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Thread: MAJ Ehrhart - Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afgh.

  1. #181
    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    I look at it this way. If a soldier can't group (from the prone position) 5 rounds within 4 inches @ 100m or 1 inch @ 25m then you do two things. You fire his instructor and take his weapon away and issue him with a machette.
    Concur. Reducing hand held dispersion is the basis of all else. If he can hit a Fig-11 5-second exposure, at 150m, from standing, firing as many rounds as it takes to get 1 hit, I'm happy as well.
    But yes... I think I can see where you are coming from. More kills are propably made by weapons other than rifles and so concentrate on where the difference will be made.
    B'Ezrat Ha Shem! Yes, we agree.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    Concur. Reducing hand held dispersion is the basis of all else. If he can hit a Fig-11 5-second exposure, at 150m, from standing, firing as many rounds as it takes to get 1 hit, I'm happy as well.

    B'Ezrat Ha Shem! Yes, we agree.
    There was at one time a raging debate in Rhodesia over the "one aimed shot" school of thought and the "double tap" school. In the end I just said to my guys to do what works for them.

    What about a Fig 11 moving zig-zag at 50m?

    What about jungle-lane shooting?

  3. #183
    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    There was at one time a raging debate in Rhodesia over the "one aimed shot" school of thought and the "double tap" school. In the end I just said to my guys to do what works for them.

    What about a Fig 11 moving zig-zag at 50m?

    What about jungle-lane shooting?
    My experience on Jungle Lanes is that one aimed shot does not work. If the one aimed shot misses, you are going to need to do another very quickly.
    Rapid multiple shots seems to work much better. "FFF" "Fire till the F**ker Falls.

    Another issue I have with "jungle lanes" is that what you are doing in them, has to work within the Contact Drill SOP you are using.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    My experience on Jungle Lanes is that one aimed shot does not work. If the one aimed shot misses, you are going to need to do another very quickly.
    Rapid multiple shots seems to work much better. "FFF" "Fire till the F**ker Falls.

    Another issue I have with "jungle lanes" is that what you are doing in them, has to work within the Contact Drill SOP you are using.
    "Rapid multiple shots" equals... a series of single shots... or a series of double taps?

    My biggest worry with jungle lanes was that they were one at a time per instructor. Too time consuming.

    We tried to get 'stick' jungle-lanes going but found location, safety and that they were pretty quickly 'shot out' almost insurmountable problems.

    Maybe just settle for one objective and that is the shooting training with the appropriate post engagement response as in "take cover" with the instructor acting as the stick or section commander.
    Last edited by JMA; 04-07-2010 at 01:30 PM.

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    Wilf, did you mean ""Fire (aimed shots) till the F**ker Falls"?

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    I want to add this video to my last post.

    http://www.vikingtactics.com/pop-instr_video13.html

  7. #187
    Council Member Firn's Avatar
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    Afghan Marksmanship: Pointing, Not Aiming

    Another piece on (Afghan) Marksmanship, Ken White might not approve, but it offers in any case a good springboard for an discussion, just as the last one did.

    This week, the same trainer said that the problems remain, and that after years of working with Afghan soldiers, and an extraordinary investment of American money and soldiers’ time, “two fundamentals are missing from that army. The first is discipline. There really is none. And the second is accountability.”

    Regards

    Firn

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
    Wilf, did you mean ""Fire (aimed shots) till the F**ker Falls"?
    Merely, if you don't hit, keep shooting and once you hit, keep hitting! The more you shoot, the more you should aim.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Wink What's not to approve, Firn. He tells what he's seen.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firn View Post
    Another piece on (Afghan) Marksmanship, Ken White might not approve, but it offers in any case a good springboard for an discussion...
    And we've all seen the same thing on TV -- and in our own services. It's nice to think that we, particularly us gun happy Merkuns, are all great shooters but the reality is most services don't train it very well nowadays and the 'spray and pray' syndrome can strike western units as well.

    Like Chivers, apparently, I'm a big fan of really thorough weapons training and aimed fire. The Afghans are not alone in trying to save money and time by doing an inadequate job of training not only marksmanship but the even more important subject of fire control and distribution.

