnikov was 39mm long. At least, the ones I shot were. Maybe there's another kind.

On the big bullet/little bullet debate, and all the lasciviously gory descriptions of tissue damage, I think we need a slight reality check. Bullets first and foremost have to hit the target to do the most good. There is a whole angle to this discussion that hasn't been explored, spefically, over time, will a lot of little bullets hurt the enemy more than somewhat fewer larger bullets?

The conclusion of most armies so far seems to be hands down the former. Volume trumps accuracy.

The other point I want to make is that it is simply wrong to say that the main function of the individual assault rifle is kill. Oh sure, that's what the infantry gets told.

But in fact, the main function of the individual rifle in most wars is to supress, not kill. Artillery and to a lesser extent machine guns do the killing. This has been the case for practically every war since about the Russo-Japanese, and frankly even a century later that rule doesn't seem to be changing much.

In most wars, the individual infantrymen's rifle is used to make the other side's infantry or crew-served weapon teams to hide, and so render them ineffective so something else can kill them. Infantry that tries to use its rifles, and only its rifles, against just about anything is infantry about to be cut to pieces - either bit by bit or in one big ambush.

Iraq of course pits U.S. infantry - which has enough free time and resources literally to shop in a store for combat gear if it doesn't like the stuff the government issues it - against mostly Iraqi insurgents, who mostly know full well that if they ever get into a shooting match with the Americans, they have lost. In this very particular the U.S. infantry has the job of hunting down the few Iraqis actually interested in a firefight, and of course of performing the pure police task of grabbing Iraqis thought by intelligence to be involved in the insurgency, while ignoring the suspect's relatives, who invariably upset at U.S. infantry busting into their house.

Under these circumstances, U.S. infantry naturally wants a weapon that will improve their life expectancy when entering a room which, extremely rarely but still sometimes, have an armed Iraqi or two on the other side actually disposed towards resistance.

To do this, the U.S. infantry clumps together in nice little groups and then piles into a room in hopes of overwhelming any Iraqis wanting to fight on the other side. The Iraqi has no where to run and, if the U.S. infantry gets to the point where they are shooting, every one knows the Iraqi(s) will die sooner or later.

This puts a premium on the Iraqi wanting to take some Americans with him, and the Americans wanting the Iraqi(s) to have zero chances of returning fire. One way of - marginally - reducing those chances is by shooting the Iraqi with a big bullet not a little bullet. It is a very small difference; in my experience most bullet wounds are immediately incapacitating, and the number of bullet wounds that would allow a person to return fire once shot, is so perishingly small as to reduce the arguement about big bullet/little bullet almost to absurdity.

From what I have seen, most gunshot people gunshot are unable to or want to do anything but keep themselves from bleeding to death. Yes there is the rare wierdo actually capable of taking a bullet wound and carrying on, and certainly there are more wierdos like that trying to shoot it out with the Americans, than in the standard human bell curve.

But frankly, it seems like most armies deal with that problem by shooting the wierdo more than once, rather than getting wrapping around the axle in a psuedo-erotic arguement about stopping power and the need to be allowed hollow point bullets.

Yeah yeah, I know all about the Moros and the .45. The Japanese did fine against the Moros with Ariskas.

Sure I might have a different opinion if I was one of the guys breaking down doors in search of obstreperous Iraqis. I'm not. I'm a guy thinking about which resources to expend on winning a war.

Friendly infantry lives is one of those resources. It is certainly possible that it would be so wasteful giving infantry the very best weapon possible for entering a room, that it makes more sense to give them a pretty good weapon, tell them if they don't like the stopping power then just shoot again, and if a few more infantrymen die, get maimed, etc., well them's the breaks. Suffering a few extra casualties is less of a pain than changing over an entire army's basic small arm.

Which doesn't mean that I or any other military planner is going to tell the infantry their rifle is anything less than ideal for the situation. If I'm Soviet I'll just tell the infantry to suck it up, I just said they have the best infantry weapon in the world, I outrank them, I've informed them of reality, so shut up.

I'm American I'll tell the infantry the urban uber-rifle is under review somewhere in the Pentagon, and meanwhile have you clowns forgotten you can call in air or smoke or CS or attack helicopters or a zillion laser-guided whiz-bangs, so what are you whining about? Git in the building and if one of you gets shot, you can compain to your Congressman, assuming of course you know who he is and are literate enough to write him a letter.

