Good riddance M-16

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PowerPointRanger M14s & auto 9/25/2005 1:33:23 PM

I'm sure the M-14's can still do the job (especially in an Afghanistan-like environment, where a heavier round would be useful). As for full-auto, I know it is something Armies use with caution at the level of a personal weapon. As has been pointed out, it can be wasteful and inaccurate, which is probably the reason most soldiers don't get that option. But that really comes down to a matter of training and doctrine. If you know when to use it, why shouldn't you have the option? As I've said before, it's a simple mod.

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shek RE:Just curious - PowerPointRanger 9/26/2005 6:37:41 AM

PPT Ranger, M16 jams Did your weapon actually jam in Bosnia when you had to fire it? If so, how often were you cleaning it? How far were you breaking the weapon down? What lubricant(s) were you using? What cleaning tools were you using (dental tools, barbers brush, boresnake, Q-tips, pipe cleaners, etc.)? Were you using a dust cap on your muzzle? How often did you download your magazines and let the spring rest overnight? How often did you clean your magazines and the rounds? When was the last time the weapon had been guaged? In all the live fires and weapons densities, the only time I've ever had a jam with live ammunition was due to magazine failure, and that has only been a handful of times. It's important to diagnose what the actual problem was so that you can prevent it in the future. Full auto I'm also perplexed by your insistance on wanting full auto in a CQB scenario. This runs counter to Army doctrine on CQM/CQB training, which originated from the SOCOM side of the house, was passed onto the conventional side during Somalia, and has been official doctrine for several years now. How many times have you completed the RTC 350-1-2 CQM tables to standard? How long have you been trained on the 4 man stack and how many shoothouse live fires have you completed? I don't advocate blind adherence to doctrine, but in this case, this is a time proven training standard. I'm just curious if you were ever fully trained on current CQM/CQB standards and understand them so that you are making a conscious decision to say that you believe the standards are flawed.

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eon RE:My (Amateur) Take 10/2/2005 11:40:21 PM

My use of M-16 (A1), M-14 (standard), etc., was in the law-enforcement area. M-16A1; extremely reliable >when kept clean<- even with ammo loaded with the infamous ball powder as opposed to IMR. (This was in the Seventies, and a lot of our ammo, like the ordanance, was U.S. Army surplus, so to speak). The only jam I ever experienced with an A1 was due to carbonate buildup in the gas tube, resulting in sluggish bolt movement. (The prior user hadn't cleaned it after 500 rounds.) I cleaned the tube. After that, no problem. M-14; The only problems I ever had with the -14 were ammunition-related. Some imported 7.62 NATO, notably the Spanish FMJ we got in the early Eighties, had brass that was a bit too soft, and >sometimes< it would hang up in the chamber. A swift kick to the operating handle of the bolt solved that problem. CQB and room-clearing: I used either a Remington 870 riot (20"), or a 1921A1 Thompson. Never had to fire either one; one >look< at the business end of one of those weapons made everyone become polite, quiet, and respectful very quickly, indeed. P.S. to Yimmy; Does the RA still use 9m/m SMGs for house-clearing, or just the 5.56 rifle? Cheers. eon

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Horsesoldier RE:My (Amateur) Take 10/3/2005 3:32:27 PM

>>P.S. to Yimmy; Does the RA still use 9m/m SMGs for house-clearing, or just the 5.56 rifle? << It's pretty much all M4s and M16s these days, with some exceptions (off the top of my head, I believe the USMC still has some MP5s it uses for certain CQB scenarios, as do US Army MP SRTs, though I think the latter only use them for peacetime/CONUS law enforcement SWAT type operations).

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Yimmy RE:My (Amateur) Take 10/3/2005 5:12:04 PM

>>P.S. to Yimmy; Does the RA still use 9m/m SMGs for house-clearing, or just the 5.56 rifle? << Assuming by RA you mean Royal Army, the British army doesn't use Sterling 9mm SMG's any more. The only 9mm weapon used by the army these days is the old Browning HP. SAS, Royal Marines etc may use MP5's sometimes, and the RAF use Glocks, but the army only primarily use the SA-80.

