MAJ Ehrhart - Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afgh.

[jcustis]

So what's the best tactical situation to use precision, automatic fires at the 400-500m range?

I feel like we're talking in circles.

"What does the Automatic Rifleman do?"

"Oh, he's the guy who fires his rifle automatically."

"Why does he do that?"

"Because he's the Automatic Rifleman."

Of course, this is the military so that makes perfect sense...

I think you may be getting wrapped around the term 'automatic rifleman'. He isn't the just guy who fires his rifle automatically. The M27 is distinct from the Browning Automatic Rifle in that the standard response in the offense is not to respond to a target by flipping the safety to automatic and dispatching the enemy as quickly as possible with multiple bursts. Good BAR gunners could squeeze off very short bursts or single shots when the slow rate of fire was selected, but it was still an automatic weapon.

What the Marine Gunners and infantry guys have essentially concluded is that the IAR gunner should move as a rifleman would. He doesn't need the rest of the team or portion of the squad to seize his next firing position for him, as he struggles to relocate to this new firing point. The rest of the team need not fight to protect him as a primary task, and he is not expected to be that "suppressive firepower" fight-stopper that I think too many folk envisioned the SAW gunner was supposed to be.

The standard response for the IAR gunner is accurate, semi-automatic fire delivered against a point target(s), and he ratchets up to bursts of fully-automatic fire against massed targets, or perhaps enfilade targets, and definitely against area targets. Even in a counter-ambush scenario, the answer is not to spray-and-pray wildly, but you have 28-30 rounds to put out there quickly...if you're not already dead at the initiation. For targets at the 400-500m range, if I need to use automatic fires due to the nature of the target, I'm going to be using a machine gun first if I have one.

We had a maintenance problem, and a training problem, and a mobility problem, with the employment of the SAW within the team and squad. Time will tell if the IAR is the answer, and if we are looking for a panacea at the end of a length of extruded metal, pins, welds, and polymer, we are already behind the power curve. It has been tested, evaluated, and weighed against the SAW in terms of hits-per-tgt and rounds expended per hit, and it won, but still needs to be looked at as a system.

Effective suppression is hits on target, and giving dirt naps to the knuckleheads who need them.

BREAK--

Fuchs, everything you stated above is really stating the obvious, it seems, for great war settings.

[Chris jM]

Thanks for your last reply.

We had a maintenance problem, and a training problem, and a mobility problem, with the employment of the SAW within the team and squad...

Do you think the USMC has this problem as a service specific issue, or do you think it is universally applicable to all armies with belt-fed weapons in the squad/section?

I ask this as I have never heard of any issues with the M249 in my army. I wonder whether this is due to a lack of low-level combat experience compared to the USMC, or whether it is a cultural/employment issue.

[Chris jM]

Just to clarify my last post so it doesn't appear inadvertantly condescending - by 'low level combat experience' I mean small unit, not low intensity, and by 'cultural/employment' I'm referring to where the weapon is located in the unit, how it is employed and to what end, etc.

[Fuchs]

What the Marine Gunners and infantry guys have essentially concluded is that the IAR gunner should move as a rifleman would.

He IS a rifleman. That weapon is almost indistinguishable from some assault rifles.


I concluded a while ago that the IAR will be introduced as SAW replacement, it will be hyped as super-successful and then it will replace the M16 in the infantry.
The whole program looks like a M16 replacement program done specifically to avoid the pitfalls of the many earlier M16 replacement programs.
This replacement program comes with its own ideology/doctrine ("automatic rifleman") and a heavy dose of BAR-nostalgia.

The current pro-IAR propaganda was predictable and prepares for the replacement of the M16 PLUS it distracts from the general incompetence of the Marines in regard to procurement requirements and program management.

[kaur]

Fuchs, good news for Germany's export oriented indutry! HK first won IAR contest, next Army new carbine contest

About wound ballistics. It depends a lot what area you hit. Accurate weapon is more lethal with "weaker" ammo. According to one Swede here, shot placement is key to lethality.

http://www.google.ee/url?sa=t&rct=j&...qD4vog&cad=rja

[Fuchs]

Shot placement is impractical. You gotta be glad if you hit at all*.

You better switch to auto if you're close enough to even consider shot placement.


*: Assuming competent enemies who are a powerful enough to be a believable threat to your nation at all.

[Vojnik]

He IS a rifleman. That weapon is almost indistinguishable from some assault rifles.


I concluded a while ago that the IAR will be introduced as SAW replacement, it will be hyped as super-successful and then it will replace the M16 in the infantry.
The whole program looks like a M16 replacement program done specifically to avoid the pitfalls of the many earlier M16 replacement programs.
This replacement program comes with its own ideology/doctrine ("automatic rifleman") and a heavy dose of BAR-nostalgia.

