Regarding the USMC's IAR...isn't this roughly the same concept as the British Army's LSW? Or for that matter, the RPK or Browning Automatic Rifle?
Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm open to ideas, but I'm not sure I can see the benefit of a 5.56mm light support weapon firing from 30-round magazines instead of a belt-fed weapon.
Yes to the first...
Reliability, weight and ammo conservation in that order to the second. Belt fed weapons are a maintenance and ammo burden on a Platoon for little benefit. Belt fed weapons can do more damage when employed in pairs and at Company level...Originally Posted by Vojnik
http://www.tactical-life.com/online/...?right=relatedIn May 2010, the USMC announced the adoption of the HK IAR as the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle and placed them with units in combat areas. The M27 has proven that it provides better firepower than the SAW without the steel links in belt-fed ammo that add bulk and weight for the gunner, make reloading a two-handed evolution and take the gun out of the fight to clear some stoppages. Is this just my opinion? No. These are facts passed to me at Quantico by Chris Wade, a Marine Corps Battalion Gunner, while I was knocking down targets with three-round bursts with the M27 at 500 meters—something that would have taken half a belt with a SAW. If the HK IAR makes a salty Marine Gunner happy, I am not going to argue the point.
Bursts...500 meters.
I smell propaganda (or incompetence).
First hit; second, third missed?
Even IF he was hitting consistently (and wasting 2/3 of the cartridges with burst instead of single shots):
His "I was knocking down targets" creates the illusion that such hits would be effective, which is grossly misleading. 5.56 mm is at that range more like a small calibre pocket pistol bullet at short range.
Which would kill anyone not wearing body armor dead enough.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Isn't 33% hits at that range a very good result for somebody who has not been to some kind of special school?
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
That is if you always deploy in company strength. If not you should move your firepower down to the level of deployment.
The quote listed below is one of mine from a different forum, so don't mind the odd grammar. The foot stomp is that the M27 should not be compared to the M249 SAW. It is absolutely aimed at filling the automatic rifle role in the fireteam, but the standard response for employment is not automatic fire, or even bursts for that matter, unless a specific type of target (generally massed individual tgts) presents itself.
People point to the Brit LSW and the Diemaco LSW, decry them as failures, and look at the M27 to as a copy of the LSW concept and presume that it will fail. There is a considerable amount of empirical data accumulated through testing and experimentation, and now combat operations, to demonstrate that the M27 is better than the SAW at the team level.During the course of the conversations I had with the assembled Gunners, something formed in my mind that I think was on the tip of my tongue through the 13 pages of this thread, but I just could never really articulate (Chris or somebody else might have, but I don't recall ). In the process of the experimentation, requirements development, testing, etc., the Marine Corps was not in a pursuit for a replacement for the SAW, although a lot of headlines were churned out that made people think so. That's where the whole discussion gets bogged down and twisted...what the Corps has been trying to do is field a weapon suitable to equip the billet that exists in the fireteam (AR rifleman), and also serves (doctrinally) as the asst. tm ldr - an automatic rifle. The SAW is not and never will be an AR, but rather a LMG, and although there are still acolytes to the power of belt-fed suppression, we seem to be moving forward smartly.
Can some guys rock the SAW well? Absolutely, and I think I was one of them, but when you look at maintenance, training, and other employment issues like mobility, they point to a need for the M27 and a movement of the SAW back to the role of the light machine gun where it should have never left.
Think of it as less a LSW, and more of a precision, lightweight rifle with the capability to engage select targets with controlled automatic fire when necessary. If the unit wants a full-time lead slinger at the squad level, then they need to send the emma gees.
IAR questions
If I may be so bold, I'd appreciate it if someone could clarify a point of mystery of mine - why did they choose another 5.56 rifle to fulfill this role? I could understand if they went for a 7.62 (or even a 6.X) rifle, as it provides additional range, reach and lethality. I'm mystified by the selection of the HK416, though. If the IAR concept is needed in the 5.56 calibre, why not pull an M16A4 off the shelf, provide a 6x optic (or similar), a bipod and a heavier barrel at the most?
'...the gods of war are capricious, and boldness often brings better results than reason would predict.'
Donald Kagan
That's a good question. Several companies tried to provide articles for testing, and the HK offering was chosen. IIRC, Colt even had the opportunity to provide a sample, but it either did not pass muster or the company simply did not choose to compete.
I don't think we are in the ordnance/arsenal business like we used to be years ago, where the Govt develops the design and then turns to industry to say, "okay, make me more of these!" The Navy does some work at Crane, IN, and the Marine Corps has it Precision Weapons Section in Quantico.
The IAR holds better minute of angle accuracy that the M16A4 does, and in fact reportedly shoots better than the DM rifles that were built out of M16A4s, specifically for a DM role.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...Marksman_Rifle
Vojnik:
The question is what makes suppression effect. I think that this is threat to be killed. This is related to precision. IAR is very precise according to comments. IAR is good suppression weapon thenKaur, I understand the "3 rds in 18" at 500m" concept, but that seems like that's not quite the point of a squad suppressive weapon. I thought a "machine gun" was supposed to provide a beaten zone of fire in order to kill/injure within that beaten zone, to provide sustained or cyclic grazing fire in the defensive, or to suppress the enemy to allow fire and maneuver.
jcustis:
I have been thinking also isn't there identity crisis in the heads of squad DM's? Do IAR people and DM people participate same courses now?The IAR holds better minute of angle accuracy that the M16A4 does, and in fact reportedly shoots better than the DM rifles that were built out of M16A4s, specifically for a DM role.
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...
Last edited by Vojnik; 10-25-2011 at 01:01 PM.
Vojnik, if you open MAJ Ehrhart's paper then he is writing about taking back infantry half-kilometre. As far as I understand IAR helps squads to do that. I found there answers to Automatic Rifleman questions you asked concerning automatic mode.
Training is everything is training.
We often forget that -- and we do not do it at all well...Situation dependent obviously but generally in the defense in open terrain. Other than that, little call for it.
Some will say it can be used in the offense as 'suppressive' fire. Been my observation that against even marginally trained or experienced troops automatic fire does not suppress, precision (or more correctly, accurate) fire does suppress. The volume of fire makes little difference other than as noise and a psychological reinforcement to those who have to go forward -- well trained troops do not need -- or want -- that noise.Actually, it does make sense. He provides the capability to do just that on the rare occasions when it's actually beneficial as opposed to just cosmetic. That will generally be in providing aimed fire at point targets (not area targets, that's what MGs are for) in support of offensive movement and for final protective fires in the defense and a combination of those techniques for ambushes and counter ambushes.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.
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