I spent the last few days re-reading this thread and other relevant ones. The depth to which issues have already been discussed is quite amazing (maaaan, this is a time consuming hobby). It is also so easy to fall into repetition and quite unavoidable at the same time.
Norfolk, you beat me to it with the 20 man section in ‘rifle squad composition’ post 156.
It appears we think very much along the same lines.
Wilf, I came across a printout I have had filed for some time and forgot I had, of your article on ‘fire and maneuver effects’. Excellent article and certainly very relevant to the 5.56 versus (or plus) 7.62 conversation.
Combining a few of the older threads into this ‘combined’ thread certainly seems to make sense as you can hardly have for instance above mentioned conversation without immediately effecting things like unit composition.
So, at the risk of being repetitive again, is the concept of suppression really as straight forward as putting any size of rounds down in the direction of the enemy just to keep their heads down. Is the value of suppression not increased (adding shock) if the rounds do more physical damage with regards to crumbling away the cover that the enemy hides behind with associated demoralization and the increased ability to actually kill some enemy in the process? Would this not also increase your momentum and speed with regards to winning the firefight and the following assault?
If this is so, then how much more effective is 7.62 over 5.56? If it is by a factor of more than 2, then maybe the double weight of 7.62 over 5.56 is justified. But how do we measure this?
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