The current pro-IAR propaganda was predictable and prepares for the replacement of the M16 PLUS it distracts from the general incompetence of the Marines in regard to procurement requirements and program management.

THIS. This is what I was trying to say.

Thank you Fuchs.

The USMC evaluated the Colt Automatic Rifle in 1977 and decided to go with the Minimi instead, correct? So, 30 years later they say "Ooops...got that wrong"? But yet still retain the 3-round burst on the M-16A4? Or hell...still retain the M-16A4 period...

[Fuchs]

The USMC also had a period during which it used a LMG version of the M16A1 with bipod. There's next to no innovation in the current "I"AR, and quite the same concept was afaik found lacking a generation ago.

[kaur]

Vojnik, this is Fuchs' speculation that confirms his hypothesis

Ballistics.

The Corps has considered a variety of options to improve stopping power in recent years. In 2007, it weighed fielding a 6.8mm weapon after rank-and-file troops assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command designed it with their command’s approval to address deficiencies in standard 5.56mm ammo. Neither SOCOM nor the Corps adopted it, in part because of the logistics and cost required. Gen. James Mattis, now commander of U.S. Central Command, advocated behind the scenes that the Corps consider adopting 6.8mm ammo as recently as last year, but the service adopted SOST ammo instead.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news...dates-091110w/

IAR and SAW

Currently, the Marines have two battalions of M27s in Afghanistan and another three preparing to deploy. Marine battalions will also keep nine M249s per rifle company to allow commanders to beef up firepower when needed.

http://www.military.com/news/article...tic-rifle.html

Carbine/rifle firepower quality is being overestimated and it's still the machine gunners and snipers that do 80% of the job (~Pareto) - just as they did in the age of bolt-action carbines.

Fuchs, how you define sniper in this context? What skills, what gear?

it used a LMG version of the M16A1 with bipod

What barrel, how the bipod was attatched to barrel etc? They lost the accuracy (we are talking here about half km) to technical solutions.

[Fuchs]

I define sniper in the context of an infantry squad or platoon as quite the same as designated marksman.
* an emphasis on camouflage, concealment, cover and deception to the point that he becomes quite invisible even while shooting (including muzzle flash and dust cloud concerns)
* aimed single shots of unusually good accuracy

To me the difference between a sniper and a designated marksman is
* DM is organic to infantry small unit, sniper at most attached to it
* sniper is more extreme; more specialised weapon, more fieldcraft training
* sniper is trained as forward observer and usually better at ranging
* sniper has greater freedom of movement relative to small infantry unit.
* sniper has his own fire discipline
* sniper isn't meant to participate in assaults

So in the context of this discussion they're practically the same and I become occasionally lazy enough to not differentiate between them.

M16A1 LMG.

[Ken White]

Fuchs:

Heh. No one who ever carried a BAR is the slightest bit nostalgic about that monster...

This:

You better switch to auto if you're close enough to even consider shot placement.

is just flat wrong. It's a dangerous fallacy created by the Russians who also fielded half trained Soldiers to compensate for that lack of training and one that has been since adopted by people who should know better. Full auto, Shotgun, Rifle, Pistol, Howitzer, Mortar -- whatever -- shot placement is critical. Inaccurate fire is totally worthless and a full auto capability encourages its use and thus the resultant inaccuracy.

Low performance infantryman + high performance weapon = still low performance.

That's true but it is not because 'competent' armies HAVE to do it that way, it is simply the way they've always done it -- and it's wrong. Most Armies have too many Infantrymen and the majority of them are only marginally trained.This is partly induced by the myths that Mass is critical; Infantry is 'cheaper' than armored vehicles; and Infantry can do everything. In reverse order, it cannot and should not; proper infantry is more expensive than an armored unit -- there's nothing that's more cost inefficient than an Infantry Battalion in peacetime...

Mass is vastly overrated as an effect simply because we are inheritors of 'tradition' -- and inertia.

It would take major personnel system improvements to solve this without resorting to a tiny all-SF infantry force.

Yes -- sorely needed, too. I have read and agree with much of your linked Blog post IF Armies intend to continue doing business as they have. I contend a new model is needed and that infantry as levee en mass is woefully outdated -- and a habit. I agree psychological selection is important -- I'd say imperative -- and agree that the 80% exist -- they can be Artillerists and Armor crewmwen, MPs Engineers and so forth which really do -- and should -- vastly outnumber the infantry. Infantry do not need to be trained to high end SOF capability but they need to be more than space fillers...


JMA:

If not you should move your firepower down to the level of deployment.

Nope. Keep that firepower consolidated for proper training and employment -- which can include detaching pairs of guns with trained crews including Ammo bearers to Platoon or smaller elements as needed.

