Use code “FORGOTTENRYE10” for 10% off Kyrö Distillery spirits at their web store:
https://kyrodistillery.com/
00:00:20 – Aimpoint offering multi-reticle options?
00:01:55 – Blood lead levels from shooting
00:05:59 – Combining scuba with history and guns
My scuba channel; Deep Dive With Ian: https://www.youtube.com/@DeepDiveWithIan
00:07:51 – Change in rifling twist rate for 5.56mm
00:10:30 – Does liking sights equate to shooting better with them?
00:11:45 – Calico drum reliability video series
00:13:25 – Bin Shih and Pistols of the Warlords
Bin Shih interview: https://youtu.be/SvzEMvy3V84
00:15:05 – Did the Finns get the rk/62 right?
00:18:20 – If I could have one tank what would it be?
00:20:38 – Collectible guns still in original packing material
00:22:34 – My reference book library
00:23:41 – M3 Carbine night vision scope
Legacy Collectibles’ M3 restoration: https://youtu.be/AAhe4pk2Pn8
00:26:54 – What is blocking polymer cased ammo?
00:30:05 – Would an intermediate cartridge prevent SMG development?
00:31:24 – Potential for rail guns and Gauss rifles?
Interview with David Wirth, Gauss rifle & Railgun designer: https://youtu.be/NIl1XmEDdVY
00:34:06 – New parts kits coming in?
00:35:50 – Will we see new primer-actuated designs?
00:37:54 – Lots of okay rifles of a few really good ones?
00:41:19 – Would the M14 still have a bad rep if it had been introduced 10 years earlier?
00:45:06 – Why is 30 rounds the magazine standard?
00:49:27 – Is the Remington Model 51 a locked breech or a delayed blowback?
00:51:48 – What about the 6.8×51 in a GPMG or DMR?
00:54:41 – Which pistol solidified 9×19 as the predominant pistol cartridge?
00:57:29 – Will counter-UAS needs lead to new developments in shotgun design?
00:58:25 – Silenced revolvers instead of slide locks
01:00:19 – How best to practice for Moons Out 2026?
01:02:22 – Is there a market for the exotic high end pistols like the Laugo and Rideout?
01:06:24 – Are my books available in Europe?
01:07:46 – Most influential MG designer: Maxim or Browning?
01:08:48 – Ammunition supply chain in the Old West
“Potential for rail guns(…)?”
Recently Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force has shared new images of a railgun on the test ship JS Asuka. https://interestingengineering.com/military/japan-worlds-first-electromagnetic-railgun
I strongly suspect that a lot of the cut programs like our railgun initiative are going to turn out to have been cut at the behest of Chinese paymasters…
while they simultaneously stole the design work.
Just sayin’…
Rail guns are linear electric motors and suffer from problems with high inrush currents. They also use enormous amount of electricity. The rail gun that was under development for the navy used so much power that the ship could either maneuver or fire the gun but both at the same time. The power requirement for the gun was the same as the propulsion plant. The high inrush produces large amounts of heat and squirming in the feild coils same as any large motor. Rumor was that the gun had to be completely rebuilt after 6 rounds. Because of the heat and squirming most large motors can’t be started more than about once evry 30 minutes or so. Rapid fire on the rail gun would burn it out in short order. Unless you had a large refrigeration plant to cool it and a power plant to operate the chillers.
not both. typing on a cell phone sucks.
The point you’re missing is that there have been a lot of “failed” US projects which were suspiciously cut before completion.
Were those cuts justified? Who the hell knows, but when you see the Japanese or someone else fielding weapons using that same technology, you begin to wonder.
If nothing else, we’d have been wise to keep things ticking over, and close-hold. The history of the US developing crap and then letting others capitalize on it isn’t what I’d term “confidence-inspiring”.
“(…)Why is 30 rounds the magazine standard?(…)”
As already suggested ergonomics, that it to make firing prone convenient. That being said if you put bi-pod of enough size you might use banana magazine holding 40 intermediate rounds like RPK XOR holding 45 small-caliber rounds like RPK-74.
30 rounds was almost too much on the German MaschinenKarabiner series.
It was probably about the best that could practically be accommodated on the AK type.
The 75 round drum, as bulky as it is, at least lets you get down properly behind the bipod.
The saddle drum was and still is probably the least-worst solution.
clear ether
eon
I remain dubious of the proposition that box magazines larger than 30 rounds are either practicable or useful to any real degree, given current cartridge/weapon technology.
