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This month’s Q&A theme is submachine guns:
0:00:41 – Do different nationalities have culturally distinctive submachine guns or gun features?
0:04:25 – What was the first SMG? German or Italian?
0:06:11 – Magazine loadouts for submachine guns
0:08:08 – Why is the MP5 still viable and popular today?
0:11:09 – Do SMGs still have a role in light of short carbines and .300 Blackout?
0:14:55 – Would 10mm close the gap between SMG and rifle?
0:20:19 – Why no SMGs in .357 Mag or .44 Mag?
0:22:35 – Why is the Sten magazine bad, and what makes a good SMG mag?
0:27:01 – Does the US military still have any issued SMGs?
0:28:06 – Did the Sten really have problems running away?
0:30:16 – Why no British SMG before WW2?
0:32:21 – Difference between PCC and SMG
0:34:46 – Why re some 9mm mags straight and some curved?
0:36:18 – Why are people still making simple blowback SMGs today?
0:38:13 – Why so little development of open bolt SMGs today?
0:40:15 – Coupled magazines for the UD42
0:42:50 – Where would one go to learn to shoot submachine guns?
0:43:58 – Without Knob Creek, are there any more national SMG matches?
0:45:04 – The MP5 trigger is pretty bad – is that normal?
0:46:17 – What would SMG development have done if battle rifles stayed in vogue?
0:47:11 – Mass-production SMGs not in 9mm? (And also not in 7.62×25 or 45ACP)
0:48:53 – Most fun full-auto .22?
0:49:52 – Does the quality of first-gen SMG manufacture have a benefit?
0:51:12 – Is the PDW dead?
0:54:07 – The specialized Remington-Thompson .45 cartridge
0:55:43 – What SMG for time travel to medieval Europe?
0:57:00 – Why no US SMGs in .38 Super prior to WW2?
0:58:55 – Why not more bayonets on SMGs?
1:01:01 – Magnet-delayed or magnet-buffered designs
1:04:47 – Burst limiter utility in machine pistols
“(…)Why no SMGs in .357 Mag(…)”
There exist TOR https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/07/31/venezuelan-tor-smg-chambered-357-magnum/ though details are missing
Ruger also makes a semi-auto .44 Mag “Deerfield carbine”. It’s a full on rifle with a gas system and only holds 10 rounds with an extended mag. I can’t find what system its Model 44 “Deerstalker” predecessor, but it was discontinued due to high costs and likely not straight blowback. I’m not sure .44 Mag is straight blowback compatible in the first place.
AND I just tried finding more information on these things, and the search suggestions for finishing semi showed “semiautomático”. I’ve got to wonder how much the modern one was for non-US countries (with “military cartridge” restrictions?).
The original Ruger 44 carbine was a locked-breech, gas-operated rifle with a short-stroke piston system similar to the Winchester M1 Carbine. A similar setup was later used on the Ruger Mini-14.
Locking was by a rotating bolt inside an action slide, in a manner very similar to the M1 Carbine.
https://ruger-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/_manuals/model44.pdf
clear ether
eon
Completely fair answer about the British attitude to SMGs prior to WW2 – I cringe when I hear people attribute it to stuffy British generals dismissing SMGs as “gangster guns”, which is a total myth.
The British attitude toward the submachine gun was really not very different from most European powers in the 1930s. As Ian points out, they were considered specialist weapons, primarily for paratroopers, tankers, or rearguard policing duties. Even the Germans, who are held up as the chief innovators of the submachine gun during this period, did not fully “buy in” to the idea of mass-issuing SMGs until 1940.
The British Army did become increasingly interested in adopting a submachine gun in the late 1930s with the BSA-Király and the Suomi KP/31. But unforeseen complications involving the countries that these guns originated from prevented the adoption of either, and like France they had to resort to panic-buying Thompsons from the US in 1940.
“(…)Mass-production SMGs not in 9mm? (And also not in 7.62×25 or 45ACP)(…)”
Depending on your definition Type 100 https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Type_100_submachine_gun might qualify, as it is 8 mm and ~25000 making it most widely-produced of Japan’s indigenous submachine gun designs during the war
“(…)Remington-Thompson .45 cartridge(…)”
According to https://municion.org/producto/45-thompson-model-1923/ it did launch 250 gr bullet at 1450 fps.