No armed force IMO should ever always deploy in any set strength; METT-TC and all that...

Vojnik:

The USMC evaluated the Colt Automatic Rifle in 1977 and decided to go with the Minimi instead, correct? So, 30 years later they say "Ooops...got that wrong"? But yet still retain the 3-round burst on the M-16A4? Or hell...still retain the M-16A4 period...

During peacetime, the Marines are captive to Army procurement. Congress tends to insist that one size fits all (it never does...) and that everyone should use the same equipment. Stupid and shortsighted, nominally based on cost grounds and generally wrong on that but there it is. The Marines tried to resist the M16 altogether back in 1963 -- they did not succeed. They tried to resist the M249 (as did some in the Army). The Army through Barry McCaffrey (then AC at USAIS) was pushed into the M4 based on that fatally flawed 'automatic fire is required for all' mantra though they in a bow to the flaw in that argument insisted on the rather dumb three round burst bit -- yet another attempt to substitute technology no matter how flawed for training. Given the 'Stan and Iraq, the Marines developed some independence in their procurement -- independence they should never have been denied in the first place.

That said, Fuchs is probably right and its a slick way to get rid of the very flawed M16 / M4. More power to 'em.

[Fuchs]

Ken; statistics on shots fired by policemen (all semi-auto), the range involved and hits 'scored', are disgusting.

I was taught to switch to auto on G3 at 25-30 metres, and I am a fan of that considering that shooting auto with G3 meant to score multiple hits per trigger pull against "kneeling" cardboard targets.

Full auto till mag is empty was not debatable with the G3's recoil, but long bursts (4-6 cartridges) are surely more effective than trusting the quickness of your index finger with semi-auto when a second more or less can decide about life or death.


Btw, about auto fire on the attack in general:
Back in WW2 the German infantry squad was a machine gunner with assistant and escorts/porters. That was changed (at least on paper) to two machine gunners, two assistant machinegunners and escorts/porters. The NCO leading the squad was often armed with a submachinegun (so he didn't participate in most firefights, but was most useful at short range as escort) and he assigned targets/directions to the machinegunner.

Later, in 1944, assault rifles became available and some experiments were done. Assault rifles have a better range than submachineguns (and Soviet all-SMG companies were known to be dangerous on the attack and in urban settings).

One of the experiments ditched the machinegun and equipped all-assault rifle infantry. This infantry was meant for offensive actions, firing full auto on the attack. As far as I've read about it, this approach worked quite well.
Keep in mind that by '44 the German infantry needed all morale boost it could get and the Soviet one wasn't exactly composed of personnel of choice any more (= many infantrymen were older than preferred for infantry).

Full auto assaults at that time were quick and had two main advantages;
(1) the noise was impressive and provoked the "flee" panic reaction
(2) the storming troops were impressive and provoked the "take cover and freeze" panic reaction.

There are certainly less dangerous ways of provoking panic reactions, but every discussion of full auto weapons tactics has to take into account the psychological effects (confidence in own troops and fear in the enemy troops). Weapons development, procurement and squad/platoon design (TO&E, tactics) should be in great part about psychology.
(This, of course, damns the rejecting UK Army reactions to the poor SA86 reputation as utterly incompetent.)

[JMA]

JMA:Nope. Keep that firepower consolidated for proper training and employment -- which can include detaching pairs of guns with trained crews including Ammo bearers to Platoon or smaller elements as needed.

No armed force IMO should ever always deploy in any set strength; METT-TC and all that...

If as you end with everything is METT-TC governed then how can it be dogmatically stated that firepower should be consolidated?

I would be interested if someone can explain to me why there needs to be ay intermediate weapons between the standard service rifle and the FN MAG 58 (M240).

The troopies in Rhodesia carried the gun and 500 rounds (if more were needed for a particular op the others would share the extras). These were not supermen just your average colonial 18/19/20 year olds. Weight was not a problem.

I can't remember any gunner near me having a stoppage. If they had they would have been in deep sh*t but what the troop sgt would have done to them would have been nothing like the savage ridicule they would have suffered from the other troopies. See photo below... an ops briefing on the go, gunners told to make sure their weapons are 100% will be briefed later. A question of priorities.

An aside. At a recent regimental reunion in the UK I met an old troopie of mine who told me that after 30 years he had finally understood why I had taken his MAG away and given it to someone else back then. He said it was the greatest humiliation he had suffered in his whole life and the other troopies had mocked him for years thereafter.



You put the fire power where you need it and you get more weapons if you need them. In Rhodesia there was one MAG per four-man stick (callsign). To be a MAG gunner was a badge of honour. Then of course there was a hierarchy among the gunners as to who had 'ripped' the most gooks.