The real issue is that the roles where a bigger magazine is necessary are also the roles where you’re wasting time by engaging with something in the individual weapon class, including things like the M27 or RPK. You’re kidding yourself, if you’re thinking that is at all tactically significant.
It’s my opinion that for what we have in terms of technology, the current sweet spot is 30 rounds of an intermediate caliber. Period. No more, no less.
If you want to do a true support weapon role, then you either need an explosive warhead over 40mm, or a belt-fed weapon in an appropriate caliber. Anything else is a waste of time and logistics effort.
Again: Individual weapons are local security tools, only usable for the close-in assault or defense. You want real tactical effect, then you need to be able to deliver lethality quickly over a squad-sized space, and that’s just not on for an individual weapon.
You need to think of all this in terms of how war used to operate, with entire units providing what amounted to organic machinegun fires through the volley fire system. That was effective out past 400m, and that “effective” is not “Yeah, we got him…”, but “Yeah, we got him and all his buddies around him, too…”
Too many people do not really understand how “war” works: You’re not “engaging individual targets”, you’re “engaging units”. Design and purchase an individual weapon that’s optimized for individual targets past 400m, basically issuing a DMR to everyone? You are stupid, wasting time and money, and oblivious to how combat actually works. You don’t “engage individual targets” at that range; you use observation of an individual target in order to deliver mass fires on the likelihood that where you observe one, there are almost certainly “many”. You want to win, you address the “many”, and you do so with a weapon that is an area effect weapon, not a point target weapon…
I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but here we are again. War is not how many people imagine it; it’s an ugly game of mass murder and murder by ambush. If you’re offering a “fair fight”, or trying to avoid indiscriminate slaughter through precision, you’re doing it wrong.
Presuming you want to win, that is.
Probably the most useful adjunct to the MG team is to give the individual soldiers who have the necessary “talent” an underbarrel GL on their IW.
Instead of trying to compete with the MG, just be able to “project” a grenade farther than it can reasonably be thrown.
Something will have to replace the mortar at close to medium range, because drones tend to regard mortar teams as a real taste treat.
clear ether
eon
From the looks of things in Ukraine, even the MG team may be on its way out, due to the inability to overcome the cold logistics of it all.
The Russians are having to resort to successive two-man teams, mostly expendable, in order to get enough firepower up against the Ukrainian lines. Anything with more of a footprint dies before it can get close enough to be effective…
Where this ends? No ‘effin idea. It is entirely possible that we’re witnessing a “false dawn” due to uniquely Russian and Ukrainian incompetence, but on the other hand, this may be a “leading indicator” for where things are going in the future.
You pays your money, you takes your chances…
“(…)dubious of the proposition that box magazines larger than 30 rounds are either practicable or useful to any real degree, given current cartridge/weapon technology.”
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/hnr-t223-manual/ claims that One of the advantages the rifle had at that time was the use of 40-round magazines in addition to 20-round ones. That early in the Vietnam war, M16 rifles were only being supplied with 20-rounders, and 30s were rare and difficult to find. For special forces units, the additional magazine capacity was a definite boon.
The 40 round magazine expedient does not seem to have survived. One surmises this was for a reason. That reason could very well be that as 30 round mags became available they were judged preferable to 40 round and 20 round magazines both.
The “20 round” was actually designed as a 15-round because that was the original RfP from CONARC.
Some smart apple in Ord found that he could cram 20 rounds into it, overstressing the spring. Jams resulted on the last two or three rounds. Soldiers in the field soon learned to load no more than 15-16 rounds.
Next came the “30-round”, actually a 25-round requested by the U.S. Air Force for Air Police. Again, some simpleton at Ord jammed 30 rounds into it, proclaimed it a “30 round magazine”, and everybody else quickly learned not to put more than 25 or 26 rounds into it.
The reason for this nonsense from Ordnance was that since the AK had a 30-round magazine (that actually worked because it was designed as such and built like a crowbar), the M16A1 had to have a matching 30-round magazine, for “morale” reasons.
Sort of the way the M16A1 acquired the Forward Bolt Assist five years after the export model. Not because of the crappy QC on cartridge case dimensions at Lake City, but because “the soldiers need something to ‘push against’ for morale reasons”.
What “the soldiers” really needed, and still need, is for somebody to finally close down “Army Ordnance” once and for all.
clear ether
eon
“What “the soldiers” really needed, and still need, is for somebody to finally close down “Army Ordnance” once and for all.”
