Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Cappy Army"
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@Whiskey11Gaming Precious few soldiers and Marines carried both the M14 and M16 in their enlistments because the M14 was only there in the early days in 1965-1967 for mass issue, procurement having ended in 1964. By 1968, hardly any units had M14s anymore.
So to just get a sample of soldiers and Marines who were issued both, you would need to find a very limited group of guys who served in a tiny window in the war. It isn’t like a unit kept all their old weapons and gave guys a choice. An armorer’s job is hard enough keeping up on the spread of M60s, rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, mortars, and .50 cals. It would really suck trying to maintain and field M14s plus M16s with all their related BII, support tools, PMCS, and processes.
As to who would choose what, every single Recon and Special Operations unit loved the AR-15 and XM177E2. They were the early adopters, quickly ditching the M14. For Infantry units, the M14 was totally inappropriate for SEA for all the reasons the XM7 is inappropriate today. Weight, bulk, limited round count, and recoil.
There are a lot of guys who read gun rags and ranted for decades about how they preferred the M14 over the M16, but almost none of them were even in Vietnam or the Infantry, and were repeating some crap they heard.
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@gunguru7020 A loaded M4A1 Block II SOPMOD with PEQ-15, TA31 ACOG, RMR, weighs 9.4lb unloaded/10lbs loaded with Surefire 30rd mag. Empty, sightless XM7 with Suppressor weighs 9.8lbs. Configured with XM157, BUIS, Surefire, and sling weighs 14lbs. Basic load weighs a lot more, takes up more space, for way less round count, meaning combat endurance with ability to fire on the enemy is limited to much less time, meaning emergency resupply will be a constant thing. It’s a non-starter for anyone with a GT Score over 100.
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@gunguru7020 You can even go with less chamber pressure and generate 3400fps muzzle velocity from 12” barrel 6.5 Grendel with a lighter bullet. We know even the 6.8x51 doesn’t penetrate Level IV at 100m, but does only at close range, so the baseline expectation of it to penetrate hard armor at 600m has not been met and was exempted year ago. That was the basis for most of the ballistic requirements of the program, which then set the magazine, rifle, and LMG weights and configurations. The whole program is literally flawed because the people who specified and are running are incompetent. This is no surprise, because big Army has not been able to solicit, select, develop, or manage a successful rifle program since the M1 Garand.
M1 Garand “Great success”
M14 Massive failure
SPIW Massive failure
ACR Failed
OICW Failed
ISCR Failed (7.62 NATO redux battle rifle)
NGSW Colossal failure across the board
Now look at USAF rifle history:
Used what the Army did, namely M1 & M2 Carbines for Security Police in the 1950s
AR-15 adoption driven by Curtis Le May for SPs after US Army Ordnance declared it wholly unfit for US service rifle use
Special Forces, Airborne, Airmobile, and Commonwealth Special Forces Units quickly adopted it in the early-mid 1960s (UK SAS, Canadanion Recce/SOF, Australian SAS, New Zealand SAS)
Then look at JSOC history:
XM177E2s Colt 653s M16A1/M203s from 1977-1985
Colt 723s from 1984 to 1993, introduction of Aimpoints and Surefires, Ops Inc Suppressors, SR-25s
M4A1 from 1994-2004, more LPVOs, newer LAMs, better lights, slings, suppressors, newer SR-25s, rails, FF RAS, MRE, better sniper optics, Thermals
Hk 416s from 2005, more optics, better LPVOs, smaller/higher output WPLs, newer suppressors, SR-25 ECC, better optics
KAC AMG belt-fed constant-recoil LMGs
6mm ARC DMRs with newer optics and accessories
US Army has proven they can’t define, select, manage, or develop appropriate weapons systems even for its own infantry, combat support, and support troops, even with the biggest Army budget in the world, with help from the other services. Therefore, small arms development for individual service weapons like rifles, carbines, and pistols should not be driven by the US Army anymore. They’ve had over a century to get it right with all the resources one could imagine, and still failed.
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@NareshSinghOctagon There were 2 production rifles and an upper receiver interim upgrade before the AR-15/M16 was dialed-in:
Colt 601 Green Rifles, which were fine firing the original stick powder ammunition. SF and ARVN Rangers loved these.
Colt 602 Black Rifles. These had major failures in maintaining dimensional specs in chambers, so when they were fed the ball propellant ammunition (developed without involvement of Stoner and the AR-15 design team from ArmaLite), they suffered serious malfunctions like case head separations, excessive cyclic rates causing FTFeed, and corroded quickly due to lack of cleaning supplies.
Army and USMC tried to band-aid the 602 with uppers that had forward assist on them, which didn’t really help. That was XM16E1.
It wasn’t until the feedback from all the failures of 602s and XM16E1s came in that the Army began a program to correct the weapon. Coincidentally, this aligned with the Ichord Subcommittee hearings and the Colt 603 (M16A1) was on its way to being specified, type-classified, and mass-produced.
M16A1 was and still is a very reliable weapon that suffers none of the silliness that happened with the original rifles. The core of the M16A1 with its BCG, recoil spring, and buffer were duplicated in the M16A2.