The velocity figure 1450 fps is confirmed by A.J.R.Cormack in Small Arms in Profile of 1973, p. 65. The periodical Army Ordnance (May-June 1923) mentions a barrel length of 14.5 inches, 13 pounds weight and 400 rpm cyclic rate.
“(…)no US SMGs in .38 Super prior to WW2?”
Thompson sub-machine gun did spawn 9×19 off-spring before WW2, though not in US.
https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Thompson_M1926 was BSA offering in 9×19, which did not find buyers. If they know about that result, they might be reluctant to do similar attempt.
The 45 Remington Thopmson cartridge case was 1.12″ long with a 250 grain bullet at 1450 fps. This data comes from Cartridges of the world 11th edition.
Just a few observations in order by time hack.
0:08:08 The MP5 is still sort-of viable because it’s still one of the few SMGs that fires from a closed bolt. This makes it more suitable for applications like police tactical teams, where accuracy is a serious consideration (shoot the perp, not the hostage) and military SpecOps where sound suppression is preferred (it’s easier to modify to fire with the bolt locked to eliminate the noise of the action). The MP5 is less an SMG than a light self-loading rifle that just happens to use a pistol cartridge.
That said, the main reason it’s still around is that Heckler and Koch has a very good and very aggressive sales department. Plus a huge “fanboi” base.
See;
https://monsterhunternation.com/2007/10/09/hk-because-you-suck-and-we-hate-you/
by Larry Correia.
Overall, the MP5 is inferior to the M1/M2 carbine in almost all respects.
0:11:09 The primary role of .300 Blackout is and always will be reduced sound signature applications. Not even necessarily with a suppressor. Some experiments going back to WW2 with pure-lead, gas-check bullets in the 300-grain range showed effectiveness and near-inaudibility suitable for night sniping, assuming you only wanted to shoot within about 250 meters. Coupled with even 1940s night-vision (like the U.S. M3 “sniperscope”), the results would be worthwhile in such operations. Of course, the lead bullet would definitely violate the Hague Accords.
0:14:55 The 10mm Auto fired from an SMG to carbine-length barrel (10″ to 16″) would roughly approximate the ballistics of the old .351 Winchester Self-Loading cartridge from the M1907 self-loading carbine. This would make it a viable round for deer-sized game at ranges under 100 meters. In fact, there are a number of handgun hunters today who use 10mm M1911s, often the “longslide” 6″ to 8″ barreled ones, for medium-sized game of various types. See Handgun Hunting by Kat Ainsworth;
https://oceanofpdf.com/languages/english-language-books/pdf-epub-handgun-hunting-a-comprehensive-guide-to-choosing-and-using-the-right-firearms-for-big-and-small-game-download/
0:20:19 Persuant to that, there seems little point in an SMG in .357 Magnum or .44 Magnum, since we have the rimless 9mm Winchester Magnum (9 x 29mm) and .45 Winchester Magnum (11.5 x 30mm), which can easily duplicate or exceed the revolver cartridges’ ballistics, and will certainly feed much more conveniently through a box-magazine-fed action. Plus, the raw material for handloading (.223 Rem. and .308 Win. brass; non-military only, please) is easily obtainable. As such, why bother with the rimmed cartridges?
0:55:43 A “gun for time travel” ideally should be one for which ammunition can be obtained or artificed with the available materials at the destination. Brian Daley went into this in some detail in his novel The Doomfarers of Coramonde; his hero chose an M1 .30 Carbine and Mauser M1916 in 9 x 19mm, based on what he could take with him through a “warpgate” his car would fit through.
My personal choice for an excursion to Author’s Court of Camelot or the equivalent would be a Winchester-type lever-action carbine or rifle and a Peacemaker-type single-action revolver, both in either .44 Magnum or .44-40 Winchester Center Fire. Both types of ammunition can easily be reloaded with black powder and cast-lead bullets, the only thing necessary to do so being loading equipment (a Lee loader kit is about the size and weight of an almanac and costs under $100 complete with dies), a supply of replacement primers (or just knowing how to make priming compound and reload them- lead picrate is easily made), and a wood mallet (locally obtained).