I’d say that the real deal is that the Army needs a functioning Ordnance system that wasn’t full of parochial “Not Invented Here” types who do things like prevent purchase of commercially-developed MagPul magazines while simultaneously funding multiple efforts to duplicate what MagPul was doing, but under their control. The anti-tip follower that MagPul came up with for the old aluminum magazine was an exponential improvement, but instead of say, licensing it? They went all-out to ban it, and develop their own version. After literal decades of “non-emphasis” on actually improving the issue magazine…
The problem isn’t the existence of Ordance; it’s how we’ve been running it, and who has been running it. The function still needs to be fulfilled, just done right.
This is part of my frustration with all of it… When the M60 was reaching the end of its useful service life (reasonably, far beyond it…) Ordnance had no program going to replace it; absent the Rangers and Marines doing an end-run around Ordnance to get at the “excess” war stock M240 coaxials, replacing the M60 with the M240 would never have happened.
Arguably, it shouldn’t have. The M240 is way too heavy for ground use, as many of our allies could have testified, had anyone bothered to ask about their experiences.
Also, there’s about zero interest inside Ordnance to actually do useful things, like develop ways to actually deliver long-range MG fire. Instead of looking at the MagPul plastic magazines and going “Gee, that’s a good idea!! Thank you… May we license the design?”, they spent literal millions of dollars to develop competing designs that never went anywhere, while claiming that MagPul stuff didn’t work and doing their best to prevent units from buying their own on the commercial market.
Don’t destroy Ordnance: Fix it. First of all, by bringing in accountability and responsibility. They pull some BS like they did on MagPul and others, the parties involved ought to be dealt with, draconically. As in, prison sentences and loss of pension draconically…
There was a soviet 1970s iirc AK simplification-speedification of production project (very interesting but poorly known in west) that envisioned, again iirc, changing to bigger mag capacity, something like 40, so that they could give out to trooper less magazines, for example instead of 30rds x4, three mags of 40 rds.
Other ideas were of first usage of plastic for furniture, and stamped and welded fcg with some parts missing (one is falsely called rate reducer, as I think rifles were also semi-auto only to conserve ammo).
That is when math gets into scheming of things.
“(…)Silenced revolvers instead of slide locks(…)”
https://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/double-action-revolvers/russia-double-action-revolvers/nagan-obr-1895-eng/ claims [Nagant] M1895 had some unusual and interesting features, one of which was a gas sealed cylinder, which made the Nagant a rare example of a revolver suitable for mounting a silencer. Such a practice was known by NKVD and some Red Army special forces (recon and scouts) during WW2. A special silencer, called a “Bramit device” was designed by the Mitin brothers and could be mounted on the barrel.
The Dan Wesson revolvers with interchangeable barrels came with feeler gauges to adjust barrel/cylinder gap. According to Maj. George Nonte in Pistolsmithing, the minimum gap for a revolver should be .005 inch.
Several Western intelligence agencies used Dan Wesson revolvers in .22 LR and .357 Magnum with special suppressed barrels in the 1980s. Loaded with subsonic ammunition, their sound signature was substantially less than that of an average air gun or CO2 type.
And of course, unlike a self-loader with the slide or bolt locked, or a manual repeater, if a follow-up shot was required, simply pulling the trigger again took care of that.
clear ether
eon
There was also different way to suppress gas-leak revolver Peters PSDR III
https://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/psdr-suppressed-silenced-iii-2/
had suppressor encasing cylinder-barrel gap.
“(…)Will counter-UAS needs lead to new developments in shotgun design?(…)”
Already done. M4 A.I. Drone Guardian 18,5″ https://www.benellidefense.com/product/m4-a-i-drone-guardian-185/ is Featuring a patented system with a larger and longer cone inside the barrel, this shotgun enhances the ability to hit targets at greater distances compared to standard shotguns, providing deeper penetration and destructive capacity. It is effective for engaging targets from 0 to 50 meters (optimal range) and can reach up to 100 meters or more (borderline shots).
As far as changing rifling twists in 5.56 x 45mm, 1:9″ seems to be the best overall, allowing the widest range of bullet weights (from ~40 grains on up to ~110 grains) with acceptable accuracy.
The original 1:12″ only really worked with 50-60 grains (55 grain M193 Ball). The M16A2’s 1:7″ was optimized for heavier ball like M855 or tracer. It never gave acceptable accuracy with any bullet weight under 70 grains.
The quicker twist was also supposed to reduce M193’s tendency to fragment on penetration, for “humanitarian” reasons. That mainly shows that the people making the rules were ignorant of gross physics, at least as far as ballistics goes. The faster the rifling twist, the greater the RPM of the bullet, the greater the mechanical stress on the bullet’s jacket and core at impact, and so the more likely that it will “blow up” on impact, irrespective of its velocity through space at that exact moment.
