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Found it very interesting

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Very good link, and an interesting read.

Three thumbs up !

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This is about the fourth version of this I have seen with names and with identities censored. As far as I can tell, it's a load of crap cobbled together by some armchair commando. Not that some of it isn't pretty spot on, but a lot of it comes down to vietnam era bashing of the 5.56 cartridge and the ar-15 platform as well as the 1911 is king of the hill and 7.62x51 rules in a main battle rifle that is rife on the old shooting forums.

I know a fair number of people doing their stint in the sandbox in various forms, and much of that stuff is not accurate.

Some corrections to the article:

1) The m-16 and m-4 need a change of maintenance for the climate. The old rule of thumb is run them wet. The new rule of thumb is use a dry film lubricant. Cleaning intervals need to be bumped up, especially if you have been in a unit that never gets issued ammo normally. They don't keep themselves clean. As for the 5.56, it works fairly well, the main problem is that what works decently against hard targets (m855 62gr penetrator) doesn't necessarily do the most damage on people (m193 55gr FMJ). not to mention the m-4 with the stubby barrel can't use the 55gr ammo to full effect due to the SHORT barrel.

2) The SAW does it's job, they are just geting OLD and the magazine adapters are not a good idea. As for clearing jams, I can't see how the m240 beats it by a lot as they are essentially the same gun chambered for different cartridges. They also aren't drum fed, they are belt fed from a caddy unless using the magazine adapeter. Using an adapter with a beta-c mag wouldn't be the hottest idea, and is about the only drum fed variant I have ever seen.

3) M9 is NOT making anyone happy. They haven't received proper maintenance in damn near forever, the slide to frame fit has become ovelry sloppy due to age and the fact they are aluminum alloy frames. The springs are not being switched out at appropriate intervals. Teh gun tends to have the locking block or the area around it fail with heavy use (i.e. lots of rounds fired). The magazines are either old (mec-gar quality mags with bad springs and worn followers), or crap (new lowest bidder contract). As for the stopping power of the 9mm round, it's a frikin pistol, they are not quality man-stoppers in pretty much any caliber that isn't meant for hunting and impractical for use ina military sidearm.

4) mossburg 12ga. It's a shotgun, it's used for breaching doors, and it really only works on regular doors. In the modern/western buildings they worked fine, but in traditonal/cheaper buildings, the doors aren't built with exposed hinges or normal doorknobs, so breaching rounds don't really get the job done. There are several shotguns available over there, and the mossburg is not the most liked, but it works. For house clearing, they are fielding some semi-auto and full-auto shotguns, but it's not real widespread.

5) the m240. people like it, and there aren't enough to go around mainly due to the army planning to let a lot of gear rot in place while they worked up a replacement and tried to save money to survive budget cuts. It's not real great unless it's mounted though. When not mounted ona vehicle, it's more in the role of crew served weapon than being used like a SAW. Anyone who says the m-60 was a good weapon would likely get punched in the face by anyone who had to hump one through the jungle. It's a shrunk down mg-42, that's still too big, and when shrunk further is even less reliable. The scaling down made it not work as well, the changing of certain parts to reduce weight made it malfunction prone. A popular mode of failure was to "cook off" not form heat, but from the action wearing and it going into uncontrolable full-auto fire until it was out of ammo. Your buddies you are laying down cover fire for while doing bounding overwatch don't think highly of you when this happens. The m-60 was and is CRAP.

6) Ma duce. John Moses Browning knew his shit, and it's a damn good thing he did, because every one of the m-2 machine guns is 40 years old or more. We have no facilities to produce more, and no viable replacement due to budget cuts, letting things rot in place, and not having a replacement weapon developed. IEDs are takinga toll on these suckers ad it's not good.

7) the .45 is well liked. It does not reliably put anyone down with one shot, and the seals fucking HATE the H&K socom (it doesn't suck totally, it's just design by comittee and bribes, and isn't what they asked for beyond being a .45 and having a supressor available). It's why they have a standing order with sig for p220s with an option for something absurd like 3000 of them (although that might be for all of SOCOM, not just the seals).

8) m-14. Generally well liked because the designated marksmen need something with more range and oomph than the m-16 or m-4. The overal adjustment of infantry to urban house to house seems to have forgotten that people still shoot you from far away, especially in a desert region where even the cities are spread out. the m-14 with an acog mounted on it is a big winner, but if not properly maintained, even the ww2 op-rod based semi-auto action can bind and fail. But then again, so are the ar platformed stoner sr-25 and armalite ar-10. Both of which are also pulling designated marksman duty and use 7.62x51.