As for the black powder, remember; 75% Potassium Nitrate, 15% Charcoal, 10% sulfur. No, not every idiot can make it, but idiots should not involve themselves with either weapons or temporal relastaticism.
(Those dingbats from the Federation Starfleet doing it was bad enough, FFS.)
clear ether
eon
The West is falling to pieces and we have adult males, highly conversant in weapons and mayhem, chatting about ‘ammo for time travel’? Ooooo-kay.
Considering that you’re constantly s#!tposting from Red China, exactly what do you know about the “West”, Marty old boy?
Go away. Please. Nobody is interested in anything you have to say, any more.
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eon
When civilization collapses the only solution will be to send warriors back in time to save it. (See Reese) So the adult males are on to something here.
I think Tyrsegg is suggesting the “adult males, highly conversant in weapons and mayhem” go out and commit racial genocide with their own hands in their own streets right now and save “civilization”. He just lacks the stomach to come right out and say it.
The cartridge that closes the gap between pistol and rifle is the 7.5FK.
It has almost M1 Carbine muzzle energy (but far better ballistic coefficient) from a 6″ barrel (M1 Carbine, 110gr bullet at 1990 ft/s; 7.5FK 101gr bullet at 1950 ft/s).
From a carbine lenght barrel, it should be in .222 Remington territory.
“(…)MP5 is less an SMG than a light self-loading rifle that just happens to use a pistol cartridge.(…)”
It is also part of bigger gamut of weapon sharing similar manipulator. So if you have operator proficient with MP5, but mission require better penetration than 9×19 can give, it might be easily switched to HK 53 or if bigger reach is desired then G8 https://modernfirearms.net/en/sniper-rifles/standart-caliber-rifles/germany-standart-caliber-rifles/hk-g8/
The major problem with HK53 is cookoff. Even in rapid semi-auto fire, the 5.56mm ammunition just heats the barrel up too quickly.
Cooling has always been a problem with the HK weapons; the 53 is just the most obvious example prior to the g36 series, which has distressing habit of melting its chassis in autofire. This was one of the reasons the U.S. Defense Department rejected the XM8 version, BTW.
Cooling of high-RoF rifle-caliber weapons is less a science than an art. It seems the only real solution is the oldest; liquid cooling, preferably with a rather large water jacket.
cheers
eon
Either that, or the German expedient of truly interchangeable barrels a la the MG42…
I’m of the mind that if you’re in a position where your individual weapons require water cooling or quick-change barrels…? Well, you may just have made some serious errors in terms of life-choices. Like, the US Army at Wanat sort of “bad choices”.
There are a bunch of tradeoffs inherent to building a good individual weapon; one of those is that your tactics had better not ever rely on you using those weapons for what properly ought to be the sole function of actual honest-to-God support weapons, things with tripods, belt feeds, and quick-change barrels. You ought to also be making sufficient use of supporting fires, and not be trying to substitute human lives and individual weapons for supporting fires…
I believe that crew-served, water cooled HMGs have proven time and again to be superior to any and all IWs as “area denial” tools.
If a section of half-a-dozen HMGs can’t do the job, somebody should have called for arty or CAS to begin with.
Of course, today we really don’t have those sorts of HMGs any more. We also don’t have effective Arty, due to an excessive infatuation with CLGMs as “do-it-all” devices.
And I strongly suspect that soon, drones will pretty much put CAS out of business.
The future battlefield might look like a gigantic video game.
Or “Soldier” by Harlan Ellison. Just without the telepathic cats.
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eon
I wouldn’t rule out telepathic cats, the way things are going.
Not that I’m a believer in any of that old-school psi-BS, but simply because I’m gradually learning in my life not to rule anything out, because if you’d come to me when I was in my early twenties and described the major world events of the last 40-odd years, I’d have signed you up for well-padded rubber room somewhere nice and quiet, with a 24-7 Thorazine drip. And, I’d have been able to find innumerable doctors who’d have signed off on the paperwork…
I think that water-cooled MG systems are unlikely to come back; too big, too complicated, and not mobile enough. Something like the Pecheneg? Far more likely. I think there are probably a lot of gains to be made in terms of materials technology, and that odds are excellent that at some point, we’re going to be making materials that can tolerate heat well enough to make for sufficiently durable barrels.
