The Roles and Weapons with the Squad

[BushrangerCZ]

I thought the Dragunov was a sniper rifle? But certainly the FN/SLR was fit for purpose. As most of our action was at very close ranges the range of the weapon did not come into play but it was the knock down effect and the terrible wounding it caused that set it apart from the AK47. Yes, our guys went down when hit by a 7.62mm intermediate but the wounds were not of the same magnitude. I would say the huge advantage we had was carrying the FN MAG on a one in four basis as having gunners who built up fearsome reputations through much combat experience. Int reports from captures indicated how much the insurgents feared the MAG.



You have identified the problem... now what is the solution?

IMHO the hearing problem takes two forms. One is the obvious inability to locate the position of the enemy by his fire which is a life and death issue when in contact and then it is the protection acoustic trauma. We hardly used ear defenders even on the range in the 70s and we have paid the price. But that said all the use of ear protection is meaningless after a series of cave clearing contacts with loud bangs in confined spaces. And then we had a number of guys who hit a number of landmines... I think their ears are still ringing

I thought that ear plugs which allow normal speech and sounds through but protect against gunshot noise were freely available from gun shops or mail order?



Yes this is weird isn't it. I see the Brits are getting clever about this too. Soldiers beyond the ten years service are being found to be unfit for operational duty due to reduced hearing. Idiots. It was the army that did it to them and they should be fitted with the best available "hearing aids" to fix that not only in an operation context but also for after their service as well. What makes this so damn laughable is that on operations they give them a head set that blocks out the hearing in one ear anyway.

What would entice me back into the military at this stage of my life would be to carry out a "Stalinist type purge" of all the deadwood and idiots who seem to do more than the average enemy to hamper/sabotage military performance.



You need a gizmo? The yanks will have it and in this case some damn fine stuff too. Why not ask around here I'm sure you will get good advice.



Again you have identified the problem (well done - I read the situation as you do, and had a current Brit special forces sergeant major (WOII) tell me the same on November last year.) There are of course situations where personal radio (PPR) is useful but not I suggest for the line infantry for the majority of the time.

I used a dog whistle.


Attached to my dog tags I started with it at a normally audible level and slowly tuned it higher and higher till only a trained ear (and a dog could hear it). You can get quite fancy with the whistles mixing long and short for different meanings.

Does it work? Well one day I showed a fellow officer how in a situation where my troop were playing volleyball against another about 30m away. I blew it. My troopies looked towards me, the others did not. It works. Try it.

Thanks JMA, I will try that whistle. Yanks I worked with usually used peltors, or two-color earplugs which did not really protect or allowed perfect hearing. They were half way between this two issues, which is still not solution, but compromise. There is also device which is on the same principle as earmuffs with active hearing, but much smaller, pushed inside your ear, with the same function. I never tried that one, someone here did?? I agree that army should understand the problem, but as we do not wage a full scale war, and soldiers with this issue are rather exception than norm, they don´t bother with some official exceptions.
Solution for that radio issue would be letting just TL and his 2IC having the ICOM (even the team splits sometimes for a while), and use only one frequency. Personally, I would prefer that. (We talk just about team radios, not about HF, of course).