Hell I'd cower too, even with sapi-plates.
The Enfield is actually a pretty good weapon.
Ok the plastic helmets do suck, but what do our police have? Not much better. They got M-14's that have not been zero'd, they have bullet proof vests that may stop a BB gun, but not an AK.
After an hour or so, they may have some kind of fire power with 1 or 2 APC per large Metropolitan Police Force.
I think India didn't do too bad.
The only thing....once this type of operations goes down, the local force needs to get the mindset that their are not any hostages left, just a lot of dead bodies and they need to go in with all the force they have to kill ALL terrorist, aka, Islamic Extremists.
That Enfield is still one of the best battle weapons ever fielded provided it's in properly trained hands.
And just for the record, the Indian Ishapore Enfield is NOT chambered in .303. It's chambered for the 7.62 mm NATO round.
once this type of operations goes down, the local force needs to get the mindset that their are not any hostages left,
Bingo. Since Columbine a lot of US PD's are training for the 'active shooter' scenario using an entirely different doctrine.
Pre-Columbine the doctrine was to wait until sufficient firepower could be brought to bear. That thinking has, thankfully, been changed.
Now the police in many Departments are being trained to immediately attempt to engage the shooter(s) in order to minimize the damage. I have my doubts that this change in doctrine will be succesfully implemented.
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Ok the plastic helmets do suck, but what do our police have?
I wonder if they were realy 303s or the ones modified for "crowd control" which were 410 shotguns.
The pics I saw suggested 303 because you could see that unmistakeable magazine !
No, mostly they have M16 variations, .22 versus .30 cal for the M14. (.223, standard Nato round, in any M16 is about par with 7.62 & Kalashnikov - either can defeat typical body armor - .308 would blow through it just as the British .303 would do.)
TV coverage also showed some Sterling SMG's, follow on the the WW2 Sten gun and a pretty handy precursor to all the little black guns we see today.
Indian arsenal (Dum-Dum?) did a lot of work repairing and modifying the British SMLE (Enfield) bolt rifle - I have one with Indian assigned mark/number designations that 'experts' keep telling me is a totally different weapon. (anyone out there with late SMLE wood for any Number 5 that isn't a Jungle Carbine - Freepmail me at once.)
All considered, the Bombay police looked pretty lame but we don't know how they'd been briefed on large scale hostage situations. Regardless of all the tension in the region, I doubt that India expected an attempt at another 9/11.
