(FORT FULLASHIT) In recent years, soldiers have seen a flurry of upgrades and new weapons, ammunition and optics added to their arsenal at a rate that outpaces previous decades of development in these areas.O yeah. They're all tactically operating tactically, in a high-speed low-drag transformational circle jerk of biblical proportions.
Soldiers into their second enlistment today have a distinctly different weapons draw than they or their leaders did just a few years ago.Those changes cover the full spectrum of small arms, both individual and crew-served weapons, mostly making existing systems lighter and more functional and adding new punch to the firepower of infantry squads, platoons and companies.
Oh please.
The only way to increase infantry lethality starts and ends with teaching infantry to master their f**king weapons, and the only way you do that is lots of trigger time with quality instruction and feedback, and learning to do it cold, wet, hungry, tired, and with insufficient supplies of everything but bad guys, who are shooting back at you. You can't do it with simulators, comic books, and videos, let alone sales brochures.
And if you're not doing serious hit-the-target training at all (like Big Green hasn't done for 70 years) you're just going to miss faster with more expensive toys, and be "Shocked! Shocked I say!" when some fourth grade dropout with a vintage mid-century bangstick from the 1950s and home-made web gear greases your platoon and activates your SGLI, because he didn't get the memo you had cooler toys.
All that gee whiz Buck Rogers bullshit is going to totally shit the bed five minutes after it deploys with a real-world battalion with a bunch of guys with GEDs, rather than a hand-picked squad of poster soldiers chosen for PR at the R&D HQ.
Try to remember that Pentagon Wars was far more a documentary than a black comedy, Then remember how every weapons selection since 1945 has worked out for grunts, vs. for the weapons salesmen.
Tell me about the time they "improved" the M-2 .50 cal.
And the .45.
And the bazooka.
And...
And...
And...
Then finally, remember that the least important and decisive weapons on the battlefield (since 1914, and except to the guys carrying them) have been the ones carried by the infantry.
If you want to hook up the grunts, start by ensuring you'll never be sending them anyplace not absolutely vital, and that by the time they get there, it'll be to garrison the charred remains of what used to be anyone who decides to oppose us.
Then take the entire JAG and AG Corps, top to bottom, and stake them out on a live fire range, and let the combat troops do FPF training on them until you need DNA evidence to prove they were ever human beings, and promise the troops that in the future, if they deploy, it'll be "weapons free, and God help the enemy" instead of prosecuting them for doing their job, like the last batch of military guys POTUS had to pardon.
Then find 200 generals who'll sacrifice their stars to make the point that their job is to train warriors, not to hire non-hacker Diversity Beans who can't do the job when TSHTF, and will flat out fire people for failing to cut the mustard. (Even Mad Dog Mattis as SecDef couldn't pull that one off.)
Do that, and you could deploy what you'll get with muzzle-loading black powder flintlocks and rusty pikes and they'd conquer the world.
Fail to do it, and you could give them phased plasma rifles in the 40W range, and they'll still lose.
Don't believe me though. Ask the Taliban in Trashcanistan who won every war there since Alexander the Great.
The Army should STFU until they buy something that works, 24/7/365/anywhere/anytime, prove it by training the hell out of it for 20 years, until they wear out the first buy entirely, and decide it's so good they want MOAR!, and so beloved by the troops they'd throw away food and porn if they had to, just to hump it into combat.
And stop buying sales brochure b.s., which gets you the new Edsel class aircraft carrier, the F-35 Thunderjug, and "Diversity is our strength" kool-aid drinkers who hire soldierettes who can't throw a frag far enough not to eat their own shrapnel, transvestites who can't figure out which latrine to use, and can't-cunt officerettes who keep crashing their destroyers into cargo ships so slow they wave barnacles and jellyfish to go around them when steaming upwind.
The article is boob bait for the bubbas from the fap-fantasies of some PR second john in a Pentagon basement jerk-off shop.
( So, I guess I'm back... )
21 comments:
Welcome back I guess.
The problem with training the guys as vs. giving them new toys is no one makes any money on that and we can't have that.
It would also help morale and combat effectiveness if we had something worth fighting for. Our middle eastern problems could be mostly solved by the border patrol , seal the southern and northern ones which would also reduce the drug problem and nope almost everyone from "those places" where the snack bars live.
No money in that so it ain't gonna happen.
And for god's sake try decreasing instead of increasing the weight our guys are carrying into combat! Humping over 100lbs day in and day out is insane. If nothing else breaks our soldiers, that will. I'd like to make the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon shoulder a combat load and go on a forced march. Do that a few times and maybe then things would change.
Tweell, I'm all for decreasing the combat load of the grunt, so long as it's for the right reason.
You stated the correct reason.
I still get flashbacks to when it came out that the average female had issues carrying the average combat load of the average grunt. Their solution many had was make the load lighter so they could hump it cross country.
Great, so you going to take away ammo? or water?
The infantry and SF types I associated with in the 80's already carried a minimal amount of snivel gear (ponchos/liners, spare clothing, personal hygiene) in favor of more ammo and water, on the theory that lack of either will get you dead faster than anything else.
Yea, decrease the load using new materials, and simple things like common batteries across all equipment (and minimize the equipment needing batteries) etc., but don't do it just to widen the area of the bell curve that can cut it in the infantry (at least until the bullets start flying).
combat load too boo-coo. hard to move fast. combat pack with enough boom-booms and supply cart to haul other stuff.
like your scorched earth approach.
"Almost everything a soldier carries today requires batteries, which can add almost 20 pounds to their load—a problem soldiers have only contended with in the past generation. One solution to the problem is the use of solar panels like the Marine Austere Patrol System being developed by the Office of Naval Research. These lightweight panels would allow soldiers to recharge batteries on the go and reduce the total amount of batteries needed per mission."
