Platoon Weapons

[William F. Owen]

1. A soldier's IW is a confidence-building tool, and provides emotional security, as well as being a tool for fighting. Dismissing the soldiers' concerns based upon whatever trivia that can be gathered, scientific or not, is the "anti-leader" thing to do.

2. We have lots of relevant data: WWII USSR and Korean War-era Chinese/North Korean forces made substantial use of very ballistically similar 7.62 x 25mm submachinegun rounds. And units equipped with light weapons like this, did pretty well combined with heavier support weapons. However, there is also lots of data which suggest the round was not an effective incapacitator.

3. The rollout of the PDW will be flawed. Training will be flawed. Funds for the sensors and "acoustic targets" will not be produced, (And soldiers will not believe "sensors" anyway) and NCOs who do not believe in the PDW concept will run the training.

4. I think your concept makes some assumptions about reality, which cannot be easily proven by arranging neat and simple "facts."

Points 1 and 3. You are absolutely right. All your concerns are ones that I am both aware of and believe to be true.

However these issues cannot be allowed negate any attempt at improvement. One of my prime motivations to write about what I do and to do presentations to HQs and conferences is to try and demonstrate that there is another way and it might be better. This is why real empirical evidence is so vital.

Point 2. I am pretty familiar with that round, and am a fan of it. If you have real test data to show its terminal performance in some medium, then please let me know. What criteria are you judging incapacity against, being that it is a very relative term?

Point 4. Are you saying that facts or a body of empirical evidence cannot change soldiers minds? EG: They cannot reason, because they believe in articles of faith that do not require proof.

[120mm]

Point 4. Are you saying that facts or a body of empirical evidence cannot change soldiers minds? EG: They cannot reason, because they believe in articles of faith that do not require proof.

Yes. Absolutely. To segue into another subforum, to the typical soldier, his/her IW is a "totem". And the IW system before the current one is a holy relic, without blemish. To hear soldiers speak of the M14 with reverance is amazing, for example, especially since the M14 had some serious drawbacks.

Now, having said that, I can see a way to make your proposed system "work". I think the way the US Army rolled out the "Stryker" family of vehicles was instructive. They were isolated from the mainstream Army, and were inculcated with a sense of "specialness". By the time they hit Iraq in mid/late '03, they were "true believers".

I am chagrined that you like the "mid-velocity, low-caliber/weight" carbine rounds. The ONLY thing they are even marginally competent at, imo, is piercing body armor, and it is hard to visualize a guerilla force making the mistake of using body armor, and even harder to imagine a "Fulda Gap" scenario in current, or mid-term future ops.

I would propose your same system, only using lower speed, heavier projectiles instead of the lightweight, medium-speed projectiles. If you restrict your terminal range to 200m, you can manage the trajectory problem, I think. And, if your military forces SHOULD face an OPFOR wearing body armor, sabot rounds, or changing to a bottlenecked version of the main round wouldn't require replacing all the weapons, just the barrels, and possibly the magazines.

Lightweight, high speed rounds do an awful job of penetrating mixed media barriers. Lightweight, medium speed rounds do a worse job. Even pistol caliber rounds, fired from a pistol are better at penetrating just about anything except body armor.

http://www.theboxotruth.com/

Of course, your "permanent wound channel" stats are really key, if the US Army is ever faced by a military force composed of ballistic gelatinous creatures. Wearing body armor, of course.

I will admit to being biased in favor of heavier, slower rounds, due to digging a large variety of rounds out of once-living flesh of various sized animals.

[William F. Owen]

1. To hear soldiers speak of the M14 with reverance is amazing, for example, especially since the M14 had some serious drawbacks.

2. Now, having said that, I can see a way to make your proposed system "work". I think the way the US Army rolled out the "Stryker" family of vehicles was instructive.

3. I am chagrined that you like the "mid-velocity, low-caliber/weight" carbine rounds. The ONLY thing they are even marginally competent at, imo, is piercing body armor....

4. Of course, your "permanent wound channel" stats are really key, if the US Army is ever faced by a military force composed of ballistic gelatinous creatures. Wearing body armor, of course.

5. I will admit to being biased in favor of heavier, slower rounds, due to digging a large variety of rounds out of once-living flesh of various sized animals.

1. Oh yes, and I grew up on the L1A1 SLR that attracted similar silliness.

2. That is an excellent point. I am Stryker sceptic, but some of the theory that underpinned the concept was very sound - but generally remains hidden.

3. Well my preference is actually for a "good-enough" round. Not an all around man-stopper that everyone seems to crave. Case telescoped 5.56mm maybe 50% lighter than the current round. Good enough, but not a mature technology right now. Being able to perforate body armour at range is characteristic which buys you more than one might suppose.

4. If you can show me a better medium for assessing terminal effect than Gelatin, then I'm VERY interested to hear. If you have a round that can perforate 1.6mm of titanium sheet, (NOT CRISAT) backed by 30cm of correlated 10% Gelatin, at 200m, I submit you have an adequate IW round.

