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507th's weapons failed in combat, Army report says (M-16 Rifle)
El Paso Times ^
| July 10, 2003
| Diana Washington Valdez
Posted on 07/10/2003 4:36:05 PM PDT by Aliska
Several soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company could not defend themselves or their comrades March 23 because their weapons malfunctioned while they sustained a lengthy fire attack by Iraqis near Nasiriyah, Iraq, according to a U.S. Army report on the ambush.
The weapons that jammed or otherwise failed included a M-249 machine gun called a SAW (squad automatic weapon), a .50 caliber machine gun, as well as several M-16 rifles. The M-16 is the Army's standard issue weapon.
The report is not conclusive about why up to three different kinds of weapons failed and suggests that the "malfunctions may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment."
For rest of story click on link.
(Excerpt) Read more at borderlandnews.com ...
TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 507th; ambush; banglist; leaked; m16; m2; m249; report; saw
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To: Joe 6-pack
"Sounds like dirty weapons to me."
You mean they didn't clean them before they isssued them?! ;-)
To: Flavius
"Lets say you start if with a squeeky clean m16 and you fire it during a 2-3 day combat (and dont have 30sec) to clean it constantly..."
I have no military training, but my rule would be:
If you have fired your gun, and you might NEED to fire it again and have time to sleep, rest, or crap, you should first clean it while you have a moment our of peril.
I don't care if it is a HK G3.
To: tortoise
Incidentally, I've used M16s for weeks at a time in all sorts of filthy nasty conditions and never had a problem, even with very minimal maintenance. But then, I was infantry and I knew my weapon backward and forward.In the USMC, it doesn't matter. God have mercy on your soul if the Sergeant Major of an Air Wing or Force Service Support Group unit catches you with a dirty weapon, because the Sergeant Major sure as hell won't have any such mercy.
83
posted on
07/10/2003 6:36:12 PM PDT
by
Poohbah
(Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.)
To: Prodigal Son
Out of my league commenting on weapons maintenance, but I think it's worth pointing out that the 507th (or elements of it) had been on the road for 60 hours (per the W. Post). Maybe they deserve a little less criticism considering the obvious difficulty of proper care of the weapons under those circumstances.
To: Servant of the Nine
As more details come out about this incident, I think less and less about the competence of the 507th's leadership (I was Navy, so I'm not real familiar about what rank officer would be a company CO in the Army). These people got in trouble by screwing up in the first place, and now it appears that they were slacking off on weapons maintenance. A good CO would make sure that his sergeants were keeping the troops on top of maintenance duties. Maybe an investigation should start at the top.
85
posted on
07/10/2003 6:48:53 PM PDT
by
CFC__VRWC
(Hippies. They want to save the earth, but all they do is smoke dope and smell bad.)
To: Prodigal Son
Maintenance, as they say, is everything. Engines, tools, weapons - it's the iron rule. The armory gets a regular once-over, magazines get their contents shifted to another set on a regular basis. Everything that doesn't get shot on a regular basis gets a zero check once a year.
It isn't rocket science - it's just common sense. What's your life worth?
86
posted on
07/10/2003 7:00:36 PM PDT
by
Noumenon
(Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. -- Philip K. Dick)
To: SSN558
Everything jams sooner or later. Train to clear is part of the deal.
87
posted on
07/10/2003 7:03:19 PM PDT
by
Noumenon
(Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. -- Philip K. Dick)
To: toddst
The Benelli is the best defensive shotgun I've ever worked with. I agree. After a lot of research and experimentation, my wife and I standardized on a pair of Benelli M1 Super 90s. She likes a pistol grip - I don't. We've run 'em hard and dirty, and they work all the time. For up close and personal, it's the best combat shotgun we've tried.
88
posted on
07/10/2003 7:08:01 PM PDT
by
Noumenon
(Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. -- Philip K. Dick)
To: smalltown
Maybe they deserve a little less criticism considering the obvious difficulty of proper care of the weapons under those circumstances. I've said that in a post on this thread. I wasn't there. They were. It's as simple as that. I wouldn't want to pass judgement on them.
But, if your weapon won't fire, it isn't a weapon. There isn't a weapon made that will function with no maintenance. The desert is a harsh environment and combat is a teacher that doesn't allow replays. I won't lay it on the soldiers here. It could've been their chain of command (witness, we have AT4s and grenades locked up) or it could've been an MOS specific cultural outlook on weapons' maintenance. Bottom line, when the enemy starts shooting at you isn't the time to discover your weapon needs cleaning.
The M16 is somewhat finnicky. The SAW also. But the 50 Cal will operate in adverse situations. Without passing judgement, it is hard to imagine three weapons systems failing simultaneously in a non-combat MOS convoy without at least considering the operators as one source of that malfunction.