-Modern War Institute.
20 pounds of batteries.
Got Logistics?
OUTSTANDING; couldn't have said it any better.
"These lightweight panels would allow soldiers to recharge batteries on the go"
Rechargeable batteries don't hold nearly as much charge as regular ones. And the trickle charge from a square foot of flexible solar panel is negligible, even in the desert. And as you use up and toss regular batteries, your load gets lighter. But it would be great if they decided on just one or even two common batteries (AA and 9V).
Our last day in the sandbox, I weighed myself with and without my "walking around the base" gear. No pack. No water. No radio. No extra anything. I was wearing 65 pounds of gear.
One could note that the "learn how to use your weapon" approach works at all levels.
Having recently moved from NJ (spit) to the free state of PA, I'm going to be getting my CCW and will be shopping for my first actual carry pistol. Honestly, I'm leaning toward a 9 mm. But Mark, you may say, you HAVE to have a pistol who's caliber begins with a "4"!
While I respect the late Jeff Cooper (RIP) as much as anyone, 9 mil surplus ball ammo is cheap and plentiful, which means I can practice a LOT without my wife having a "discussion" about my ammo budget, which means that if the balloon goes up I'm more likely to actually HIT what I'm shooting at. So in a range session shoot a few hundred rounds of ball, then a couple mags of more expensive carry ammo just to prove reliability, and go home with cash in my wallet. Honestly, a hit with a 9 MM is more effective than a miss with a .45.
Mark D
I like .45s because I know they're proven man-stoppers.
That said, so is the 9mm.
I have no problem carrying a 9mm for that, because I know that while the first round alone may not curb someone's enthusiasm, the other 10-15 rounds coming in behind it will do that job nicely.
cf. Support You Local Sheriff:
"Why, that badge must've saved the life of the man wearing it!"
"Well, it sure would have, if it wasn't for all those other bullets flying in from every which way."
At one point, the bedside gun was a single-action Ruger .45. I was doing cowboy action shooting 2-4 times a month, and I had zero doubts about my ability then to put all six rounds in a space the size of a coffee saucer out to 25 yards, at mutiple targets if necessary, in under a few seconds, and I was using full-power loads and bullets. Because I'd done it 2000 times already. Train like you fight, and fight like you train, is always the go-to selection.
Out of all the crap given to bolt onto my rifle I was down to an ACOG, BUIS, and two point sling. Heresey I've recently heard from a young Marine (less than a year out): no longer putting much training on iron sights. So there is going to be a generation of fighting men that can't shoot with iron sights.
@Jack:
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/12/idiot-savants.html
Seems to me the biggest problem with all this gadgetry is a little three letter thing called EMP. Doesn't even need to be a big one from a nuclear explosion. Imagine the other side with a dedicated force that carries man portable EMP guns. I'd bet there are other creative ways to do this.
Oh.. and the solar panels.. obviously the pogues at ONR don't know that it ALWAYS rains when you are in the field. Unless it snows.
You're mostly right, Aesop. However, the German Panzer Faust was far superior to the bazooka, and that's what became the RPG.
The latest RPG round, RPG-29 or the RPG-32, are great manpads weapons out to 400 meters.
Wish I had hundreds of them to hand out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf4IGyPTHLo
Heh
@Pat,
None of which was the direction we went in after we dropped the 3.5".
Idiocies like the LAAW, M202, and various other vendor-pushed jackassery have been the norm, not simplicity and battlefield effectiveness. Even Big Green had to eat shit and reintroduce the retired M67 90mm Recoilless in Afghanistan, because of the gap never filled after it was pulled in the 1990s.
And then they killed it again.
The idiots never learn.
You, sir, have a talent. It's like reading Col Jessup's speech in every paragraph.
"...and you could give them phased plasma rifles in the 40W range,..."
Make mine an M56 Smart Gun in 10mm Caseless HE!
Though I'll settle for an M-21A Pulse Rifle...
The 3.5" was a good piece; I'm old enough to have learned it in Armorer's school. We absolutely should buy and field the RPG system. Some of those new rounds are the shizzle.
As ever, you're spot on with "No Change".
The M67 needs to be kept as well. One thing learned from Hue was the value of the little "Ontos" in a city fight; the 106's paid for themselves in that fracas.
As I'm in my dotage, I'm refining my own "combat load" and spending lots of time and ammunition on my M4. I'm NOT gonna be able to move with anything heavier.
Boat Guy
So this it what it reads like when an infantry guy learns how to use words.
Awesome. Excellent points and well said. Keep up the great work.
I pulled recruiting duty with an Infantry guy (DA Select: Yes, you WILL eat that shit sammich for three years!) He had never qualified on iron sights. ACOG only. With the ACOG he was Expert every time. Iron sights? Marksman at best.
But I've also served with Infantry COs who demanded their troops use iron sights until they were experts and then give them the fancy toys. It varies from unit to unit. Good CO, good training. Crappy CO, crappy training. Same as it ever was.
I felt like I was taught shooting basics pretty well in the Marines - M16A2 with iron sights out to 500 yards in Boot Camp. After that, I regularly carried my rifle around (radio operator in the infantry) and very rarely fired it other than for annual re-qualification.
Then I went to a National Guard unit where I rarely even touched my rifle. Marksmanship is a perishable skill, but unless a Marine / Soldier buys his own weapon, ammo, and secures a decent place to shoot - the service is perfectly happy to let it perish (if it ever existed - I've seen new soldiers who can't shoot worth a damn right out of training).
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