Infantry is expendable. That hasn't changed for about seven thousand years. Infantrymen try and improve their chances of survival, and one of the ways they do it is by complaining about their weapons. Infantry griping also is about 7,000 year old.

Besides, the bottom line is that infantry needs to be ready not just to fight in the war that's going on, but in the ones in the future, in whatever terrain the future is going to offer, rather than just the terrain the present war happens to be in.

Just because the U.S. infantry happens to be playing at ueber-SWAT team right now, is no reason to forget about being able to fight against real infantry in an combined arms environment bounded by something besides cinder blocks.

And if more infantrymen die or are maimed because of that policy, hey, nobody said being in the infantry gave you the right to decide your future.

Which brings me to armor capable of resisting alien blood/spurting acid. It is yet more evidence of the poverty of U.S. military thinking that not yet have they realized what a week or so of eating hummus, baba ganoush, stinky lamb on a stick, and fake Marlboro cigarettes made in Cyprus will do to the normal human mouth, if not followed up by regular dental maintenance. Of course, the resistance seems to have missed the point as well.

Given the shortage of running water the average Iraqi insurgent is almost inevitably armed with breath capable of knocking a buzzard right into a latrine trench, and the effect of those powerful pheromones on the flight of bullets of any weight, never mind acid agents under high hydraulic pressure, is unknown.

Good thing the Iraq insurgents shoot back rather than breathe back when the U.S. infantry kicks down the door. If the exchange had been words rather than bullets, bad Iraqi breath :eek: would force the U.S. into MOPPIV, and it is well known that the U.S. military prefers peace to MOPPIV.

[Nidan1]

What we do know now is that the fight for Fallujah was won, and won decisively. This was the biggest allied military victory in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

American Marines and soldiers and their Iraqi allies took on Iraq's terrorist stronghold, headquarters of the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and flattened their enemy. Zarqawi's killers, bombers and hostage takers who had turned Fallujah into a terrorist bastion are now dead, captured or in flight. In 10 days of tough urban fighting, every block of Fallujah's 20 square kilometers was meticulously cleared by coalition forces going house to house and room to room.

The best current estimate is that between 1,200 and 1,600 insurgent combatants were killed in Fallujah. Hundreds more were wounded. Additional hundreds were captured. The headquarters, base areas, storehouses, arms depots, ammunition dumps and bomb factories that fed the Iraq insurgency were seized from a determined and now defeated enemy.

The cost in American lives, while heartrending, was far less than might have been expected in taking a city so well defended by a heavily armed foe that had months to prepare. The Pentagon reports that 71 American soldiers and Marines were killed in the fight for Fallujah and about 450 were wounded. Sixty percent of those wounded have returned to duty.

For the American military, this was the biggest urban battle since Hue City was retaken from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive in 1968. The battle for Hue (admittedly against a more numerous and formidable enemy) took a month and cost the lives of nearly 500 American and South Vietnamese troops. Fallujah was taken in a third the time and at less than one-fifth the cost in casualties.

Based on this article in the San Diego Union, and many others like it, and including AARs from units involved, it seems that American and allied infantrymen did quite well with their small bullets, thank you very much.

[Tarquelne]

True, and I was aware of that, but we are the dumbasses that decided to follow that ruling.

IIRC the original concern was with "untreatable wounds", and the dumbasses decided watching people die lingering deaths from wounds that respond poorly to medical care in't fun for anybody.

And while this sort of thing doesn't matter much of the time, given the present conflict the damage from the PR hit we'd take for using "nasty" ammo might easily outweigh any benefits. The advantage the ammo gives would have to be considerable to make it worth it. And yes, I'm including American/coalition lives lost. Just one extra terrorist - a weenie driven over the edge by a relative killed by this "Satanic" ammunition - could eat up the difference in soldiers lives saved by the super-ammo.

The world being populated by other people as it is, some of them currently willing to help, others currently hostile, PR really matters.

[ December 07, 2005, 09:40 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

[akd]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

But in fact, the main function of the individual rifle in most wars is to supress, not kill. Artillery and to a lesser extent machine guns do the killing. This has been the case for practically every war since about the Russo-Japanese, and frankly even a century later that rule doesn't seem to be changing much.

Uhh...the enemy is suppressed because you are trying to kill him with a weapon designed to kill him. Bit of an ass-backwards argument there.

[Colin]

The AK-74 which would probably be used more commonly in a 2007 Syrian Army The AK-47 featured the short 7.62x39mm round that leaves the gun at about 700M/sec. The 74 uses a 5.45x39mm. It leaves the gun at 900/m second and has much better penetrating tendencies then the AK-47 does because it has a better flight.

The 47 is in use in places where there is little money, training and resources. The 74 is standard in the Russian forces. If you look at the Russians in the last 10-15 years there has been a tendency toward quality (esp. in the airforce) instead of large numbers. The Syrians may also have AN-94's.

[shlitzzlipzz@hotmail.com]

In room-to-room fighting US troops do not use 3 round bursts?

Given the short range when doing this, I find it hard to believe that they would not use the 3 round burst. The actual 'climb' of the weapon (after targeting COM) might be beneficial.

Ive fired the M16A1 on full auto (using controlled bursts) and at 5 meters or less, using non-shoulder firing techniques, its not hard to hit a man sized target. I notice most US troops in Iraq use a shoulder type stance though.

Shotgun Round Pictured earlier: Its actually a muzzle loader sabot round but why not have something like that for a shotgun?

Suppression in CQB? Its a fight to the death with no quarter given.

Alternatives: Its probably impossible to assure 100% total incapacitation. I wonder if any of these might work...

Blinding technology. Intense flashing device that is introduced into the room or worn. Special filters on attackers goggles allow them vision while denying the defenders. A timing technology would 'filter' the goggles (using active material that blocks light when charged).

The net effect is that anyone in the room is effectively 'blinded' while the attackers are entering. The attackers can gain room situation advantage and liquidate the defenders or decide they are not a threat and move on or take hostages.

The weapon could be preceded by a traditional flash-bang and the attacking troops could alternate either waiting using it (to let a badguy reveal himself by firing), sending in one man (system activates and the point man could signal the rest to wait or immediately enter..the goggles have a small pop-up message).

When the attackers are actually shooting, its shooting ducks in a barrel. IF the enemy fires, he is doing it blind. He will have his vision denied and the best he could do is fire in a direction.

Its 'sort-of' night vision introduced in the daytime.

[akd]

Originally posted by Colin:

The Syrians may also have AN-94's.

The Russians are hardly using the AN-94, so I can't see why Syria would be acquiring them in the next two years.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Shlitzzlpzza@hotmail.com:

Ive fired the M16A1 on full auto (using controlled bursts) and at 5 meters or less, using non-shoulder firing techniques, its not hard to hit a man sized target. I notice most US troops in Iraq use a shoulder type stance though

No ****, at five meters or less a blind man could hit something on full auto.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by akd:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:

But in fact, the main function of the individual rifle in most wars is to supress, not kill. Artillery and to a lesser extent machine guns do the killing. This has been the case for practically every war since about the Russo-Japanese, and frankly even a century later that rule doesn't seem to be changing much.

Uhh...the enemy is suppressed because you are trying to kill him with a weapon designed to kill him. Bit of an ass-backwards argument there. </font>

[shlitzzlipzz@hotmail.com]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Shlitzzlpzza@hotmail.com:

Ive fired the M16A1 on full auto (using controlled bursts) and at 5 meters or less, using non-shoulder firing techniques, its not hard to hit a man sized target. I notice most US troops in Iraq use a shoulder type stance though

No ****, at five meters or less a blind man could hit something on full auto. </font>

[Nidan1]

I was responding to your statement, you said full auto at 15m or less. I am assuming you are firing from the hip, or holding the M16 by the pistol grip and shooting around a corner or over a parapet or some other obstacle. To me that might be as good as firing blind.

In other words spraying fire at that distance is bound to hit something, but that sounds as if a desperate situation has been reached, and it is no longer a controlled building/room clearing operation.

[Guest Mike]

43, 39....bloody millimetric grogs!!

I wasn't talking about the russian army - I was talking about total usage.

Nidan said:

In other words spraying fire at that distance is bound to hit something, but that sounds as if a desperate situation has been reached, and it is no longer a controlled building/room clearing operation.

Any time you're shooting at someone who is shooting back is a desperate situation!!

[ December 07, 2005, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]