As in all other sorts of physics, the TANSTAAFL Rule applies.
clear ether
eon
Lethality of .223 and 5.45 was a big talk 30ish years ago.
Was it all a myth?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9c/75/b9/9c75b957c18028a362415b5352402690.jpg
Wound profiles from actual ballistic gelatin tests.
5.45mm wounds about like any of the 7.62s (39 or 51, either one). The bullet does the classic “turns over once and proceeds through backward” maneuver.
(Note that a bullet traveling backward through tissue demonstrates a profile remarkably like that of the hull of a nuclear-powered attack submarine; rounded “nose”, tapered “tail”. Fluid dynamics at work.)
5.56 x 45mm projectiles of standard service type tend to explode after 10-12 cm of penetration. Thereby generating a large avulsion inside the target.
It’s the combination of velocity, bullet construction, and high RPM from rifling. Although it seems that almost any rifling twist gets roughly the same result; 1:12″, 1:7″, or 1:9″.
Probably the only way to prevent this in 5.56 x 45mm would be to use a monolithic-construction bullet of something like phosphor bronze, as are used in some large-caliber long-range cartridges (.408 Cheytac aka 10.36 x 77mm).
And even then, expect odd results.
clear ether
eon
The “lethality” question with regards to both 5.56 and 5.45 is dreadfully lacking in real science. I mean, there’s been some, but… Try to winkle the truth out of sources; they’re all contradictory, just like the first-hand reporting.
My own belief is that there are parts of ballistic science, mostly the ones surrounding this very issue, that are borderline black magic. Mostly because nobody’s bothered doing any real statistical study of actual effect downrange in real combat.
Rangers at Mogadishu were seeing things that we should have been investigating immediately, but nobody listened to them. Some Rangers got excellent results from M855, some did not. Some had great results from the early carbines they were firing, some did not. What was the cause? Were guys who were highly trained and experienced missing a lot, and then failing to call their shots well enough to know they’d missed?
One of the guys I talked to initially used an M16A2, and transitioned to a carbine when his weapon got damaged and he picked up a carbine from a casualty. He reported that the A2 was making kills, and the carbine… Not so much.
The Army never really looked at “lethality” of M855 through the M4-length barrels. Why not? No idea, I just know that it wasn’t really ever tested until late in the GWO(some)T, and then it was full-on panic mode.
They really should have tested M855 through the M4 before they decided to type-standardize it as the basic infantry weapon, but because of the way the M4 became that through “sideloading”, it was never done. And, they ignored the feedback from Somalia, for whatever reason.
My take on the whole thing is that that fact alone, along with “no new GPMG in the pipeline” when the M60 hit the end-of-service-life point should have led to the entire small arms procurement system being taken out behind the barn and getting a .22LR behind the ear.
Metaphorically speaking.
Maybe.
I’d have been up for doing the Blokhin role, if that had meant fixing things…
The reality here is that a lot of this is a black art; the Germans went to great lengths to proclaim that their 7.62 projectiles were far more humane than our evil M193 ammo was… Turns out, that “humane” German ball projectile really, really liked breaking apart in human flesh, producing some really prodigious wound profiles. Friend of mine hunted with that stuff, once: They were picking projectile fragments out of their teeth for a long time with that particular carcass, because the bullet that hit basically blew up like a frag grenade. We did the ballistic gel thing afterwards, and it was spectacular in effect. No idea why that particular lot did that, but it was apparently a pretty consistent thing with that West German loading.
So, yeah: Design for “less lethal”, and get “way more lethal”. At least, on the face of it; I suspect that the “humanitarian” types in the German system got swindled, but who is to say at this late date…
Wheellock firearms were actually used as mass military armament, cavalry used those (mostly pistols, but also carbines) since early 16th to the second half of 17th century.
They were also used by troops guarding artillery, in order not to have matchlocks and their burning match near large quantities of gunpowder.
Also troops escorting the powder wagons in the supply train, for the same reason.
cheers
eon
At 4.38 minutes, you prove (as Ron White said) that your job is better than ours.
Also, as a professional chemist with 40 years experience, I can assure you that there there is no such thing as overstating the hazards of heavy metal exposure. Thank you for setting a good example by wearing gloves, etc.
Would you consider a presentation on the chemical hazards of the firearms trade? it might be really interesting.
