They can buy a semiauto-only version from DSA as well...
Agree totally about the Thompson...too bad it was so heavy. Nice to know that the .45 ACP is coming back as a SMG round (see the HK UMP-45).
Fans of the FAL (which has its pros, but is unmaintainable except by a first-world military with good training and logistics) can see the US T48 version in the Springfield Armory Museum, which is accessible if you find in Boston, Albany, or Hartford and have time for a day trip. If you are a sports fan, the Basketball Hall of Fame is in the same city (I have stayed for a month at the hotel that shares its parking lot without managing to see it... basketball... paugh. But some of you must like it and the displays are supposed to be good).
I am always entertained in these threads by the way that everybody who has ever picked up a rifle, which ought to be every male American, but unfortunately isn't, is an expert on small arms.
I am mostly happy with the issued arms. Contrary to most postings in anonymous chatrooms by boastful "SEALs" and whatnot, the M4A1 works pretty well; it is probably the best balance of weight and effect out there, and I'm told by the guys in J4 that all the coalition SOF came begging for them, including some equipped with G36s.
Still, if I could bring back one weapon from history it would be the M1A1 TSMG. Every once in a while I rent one at a range just to be master of all I survey. If everybody had to do it twice a year we'd probably have a massive outbreak of men acting like men, taking responsibility, protecting the helpless, and all that historical stuff. It's heavy and it's conceptually out of date, but JTT and his guys really produced a righteous machine.
It seems to me that decent weapons have been produced by committees and corporations, but excellent weapons have each always borne the stamp of an individual man.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
As to the M4 w/ a M203 attached I never had complaints. I carried an earlier version also called the XM177 and the GAU5/AA that we mated with an M148. My favorite is still the M1A/M14.......I carried that most of the time but had the M4/203 combo available . The M1A was a speciality tool for us as we used it for a process called SMUD in EOD. I prefered to carry it all the time .
Hope yer well........
Stay safe
I met him because he was at the SOCOM sniper competition last week, and came in 4th (against bolt guns) with his combat-proven SR-25. The folks who beat him had the product of the booth I was strap-hanging in on the butts of their rifles, and he wanted one. That's how I met him. He was out at SHOT looking for team gear. (Kasey Beltz of Accu-Shot liked my book enough that he invited me to sell my books out of it. Was I lucky or what?) Thanks Kasey!
[Accu-Shot is an up-down mono-pod that attaches to the standard swivel mount on the back of most rifles. The winners at the SOCOM shoot had them, and K.E. wants them for his QRF company's snipers, that's how we met.]
Anyhoooo.... Getting to the point. K.E.'s SF company has racked up beoucoups missions of the CQB variety, taking down structures from the outside, and killing all the bad guys inside. He moves close behind the entry team, he is not a distant stand-off kind of sniper. He ends up using his .308 SR-25 for CQB. (He uses the flipped up lens caps of his big scope as his "battle sights" for inside work.)
He goes in with the entry guys, because he says it's very common that as a structure is secured, they will take rifle fire from other buildings several hundred yards away. The M-4 guys can't do much to suppress that fire, but his SR-25 quickly puts a stop to it.
In fact, he says that with the IR illuminator, his spotter can see the "trace" of his bullets. The boat tail end of a Sierra Match King is shiny brass, and it reflects back the IR illumination, and is seen in the NODs as a clear green light.
Now, on to the main point: he is adamant that 5.56 out of an M-4 is not an adequate round. He says that he cannot count the times a bad guy has been stitched 3-4-5 times across the chest, has crumpled down, been bypassed, and then recovered and fired again at the SFs. They DO NOT TRUST the 5.56 to kill a man or put him down definitively in a fast-paced CQB environment. K.E. says "308 kills 'em, 556 wounds 'em." He says the current 556 out of an M-4 makes "ice pick wounds."
At this point, his SF CRF company is attempting ad-hoc piecemeal to cobble together a full loadout of 6.8mm uppers. He laughs about begging for more 6.8mm uppers to "T&E" which is in fact code for putting them to immediate use in combat.
Another visitor to the booth at another time was an older gentleman from Crane Indiana, a govt. small arms ordnance type. He says the Army is NOT putting in any serious quantity orders for 6.8mm uppers. He says the SFs are doing this all on their own, begging for scraps and odds and ends on their own. This confirms what K.E. says about begging for "T&E" 6.8mm uppers.
Apparently the Army doesn't want to hear what the SF guys think about the 5.56. They use it frequently in CQB, and have NO faith in it. Not when you and the bad guy are in the same room or hall or stairwell. It might suit "Big Army" when the enemy is not so close, but at room distance it's not working, according to K.E.
They want the 6.8s even with greatly reduced mag capacity, a sign of their strong desire to dump the 5.56mm. The ordnance guy from Crane (K.E and him were never at the booth at the same time) pointed out that the 6.8 may not feed reliably from a 5.56 mag. The double stack mag is designed to work tightly packed with rounds touching tops and bottoms. Spaced out in a mag, half way between double and single stacked, the rounds are pushed hard outward, causing binding. That was a point the ordnance man made, that K.E. didn't mention.
Sorry for going on and on, but I thought you guys would appreciate hearing this story right from the mouth of the 5th SF's ME QRF company. The guys has done four deployments in the ME since 9-11 going back to pre-Kabul, and I have 100% faith in his honesty.
NOTE: if you pass this info on, please remove K.E.'s initials and unit information. I felt okay burying this info deep in this "specialist" FR thread.
Yep, someone posted pics on the FAL Files message board some time ago, which pics showed rack upon rack of T-48s sitting in storage. The pictures might've been taken at the museum, if the display shows a whole bunch of T-48s standing in open storage racks.
I know some of the vices of the FAL design, but to what do you attribute its "unmaintainable" nature? I know it lacks the "modular" design that later service rifles feature, but it *is* Hell for stout.
They can buy a semiauto-only version from DSA as well...
Agree totally about the Thompson...too bad it was so heavy. Nice to know that the .45 ACP is coming back as a SMG round (see the HK UMP-45).