Posted on 12/26/2003 3:15:26 AM PST by kattracks
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:41:38 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
SAMARA, Iraq
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
" I spent the rest of the article wondering why our snipers would be using a 40 year old weapon."
Because it WORKS.
A whole lot better than our aluminum beercan and plastic "Jammin' Jenny" the M-16 or any of it's buttugly, overpriced varients ever did in a real combat environment - that's why.
Word has it that Troops in Iraq are clamoring for re-issue of any of the mothballed/warehoused US M-14s that the Klinton Syndicate didn't have torched to pieces or sold to China.
Once again, the Jenny has proved itself a failure where the boots meet the elephant.
"Surprise".
They are going to need some REAL RIFLES over there - and Real Riflemen like this Sgt. who know how to use them - and the sooner the better! I'd feel a lot better armed with a good old shoulder-whallopin' .30 cal. '03 Springfield over there than with a "Jenny" any day.
That is an oxymoron since WWII, particularly in the Mid-East, after the introduction of the AK-47 and it's variants. The Arabs find them particularly useful for saluting and attaching surrender flags. The target on the rooftop was probably a mercenary from somewhere.
It's "Dragunov." I never saw one there, although there were some ROmanian FPKs (an AK-47 type weapon for the 54 rimmed, styled to look like a Dragunov -- a piece of junk).
The only thing people were using in 7.62 x 54R was the PKM general purpose machine gun.
A few rusty, shot out Mosin-Nagants were turned in by warlords looking to rotate stock in their arsenals, and a few Lee-Enfields, and some real oddities like a Canadian straight-pull Ross. Never saw a scoped rifle among the Hadjis, or any other optic (even their RPGs, they shot with iron sights). We did recover one mortar sight from the southwest of the country, the desert north of Kandahar.
The Afghan sniper is a mythical figure that was manufactured by the press and old Kipling stories. The fact of the matter is, they get no eye treatments, everyone over 35 has bad cataracts from UV exposure, they all fire AKs on "crowd control" and they hit their targets only by pure luck.
One reason that they got their clocks cleaned on Anaconda was that at the 400 and 500 yard engagement ranges they could only bring effective fire with crew served weapons where our infantry riflemen were able to plink them with M-4s and ACOG optical sights.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I know. I own one. Best damn rifle in my safe.
L
That is a fact, but because of the ammunition, not the weapon. The performance of the VN era 5.56mm (with a barely stabilized Ball M193 round) was greatly diminished by the adoption of the Ball M855 round that launches an over-stabilized bullet. The M193 tumbled upon impact with the VC or NVA and caused much disruption of flesh and bones. The M855 simply bores a hole through the terrorists without inflicting an immediate incapacitation.
Both the 30 BALL M2 (.30-06) or 7.62x51mm (.308 Win) are much better combat rounds than current 5.56mm ammunition.
That must have been the day there was a $3/share jump in the stock of 72 Virgins Dating Service, Inc.
Spoken like someone who has learnt his weaponry from books and gun-shop scuttlebutt. I have yet to see a jam with an M4A1, although some of the early ones had severe quality control problems (they were made, for the record, by Colt). The outfit that had a problem with M16s jamming also had a problem with cleaning M16s, namely, they didn't. Guess what happens to an M14 if you don't clean it? (Having put literally tens of thousands of rounds downrange from each of these weapons, and having used the M4A1 and M14 in combat, I can tell you).
Word has it that Troops in Iraq are clamoring for re-issue of any of the mothballed/warehoused US M-14s
This comes up from the armchair warriors like clockwork every conflict. No one is "clamoring for the reissue of the M14," except for civilian gun nuts who never served, or who spent one term shuffling papers thirty years ago. It isn't combat soldiers who want to ram this abortion down the Army's throats. (The biggest single proponent of a "more powerful cartridge" brags up his military commission, but he's a frickin' Dentist. In the frickin' Navy. I don't tell him what kinda roto-rooter he uses doing root canals on USS Boat, I wish he would lay off his second career as a small-arms hobbyist).
The reason the Stryker guys got M14s is that there are plenty in the inventory and they were concerned about range in the open desert. They couldn't be quickly supplied with M24 sniper systems, which requires a bunch of school time to get the best out of... so they were given M14s and off the shelf optics (ACOGs, EOTech holo sights, etc) instead.
An infantry unit's rifles are not its main firepower. Its crew-served weapons are, and can reach out to a considerably greater distance than a shoulder-fired rifle can. The riflemen protect the crew-served weapons and they also are the ones that advance against the enemy while the heavy weapons provide a base of fire. Most civilian gun nuts don't understand the first thing about tactics, are ignorant of crew-served weapons (machineguns and mortars) and their employment, and see combat as a rifle-on-rifle battle. If it is, both sides are not well led.
< sarc>The reason no army in the world is armed with a "shoulder-wallopin 03 Springfield" or equivalent in 2003 must just be because no one recognises that you are better suited to make this decision than, say, the combat soldiers that make these determinations for the US Armed Forces. < /sarc>
Kindly go wallop your shoulder or whatever in private, and let the professionals -- who contrary to the bleating in the gun press, know what they're doing -- get on with the war... if it was up to you guys we would stil be toting the 45-70 Springfield. "A magazine rifle just wastes ammunition."