Alternatively, it may well be that they figure out a way to tap some of that heat energy to generate electricity directly, and you’ll be using your support weapons to charge the section’s batteries. Or, not.
No matter how you look at it, the Vickers and M1917 aren’t likely coming back anytime soon. I suspect that the odd Maxim might see use, but that’s only because they will still be pulling those out of storage caverns sometime into the early 2100s, and as long as the 7.62X54R is being produced, why not?
I really don’t know where the drone thing is going to wind up… I suspect that effective countermeasures will eventually show up, but how long that will take or what form they’ll have, I have no idea. I do know that the drone has effectively killed the late-20th Century armored warfare paradigm, and it will remain dead until someone figures those countermeasures out.
I always knew the drones were going to be a big deal, from the first time I saw one pulled out of a friend’s stack of Christmas toys for his kids. We wound up playing with the drone more than the kids got to, and I went home that evening with what I can only describe as a dawning sense of horror for the implications of it all. There was a recognition that we were only a few key critical enablers away from the world of Philip K. Dick’s Second Variety…
Never could persuade anyone else of that fact, though. Everything that’s happened in Ukraine since 2022 was stuff I ball-parked back around 2000; I was only off on just who it would be that made it all happen. My money was on Taiwan/PRC or Singapore/Malaysia, maybe one of the Baltic states vs. Russia. I’d have never considered Ukraine as a player, basically because I wasn’t sufficiently aware of them or their culture/capabilities.
“(…)way to tap some of that heat energy to generate electricity directly(…)”
This actually was done for VOAYGER 1 spacecraft. This worked following way: VOYAGER 1 carried stock of unstable chemical element which DECAY which gives HEAT which is driven into THERMOCOUPLE which gives VOLTAGE as output, which was used for powering wireless set &c. Observe that VOYAGER 1 did emit radio transmissions for few decades without any maintenance at all, so used devices, incl. THERMOCOUPLE might be made to do not increase maintenance burden.
For more information see https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/radioisotope-power-systems/power-radioisotope-thermoelectric-generators/
The Big Sandy is a twice yearly machine gun shoot in northern Arizona.
Much of the reason that we even have an SMG class of military firearm boils down a couple of factors.
First one was my favorite hobby-horse: The powers-that-were flatly refused to go to the trouble and actually observe what was going on in combat, and they further refused to wrap their heads around the implications. The SMG “happened” because they flatly refused to acknowledge the facts on the ground, namely that the machinegun totally obviated the over-sized infantry rifle and the vast majority of the cartridges it was chambered for. Because of this, and because war has its imperatives, they had to glom onto that which was available, and that was the pistol-caliber SMG.
Had anyone had the wit and wisdom to observe that the long-range volley and cavalry-stopping role was now effectively taken over by the MG, they might have started fielding weapons like the SKS, which to my eye, was probably the ideal weapon to have fought in the trenches of WWI. That the Soviets only got around to fielding the damn thing during the post-WWII era is a testament to purblind idiocy. The handwriting was on the wall, and the “spirits of the age” demanded mo’ bettah firepower, so the reality is that the SMG was called up into duty for WWII. It should not have been a “thing”, really… But, because the geniuses in charge refused to admit that they needed a light, handy rifle that was only lethal out to 400m, we got what we got. Which was a lengthy technological blind alley.
The facts were there to be observed; the early experiments with the Bergmann guns, the Vilar Perosa, even the Pedersen Device. You needed something a lot smaller and handier than the then au courant service rifles of the era, and you needed way more firepower. This should have led to extensive experimentation and development during the post-WWI period, but they were too busy making believe that the infantry individual weapon was tactically important past 400m. Which it was not; this fantasy is still on view throughout the “intellectual elites” of the various militaries around the world, who’re apparently unaware that massed volley fires went away with having your infantry go at it in static linear formations.
Had anyone paid the slightest attention, the SMG would have remained a peripheral weapon, issued for police, local security, and maybe couriers. As it was, since they didn’t “follow the desire path” of what was actually going on in combat, the SMG came to the forefront through the infantry and others saying “Yeah, it ain’t perfect, but it’s better than what we have…”
In short, the SMG was the M4 carbine of the pre-WWII military: Taken up because what was on offer wasn’t suitable to need.
I’ve often thought that the Pedersen Device could have been our first “M1 Carbine”.
They built hundreds of them, and destroyed them at the end of the war because they concluded they didn’t fit the requirements of “proper warfare”. The old story that the Army was afraid they’d fall into the hands of “gangsters” is BS; they were destroyed in late 1918/early 1919, before the Volstead Act and well before there were any “gangsters”.
Mostly Ordnance didn’t want to modify all their Springfields to take the Devices. “Too many rifles tied up in modifications, harrumph.”
Hmm. Looking at Hatcher’s Notebook, the total number of single heat-treatment 1903 Springfield rifles made before February 1918 (S/N range 750,000-800,000) was probably about ten times the total number of Pedersen Devices manufactured.
The single heat-treatment receivers would have been more than strong enough to handle the much lower pressures of the .30 Pedersen round compared to .30-06. And they weren’t usable “as is”.
Cut them back to carbine length
https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/Amoskeag/11/625711/H1193-L144109483.jpg
And permanently mount the Pedersen Devices in them (maybe change the feed to come up through the former internal rifle magazine?) and the Army would have had a handy carbine for CQB twenty years ahead of “schedule”.
Of course, for Ordnance, that undoubtedly would have made too much sense.
clear ether
eon
It was an interlocking set of “failures to observe” and “failure to think through consequences”.
On the one hand, a large part of the reason they even had the big cartridges in the first place was mostly due to the anachronistic perception that they needed those heavy long-range cartridges for doing massed volley fires and dealing with cavalry… Both issues were put paid to by the development of the machinegun. You didn’t need “beeg boolets goin’ fast” with the individual weapon any more; you needed something far closer in spirit to the skeet shotgun in the 20gauge range; something quick to handle, easy to shoot accurately, and way more portable than many of the abortions that they had on issue. The Brits and the US were on the right path, with their SMLE and M1903 mid-length rifles, but they lacked the courage of their convictions to carry those designs out to their logical conclusions.
The whole thing is reminiscent of the cavalry’s long farewell to the horse, and due to the same reason: Too much focus on the wrong thing. Cavalry should have looked at things from the standpoint of “What is it we really do, here? What is our value-added?”, and then recognized that the “spirit of the cavalry” wasn’t the damn horse, but “Mobility”. Which meant giving up the old beliefs about being the “arm of shock” and all that.
Neither they nor the ordnance/infantry types that were responsible for the rifles recognized that reality had shifted under their feet, conditions had changed, and infantry no longer had a role as mere participants in an organic firepower-production line. You could distill a battalion’s worth of fires into one or two machineguns, easily hidden, operated by very few men, and ohbytheway, those guys obviated the ability to even mass enough troops to create one of those “organic machineguns” in the first damn place.
Failure to recognize reality is always, always deadly. You can observe this precise sequence of events taking place before us in real time, as the Ukrainians demonstrate the development of a new warfare, that of the drone and remote observation. The same thing happened in WWI; the same issues taking place are demonstrated here, today, in that our military is unable to recognize reality unfolding multiple changes before its eyes, and that they’d better adapt. From what I’ve seen, they aren’t, and I expect the same sad narrative going forward that these purblind fools enacted multiple times since WWI gave us the first major case-study.
It should have been recognized. Some few did, but they were not in positions to make decisions, and they were unable to influence anyone until late in the WWII time period. Even then, the idjit class here in the US ignored reality and its lessons, instead giving us the M14/7.62 NATO combination that proved to be effectively worthless in Vietnam. Now, we’re again ignoring the lessons of history, and going right back into the burning barn. Proving, once again, that many of our so-called “elite” leadership types are about as dumb as horses…
The Air Force is going back into that burning barn;
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/us-special-ops-gets-first-skyraider-ii-close-support-planes-eyes-bespoke-mission-sets/
They can talk about “permissive AAA environments” all they please, but this thing is basically nothing but a sitting duck for MANPADs and drones.
It might have been a good idea; over the Congo back when Ike was in the White House. But back then, everybody had leftover WW2 Texans and Harvards, too.
With machine guns.
clear ether
eon
I honestly had a lot of trouble, as a young soldier, believing that the “authorities” of the interwar era were that reality-challenged. My take was that there was no way they could have missed the key developments like radios and all the rest of the enablers for the German’s initial easy successes…
Now? I’m entirely unsurprised, and look back at my early naivete as touchingly delusional about the vast and unpleasant nature of human stupidity.
Mostly, military history consists of people being shocked and surprised at things other people warned them about well before the actual events took place… Doesn’t matter where, doesn’t matter when, the reality is that most people are too stupid and lazy to “get off the X”. They’d rather stand there and wait for the bombs to drop on them, then bewail the tragedy of it all “Because… Nobody could have predicted this!!!!”
Same story, told a million different ways. Pearl Harbor? Predicted, right down to the tiniest detail. IED threat in Iraq? We told them, warned them… Were dismissed.
It’ll be the same with NGSW; when it crashes and burns, they’ll all be shocked by the demonstrated failure of M14 Part Two, Too Big redux.
You can’t go wrong betting on “stupid”, especially when it comes to American small arms doctrine and design. It’s just too bad that there’s no way to monetize it…
“(…)NGSW(…)crashes(…)”
If above does include regular breakages of key components then you might find https://www.twz.com/land/army-captain-slams-new-xm7-rifle-as-unfit-sig-sauer-says-otherwise worth reading
The Pederson cartridge is a deeply compromised design due to the need to keep the Device short enough to squeeze into the Springfield’s receiver. It’s not even a very good pistol cartridge at that point. You’d practically be better off buying 1907 Winchesters, et al. In lieu of that, convert the Devices to gas-operation with an added piston along the lines of the endless attempts to convert bolt-actions to autoloaders, and shorten the bolt to give you enough room to use a .30 cartridge about 1.5″ long.
I’d agree wholeheartedly that the Pedersen Device was a nutty and compromised design. It was, however, a sign that someone was paying attention to the issues, and was at least vaguely trying to deal with them.
Sad reality is, the powers-that-were ignored reality and its proponents, which I think explains why they effectively threw away the entire concept when they did. I suspect that the entire idea represented by the Pedersen Device disturbed them, made them profoundly uncomfortable, and they wanted to make the discomfort go away by getting rid of the Device. Which was, in the end, about the sole rational attempt to observe and deal with reality on the modern battlefield until the advent of the M16 in American usage.
We’d have been a lot better off with someone “militarizing” one of the Winchester or Remington semi-auto civilian rifles. Unfortunately, the legacy systems adherents were fully wed to the idea that we’d need to kill cavalry horses and do massed volley fires, even after the machinegun rendered both activities suspect…
“(…) “militarizing” one of the Winchester(…)”
See https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Woodhull_carbine as possible example.
The SKS would have probably been the ideal WWI rifle, but average WWI conscripts were probably not the ideal soldiers to service it. The advantage of bolt actions was that they were almost idiot proof.
Probably a simple blowback action, like that of the 1905/1907 Winchester, would have been better.
Blowback would have restricted the cartridges to pistol-caliber options. You really need something that’s above the threshold for locked breech.
Honestly, something about in the class of a box magazine-fed semi-auto Winchester Model 1894 was what they really needed, and that is basically what you get with an SKS.
I don’t think the maintenance and cleaning would have been that hard to train, either: There were much more complex mechanisms in common use. Hell, if you could train the average Soviet or CCP conscript on the system, then the training of WWI Western Allies would have been a piece of cake…
I’ve always been astounded at the assumptions made by the so-called “elites” about the masses. On the one hand, they’re prone to insanely overestimating what is humanly possible with anyone, and they’re simultaneously automatically assuming that some things are too “complex” for the unwashed.
I always like to point out that the geniuses behind the SINCGARS interface, especially the early days versions, were flatly nuts about how easily managed that system was, to someone who’d been up for 72 hours straight, sitting on the side of a hill somewhere in Korea in the freezing cold at 03:00 in the morning. Under those conditions, a certified genius ain’t getting it right, trying to do a fill over-the-air. Hell, with 8 hours of sleep, a fresh cup of coffee, sitting in a commo shelter at noon? You had issues…
Simultaneously, they seemed to forget that the previous generation of “enlisted idiot” had somehow managed to do line-by-line encryption using the paper-copy CEOI that was on offer during their years of service… Which, on the surface, was much more complex, yet somehow simpler to do using “muscle memory”.
I think the SKS was something that could have been designed and issued without much trouble during the majority of WWI. They just didn’t have the vision to recognize that the sole purpose of infantry was now close-in security and assault, while the volley fire and anti-cavalry mission was best performed by the machinegun. They picked up on the fact that massing troops for volley fire was a non-starter quickly enough, they just didn’t carry out the equation far enough to recognize the implications, namely that “infantry won’t need to shoot much beyond 400m”.
To my eye, the whole thing sort of smacks of the old-school idea of having your champions go out and battle in front of the formations, letting them decide the engagement. It’s just plain stupid, wishful thinking that things were still the same as a bygone era, one that the people in charge fantasized was somehow nobler, somehow preferable.
War has always been unabashed horror, slaughter on a wholesale scale. More of it you manage, the shorter the fighting will be; best to just get it over by being as practical as possible about it. The idea of somehow dominating the fight by having your noble individual riflemen do most of the fighting is just idiocy on stilts; you should be engaging every sighted enemy not with a single projectile, but a multitude of them, on the theory that the one idiot who skylined himself likely has a bunch of friends who should shortly be wishing they had a better, smarter run of acquaintance…
It’s all a game of numbers; if you shoot at the one guy you see, and kill him? You’re giving up the opportunity to kill all his friends, which is what you need to do in order to win. If you find yourself in the position of running a live-fire training engagement for the enemy, your tactics suck.
A bottleneck .351 Winchester with a spitzer bullet (that’s what the French tried to do with the 8mm Ribeyrolles) would have had far better performances than the .30 Carbine (practically comparable to a .300 Blackout). More than enough for WWI trench fight.
This is waaaay tooooo loooong.
20 minutes is about my limit.
Re: “Predicted” military disasters. People predict dozens of disasters that NEVER occur. How to call out the real ones? It is like Joseph Stiglitz said, ‘I have predicted nine of the past two recessions.’ This forums manchild geniuses are profoundly ignorant of the whole Chicken Little side to policy making: ANYTHING that happens will be perceived by some clique as Armageddon incipient. Y’all remind me of drunk grampa shooting the mailman, the pizza guy and the neighbor’s cat ‘just to be safe.’ GTFU and get a real job.
I have an actual track record, fuckwit.
In 1993, after a lot of research, I noted the clear line between WWII Eastern Front “Rear Area Battle” experience and what happened to everyone on every post-WWII battlefield, namely that the Soviets were spreading the gospel of the IED and land mine as interdiction techniques.
19-fucking-93.
I and a bunch of other folks went to the “authorities” in the US Army Engineer School with our concerns, along with copious amounts of evidence gleaned from worldwide military experience. The train was right there on the tracks, pointed out to them by all and sundry from my lowly self up to at least a full-bird colonel we recruited and converted to our cause.
Not a fucking thing was done about any of that, even after Bosnia and Kosovo. The US Army did not procure actual MRAP vehicles until about 2005, when one of the majors involved quite literally “fell on his sword” by going to his Congressional delegation and laying out what he knew, asking why the lone set of armored route clearance gear that had been procured for “operational testing in a humanitarian demining environment” was still sitting there rotting on a back lot at Fort Leonard Wood…
You can say all you like about how all these things are “unpredictable”, but they’re anything but. All you have to do is observe, orient, decide, and act. Boyd’s OODA loop isn’t just applicable to dogfighting. Most people, like yourself, simply don’t bother to either observe or orient, neither of which are all that difficult.
Except for the willfully obtuse. Even if you don’t act on the information, the predictions are there: Preventative measures should be taken, as in the FMTV program managers decision not to design or procure uparmor kits, which would have been cheap to do during the design phase of the program. They wound up buying those kits, eventually, at great expense, and then shipping them in at even greater expense. They should have been on the boats, ready to go if needed.
I’m pretty sure there was a twat like yourself doing damage control after all the various chickens came home to roost… “Oh, woe is us!!! Who could have known that you might need radios in the tanks… That the Germans might actually out-maneuver us the way our attaches reported them doing on exercises!!! It was all so unpredictable…
Morons, one and all. You’ll be there defending the current lack of effort towards the drone issue, after the next Kasserine Pass/Task Force Smith debacle, crying long, sad crocodile tears over the dead. Whose deaths could have been prevented by a little foresight and imagination, two characteristics notably lacking in your ilk.
I am just saying that WHATEVER happens there is some lone voice crying in the wildernesr prediction it. Without some way of selecting which prophet to listen to, all this “I told you so!” is pretty useless. Everyone out there has a hobbyhorse he rides to death. Why listen to Tom as opposed to Dick or Harry? I recall after the COVID brouhaha, anyone with M.D. after his name could get into print prediction ‘the next pandemic.’ Sooner or later someone will be right and everyone will be aghast that ‘No one listened!’ Why? Not stupidity. Simply the fact that it is damned hard to pick out the ONE correct voice from a veritible cacaphony. You lot seem to think that Truth glows self-evident and in advance. ‘T ain’t necessarily so there, Buckwheat.
Or,to simplifly, read Tolstoy on the Battle of Schoengrabern. The commander almost ALWAYS has the info that will enable him to make a correct choice. This info is swimming cheek by jowl with 10,000 pieces of false or less useful info. Thank gods that this forum has guys not subject to one Iowa of uncertainty
The argument I have read against PDWs, as a general distribution to “rear area” troops, is that there is no longer a “hard front” that demarks where the fighting occurs and the safe rear areas. The modern battlefield, look at Iraq and Afghanistan, is very fluid. There is no hard separation between the “front line troops” and “rear echelon support troops” and “enemy combatants”. The enemy will attack in full force everywhere they can.
While support troops with PDWs would be able to defend themselves, but there is a lost opportunity to specifically identify hostiles from non-combatants and deliver a hard blow to the hostiles.
I don’t doubt but that you’ve read something I’ve written on the issue, because I seem to be the only person alive who actually grasps this fact, particularly when it comes to fighting insurgencies.
I am not ever going to advocate atrocity, but the raw and unpleasant fact is this: There is an excellent case for not affording the enemy the opportunity to generate what we might term “veterans”. If you allow survivors, then those survivors will have learned how you fight, and may even figure out how to counteract your tactics, techniques, and procedures. This is stupidity on stilts, and why every single engagement (especially in an insurgency) needs to end in the utter destruction and elimination of the enemy. You do anything else, and you’re actually running a live-fire training exercise for that enemy, and if your operational effect is producing more experienced, more motivated enemy troops? You’ve done screwed the pooch, Clyde.
This is why every element of your forces has to be ready, willing, and able to crush the enemy when the enemy is foolish enough to raise their heads. You don’t blow through an ambush and “continue the mission” the way most of our logistics guys did in Iraq; all that did was serve to offer the enemy a bunch of confidence-building events to encourage their recruits, and afford those recruits live-fire training. If those convoys had stopped, and then enthusiastically engaged those idiots to the death, well… I assure you that enthusiasm for such activities would have dropped off in short order. We never seemed to figure this crap out, because most of the US Army officer corps has tunnel vision, and does not comprehend the big picture in these matters. I mean, you could see the effects if you tracked the insurgent activity in an area over a period of time: They started small, achieved perceived success, and that encouraged bigger and bolder attacks.
Meanwhile, of course, the actual hard-core combat troops were hitting dry hole after dry hole, wondering where the enemy was. Their officers never cottoned on to the fact that the enemy was not stupid enough to engage actual “combat troops”, aaaaand… Yeah. Just work the math for yourself.
Every body in uniform that we bother to transport, feed, and supply in theater needs to be a “combat soldier” with the mentality, fitness, and equipment to carry the fight to the enemy whenever and wherever that enemy makes the mistake of raising their head to engage us… And, those troops need to run that enemy to the ground and utterly destroy them.
Anything else, and you’re just wasting time, money, and human lives.
I am sure I saw the comment here on Forgotten Weapons, but I could not remember who said it. So you get the prize for actually thinking through the situation.
As Cassandra learned the hard way, pointing out the likely predictable outcomes of choices made rarely makes people happy.
Had I chosen to just go along with the program, I suspect I’d have left service at a higher rank than I did. As it was, I effectively sidelined myself through making a nuisance of telling people what I thought about what they were doing.
Not sure if I ever did any good, but I do sleep better at night.