Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Matsimus" channel.

The US has been upgrading the F-16 throughout its entire life, starting from the major changes the USAF asked for over the YF-16 when you look at the FSD F-16s, F-16A/B Blocks 1, 5, 10, 15 and F-16C Block 25, 30/32, 40/42, and 50/52. Within each of those are specific fleet upgrades in all sorts of areas, from landing gear to Auto Ground Collision Avoidance, ECM, Chaff/Flare, radars, missiles, helmets, etc.
5
US Army stipulates some bad specifications in the TDP, namely the High Pressure Test (non destructive) on the bolt. Diemaco used a far superior approach to their bolts, and the barrels are superior as well. Much easier to do for small volume orders compared to gargantuan US military orders. SAS and SBS used a lot of Diemaco rifles and carbines since 1974.
5
@sam8742 It's genuinely sad watching so many people from the Commonwealth who can't own what we have.
4
C8 is hard to beat.
4
@drjamespotter Do you know what year Diemaco started selling Carbines to UKSOF? My Recon Team Leader had a poster of some NATO SOF guy (likely SAS) in freefall with a Diemaco carbine jumped open/retained by the harness. That was in the 1990s.
3
@davidhamilton6612 I still remember the days when the British Army, Royal Marines, and Canadian Army used L1A1 and C1A1 SLRs. The long barrel/flash hider combo was very distinct.
2
Look at what Australian SAS and NZ SAS choose to carry, when they could have whatever they want-especially their nation's issued rifle. Why do they reject it and carry something else dating back to 1967?
2
@sam8742 I really like the AUG, but still don't own one after over 30 years of panic-buying.
2
@toxichazard5015 Especially in mountainous terrain, humping 7.62 NATO rifle ammunition is a great way to be rendered combat-ineffective very quickly. Weight kills your maneuverability and endurance, limited round count strains your volume of fire and supply demands. Issuing 7.62 NATO to everyone in an Infantry Platoon is a great way to get more of your men killed. This is a very well-known reality dating back to the M14.
2
His comparison is actually valid with the MiG-29K naval Fulcrum and F/A-18E/F. Could also compare to the legacy Hornets if you wanted, but they're being retired, with an emphasis on tired.
1
Thomas Chadwick: Admiral K lost 2 fighters, a MiG29K and Su-33 off the coast of Syria due to basic carrier operations. I wonder if that played a role in their high rate of failure if Admiral K was actually meant for Yak-141. They had a bolter with one of the passes, forcing a MiG-29K to wave off and go into a pattern, at which point he lost 2 engines simultaneously. That sounds like he ran out of gas, or some fuel flow system failed. It's very rare to lose 2 engines like that at the same time. Either way, the whole display was clown shoes.
1
dumdumbinks274: It's my understanding that Russian mercenary pilots in Su-27 flying for Ethiopian AF shot down 5 MiG-29s from the Ukraine, in the service of Eritrean AF. Both types exchanged R-27s with each other, which had a 0% pk, followed by Su-27s turning back and taking the fight to WVR passes with R-73 kills on Eritreans.
1
spiff1003: F-16A/B was highly developed as a multirole fighter assigned to replace the F-4E and A-7D. The USAF demanded the changes be made to the YF-16 when they specified the FSD F-16s in the early/mid 1970s, which were the prototype/developmental birds for the F-16A/B early production blocks. The F-16A/B surprised everyone at Gunsmoke bombing competitions by placing very high first year, then emerging as the dominant precision attack jet in the USAF inventory by the mid-1980s after only a few years of operations use. The YF-16 was purely designed for air superiority within daytime AWACS or CGI vectors to contact so it could get the MiG-21 and MiG-23 WVR and slay them. It had no pulse-doppler radar, just a radar ranging gunsight for the 20mm Vulcan. The USAF didn't want anything else competing with the F-15, so they relegated the F-16 to bomb truck duty as almost an exclusive rule, with very few operational exceptions. Those ended up being over No Fly Zones over Iraq, and the war in Yugoslavia, where the only USAF F-16 kills have been recorded. The rest of the 77 F-16 air-to-air victories are mostly Israeli, with 44 in the 1982 Lebanon War alone against Syrian AF MiGs and Sukhois.