    Automatic weapons are a part of the problem; the automatic capability is significantly undertrained and overused for very little if any real benefit...

  10. #190
    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Soldiers are not required to qualify on their assigned weapon (M-16) prior to graduation. A fitness test is not required either. The list goes on and on. Soldiers “graduate” from basic and advanced training simply because they did not go AWOL. If they are present on graduation day then off they go to their units.
    ...so basically they are NOT TRAINED and there would be 1,000% increase in effectiveness if they had a fitness test and a shooting test.

    The exact same thing was true of the Cambodian Forces trained by the US. They weren't really trained at all.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    It wouldn't break my heart if IET only included physical fitness, integration into the Army, and some very limited tactical training just for familiarization purposes. Frankly, I always preferred working with Soldiers who had not yet developed bad habits. A blank slate is easier to train. I don't care whether a Soldier qualifies on his weapon at basic. The ability to hit 23 out 40 pop-ups of known distances is meaningless. If anything, it gives the Soldier a false sense that he's well-trained. I want him to be trained by the NCOs. They will prepare him for the missions that he will be expected to stand ready for.

  12. #192
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default There's a minor problem with that approach.

    I totally agree with it, have trained and retained and had good units -- while that initial set was there. When the replacements came in -- and they always eventually do if not from casualties then from ETS -- things dropped a notch...

    If you're deployed when that time hits, you do not have the option of taking a three month break to train every new guy. You have to receive 'trained replacements' and make them work. In Iraq with a low casualty and redeploy for cause rate , that may not have been a problem but at other times I've seen a 25-30 rotation rate in combat per quarter.

    There's another problem. I have no doubt the Schmedlap or Sam Damon Co/Bn/Bde would be a great unit. OTOH, I have every reason to suspect that the Heebly or Massengale Co/Bn/Bde would create more problems than either would solve. Heebly makes Courtney Massengale look like the careerist he is and Heebly is a straight arrow who invariably means well -- but he's dumber than a box of hammers. Court is a smart Dude but his, um, priority allocation process is not too good...

    You'd also have the problem of getting SSG J. Phugabosky in from the Heebly Bde who's himself only partly trained himself and then getting him up to speed to train your new guys...

    For what you suggest to work, the Army would have to be smaller than it is (quality control would excise a bunch of folks), the personnel system would promote only on proven merit and capability, not 'best qualified' and a large bureaucracy that purchases, supplies, maintains, moves, medicates and such like would have to get trained somehow -- just in case they had to deploy. The current Personnel system would have to go; you need water walker leaders; the existing system is geared to provide paper qualified leaders.

    There is a way. It's pretty well proven that new organizations, particularly if they are lean, function well. As they age, they become more and more bureaucratic and only a few exceptional outfits are consistently top notch. There is a deterioration curve in effectiveness that is extremely difficult to halt. I seem to recall a study some years ago that posited five years was the norm before inertia set in.

    Thus, regeneration has advantages. Now all we have to do is figure out how to regenerate every Brigade at about three to five year intervals -- and convince the Per Weenies to leave everyone in the same job the whole time. Oh yeah -- and find people that'll accept that setup (I think that part is easy and the large number willing might surprise the Per folks who would absolutely hate the idea -- 'cause then, who needs a Per system...).

    Yes, I know that means a third of the force would be unavailable at any given time. Nothing really new in that.

    Of course, one thing that would be quite helpful is for the Army to realize that the types of unit, organization, training, equipment and even people who can and will soldier around the world in what is nominally peace time are a whole different ball game from the mass Army needed to fight a major war against a near peer. Our big problem is that the US Army, from WW I forward has had a delusion that they can just shrink in peacetime and rapidly expand for a war. Doesn't really work that way. There are those who will say we did it in a few months for WW II. Not really, the Army started pre mobilizing itself in late 1938, the draft was instituted in 1940 as was a massive reequipment program -- yet, the US Army arguably was not really effective prior to late 1943, arguably late 1944. That's really four years, not a few months. Not complaining, that was really a phenomenal performance -- I'm not at all sure we could replicate it today...