For a 140 gr bullet in 16 inch barrel from 277furry we looking at velocity of 3000fps. For 165gr bullet in 24 inch barrel from 308, we looking at velocity of 2700fps. Using a barrel of 25 inch this will increase velocity by about 20fps. The ballistic coefficient of 270 140 gr and 165 gr 308 is similar. With the 277furry you have cartridge of less weight, less winddrift and less drop. Will it be better cartridge for DMR use than 308. Hell yes.
True, but since the same ballistics with 140 to 160 grain bullets are achievable with 7 x 57mm Mauser (1892), 7mm-08 Remington (1980), or for that matter .257 Roberts (1934- you don’t even need the Ackley Improved version), the exact need for .277 Fury is obscure.
Unless of course somebody just wanted to write big fat checks to SiG, which I wouldn’t rule out.
clear ether
eon
3000fps. Mauser 7×57 mm 2800fps, 7mm-08 Remington 2900fps, 257 Roberts 120gr 2875fps. and not from a 16inch barrel. My understanding is that the Army chose the bullet. That is interesting question. Why? Is 6.8 the best choose ? My be not. Is a improvement over 0.308 ? Definitively yes.
Sorry to state, but no amount of juggling powder formulas will get 9 grams of projectile up to that magic 914 M/S in 40.6cm of barrel. 850 M/S is about the best you can hope for, and your barrel steel (or whatever) had better be good, or else you’ll be looking at the .220 Swift Syndrome; barrel leade’ gone after 2,000 rounds, barrel smoothbore for most of its length after 5,000.
Also, a 6.8 x 51mm cartridge is going to require a 7.62 x 51mm- sized platform. Think Knight SR-25 aka MK 11 MOD 0;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-25
No matter how you play with the receiver dimensions, that mag well is going to be 7.62 x 51mm size, so is the upper receiver, so is the bolt system, and in the end the rifle is going to be 7.62 x 51mm weight.
If that was the prime desideratum, a MK 11 MOD 0 carbine with 40.6 cm barrel in 7mm-08 Remington (7 x 51mm) would get the job done just as well;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7mm-08_Remington
But then there would be no huge checks to SiG. And I strongly suspect that the real endgame would not take place.
That being the revolving door doing another spin and somebody in Ord first getting a star on their collar (or maybe a second one), followed by a muster-out into a bespoke suit, and a corner office at SiG with two glass sides, a 12-meter “climbing wall” to pose for photos in front of on the third, and a fourth wall with the door leading to the corridor full of desks rocking twenty-something hottie secretaries in designer business dresses, one of them his very own.
We have too many Col. Freeman Olds’ in uniform, and things like 6.8 x 51mm are a typical result.
(See A Deeper Blue by John Ringo.)
clear ether
eon
6.8×51 mm :
Sierra 140gr Spitzer Boattail (GameKing) 16’barrel
2950fps at 500 yd drop -49.3 inch winddrift 20.2 inch speed 1961fps energy 1195 ft.pds
7-08 remington:
Sierra 140gr Spitzer Boattail (GameKing) 16’barrel
2640fps at 500yd drop -66 inch winddrift 26.2 inch speed 1669fps energy 866ft.pds
You just keep on believing SiG’s sales brochures.
Even with four feet of drop vs five-and-a-half, you ain’t hitting.
Some of us have actually shot at targets that far away.
Fortunately, not ones that could shoot back.
cheers
eon
So what is the real issue with Calico magazine? Is it the magazine design itself or the poor design of the one firearm that can use them? Without a dependable firearm, the magazine can not be given a valid endurance test.
Seems the jury is still out on this one. I don’t know what it would take to modify a more reliable platform for the magazine. But until then, I refuse to get on the helical magazine hate wagon.
The Calico mag is actually about as old as the “box” magazine. See “Evans Repeating Rifle”.
It seems to work fairly well with cartridges that are not much more than 4:1 length-to-beam ratio. With longer cartridges, especially tapered or bottlenecked ones, it tends to sulk.
Manufacturing quality counts, as well. It has to be more precisely made than a typical box magazine.
I often think a future IW could be built around Plastic-Cased Telescoped Ammunition (PCTA), possibly with high-energy liquid monopropellant replacing conventional propellant powders and even H&K style caseless ammunition propellant. With a cartridge that was a simple cylinder or even a trochoid cross section (see “Dardick”), a Calico-type magazine in the comb of the stock, feeding a revolver-breech action, could achieve the supposedly laudable goal of a three-shot burst at a high enough cyclic rate that the last bullet was out the muzzle before the rifle began recoiling noticeably.