1
I've been a student and end-user of the AR-15 family of weapons since the 1980s. Diemaco rifles and carbines are as you say, especially regarding metallurgy and processes for the barrel and BCG. US can't crank out that quality in volumes required for the entire military, but could for SOCOM, so I wish they would adopt the critical parts of the Canadian TDP for SOCOM. Similar technical variances were done on the URGI uppers though. ARDEC put out a paper on a new CNC bolt-peening process that doubles bolt life as well, so we seem to be moving into an area where much more durability can be mass-produced on critical parts.
1
5.56 doesn't need 20" barrels. SOG, LRRPs, and SF destroyed that theory in the 1960s with XM177E2 11.5" guns before the myth became popular decades later. Grenada, Panama same thing. Mark Bowden blew it out of proportion by emphasizing one guy's misses in Mogadishu as a critique of all 5.56 carbines, which didn't really match the large data set. Gun rags and "experts" latched onto that mantra and wrote endlessly about it, mostly as a confirmation bias favoring 7.62 NATO. 14.5" M193 does 3050fps avg. 11.5" isn't far from that, in the 2820-2890fps range. 12.5" is really close to 14.5". Terminal ballistics studies haven't duplicated rotational velocity, and premise their assumptions on limited metrics relative to observed performance in gel. 20" muskets don't really provide anything extra in practical terminal performance, while they do penalize you 100% of the time in length and handling handicaps. One area in favor of 20" AR-15 RLGS is how smoothly they handle due to lower port pressure.
1
@MattCellaneous 12.5" 5.56 is ideal for a fighting carbine in 5.56 NATO, preferably suppressed. I've been chasing this rabbit since the 1980s and have seen all the arguments, seen a lot of dudes smoke-checked or injured by 5.56, and studied mountains of data on it, including internal DoD research unavailable to the public. If you look at the minutiae of the terminal performance and put it into context, you see why the various velocities between 11.5" and 20" are really marginal. It amounts to a pole-vaulting contest of mouse turds. Impact speed really needs much more mv to make a difference. Until you hit .22-250 speeds, there isn't much difference between carbines and 20" rifles.
1
@MattCellaneous 16" .308 is a bit long for DMs, especially if you suppress. DMs shouldn't be confused with Snipers. A DM is organic to a Rifle Squad. He provides increased observational and PID SA to the Squad, as well as more accurate fires in support of his Rifle Squad. Preferably, a DM should carry a rifle chambered in/compatible with the squad if the organization has limited logistics capabilities, or if it is likely for that squad and platoon to be cut off from resupply. Contradictions to my point exist in both the West and East: 5.56 and 7.62 NATO 5.45 and 7.62x54R In the Russian SSR, SVD gunners were fully-trained snipers, not DMs, but they had 1-2 Snipers organic to each Motorized Infantry Platoon.
1
milutinke97: Then why does the Iraqi Air Force have a better kill record than the Russian AF, even with the MiG-25? Russian MiG-29 operational use is embarrassing, with only a drone kill over Georgia. I keep seeing this mentioning of how great the Russian pilots are, and I agree they have a good program that starts in youth, however, nobody in the world has the track record to compete with the US, UK, or Israelis. The numbers are staggeringly lop-sided ever since the late 1970s, after counter-SAM techniques and systems became common in Israel and the US. The only operational combat record we can loosely ascribe to the Russians are Russian mercenary pilots flying Su-27s against Eritreans, and fighting against Eritreans is like clubbing baby seals in a bucket if we're honest, especially since the Eritreans just barely got the MiG-29s from the Ukraine.
1
I'm only 7 minutes in, a former US Army 11B Scout Sniper/Recon community guy myself. So far, every piece of advice he has given has been spot-on. When I was in Long Range Surveillance (LRSC), our interaction with the Brits and UK recon community was instrumental in creating a very unique and professional culture within LRS, especially the technical side of Recce work. I've always been impressed with the recon community from the UK. They are in a different world entirely from the US Army and even USMC when it comes to reconnaissance. Only a few US units have internalized that professionalism and technical expertise from the UK, none of which I will mention here.