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    Council Member Pete's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    I seem to recall a study some years ago that posited five years was the norm before inertia set in.
    Does this mean that White's Battalion of Bluegrass Dragoons would have to disband no later then five years after its first muster?

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Thumbs up Yep

    Four might be even better and three better yet...

    Bluegoon Dragasses. I like that. Thanks. Pete...

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    The Improved Carbine is intended as a no holds barred look at individual small arms in the carbine class. Despite rumors that the Improved Carbine and Squad Individual Marksman variant would share the same requirements document, possibly also with the Personal Defense Weapon, this is not the case. They needed to be broken down into separate requirements although it is possible that the Individual Carbine and Squad Individual Marksman weapons may end up relying on a common weapon. The PDW is a bit more problematic due to the Army’s desired characteristics for the weapon. The Army wants to purchase about 500,000 of the new carbines and has stipulated that they will own the Technical Data Package so that they can award production contracts for the type selected to more than one manufacturer.
    http://soldiersystems.net/2010/04/12...my-small-arms/

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    Can we weigh all these changes against this...

    "We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization." Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Sorry, I just don't see the problem. These problems are entirely self-inflicted and not symptomatic of any real operational problem. The problem is people and stupid ideas.

    You need a rifle/Individual weapon - easy! - we can do that. What's the problem?
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    Yes Chris' book is a good troopies eye view of matters.

    But this article with a view diagrams will help you to understand things a lot clearer.

    http://www.jrtwood.com/article_fireforce.asp

    Also once read download this MP3 file and listen to a recording of part of a fire force call out. Only the commander (c/s 39) and the aircraft transmissions can be heard.

    http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/4/...rce1976-01.mp3

    Enjoy
    Not sure how much following that link clarified matters for you.

    The envelopment of a target area was often not quite that. If the Fire Force comprised a K-Car and 3 G-Cars (3 x 4 man sticks) with 20 paras (5 x sticks) following the a Dak (Dakota-DC3) one could rarely seal off an area. The trick was to get a complete and detailed briefing from the call-sign on the ground and select the likely escape routes given the line of approach of the aircraft. The troops in the para-Dak would then be dropped in a cultivated field somewhere close by and ferried in closer by chopper. The Allouette III was great as it could get into a tight LZ and you had to get the pilot, the fuel line or the tail rotor to really put it on its ass.

    There was a lot of skill required by the Airborne Commander and the K-Car pilot (the senior pilot) to work the deployment to its best tactically.

    I never heard of the paras being dropped in a stop line on the ground where they stayed. It always required movement or ferrying to get into position. And the need for paras was only there because there were not enough choppers to lift enough troops in.

    Later in the war there was a increase in the number of choppers through South Africa sending in (I think) 27 choppers and crews so the 'Jumbo' Fire Forces were established (jumbo only in the Rhodesian context) with two k-Cars and 5 G-Cars each with a para Dak (DC3) and two Lynx (Cessna 337 Skymaster) aircraft. The second K-Car was normally what was termed and alpha-fit where insted of the 20mm cannon there were four .30 Browning MGs side mounted. The alpha-fit was actually more lethal than the 20mm cannon because when there was tree cover the rounds would explode on contact with very little resulting penetration and when the ground was soft the rounds would penetrate fractionally before exploding with the resultant limited shrapnel spread. (A 7.62mm minigun would be similar to the alpha-fit)
    Last edited by JMA; 04-13-2010 at 03:22 PM.

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    Council Member Chris jM's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    Not sure how much following that link clarified matters for you.
    Thanks for the link/s JMA - that and the content on the related RLI thread provides a lot of good info. I need to read more about the entire period to get an understanding of it though - I still am very ignorant of the guerrilla situation, tactics, aims etc so my current knowledge of fire-force tactics is rather flimsy. It will require a few more books for me to make get to grips with the how's and why's of the war.
    '...the gods of war are capricious, and boldness often brings better results than reason would predict.'
    Donald Kagan

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    Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
    Can we weigh all these changes against this...

    "We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization." Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
    A false attribution.
    But an apt quote.

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