9) Barret m82a1. Yeah it's well liked. Yeah it works. Jsut liek all the other .50bmg based waepons, it may not be here to stay as they want to replace them all with wacky high-tech sort of grenade launchers. (more like 20mm rifle ammo that is slower and can carry a payload see http://www.barrettrifles.com/military/xm109.htm fro the xm109). What you can squeeze into a .50bmg cartridge with enough money at your disposal is pretty impressive though, so who knows.


10) m24 sniper rifle. solid rifle, some objections to the issued optics. The army has .300 winchester magnum variants, and the marines want them too as they need something between .308 and .50bmg.

11) The main bitch about body armor is the neck protection. It limits your range of motion when hitting the ground taking cover, and that can get you killed. Not sure if the revision that lessens that is out there yet. As for the heat, the armor really doesn't matter. It's so frikin hot that it almost doesn't matter what you wear. The only wearable items that are really debated are nomex undergaments and facemasks as flash burns from IEDs is a big problem, but they make you even hotter. AS one guy I know put it, driving around out there is like sitting with a blow dryer in your face. it was regularly 140 degrees where he was stationed over the summer.

12) night vision and infrared does rule.

13) Sure-fire lights are pretty much a winner, but the actual flashlights less so than the weapon mounted lights. Which surprised some people.

Some things NOT in the article about our troops weaponry that is a common sentiment.

A)THEY WANT MORE STRYKERS. The fact that the media is pushing uparmored humvees and money is getting spent on them rather than strykers is pissing many off. With no good alternative to the m-2 on the humvee, and actual armored vehicle designed to be such with a 25mm chain gun on it is what htey would like more of. The humvee sucks when you are getting shot at. The up-armored humvee sucks when things are blowing up around you or they have more guns than you, or someone whips out an rpg and you are trying to get away. They are heavy and they are pigs. The new humvees with the bed liner material to protect against shrpanel are better (due to being more survivable than the unamrored humvee and lighter than the up-armored humvee). However, the average army guy couldn't give a crap about getting more of ANY humvee. They want strykers.

B) magnifying optics. Although red-dots are cool, and work great house to house, magnifying optics are proving invaluable in spread out terrain. There's definitely pressure to adopt an official scope and get branch wide purchasing rather than having COs do it for their units.


Bad guy armament:

ak-47 & 7.62x39: not much better than the ar platform and the 5.56. Reliability isn't a big win because so many of them are local manufacture and not necesarily the best tolerance wise. The ammo has more oomph up close, but the drop on it is bigger, so they don't get as much range. Net result is you don't want to be shooting at anyone more than 200 yards away with either.

RPG: It is the most feared, and simple my ass. Some of the most recent variants with the fancy shaped charges can make holes in just about anything we have if it hits the right spot. Theres a lot of technology riding on the warhead of this simple weapon, and that's not good news.

IEDs: It's a WHOLE lot more than what this guy states. They are getting built into roads and structures and dealing with it is probably the biggest hurdle out there.

4) Mortars and rockets: definitely a pain in the ass, but our tactics are definitely winning out over their tactics on this one. We have an effective formula for the nighttime harassment and pot shots.

5) google earth.. yeah ok. I don't think he knows what he is talking about here.

Bad guy armament not mentioned

A) they have more high-tech surface to air shoulder mounted rockets than makes anyone happy. They pretty much have variants of anything that came out of the eastern bloc or has been in the hands of any conservative muslim nation at their disposal. Fortunately the good stuff is in fairly limited numbers. But there IS a reason why we have been losing more helicopters lately.


Unintended consequences:

1) budget cuts. We were playing a game of make it last as long as we can due to Clinton-era budget cuts (not bashing, but it was his initiative and his watch it happened on). We cut back ammo manufacture and we stopped procuring many items, and now they are unavailable to us and there is no hope of replacement. it also means we had a severe ammo shortage for small arms, and if it weren't for a couple of nato nations helping out, we would have bene caught even MORE undersupplied.

2) the 1986 ban on manufacturing of machine guns for civilian consumption. It basically means there's no cottage industry of making m-2 replacement parts or even limited numbers of m-2s. It also means there aren't a hell of a lot of bidders on the new projects, or weapons ready for procurment because they lok like they would be a good fit (like the thompson sub-machinegun in WWII, or the m-16 that stoner shopped around in the ar-10 format) Combine it with decomissioning internal small arms development in favor of contracting it out, and we are basically only getting any interest if some foreign nation has a ready product (SAW, M9), or it is a big enough contract to attract attention (recently abandoned search for an m-4 replacement. Had a whopping 3 or 4 entries).