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@rethguals We said the same thing, but it was a baseline at least to measure different areas of functional fitness. Push-ups help with being able to get out of the prone and IMT. The run was good for cardio. The sit-ups were injurious to your back if you did them fast enough to knock-out 92 in 2 minutes.
In Infantry, we also did pull-ups, CWST, and 12-mile ruck marches quite often, so there was the APFT and then the practical things we did. Donning rucks in Weapons Squad, Mortars, RTOs, and anyone who had an especially-heavy ruck had a dead-lift type practical demand.
I felt there should be a Combat Physical Fitness test with LCE, Helmet, weapon, with sprints, obstacles, dummy drags, and fireman carries. We did a lot of that stuff though just as part of unit culture and training, including no-warning stress fires along the way during surprise 12-mile road marches.
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@rethguals I was in 7 different units ranging from Light Infantry (Air Assault) to Airborne Infantry and Long Range Surveillance. I noticed that our weekly PT schedules were very similar between the Light and Airborne units.
Monday was a 3-mile fast-paced run followed by upper body, tons of push-ups.
Tuesday would be 5 mile run followed by lower body and pull-ups.
Wednesday would be sprints, followed by dips/upper body.
Thursday was always Road March day followed by combatives and rig-ex in Airborne units.
Friday was long run day for endurance, often 6-8mi run, one time 10 miler surprise.
In Recon Platoons, we did PT 2x/day if we were in garrison, so the PT standards were much higher and enforced. You had to have 290 and above and 290 was considered a dirtbag performance to shame you. They really expected 300+ extended scale.
In the field, we rucked everywhere if there wasn’t trans coordinated for trucks, so we often rucked 20km/12mi per day just in mostly admin modes to get from one range to another, or to relocate for the next iteration of training. In Recon units, we rucked a lot farther and carried everything to sustain ourselves, sometimes augmented with buried caches.
I enjoyed that environment really, as we were always moving and being outdoors. The thought of sitting at a desk was just not compatible with my physique and physiology at the time. The only instances where I would do so was to borrow the PL’s desk for typing up awards for my soldiers.
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@Texas240 Agreed except for Comanche. That was an awesome helicopter that would have been an excellent replacement for the OH-58D, and could have also performed a lot of what the Apache does. Army Aviation didn’t want to decide between upgrades for AH-64 and UH-60 fleet and acquisition for RAH-66, but I would argue RAH-66 performing light armored reconnaissance in advance would have bright more pros than cons. We ended up without a light observation helo because they got rid of OH-58D after cancelling RAH-66.
I would happily take every dime wasted on NGSW and put it towards RAH-66, or even better, give to the USAF so they can buy more F-35s, missiles, JDAMs, SDBs, etc. NGSW has been an absolute total waste of time, money, and RDT&E resources.
I also question the effects of traitors in our upper echelons of acquisition who want to sabotage promising programs, while promoting wasteful and limited-use programs (NGSW, MRAP, conventional forces O&M costs for mass deployments to OEF and OIF, America’s Army video game).
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@gunguru7020 A high performance intermediate cartridge to replace 7.62 NATO, which will also reduce shipping bulk and weight (this is where the real money is in the budget, costing billions just Army internal).
We could keep 5.56 for the low-end PDW and for most combat arms duty positions, and equip anyone who used to employ a 7.62 NATO weapon with an efficient intermediate cartridge.
M4 program just needs to adopt the SOPMOD-style Block upgrade approach rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, as you can’t really get a simpler design with less moving parts. Anodize the receivers FDE and make little improvements here and there.
The Surefire/Magpul ICAR solves the mechanical side of frame and magazine for the new intermediate cartridge.
Apply cartridge and propellant design improvements to 5.56 or make an even smaller cartridge with equal or better performance than 5.56 for most dismounts, combat support, and support personnel in a much smaller overall form even than the M4.
Just for reference on the Intermediate cartridge side, a 12” 6.5 Grendel will spit a new EPR projectile out at 3400fps, without exceeding 52,000psi chamber pressure.
6.5 Grendel and 6mm have decades of developmental history already behind them, so we aren’t re-inventing the wheel there either, and we haven’t even tried pushing them with the new case technology. The hybrid cases are failing though, so single piece cases continue to be a proven solution that can either be legacy brass, and/or NAS.
This solution set reduces the overall soldier’s and unit weight burden, while increasing the round count, increasing hit probability, increasing lethality, and increasing survivability.
NGSW does all of those metrics wrong.
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@gunguru7020 No, we already have 7.62 weapons down to the Platoon and Squad levels. I was an 11B, Scout Observer, Sniper, Recon ATL, Weapons Squad Leader, did all the duty positions in the line and Recon throughout my career, so I have a very intimate understanding of how the MTO&E actually works, what modern threats actually are from strategic down to tactical levels, and am a mega-geek gun guy with decades of experience in internal, external, and terminal ballistics research and application.
We can increase the performance we already have, while reducing the overall weight of weapons and ammunition, to increase lethality and survivability. NGSW can’t do any of that and is a flawed concept from the start, like literally every single Big Army weapons program since the M14.
Remember, this is an organization that can’t solicit, oversee development of, and field a successful service rifle since the 1950s when they went to replace the M1 Garand.
The USAF had to drive the successful replacement inadvertently after Army Ordnance declared the AR-15 totally unsuitable for Infantry use.
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