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
"South Viet Nam, 1966. A flash of movement caught the eye of a young Marine Military Policeman who was keeping watch for possible enemy action. As he observed, he could make out a figure crouched in the distance, working busily with something he couldn't quite see. The man was in civilian clothes... but... there was the rifle slung over his back - the telltale mark of a Viet Cong guerrilla. The enemy soldier continued about his task, oblivious to his danger as Sgt. Carlos Hathcock brought his M-14 to bear. The range appeared to be between 300 and 400 yards - child's play for Hathcock, who had won the 1000 yard Wimbledon Cup Match at Camp Perry only the year before. The rackgrade weapon he now held was a far cry from the finely-fitted National Match M-1 he had used in competition, but it was certainly capable of making this shot. With his M-14 rested comfortably, Hathcock verified his target - yes, definitely armed - and adjusted his position slightly. He let the front sight settle naturally, centered on the crouching soldier, who appeared to be placing a booby trap.
"Hathcock felt his chest tighten and his heartbeat increase; although already Distinguished and a world-class competitive rifleman, he was still new to combat and the killing of men. As he silently eased the safety forward, his right hand settled firmly into place on the small of the stock. He was in his "bubble" now a zone of total concentration. He exhaled, and there was the front sight: on target, crisp, in razor-sharp focus. and centered in the rear sight aperture. The rifle was absolutely still as he took up the slack in the two-stage trigger, and then applied the final pressure. Such was the depth of his concentration that he was only vaguely aware of the rifles' report as it jolted against his shoulder. As the bolt cycled, the empty case skittered brightly across the ground to his right, and the M-14 settled back into Position, cocked and ready for a second shot. None was needed, however. The enemy guerrilla lay sprawled, no longer a threat. Sgt. Carlos Hathcock II had made his first kill . . . .
"What was Carlos' opinion of the standard M-14 rifle in combat? 'It was very reliable... very, VERY reliable. When them M-16's first came in country, man, they were killin' a lot of people - the people shootin' 'em! When I went back the second time, I would NOT let my people carry the M-16 'cause I wanted all my people to come back. And, I never lost a person over there.'"
* * * * *
M14 without a scope, at a crouching target, 300-400 yards. The article goes on to say Hathcock kept his weapon zeroed at 700 yards (but I believe he used a Winchester Model 70 for most of his kills).
I'm sure they did... remember the Russians equipped an entire Afghan Army, which was captured more or less intact (or changed sides, sometimes several times).
[enfield] would defeat any of their body armor that would usually stop a 7.62 X 39.
Doesn't surprise me. In the war museum in Karshi, Uzbekistan, there is an "Afghan room" with pictures of Uzbeks who were heroes in the Soviet war there... and there's one young lieutenants diary, and his body armour, with the hole in it, and the bullet that penetrated it and killed him. It was a .30 calibre boat-tailed spitzer-point -- can't tell from the other side of the display what fired it, but it looked too long to be 7.62 x 39. But that is what they all have now -- AKMs.
He said that if their patrol found so much as a single .303 shell casing in a village, the whole village was "doomed".
Doesn't surprize me. I heard a lot of stories of Russian cruelty and extreme reaction.
Neither does your tale of lame-ass marksmanship surprize me, unfortunately. The US Army could definitely tighten up its marksmanship. My commanders would lynch me for saying this, but the Marines "get it" on rifle shooting -- which, my remarks above notwithstanding, is still a critically important basic soldier skill -- and the Army does not "get it" -- at least not as well as the USMC.
A lot of these guys getting in firefights in Baghdad and Samarra are engineers, MPs, artillery. The infantry guys are not that bad, but in modern war, everybody has to be ready to fight (which the Marines, again, have said for 100 years, it seems like). The ACOG is probably the most important tool we can use, that and better training, to get them to shoot better.
The importance of the scope is not magnification but that it puts the aim point and the target in the same focal plane. That's one of the things that complicates shooting with iron sights and it ought to be taken out of the picture, now that we have the technology to do so.
Finally, be careful drawing parallels to Russia and US in Afghanistan. Some parallels stand up but some don't. Our Army is a very different organisation than theirs, with very different people. Our Army in Vietnam (when we had a draft) was closer to what the Soviet Union fielded in Afghanistan, but even there, there are different cultural ways of looking at things.
The Afghans were always surprized (usally pleasantly) that we were not like the Soviet Army.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Yeah, they did this in Korea and I think Hathcock did in Vietnam (hell of a shot, that guy).
All current MGs have the picatinny rails system so weapon sights are to some degree interchangeable. Some of the night sights are a bit weak for the recoil of the M2HB. Of course, the "day" sights can (in many cases) be used with goggles.
MY setup was an ACOG by day and a PEQ-2 IR laser by night. Some guys preferred the EOTech. We also had a day/night (IR) aimpoint, but nobody used it.
Funny, but they did not want to mess with us by night.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Nope, these are just off-the-rack (of course, freshly arsenal-reconditioned) M14s. Some with wood, some with plastic stocks. Not national match, not special selection, no aftermarket parts. The only change from the way they were issued 1957-65 or so is the rails system.
A lot of the civilian M1As have cheap, investment-cast receivers which leads to problems in heavy use; they'd never pass Army testing. Most people don't shoot them enough to have any problems, though. Beware the Chinese imports particularly, some of them have come apart on people.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Believe it or not, one of the Gunnys longest shots was with an M2 Browning .50 caliber with a modified scope mount on it.
He took a guy off a bicycle at something like 1000 yards.
Amazing guy, the Gunny.
Semper Fi.
L
You are also a lot more likely to feel dead. It is apparent that you have no grasp of what constitutes a good combat arm in practice, nor do you have any real experience with modern variants of most (if any) of the weapons you speak of.
Your post reads like a talking points memo for armchair warriors.
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