Posted on 04/06/2017 10:06:27 PM PDT by MtnClimber
For the first time since the M14 was issued in the early days of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army is giving serious consideration to bringing the battle rifle back to war. According to multiple sources, what started out as a directed requirement for a 7.62 NATO Designated Marksmanship Rifle for issue to Infantry Rifle Squads has grown in scope to increase the Basis of Issue to all personnel in Brigade Combat Teams and perhaps beyond. The genesis of this requirement is overmatch. The troops feel like they’re in a street fight with a guy with longer arms. The 7.62x54R cartridge gives the enemy those longer arms.
Consequently, the Army wants to enable the rifleman to accurately engage targets at a further range than the current 5.56mm. Although at this point, I’ll keep that exact exact distance close to the vest. The goal here is to foster a dialogue about the 7.62 requirement in general, and not offer operational specifics.
It’s important to establish right up front that 7.62mm is not the Army’s end goal. The “Interim” component of this capability’s name relies on a plan to eventually adopt one of the 6.5mm family of intermediate calibers. Currently, elements of the Army are evaluating .260, .264 USA and .277 USA. The .260 is commercially available while .264 USA and .277 USA are developments of the Army Marksmanship Unit. Unfortunately, the US Army doesn’t plan to conduct an intermediate caliber study until the early 2020s. That’s why they want to adopt 7.62mm now. The idea is to adopt the Battle Rifle to deal with a newly identified threat with what’s available now, and transition the fleet to an intermediate caliber cartridge, once its selected.
(Excerpt) Read more at bearingarms.com ...
I went to Marine Corps boot camp at San Diego in 1967. Qualified with the M14. After graduation, went up to Camp Pendleton for ITR. Carried and fired the M1. After a year in ground electronic repair school (in San Diego at the time, now at 29 Palms), went back to Camp Pendleton for Staging Battalion enroute to Vietnam. Carried and fired the M16.
Of the three rifles, I liked the M1 the best. Beautiful balance; great shooting rifle. However, on a fully automatic battlfield...
BTW, while the M16’s design demanded that you keep it clean, it’s initial reports of being prone to jam were, if I recall correctly,at least in part tied to a bad lot of Lake City ammunition. I ran some through my M16 while in-country. Something about the interaction between the propellant gases and the lubricant made the carbon fouling really adhesive. Very difficult to clean afterwards.
You couldn’t give me an M16. My worst day in Vietnam was on a PCF going up a canal between Vung Tau and Saigon. We took fire from the bushes and after returning fire, my M16 jammed on the 3rd or 4th round. I had to disassemble the damn thing and extract the bent cartridge jammed in the breech. I had no idea I could tear down and reassemble a weapon that fast.
Good Lord, how much does that thing weigh?
You have described all so well why I am grateful to have been a little too young for Vietnam. Thank you for having been there instead of me.
> Good Lord, how much does that thing weigh?
About 9-1/4#. (M16 is about 7-1/4#)
I’d rather carry the extra 2# of gun than have the damn thing jam on me.
The early problems with the M-16 in Vietnam came from the troops not being trained in how to take care of the rifle, the lack of cleaning kits (the cleaning rods for the M-14 were too big to fit through the smaller M-16 barrel), and to a lesser extent, its needing modifications that came out in the M-16A1.
Those early problems have haunted the M-16 in legend ever since. It is similar to early problems with the M-1 Abrams tank that were discovered and corrected — critics kept harping about the problems and ignoring that they had all been corrected when the actual production tanks came off the assembly line.
It's something I wouldn't have wished on you but it's also something I wouldn't have missed for the world.
"There are certainly other manly weapons, and you may have a different list. As long as the list contains nothing French, gold-plated, .25 or with pearl grips (which Patton correctly observed are the mark of a New Orleans pimp), it is a good list."
Still man, it cost American lives.
I’m sure all the quirks were fixed, but that didn’t do any good for the guy who died because of them.
That’s inexcusable.
From what you’re saying, the A-1 was good to go before it saw action. That’s a big difference
I HATE seeing American soldiers die for absurd reasons!!
I HATE seeing them die period! But because of sloppiness, it hurts more.
The A1 was the solution to the problems discovered in combat.
Oh :(
Is that the only way to learn what is REALLY wrong or right with a piece of military equipment? Using it in combat?
God I hope not
Being a civilian, i dont know.
One of worst calumnies of the Left against America was to depict our troops in Vietnam as a bunch of out of control, war crazy killers, who came home to become criminals, nut cases, and druggies. To the contrary: most of our Vietnam vets came home to build normal, successful lives that added to the country’s strengths. And historians point out that the eventual collapse of South Vietnam was due to the Left’s victories in the 1974 midterm elections and the ensuing cutoff of US support by Congress.
The defense department was convinced by evidence that enemy battle deaths did not come from “aimed riflery.” Col Jeff Cooper has written on this subject in the Cooper Commentaries. He writes of a small number of battles, two during the Boer War, that were decided by aimed riflery.
One in ten soldiers or leathernecks will be able to keep cool enough to use aimed marksmanship in battle. The rest will spray and pray. The decision then is to identify those few individuals and put them on the squad automatic weapons. The rest of the grunts get something that makes noise and has no recoil.
The grunts’ job is to just throw out a field of lead while somebody calls in the big stuff.
I do not know whether any of their thinking is correct, but I do believe that a decision or policy of the bureaucracy of the defense department should have no bearing whatsoever on anything that a real rifleman might decide to use.
No it is not the only way, but often it happens when there is a need to get an item fielded to the troops, when waiting for extensive peacetime schedule testing is not an option during a war. But the biggest problem was that the soldiers and their leaders were NOT told that the M-16 needed much attention to cleaning than the M-14 did. Thus they treated the M-16 like their “tried and true M-14” and the problems occurred. Remember that the M-14 was based upon the M-1 Garand, that was fielded in 1939-40 to the Army, thus it had already gone through combat in WWII and Korea, thus 2 decades of use and finding out/solving problems with it.
Amen to that! On Pre-Qual Day I fired a 241/250 at Parris Island. (unfortunately, on Qual Day we had a snowstorm and I did not do nearly as well)
200 yds, 7/10 in a 12" bull - Standing
300 yds, 7/10 in a 12" bull - Kneeling & Sitting
500 uds, 7/10 in a 20" bull - Prone.
Iron sights.
I REALLY liked that M-14!
Welcome Home!
The AF pulled M-16s out of storage and issued them to us in Desert Storm. We still had problems with them. They didn’t work well in an environment with fine dust. The first magazine that I fired had numerous failure to feed and failure to ejects.
I’m kind of old fashion, so I really prefer the 30-06 or 7.62 to the 5.56 for the type of environment that we were in. The few firefights that I experienced were at ranges of 300 yards or better.
How do you like the scout scope? As someone who is optically challenged (heh), my eyes need a little help, but the thought of trying to look through something halfway down the barrel is a bit disturbing.
Any thoughts? Or am I just being a scaredy cat?
I strongly disagree: we cleaned our M16s carefully and several times a day. It was dangerously flawed and its ammunition made it worse.
“Extensive peacetime testing” - or just limited fielding in country? Those of us in direct combat’s lives depended on the damn thing working and it didn’t.
***The best prevention is maintenance and putting a condom over the barrels flash suppressor.***
I remember old vets from WWII telling about this.
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