5. I have had some long discussions with the military medicine community on this, and it has merit, except for the fact that animals do not suffer from suppression, and that incapacity in animals is comparatively easy to judge/measure, unlike humans.

[120mm]

If I were back in the US, I'd be tempted to get a cheap carbine/pistol combo, sharing similar ammunition, and do some testing using full-bore and sabot ammunition.

There are some decent carbine actions that claim to be able to have automatically adjusting gas systems, which would cycle multiple types and loadings of ammo.

[120mm]

Here is a link to illustrate the relative lack of effectiveness of the 5.7 x 28mm round.

http://lightfighter.net/eve/forums/a...3621062102/p/1

I would submit that instead of saboting a necked down 9mm round, why not just saboting a regular 9mm round and retaining the original barrel diameter? There is significant hype involving effectiveness of the PDW rounds on soft targets, but I'm not convinced.

[William F. Owen]

Here is a link to illustrate the relative lack of effectiveness of the 5.7 x 28mm round.

http://lightfighter.net/eve/forums/a...3621062102/p/1

I would submit that instead of saboting a necked down 9mm round, why not just saboting a regular 9mm round and retaining the original barrel diameter? There is significant hype involving effectiveness of the PDW rounds on soft targets, but I'm not convinced.

I think the amount of testing NATO has done 5.7 and 4.6 is quite conclusive. I have all the PASGT and CRISAT performance data, as well as permanent wound channel performance. The only useful data absent seems to be autopsies.

...and fire from a handgun, both rounds suck. Stay with 9mm.

[Ken White]

Including a lot of 9mm stuff. I seem to recall reading an article not too long ago that said due to the weapon quantities and routine violence, Hospitals in the RSA treat a lot of gunshot wounds. Most patients walk in. Most were shot with 9mm rounds...

From the 'Marine Rules of Combat:'

"1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
. . .
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
. . .
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."

[Norfolk]

Including a lot of 9mm stuff. I seem to recall reading an article not too long ago that said due to the weapon quantities and routine violence, Hospitals in the RSA treat a lot of gunshot wounds. Most patients walk in. Most were shot with 9mm rounds...

From the 'Marine Rules of Combat:'

I was going to say, how many people who take a .40 cal come walking in and walking out of hospitals? Theres seem to be a noticeable difference between the nine milly and even the .40.

I must say, I retain doubts about the 5.56, and especially in LMGs - effective suppression or not, I still want something that can reliably kill someone out to 800 m, not just keep their heads down. A 5.56 won't do that. Even granting that the 5.56 is an adequate killer out to 200 m (in an M-16, not an M-4), and you can carry plenty of ammo, anything beyond that still needs a substantially more potent round. Suppressing alone is not good enough; when you pull the trigger, you should be able to kill whoever you hit, not just suppress them; otherwise, you just end up having to kill them later during the assault - knife-fighting range, and that leads to a lot of battle losses.

I'm inclined towards the 6.5 Grendel for carbines, rifles, and LMGs, but if LMGs are to retain 5.56 alongside present carbines and rifles, that can hurt your ability to kill (especially) and to suppress at longer ranges. The latter is particularly important if you have to shoot-in a Section or pair of Sections with Platoon weapons, as the 5.56 just does not have the reach of a 7.62, let alone the killing power at those ranges (200 m+).

[Rex Brynen]

... occur to me as I follow this thread (avidly, I must say, for a non-infantryman).

First, what thoughts do people have on what support weapons should be grouped at the platoon level, what should be grouped at company, and what should be grouped at both (or at battalion)? There has been some discussion of this in passing both here and in the thread on squads/sections, but I've yet to see anyone fully articulate a logic for how one would best decide this.

Second, can we really have a discussion of platoon weapons without more fully discussing APC/IFV issues? Here, I'm less interested in the perennial tracked vs wheeled and heavy versus light issues, and more on the optimal APC/IFV armament. Are 0.50 MGs enough? Should they mount 25/30mm cannon for punching through cover and providing some capability against light AFVs? What about ATGM mounts? (Of course, this also relates to light vs heavy, but let's try to leave that aside for now.)

[slapout9]

The Hospital in Montgomery,Al. where I am one of the security managers is part of a three Hospital system. We have quite a few that walk in or drive in with handgun wounds. Not that uncommon at all. I was shot with a .44 caliber and didn't even know it for about an hour, true it was only a flesh wound but I was knocked off my feet and then slide about 6 feet downhill.

First questions the Emergency doctors ask....How big is the bullet? and Where did it hit them? The ones that come in by ambulance are usually multiple gunshot wounds or large caliber wounds or hit in critical areas such as chest,stomach,head.

A bigger round is better, but it is more about where you hit them and how many times you hit them.

Real shooting with handguns!!http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=iJSNDofoOfg