Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Garand Thumb"
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@gunguru7020 It sounded like you were suggesting that the M1 Garand somehow gave US Infantry a decisive edge over the Japanese, Italians, and Germans. I've studied WWII small arms since the 1970s, and nobody has ever supported that argument with any research that I've seen.
There was an argument for the semi auto, 8rd en bloc clip-fed action, but the Germans and Japanese had plenty of belt-fed and repeating weapons, while US had a weapons mix of Garands, M-1 Carbines, Thompsons, BARs, and 1919 belt-feds.
For most of the duty positions in the line, we actually need something smaller than the M4 like a KAC PDW, with equal or superior exterior and terminal ballistics. This is where the higher pressure NGSW technology interests me in a .221 Fireball sized case with shorter COL than 5.56x45, so we can carry more mags without a weight penalty.
That would be ideal for COs, XOs, 1SGs, RTOs, AGs, ABs, PLs, PSGs, JTACs, Grenadiers, etc.
Use a 6mm or 6.35mm bore with AP option that deals with 200m and in, while DMRs and LMGs shoot a high performance intermediate rifle cartridge from a smaller action than the AR-10/NGSW.
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@scoots60 We had M21s in my first 2 Scout Platoons, and we had M14s in my first line unit, along with M16A1s, even though I went through Infantry OSUT with M16A2s.
I have worked with and lived with all of those rifles pretty extensively across multiple continents, as well as the M4/M4A1.
I like the M14/M21, but would never choose one to go outside the wire if I had other options for a DM or light sniper system.
Nobody in Ranger Regiment wanted anything to do with an M14 once the SR25s came into the inventory, and even prior to that, they used M4A1s with ACOGs suppressed in the Sniper sections, along with free-floated Recce carbines, barreled with accurate pipes and float handguards.
JSOC dropped M14s and went to SR25s in the early-mid 1990s as well in their Sniper sections.
Old inventory M14s were issued to line units for DMRs with varying degrees of success in GWOT, but SOF units who actually had a choice used SR25s, SR25Ks, and SCAR-Hs.
Some Teams tried going with all-7.62 NATO load-out, and ditched that idea after 1 or 2 missions due to weight and limited mag capacity. They tried configuring their kit with as many mags as possible, to include mag pouches on the backs of their plate carriers so dudes would act as combat squires for each other, which was just unnecessarily cumbersome and clumsy in a tactical sense.
This is one reason why 6mm ARC in a standard AR-15 receiver set was chosen to supplant or replace 7.62 NATO semi auto sniper systems in certain units.
We keep re-learning the lessons we already knew after the 1914-1918 Great War about appropriate rifle cartridges. 5.56 was the only cartridge adopted that benefitted soldier's load and combat persistence. 7.62x51 was warmed over .30 Cal in a slightly shorter case, pushed to higher chamber pressure to meet the same mv as the Garand. Didn't really change anything for Joe tentpeg other than having a detachable magazine and overall excessive weight.
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@terranempire2 Do you think it makes sense for the following soldiers in an Infantry Platoon and Company to carry an M5:
CO
1SG
HHC RTOs/Drivers
XO
Supply Sergeant
Supply Clerk
FOs
USAF TACP/JTACs
PLs
Squad Leaders
Grenadiers
WPNs Squad Leaders
Assistant Gunners
Ammo Bearers
Javelin/ATGM Gunners
That leaves only a very few duty positions in an Infantry Company carrying the M5 if all of the above don’t.
Riflemen
Team Leaders
Squad Leaders
SDMs
Only one of the duty positions makes sense for this weapon system, provided it can demonstrate the necessary accuracy potential, and that is the SDM.
For literally ever other single duty position, it doesn’t sell itself well, just from a weight and soldier’s load standpoint, reduced basic load constraint.
The M250 makes sense for SAW Gunners, as long as they can carry enough ammo, but 6.8 NGSW weighs a lot more than 5.56, so we would have a heavier SAW gunner who will have even more difficulty maneuvering with his Fire Team, unless he cross-loads more of his ammo among his teammates and slows them down a bit more than the CLS bags, AT4s, Claymores, and extra crap that gets thrown on Riflemen’s backs as SOP.
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@justinpeck3667 As part of my DM Course curriculum, I show the actual performance differences between 18” SPR, 14.5”, and 12.5” with 77gr Mk.262. Optic and trigger are more important in practice than the barrel length. The longer barrel can be detrimental in most alternate positions because it doesn’t keep the weapon mass close to the body’s C of G. I don’t see myself ever buying anything longer than 12.5” for 5.56 NATO chamberings in the future.
