Plan9

Disclaimer: All I know about firearms and small unit tactics I learned from playing Doom II multiplayer back in '97.

...

Okay, I'm back. Turns out I busy fighting world hunger by mailing out free abortion kits to the citizens of third world nations.

Lemme wade into this bullshit... since it's the funniest thing I've read since I looked at my IRA earnings last week.

...

Of course not. Lowest bidder, guys. $80 toilet seats and $500 dollar rifles. It should be $20 toilet seats and $1000 rifles.

Troops bitching about having to clean their weapons? Unheard of! And when is a good time for a weapon to jam?

At a base? So all they had was M4s and M249s? What unit is this? They should have had M203s, M240Bs, Mk19s, and M2s available. Where were the vehicles? Artillery support? AT4s, Claymores, frag grenades... knives and sharp sticks?

And it smells like somebody could have hit up a FM 5-34 and dug in the site better. Or, ya know, maybe engaged in some kind of proactive defense. It's kinda hard to sneak up on somebody in the desert if you've got roving patrols.

This whole firefight is probably a giant example of what not to do in combat. It smells like the field training exercise in basic combat training: tons of fail as a "learning experience."

Maybe so, but definitely not in consecutively and not while being tossed around in moon dust. The M4 is a very tight weapon in comparison the the over-glorified AK47. It's finicky and it doesn't like to get dirty. In the case of this particular "Oh shit!" scenario, the weapons probably should have been run "wet," which means dousing their actions with lube. The excessive lube keeps things from gumming up at the cost of being utterly disastrous if you get any kind of grit in the action. There are a million opinions on this.

Like they have fucking a choice. We used to joke about deploying with our own personally-owned weapons hidden in the milvans. I wanted to show up in country with a scoped AR-10 and a few Glocks.

Maybe I'm bitter, but having know-nothing politicians choose weapons is how we ended up with the M16 in the first place. Some Air Force guy saw it essplode a watermelon at a demo party and suddenly everybody wanted one. Weapons are incredibly political.

SCAR'd! I'll assume they're talking about the Fabrique Nationale SCAR system.

90% of soldiers don't know what "direct gas impingement" is... let alone care. They're just as lazy as civilians: they wouldn't change the oil in their cars unless they were compelled by the warranty requirements. Playing in the desert means your weapons get really dirty. You spend a lot of time before and after missions busting your knuckles with rods and brushes. It's tedious and monotonous, but if you aren't deadly serious about keeping your weapons in functioning condition, you need to get a different job. You might ignore washing the truck one week but you don't go to bed with a dirty M4 and call yourself a professional.

As we learned in Vietnam: technology doesn't beat proper preparation and cunning. If you leave yourself open, expect a shot to the ribs. If some "half ass mountain boys" can sneak up on you and kick your ass... you've been flashing that sign for a while.

Minor media correction: The M4, as issued to most Joes, is not equipped with automatic fire. It is equipped with a 3 round burst limiter. The idea is that it prevents rock 'n roll bursts... but really, it's the same effect or worse as the operator repeatedly jerks the trigger and has a sight picture as good as your average teenager on E. Automatic fire from a 6 pound rifle is useless.

Fire discipline, anybody? You have to pace yourself... both to conserve ammo and to keep your weapon from overheating.

Pfft, try rock 'n rolling half a dozen mags through ANY contemporary individual weapon... M4, AK47, G36, G3, FAL, Uzi, whatever... they all get real hot-real quick. One can be all critical of the M4 and say that the AK47 is mondo radical gnarly for desert warfare because it's loose 'n reliable, but the AK47 handguard is a 1/2" piece of WOOD. You can't even put your hand near the wood without getting a burn after that kinda burst. Anybody that has used an AK47 for a hot minute realizes its limitations.

It just sounds like these jokers would have put ANY modern weapon system out of commission. You can't repeatedly slam your Geo Metro from dead stopped to maximum speed a dozen times in half an hour and not expect something to fail eventually. Sorry we don't have laser blasters, kids... but you need to use short, controlled bursts on the SAWs and pop slowly on your M4 if you want it to keep popping without needing a cool down period.

Walt's Whack-A-Mole comparison is perfect. Generally speaking: never shoot over cover, never use the same cover more than once (if you can avoid it). This is a case of bad training, not a failure of equipment.

12 mags in half an hour? Let's say he's right... that's 12 rounds a minute for 30 minutes. And something tells me he dumped a mag or three with his burst selected, waited/moved, and dumped another mag. The M4 carbine is point weapon designed to provide accurate fire at specific targets... it is not a machine gun despite having the bullshit burst option.

You never ditch your weapon. If it's too hot to handle, sling it. Even if you've exhausted your basic load of ammo and are completely dry, your buddies have mags they can feed your weapon and you know it's dead-on-balls when it cools down again.

Some basic GI Joe tech shit real quick: The M249 SAW is a 5.56mm "light machine gun." The LMG part means that its operated by just one dude instead of the two dudes (gunner / assistant gunner) usually attached to a general purpose ("medium") machine gun such as the M240B . Also, the SAW is belt fed from disintegrating metal links stored inside a 200 round capacity disposable plastic drum or a 100 round capacity reusable cloth "nutsack." Turns out machine guns typically have quick change barrels. Each gunner carries two barrels. The idea is that during rock 'n roll situations that you fire a drum, pull the current barrel off 'n set it aside to cool, lock in the spare (cold barrel), reload, fire another drum, wash-rinse-repeat.

While it sucks that the SAW gunner has to do this extra step by himself, he should have his buddies with him to provide covering fire while it happens. Rehearsed verbal commands and the familiar "BANG" of gunfire is a good way to do this. Fireteams are supposed to "talk" their weapons during a firefight. You get a few pops from the M4s, then a burst from the SAW. The team leader, an NCO, is in charge of keeping that cadence going through verbal commands... lest his Joes turn into manic video gamers as seen in this bullshit scenario.

...

The US military's small arms are not without their flaws but they're a million times better than anything they go up against in the GWOT.


The G3, a sweet H&K-designed roller-block battle rifle, uses 7.62x51 (NATO) ammunition. The AK47 uses 7.62x39 (WP) ammunition. The G3 is more powerful and offers much better range and accuracy at the cost of weight and less magazine capacity.

...

Maybe, but you couldn't hold onto it. The little chunk of wood forward of the magazine would burn your hand.

Wait, what?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."