And with the magazine right under the cheekpiece, it solves the twin problems of the box magazine sticking down too far on the IW, or sticking up too far on the LMG and requiring the iron sights or etc. to be offset to one side or the other, as in ZB26, Chatellerault, Bren, etc.
The result could look very like one of the Calico weapons.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV4X0Wct0DENVlwx3QpfEfZE9C35qWg8DQByGLbq67YqMQ4I17AN8EqauYRkZSj1joW1VHtG_P-hSCRu_OM3cGSLFrUAM3VPar57qxyCdZ4LQe7EmTfJCGZP3eYKVhpi6HeoPnl6aIjORG/s1600/CalicoM955A.jpg
clear ether
eon
GMTA, eon.
I’ve always thought that the Dardick Tround was the ultimate shape for a caseless weapon, if only they could figure out how to seal the damn breach for firing…
And, couple that with a helical magazine? The idea has its attractions.
Totally unsure about using it as a stock, though. I’d limit that to maybe a bullpup a la the G11 or P90. You do not want the magazine in the stock, because that precludes collapsible stocks, and if you try and make it the stock, then you run into weight/strength tradeoffs.
Until someone does something like we’re apparently both thinking of, I believe that the 30-round box magazine is the sweet spot for conventional cartridges. Along with what we think of as the “conventional layout”.
The HK G11 sort of affair awaits innumerable materials technology fixes, and likely won’t happen for some considerable length of time. We may well be on to directed energy weapons, by then.
The Calico folding stock “collapses” about as far as the slider on the AR, relatively speaking. I feel about “folding stocks” about the way I feel about bullpups; kludgy attempts to correct wrong-headed initial designs of other things, mostly vehicles and protective vests.
The more things that slide/fold/swivel/go wakawakading to “correct” something fundamentally related to ergonomics and internal vehicle volumes, the more f**ked up the final result will be.
No, I never thought the sliding stock on M3 or the folding one on M1A1 was a particularly great idea. Neither did my uncles who experienced both in 1944-45.
cheers
eon
Same reason we don’t have round houses or cars. Their advocates passionately explain how structurally superior round shapes are, without stopping to consider how inferior they are at being houses or cars.
Any round object occupies a certain length and width, while wasting the corners. A box magazine mostly fills its length and width, with the only wasted volume being, ironically, space outside the round cartridges. Most round magazines also need to spend a large volume in the middle for a rotor. A 50rd Calico magazine occupies about the same volume as five 25rd Uzi mags.
Hurricane house 1930s;
https://popperfont.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/xlg_hurricane_house_0.jpg?w=640
If it was livable, I’m sure there would be a lot of them along the Atlantic coast, to say nothing of Tornado Alley.
Actually, I’d say it would be sort of like living in a very large tank turret with a central junction that would require data center level maintenance just on the “electrics”- even back then.
cheers
eon
Eon,
Cool find, as always! I’ll get my realtor looking for one immediately!
Kirk,
Sure, in that one, ultimate-strawman case (essentially infinite, but valueless steppe land) round houses would be perrrfect!
The rest of us own finite, area-[over]priced mostly rectangular lots; build of inherently rectangular materials, and fill homes with mostly rectangular goods. A yurt utilizes pi/4 of its dimensional footprint. When you fill it with rectangular furniture and appliances, each will trap a crescent of unusable area against the walls, making usable area more like half.
Math applies equally in every environment. Different people are free to fet!shize cultural subjectivities above facts and logic, but they seem to stop right around the time they recognize the foundations of a decent standard of living.
Apparently, reading comprehension is hard, for some people.
Did you not read where I clearly said “optimized for mission and environment”, or did you just breeze past that to answer your need for the smug last word, in order to bolster your own obvious inability to understand clear English?
The “need” to accommodate interior furnishings optimized for rectangular layout is an “installed base” problem, not anything relating to structural inferiority or superiority; the design vernacular we have is centered on dimensional lumber and easy construction; the 4X8 sheet of plywood is modern America’s tatami mat, along with dimensional lumber scaled to work with it, although that relationship is chronologically backwards: Balloon framing came first, historically.
The level of idiocy on display with your post is manifest; you build with what you have, because that’s what you have. You don’t build wattle-and-daub on the high plains of North America because the necessities for that aren’t present; the vernacular on the plains is that of the sod dugout or adobe, given that about all you have absent railways is just enough wood to build rooves and doorways. Said “soddies” were often free-form, and difficult to adapt to the things brought West with the settlers, who were coming from areas where brick and dimensional lumber were prevalent. Still, they adapted; the home of my great-grandparents in Colorado was an adapted modernized “soddie” with massively thick earthen walls and rounded interior features that appeared totally incongruous to the modern eye, yet which still adapted to available furnishings quite well.