1
When MiG-29 went to combat in various conflicts over 40 years of operational use, not once has it shot down another fighter. Instead, it has been shot down 18 times by F-14A, F-15C, F-16C, F-16AM, and Su-27. Its kill record is 6:18, with the kills being drones and cargo planes, which is sad and embarrassing. Meanwhile, the F-15 has 103:0, F-16 has 77:1, and Su-27 has 6:0
1
SLR? That ship sailed in the 1980s. 7.62 NATO really sucks for everyone to carry, limits your combat endurance in volume of sustained fire, strains logistics, sets units up for failure that isn't necessary.
1
@billmmckelvie5188 UK standards for yomping are very high for sure. I've worked with Royal Marines who reminded me of how fast the ruck marches are in Ranger Regiment. SAS and SBS used AR-15s in Falklands. Especially when you make contact, have to maneuver, and sweep over the enemy with bounds or flanking, 20rd mag-fed 7.62 NATO is a handicap compared to lighter 30rd mag-fed 5.56 rifles or carbines. I was in 7 different units during my time in the Army. In 2 of those units, we had 7.62 NATO M-14s and M-21s for Sniper Support Rifles, alongside M16A1s or M16A2s, (which were replaced with M4s in 1997). The main thing really missing is a permanent Designated Marksman program in the US Army. There were some initiatives during GWOT that seemed to get traction, but then eroded away. In the UK, they made DMs/Sharpshooters part of the tables of organization in the rifle section in each platoon, issuing them LMT L129A1 7.62 NATO 16" DMRs. It's a rather heavy weapon, but quite accurate and extremely durable. The barrel can be replaced by the end-user in about 1 minute.
1
@billmmckelvie5188 7.62 NATO should have never been born. The UK was working on superior cartridges after WWII, but the US kinda screwed UK and NATO over with the T65/7.62 NATO by continuing to use a battle rifle cartridge, even though we had decades of lessons-learned by that point with the After-Action Reports from the Great War, and the same reports from WWII. .30 bore cartridges with that much propellant generated too much recoil, muzzle blast, weighed too much, and required heavier rifles. Army Ordnance engineers drove the development of a new .30 cal rifle cartridge that was supposed to duplicate the performance of Rifle, .30 Caliber M2 ammunition (.30-06 Springfield), but from a shorter case, by increasing the chamber pressure. They thought this could replace SMGs, Rifles, BARs, M1919 GPMGs, and M-1/M-2 Carbines with a single cartridge in 2 different weapons, namely the M-14 and M60. What really should have been done was develop a High Performance Intermediate Rifle Cartridge in .257” to .264”, similar in configuration to the original British EM-2 Rifle cartridge, but with slightly less diameter for better sectional density. So Cartridge Overall Length would be shorter than 7.62 NATO, while retained energy on-target would be very similar, but with 50%-60% reduction in recoil. 7.62 NATO was really a mistake and a missed opportunity that has plagued us to this day.
1
@fortnex9972 If you've ever carried a FAL and basic load of mags, or tried to support it with optics mounts, or tried to shoot it for accuracy, you would know immediately why any conversation about the FAL's future was dead by the 1990s, let alone now. I still love them from a nostalgic view, but practicality isn't in its favor no matter what you do to it.
1
@toxichazard5015 Only .9kg is 1.98lbs. That's huge when talking about assault element going through the breech and CQB, let alone forced marches and cross-loading. Zoom out to the platoon distribution of ammunition, mortar rounds, aid bags, Anti-Armor weapons, litters, ladders, grenades, smokes, demo, pyro, Radios, batteries, NODs, water, meals, cold weather gear, and if every swinging pipe-hitter has an extra 2lbs on him, that's 48lbs of unavailable weight that could have been available if they were issued C8s instead. British Infantry Platoon with 30 men, HQ plus 3x Rifle Sections, 6 men with L129 and L7 not counted. The rest carry L85s.
1
It's fine under the handguards, definitely unnecessarily-heavy from the FSB-forward. The C8 is plenty for Canadian Infantry. It might be time for a new cartridge though.
1
@warmonkey3216 Free float helps mitigate heating of the handguard when shooting high volume CQM.
1
@davidtennien39 I wouldn't be surprised if C7s shoot better than mass-produced M4s with free-float. I shot unbelievable groups with a Dutch AR-10 at 150m, iron sights, South African surplus M80. It shot better at 150m than most free-float AR-10s I have owned or tested at 100yds with high end optics and match ammo.
1