Note, this doesn't mean they deserved to die or anything. Just that more training and the stress being on just how important weapons' maintenance is would be in order. It's cruel, but when you die in the Army, you become a "training aid" for your fellow soldiers. I've had commanders who had the crushed vehicles of soldiers who died in DUI accidents towed to post and deposited by the mess hall- complete with our buddy's blood and spent IV bottles- in order to show the other soldiers what the product of stupidity was.
I won't ever rag on a dead soldier. But at some point somewhere, something went wrong with this convoy and to me it doesn't look like the weapons were in a state ready to fire when they were most needed. There's only so many conclusions to be drawn from that. You can only blame the weapon for so far.
To: xrp
I hope the Army gets some Marines to show them how to clean and care for weapons.
90
posted on
07/10/2003 7:11:43 PM PDT
by
ErnBatavia
(Bumperootus!)
To: Prodigal Son
Not to knock 'em but from my own experience, the level of maintenance and knowledge of weapons was much lower among these MOS than in the combat specialties. A little story that's related I think. After 9/11 the Navy didn't have enough military police for the upgraded threat level at it's bases worldwide. So they took a certain percent of people from each command on the bases. The ones these commands gave up to the Security people were typically those the commands felt they could do without for one reason or another [feel free to read between the lines]. They were given minimul training in firearms and in the use of deadly force. A year after there training they still hadn't gone through any refresher training in the use of the firearms issued to them. You have to stay on top of it or whatever skills you may have had deteriorate in a hurry. I'm willing to bet that something similar happened to those in the 507th. They may have been qualified on paper but the reality is something completely differant.
91
posted on
07/10/2003 7:12:58 PM PDT
by
Terp
(Retired US Navy now living in Philippines were the Moutains meet the Sea in the Land of Smiles)
To: Prodigal Son
Thanks for your information.
92
posted on
07/10/2003 7:17:07 PM PDT
by
Flavius
(I)
To: Ed_in_NJ
If they're not made in USA they should be. It is absurd to believe that what our children use to defend us should be made elsewhere since the "elsewhere's" don't care about our defenders.
We haven't the brains with which we were born.
93
posted on
07/10/2003 7:17:51 PM PDT
by
Spirited
To: Prodigal Son
What
lube were they using? Malfunctions were with three different weapons, not just the M-16!
Break-Free CLP users live longer, healthier lives!
To: Prodigal Son
Thanks for that response. I guess my point was that if keeping the maintenance group in motion for an extremely extended period of time was necessary to support the rapid advance, then a certain number of weapons malfunctions were a price to be paid for that necessity.
And, of course, it was the troops in the 507th that ultimately paid that price.
To: Beelzebubba
It is a way to ensure that citizens don't actually develop the skills of a rifleman, which they might use with rifles available to civilians. You're joking, right?
96
posted on
07/10/2003 7:39:51 PM PDT
by
Aliska
To: Servant of the Nine
Clearly, with the M-2, it's an Operator Headspace problem.
97
posted on
07/10/2003 7:41:03 PM PDT
by
CatoRenasci
(Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
To: Servant of the Nine
So9 is very correct. I was heavily involved in small arms when in the Army 30 years ago. These soldiers screwed up thier own weapons. They became "unfocused", and got thier own butts kicked because thet didn't do thier jobs keeping their weapons clean. A .50cal Heavy Machinegun dosen't fail unless it is neglected. Kind of sad for mantinance unit.
98
posted on
07/10/2003 7:42:30 PM PDT
by
Lockbar
To: smalltown
I guess my point was that if keeping the maintenance group in motion for an extremely extended period of time was necessary to support the rapid advance, then a certain number of weapons malfunctions were a price to be paid for that necessity. Yep. And that's something that needs to be taken into account. You can get stuck in between a rock and a higher officer on any given day in the Army. The Army is a big ugly beast- sweaty, stinky. When it gets rolling, it chews up little people in its cogs without even slowing down.
If the commanders of that convoy had reached a point where they thought it was time to take a brief halt and do some personal maintenance- eat an MRE, take a crap, clean weapons- that's what they should have done. But in practice, that's not the way it works. Even if you're a Captain or Major or whatnot, there's always some bigger fish than you upstream on the battalion freq demanding you do more and not listening to any excuses from your end. That's both a pro and a con. That's what makes the "Army go rolling along" and also what makes for incidents like this.
Like I said, I wasn't there. None of us were. It's useless to lay blame. It was a good ambush on the part of the enemy. Even if the ones manning the guns had been infantry, it's hard to say the outcome would've been different given the circumstances.
To: tet68
Sounds like more of a maintance problem, the problem occurred in several weapon types, not a good sign...add to the mix that some of the batteries on the vehicles reportedly died, and that they got in trouble because their route was incorrectly tracked on a map, and I think your observation - someone wasn't keeping the troops on the ball, is my guess - is right on.....
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