As I said: Optimized for environment. If you build your home out of flammable sticks, and your neighbor goes for ICF, don’t be really surprised to find out theirs is still standing after the inevitable fire roars through your canyon along the California coast. He adapted; you did not. Likewise, if you insist on building something nice and square, with plenty of little catch-points for the wind, don’t be real surprised when your shit blows away along the Atlantic or Caribbean coast, while your neighbors who were smart enough to realize that faked-up English Tudor was a stupid idea and who then built nicely rounded and aerodynamic properties that could shrug off hurricane-force winds and flooding, still have their homes whilst your own is scattered over most of two counties as scrap.
Horses for courses doesn’t only apply to horse racing: It’s everywhere. Build to the environment, and deal with the implications thereof. If you like rebuilding every few decades, then by all means, put up your stupid wood-frame homes where they’re entirely inappropriate, and just deal with the consequences. Which include not demanding that the rest of the country pay for said rebuilding through taxes or higher insurance premiums.
Plywood is less permanent than materials favored in Europe – but Europeans also build rectangular. So do modern Asians, Coloradans, Caribbean islanders, and (with the exception of a handful of eccentrics too rich to care about efficiency) moderns everywhere.
Certain furniture and appliances were unique to the West. Then they were adopted by everyone who wants to live a non-shiddy standard of living.
But sure – your disagreement with the universals of math and modern construction is just a “reading comprehension issue” and torrent of other ad hominem unique to me. Speaking of reading comprehension, I acknowledged the structural superiority of round shapes in my first comment, while noting that it tends to be less important than other factors.
You started it. Don’t be surprised when someone else responds in kind, and don’t play the insulted ingenue when that response hurts your widdle feelings.
I’m long past suffering impolite idiocies from people whose grasp on the word-term concept “debate” is non-existent.
In other words, you could have made your childish quibble of a point politely, and chose not to. Tough shit.
While my comments weren’t flattering towards the idea of living in opposition to objective reality, every one was impersonally directed against arguments – practical, factual, and mostly mathematical in nature.
We do square houses because they’re easier and cheaper to build, not because they’re “better” for some considerations.
Mongols lived happily in yurts for centuries; in some environments and use-cases, they’re superior to things like the cart affairs that traditional tinkers lived out of, for the nomadic lifestyle.
There is no one universal intrinsically superior design for anything; there is just “optimized for mission and environment”. What suits here doesn’t necessarily suit over there…
I am with Ian on saying new shotgun ammo will be needed, rather than new shotgun designs.
My issue with shotguns in and anti-drone role is that the shot starts to spread out as it leaves the barrel. This limits the effective range to put enough shot in a small enough area to do damage to a drone at longer distances. Yes, as Daweo points out, there is a new shotgun design that keeps the shot better clustered together, but the effective range still seems a bit short.
What I am wondering is shotgun ammo that works like the flak charges of WW II anti-aircraft rounds. Have a way to delay the spreading out of the shot for the time needed for the still intact payload to reach a distance/height of a further away drone. Maybe a time delayed charge that waits a bit to ignite and then scatters the shot?
Everything old is gonna be new again…
What’s really needed is the equivalent of a LAW for anti-drone defense. Something expendable that you can carry as a part of your combat load, and which you can easily deploy in order to take out a pursuing drone.
Shotguns aren’t likely to be the solution, although you might make use of something like a shotgun shell.
I’m thinking that what you probably need is something that’ll basically be an aerial Claymore mine, optimized for anti-drone work. Put it in a tube, fire it towards the drone, and when it gets within range, it detonates.
I’ve been wondering, too, why they don’t integrate Claymore mines into their fixed drone defenses… If a drone gets in close, let the mine detonate and take it out.
We’re really in need of some handy portable fusing solutions, based on Raspberry Pi or Arduino technology, which can be linked to some polyvalent munitions. What I’d envision would be a bunch of small charges up in the trees, which could be detonated in order to deal with drones approaching your defenses. You’d need a lot of them, but at least there’d be something you could do before the damn drones are in your fighting positions with you.