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PowerPointRanger RE:Just curious - Shrek 10/8/2005 4:23:28 AM

Jams: While I take your point that jams have causes that may remedied when the opportunity presents itself, you have ignored my point that such jams may not happen at opportune moments. You yourself have acknowledge having jams "a handful of times". Given that we are still discussing the matter, I presume these were "opportune moments." Full Auto: I am not saying the doctrine is flawed. As I've said before, for most situations semi or burst are better (more accurate & less wasteful). HOWEVER, once again, I would point out that there are situations where full-auto is preferred. If you disagree with me on this point, then I'm sure you'll be willing to give up ALL of your full-auto weapons. After all, a SAW only wastes ammo, right? I'm sure you wouldn't want that, right?

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shek RE:Just curious - Bill Gates Ranger 10/8/2005 9:55:00 AM

No, I stated that jams can be prevented through preventive maintenance and common sense. The only jams that I?ve experienced have been with blanks (too little weight in the round which exposes magazine flaws) and with unserviceable magazines. When I was faced with these situations in training, I immediately DX?ed the magazines. 1. If you have a magazine that causes feeding jams, throw it away. Chances are that the magazine will be shiny from being old and worn. I?m sure you?ve seen these magazines around. The springs are old, worn, and weak. 2. You should never leave your magazines loaded for extended periods of time. You should unload the magazine and allow the spring to rest overnight at least once every week or so. I did this while I was deployed. This means that you need extra magazines to rotate your rounds to. Also, speed loaders and unloaders are very efficient for this task. They are part of the PEO Soldier Squad Weapons Cleaning Kit. While the rounds are unloaded, you should clean them and free them of any debris. If you are in a harsh environment, then you should unload your magazines more frequently so that sand/dust won?t cause a jam. 3. Let me know if you need to know how to order magazines and track them or who to contact about the Squad Weapons Cleaning Kit. It?s very simple, and there are ways to short circuit the process if you have a high priority order that seems to get hung up in the system. Conducting the above preventative maintenance won?t solve all jams, but will fix the vast majority. Proper and regular gauging as well as having the armorer check your extractor whenever you have a jam will further prevent jams. These are all proactive measures. You have constructed a strawman argument here. If it makes you feel good to beat up strawmen, that?s fine with me. If you reread my posts, I clearly state that rifle fire teams already have full auto capabilities through the automatic rifleman who carries the M249 Squad Automatic Rifle. The M249 eliminated the need for full auto on the M16. He carries an ammunition basic load of 800 rounds, which is nearly 4 times the ammunition basic load of a rifleman armed with a M16/M4. His job is to provide the needed automatic fire suppression for the team. There is no need for additional automatic fire at the fire team level. You have yet to provide a specific example where full auto is better. I can tell you from experience that inaccurate fully automatic rifle fire is worthless and didn?t prevent my movement. However, well aimed semiautomatic fire can easily prevent movement and be considered effective fire. Bottomline, full automatic doesn?t equal effective fire.

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PowerPointRanger Shrek & Full Auto 10/10/2005 10:10:47 PM

Okay, let's see if I've correctly understood this debate on full-auto so far: You argue that full auto is never needed, but you do, you have the M249. I'm asking, if you never need full auto, then why need the M249? Why don't you just go with all M-16's? Specific situations where full auto was needed? I thought I was fairly clear on that, but I'll say it again: Any situation where it is close quarters and the bad guys outnumber you. I realize that doctrine for most other countries in the world is just fire full auto and hope someone gets a lucky hit. It isn't a very good doctrine, I admit. I've seen foreign "elite" troops who couldn't hit a bottle at fifty yards with a full magazine (on semi). Yet, enough quantity has a quality all its own. Which would you prefer at close range (say an empty room): one man with an M-16 on semi, or two men with AK-47's on full auto? Granted, our doctrine does not plan for our troops to be alone. Wars do not always go according to plan, do they? Shrek, let me be perfectly clear, I'm not suggesting that full auto is for all soldiers or all situations. It should be rarely used, and by people who know when to use it. However, if you are someone who knows when, does it even matter if you don't have it? I'm not arguing that it should be mandated. I'm arguing that it should be an option. If you don't agree with me, and you don't turn in your M249's, I guess you're just willing to live with being a hypocrite

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shek RE:Shrek & Full Auto 10/11/2005 9:44:30 AM

PowerPoint Ranger, Wow, you?ve not only introduced another strawman argument again (the debate is over full auto on the M16 family, not all automatic weapons), but you added a false dichotomy this time (you?re either with me, or you?re a hypocrite). Next time, add an ad hominem attack so you can score a hat trick of bad debating tactics. At least you recognized that building a premise based on horrendously inept tactics isn?t a strong argument. How many times did you decide to enter and clear a room by yourself? There?s a difference between not everything going to plan and being stupid. Back to the topic at hand ? whether full automatic on the M16 family is needed. You seem to be staking your argument on close quarters combat. However, in the past decade, the Army?s doctrine has decidedly shifted away from fully automatic weapons in CQC. Instead, close quarters marksmanship tables have been developed that emphasize position, stance, and controlled quick pairs as the appropriate marksmanship techniques for CQM. It has been recognized that it isn?t your rate of fire that matters, but rather your ability to place rounds in a target?s lethal zone, roughly the shape of a bowling pin that starts in the torso and works it way up to the head. By placing rounds in this lethal zone, you terminally wound critical organs, the brain and/or snap the spinal cord or brain stem. You service your target with quick pairs until he is no longer a threat. Thus, the emphasis has been correctly placed on marksmanship and effective fire, not rate of fire. Next, close quarters combat/battle (CQC/CQB) tactics have been developed that flow from the CQM techniques, and the bad old days of spray and pray high/low man are gone. Instead, CQB is built around shock, violence of action, and dominating the rooms you clear. Instead of relying on two man teams, four man stacks are the building blocks of all urban clearing operations. This is a battle drill that is standardized across the Army, and the least important member of these four man stacks is your automatic rifleman. In fact, everytime you have to drop off security to secure a hallway or a room, your first choice is the automatic rifleman with his SAW. You proposed having to clear a room against multiple bad guys. While you understand that your single man scenario is a flawed argument, you should analyze the scenario from the appropriate tactics. The four man stack provides redundancy and intersecting fields of fire to identify and eliminate targets that pose the greatest threat to each team member. To assist the clearing team in shocking the enemy targets, you use an appropriate technique (dynamic breach technique, fragmentation grenade when the structure prevents the potential of fratricide and there aren?t non-combatants, or a flash-bang to disorient and stun occupants when non-combatants are present). These tactics are all part of a standard CQM/CQB training density and trained frequently, and they give the initiative to the clearing team, even if the room has more bad guys than the clearing team. Once again, taking advantage of the initiative gained comes down to the ability to hit targets in their lethal zone, not the ability to fire at a high rate of fire. The image that comes to mind are the scenes from the old Westerns where antagonist empties his six shooter in rapid succession, hitting nothing but air. Once he's gone black on ammo, the protagonist calmly aims his pistol and smotes his challenger. While recognizing that that's Hollywood, there is certainly some truth behind those scenes and it underscores the point that unaimed shots, no matter how quickly taken, aren't effective. As far as your proposed question, I?m not sure which angle you are asking from ? would I prefer to have two AK equipped soldiers in my team over a single soldier equipped with a semi-automatic weapon or face two AK equipped soldiers over a single soldier equipped with a semi-automatic weapon. In either case, it is a false comparison, because you haven?t held constant the number of soldiers. As far as a fellow member in a clearing team, I?d prefer him to have the current issued US weapon that infantry riflemen have, a M4 with a CCO (doesn?t matter whether it?s the Aimpoint CompM2 or the EO Tech HWS) and undergun light. This weapon configuration is built around CQC. I am curious, if the Army were to return to the full automatic option with the M16 family, as to what tables you would add to marksmanship training. I think you would agree that poor marksmanship at a high rate of fire = poor marksmanship and wasted ammunition that would have been better spent on well aimed semiautomatic fire.

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Horsesoldier RE:Shrek & Full Auto 10/16/2005 5:05:55 PM

>>Okay, let's see if I've correctly understood this debate on full-auto so far: You argue that full auto is never needed, but you do, you have the M249. I'm asking, if you never need full auto, then why need the M249? Why don't you just go with all M-16's? << Obviously you have not understood anything Shek has said thus far. >>Specific situations where full auto was needed? I thought I was fairly clear on that, but I'll say it again: Any situation where it is close quarters and the bad guys outnumber you.<< Um, sorry, but no. Such a situation is all the more reason for controlled pairs center of mass. With an Aim Point or EOTech on your weapon, especially, but even with iron sights, there is no reason for a trained shooter to trust chance to deal with targets, which is all automatic fire from an assault rifle amounts to.

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Yimmy RE:Shrek & Full Auto 10/16/2005 5:27:10 PM

"Um, sorry, but no. Such a situation is all the more reason for controlled pairs center of mass. With an Aim Point or EOTech on your weapon, especially, but even with iron sights, there is no reason for a trained shooter to trust chance to deal with targets, which is all automatic fire from an assault rifle amounts to." I think this line of thought is caused by the low intensity of recent conflicts, where CQB seems mostly at the SWAT level in scale. In a high intensity battle involving infantry, full automatic is valuable in clearing rooms, bunkers, dense woods, on the final stage of the assault, and reppelling a mass assault. "Double taps", are too clinical and slow.

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shek RE:Shrek & Full Auto 10/16/2005 7:12:22 PM

Yimmy, Sorry, but the battle drill is the same whether you are clearing a room at Disneyland or a room in Mogadishu, etc. If the target is that hostile, then you use 120mm mortar, 120mm main gun round, 155mm arty, JDAM, etc., all of which are precision guided munitions, minus the 120mm mortar, which will be soon. If there non-combatants in the room, then you use a dynamic entry technique to shock and suppress the combatants and allow you the ability to overwhelm the enemy. Bottomline, you can only fit so many dudes in a room. All high intensity combat does is increase the number of rooms that you have to clear, but not the potential nature of the combat within each room. A good example of this would be Fallujah, where instead of precision raids focused on a handful of rooms, you had to clear every building. The techniques were the same, but the number of rooms needing to be cleared increased exponentially. Next, never discount physics. Bullets either ricochet off walls and can potentially endanger those in that room, or they pass through the walls and pose a threat to those in other rooms. Well aimed controlled pairs will minimize the fratricide risks due to less lead flying as well as the fact that the well aimed shots will terminate in the taret or pose a greatly reduced risk if they pass through the target. On the contrary, reactionary automatic fire will result in numerous ricochet or pass through risks, and it can lead to a dangerous assumption of mass = effectiveness, which isn't necessarily true and can result in unaimed and ineffective shots. Additionally, controlled pairs are different from double taps. Double tap is a terminology that is synonomous with war crime, while controlled pair is a proven CQM technique used by well trained and disciplined soldiers. Lastly, don't forget that this argument is about giving riflemen a full automatic capability. This capability still exists within every fire team in a rifle platoon, and every rifle platoon also has medium machine guns that are available for use and are appropriate area suppression systems that can be used for point accuracy when in the hands of a skilled operator.

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AlbanyRifles Full Auto 10/17/2005 12:08:40 PM

Okay, let me get this straight. You would rather have every soldier firing full auto rather than in controlled, aimed, three round bursts supported by light auto weapons on bipods and medium auto weapons on tripods and T&Es firing sustained aimed fire? We had the experience in Vietnam against the mass attacks, et5c., and found that full auto for everyone was a waste.

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Yimmy RE:Full Auto 10/17/2005 1:01:59 PM

Soldiers laying down a heavy volume of fire as provided by automatic, has a place. There is no readon why trained soldiers should be denied it. I don't think the Vietnam era American army is a good comparison, those abusing the automatic function were hardly competent.

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AlbanyRifles RE:Full Auto 10/17/2005 1:53:33 PM

I won't get into your characterization of units by your use of the term abuse. However, the 3 round burst makes a lto more sense since then you can keep it on target.

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