If we really wanted better performance, they should have cut the neck down, moved the shoulder forward with a 30˚ angle on the .222 Remington case, and spit out a longer, higher BC bullet with a nice boat tail. Something like an 80gr VLD shape. That would have made a sick assault rifle, DM, and LMG load with superior supersonic reach to the 7.62x51. They were all about muzzle velocity brute force then, even though the knowledge was present in NATO and DoD to do better with projectile shaping from artillery and aerospace engineering circles.
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@gordonjohnson405 I was there from Feb ’96 to Feb ’97, and our BC was LTC Fuller when I got there, then LTC Milley. Fuller was a Grenada Ranger with old school scroll from 2/75, mustard stain, country boy, awesome BC. The best BC I ever had in all my time in the Army across 7 different units. We’d be out doing morning PT as a Recon Team and see this guy out running with his full ruck in OD Green Jungles by himself. It was LTC Fuller. He thrashed the new Lieutenants in the Currahee Club too. Made them low-crawl with their faces to the floor until they all had road rash from the carpets. It was beautiful.
I remember his Change of Command ceremony where he said, “Alright men. I believe speeches should be like miniskirts, the shorter the better! Pass and review! Currahee!” Then from one of the line companies, someone called out, “Dogpile on the Colonel!” So imagine the better part of all the EMs dog piling the BC in his change of command ceremony. Great Battalion.
All we did was train and I loved it. Milley was more reserved, sketchy-eyed, always sniffing the wind to see if what he was doing would be kosher for his career. He wasn’t particularly bad or good, just there. He signed off on our proposal to institute a Battalion DM program for the line companies that we ran out of the Scout Sniper Platoon, since our PL was prior service E-6/B4 and SOTIC Qual’d, Panama Vet and we had an ODA split team from Okinawa run a Sniper short course for us the summer of 1996.
We rarely got to go downrange south of the Imjin River. You had to have a liberty pass for either a day or overnight, and only a certain % of the Battalion could get them, so I could count the number of times I took that on maybe 2 hands. Some of my SPC4 mafia mates and I went down to see the Seoul War Museum, which was cool. The DMZ was really our home for the full year, with rare exceptions. We did MPRC and EIB south of the Imjin. Lots of incidents happened when I was there with Norks.
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It started in Army JSOC after Panama. Sniper/Recce Troop guys started having the armorers build free-floated 723s with FSP, using different rifle-length free float tubes.
Some of those early guns look really sick with the suppressor sleeved by the float tube.
LSO pistol grips, Japanese 1.5-4.5x MicroDot LPVOs or AimPoints, PAQ-4Cs, Harris bipods, Redi-Mags, and Bowflage.
After Mogadishu, they transferred most of that over to the flat top M4 uppers, but many still used the detachable carry handle while adding CAR-15 cheek pieces to the Colt Fiberlite stock, with sharktooth butt pads zip-tied on the back.
Dam Neck guys saw those and had their armorers build similar versions off their 727 Carbines right before or as the M4 went into production.
Within SOCOM, a lot of ODAs and SEAL Platoons were asking for SR-25s, but there weren't enough to go around, so they all worked with Crane to build an upper receiver drop-in solution to bring more precision fire capability in the DM role.
This all happened in the 1990s way before 9/11. SEALs are given credit for the SPR, namely because the OGs and other units kept quiet about it.
CAG had already moved on to the M4A1 with KAC MRE, custom chromoly steel barrel, and S&B Short Dot by the time Tier 2 units were getting Mk.12s.
As usual, they were at least 10 years ahead.
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@sullathehutt7720 The Army has a massive list of funded programs that are of far more consequence to the leadership and Pentagon, especially when you look at aviation, mobility, long range artillery/rocket fires, drones, medical, EW, NBC, comms/net centric systems, and so forth. Some new Infantry Rifles and ammo are a rounding error in the overall budget and force structure emphasis to them. They don't look at infantry specifics from the bottom-up, and couldn't really care less.
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@mrkeogh They solved the egged rivet hole problem with receivers by using high lead content in the rivets, so the rivets would deform first.
The working pressures on AKMs and AK-74s are substantially lower than Western small arms, because they didn't have the metallurgy and capability to mass-produce higher strength steels consistently for small arms.
7.62x39 working pressure is in the 43,000-45,000psi range, but it still generates more bolt thrust comparable to much higher chamber pressure due to the extreme case taper.
The conical shaped chamber focuses axial force more onto the bolt face than a less tapered cartridge would, all other factors being equal.
At the end of the day, you're looking at a very primitive civilization that barely gained traction relative to the rest of the industrialized nations, who were limited to much older production methods, materials, and constraints that resulted in a primitive weapon design. They leveraged thst with the higher capacity magazine like a submachinegun to make it relevant as the last weapon in the echelons of fire from a motorized infantry regiment.
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