I gotta say… From my standpoint as a combat engineer, there are a lot of really sloppy field fortifications that I’ve seen on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides of all this mess. As well as piss-poor field discipline, and very little in the way of innovative adaptability. I don’t think that any other army in the world would have fought this war quite the way these two parties have, and that a lot of the dysfunction is due to hanging on to the old Soviet/Russian tradition of mass over quality and care for the troops. Only the Russians could do what they’ve been doing to their troops, and still be able to fight. It’s like watching a shambling zombie in real life, TBH.
And, it’s been like that since day one, back in 2022. All those videos of the air assault on Hostomel, the convoys going into Ukraine from Belarus, all of that. Zero demonstrated field discipline; convoy procedures amateurish, and on and on. Frankly, if you’d have told me we would still be discussing this conflict today, I’d have called you a liar; to my eye, there was no way the Russians could sustain things.
And, they haven’t. They’re down to making assaults with motorcycles and Mad Max improvised vehicles, no tanks, no IFV systems in sight. It’s bizarre, and disturbing to the eye.
Like I said… Anyone else, this would be a different war. Countermeasures to the drone problem are available, and could be implemented. I’d go for small networked Claymore mines as part of my fixed defenses, for example… You could probably do something similar on a portable basis with your own drones; have a swarm of them providing cover as you moved, and just make damn sure that your software didn’t fire it towards your own guys.
Frankly, what they really need is a little warhead that drops free, seeks out the the direction of the drone, and then detonates so that you don’t lose the launcher drone. Kinda like the SADARM munitions, but for drones, not tanks.
We may be back to those nasty little claymorettes on vehicles, maybe on the upper corners of the hull aimed up at a 45 degree angle so as not to hit dismounts when the automatic drone defense fires them off.
On the topic of IFVs, I’ve recently concluded that not only the idea but even the layout is older than we thought. Check this out;
https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2015-09/1441698055_vikkers-medium-mk-11-razrez.jpg
and
https://tankmuseumshop.org/cdn/shop/files/TANK065_PRINT_MOCKUP.jpg?v=1742815816&width=1214
Vickers Medium MK II, circa 1925-34
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Medium_Mark_II
Every basic feature of a typical modern Infantry Fighting Vehicle is right there.
Rear door- check.
Fuel tank in rear- check.
Firing ports right and left (here inhabited by Vickers MGs)- check.
Driver next to front-mounted engine under heavily-sloped glacis plate- check.
Commander up in fully-rotating turret with (hopefully) effective anti-tank gun (47mm in this case)- check.
Although not shown here, smoke dischargers were common even then.
I strongly suspect that everything that’s wrong about modern IFVs began with this critter.
cheers
eon
Problem with single-use anti-drone protections is that there’s no single drone.
IE, one of those Russian barn-tank modifications had been hit by over 60 drones before being disabled (modifications had made it exceptionally sturdy, but reduced its mobility so much that the Ukrainans had the time to hit it over 60 times before he could do anything useful).
That’s why they need to be cheap, plentiful, and ubiquitous on the battlefield.
I don’t know what the actual solution to drones is going to be, but I do know that there’s been no weapon in the course of history that hasn’t had an eventual counter, and that the cycle between “New, game-changing weapon that changes everything…” and “Yeah, no biggie, we’ll just do this, that, and this other thing as a counter…” is speeding up.
A few centuries ago, something on the scale of the Sagger ATGM system would have reigned supreme for a generation or two on the battlefield; the Israelis were finding effective countermeasures before the 1973 war was even over. There are a lot of other examples, some of which never actually made it to war.
Hell, in Ukraine alone, the Russian AA systems were supposed to render aerial attacks impossible. What actually happened? Drones are striking thermal power plants in the Moscow region…
One of the main reasons you don’t want to start a war these days comes down to this: You’re risking disruption of your entire military system every time you do it. The biggest effect on Russia isn’t going to be the casualties or the equipment losses, although those are mind-bogglingly huge, but the follow-on effects as they have to deal with the fact that their entire military paradigm has been discredited. Who the hell is going to be buying Russian weapons, now? Who is going to be seeking out their advice? Who will rely on them for security?
The Ukrainian war has destabilized all that BS; observe Armenia now that the Russians have had to acknowledge they can’t do a damn thing for them… The entire security/diplomatic situation across Central Asia is basically blown, something that Russia is going to be paying for for generations to come.
Putin will go down in history as the worst thing that ever happened to Russia after the fall of the Soviet empire. Hell, he may even manage to eclipse the Soviets in terms of “…and then, things got worse…”, the inevitable theme of any period in Russian history.
Weapons have lifespans of dominance; the trick is to recognize when they’ve had their day, and work around that. