How about entering buildings and picking up weapons?

[Battlefront.com]

Oh yeah... I can't think of any other weapon an Allied soldier would be less well advised to use than the MG42. They might as well stand up and shout at the top of their lungs "ve arrrr ze Germons! Vy doncha shoot us!"

Mord, functional weapons caches was on the drawing board but we didn't find the need for it so they were pushed way down on the list of priorities. In Iraq the weapons caches are more strategic in nature than tactical. They engage, they disengage, they withdraw, they scatter, then lay low. Then when they want to have another go, they stop by one of their friendly neighborhood stashes and rearm.

In a recent sweep Al Qaeda fighters were flushed out. They left all their weapons and ammo behind, figuring they would infiltrate back in once the security slackened up again. These types of uses are out of CM's scrope. Tactical rearmament, however, is. But I don't think we've found a need because Uncons tend to either do very well very quickly, or get wiped out. In either case weapons/ammo stashes aren't much use.

Steve

[JonS]

I recall reading about some British unit playing around with a captured Nebelwerfer in the Orne Bridgehead sometime in late June-early July 1944. They started getting cocky, and decided to launch a few rounds back at the erstwhile owners.

*WHOOOOSH* went the rounds, leaving behind those very distinctive smoke trails.

The entire bridgehead held it's collective breath until someone VERY senior arrived and roundly bollocked the (ir)responsible subalterns, and left them very clear on the point that they were to never do that again.

[Primarch]

What about when US forces are working in concert with iraqi forces? It seem like a bad idea to shoot at every AK sound in that operation.

[FAI]

Originally posted by Primarch:

What about when US forces are working in concert with iraqi forces? It seem like a bad idea to shoot at every AK sound in that operation.

Yup, at many occasion resulted in dead Iraqi troops even with no insurgents in the immediate vicinity.

[Battlefront.com]

Ditto what FAI said. I've read of a few cases of friendly fire by US troops against Irqi police and army units.

Steve

[FAI]

And in Afghanistan too. They don't even have fire the AKs, openly carrying AKs comes with its own risk even if you are supposed to be (friendly)government troops.

[Speedy]

This suggest a very poor level of training / fire discipline for US troops.

I was under the impression that the US military had invested a lot of time and money in the last couple of decades into improving the standard of their training?

[Axel]

So can you jump back in in a abandoned tank?

[MikeyD]

"This suggest a very poor level of training / fire discipline for US troops."

Everything's relative. U.S. appears to be much better at fire discipline than early in the war when the troops simply weren't expecting to find themselves in this sort of trouble. The much derided Iraqi army 'death blossom' habit of indiscriminant firing when targetted had been a typical U.S. response to the same threat. It took a LOT of hard work to train-up the correct automatic response under those circumstances.

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by Speedy:

This suggest a very poor level of training / fire discipline for US troops.

Hearing a few stories of friendly fire and then making assumptions isn't getting the whole story.

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I'm betting they can't reload from a Stryker though.

The Syrians can jog back to their hidden weapons cache. </font>

[Battlefront.com]

Speedy

This suggest a very poor level of training / fire discipline for US troops.

Not at all. Fog of war is always a problem. It's made worse when, perhaps, the troops being coordinated with aren't doing what they are supposed to. Meaning, coordination has to work both ways.

And then there is the rule that nothing ever works perfectly. Looks like some Marines "lost it" in Afghanistan fairly recently, for example. According to the official line fire discipline collapsed and a lot of civilians were killed as a result. That's probably more a reflection on combat fatigue and the psychologically draining nature of the fighting than inherent training/discipline. If it were a fundamental problem, the exceptional cases would be when a US unit didn't kill 20 civilians everytime they heard a loud bang.

Steve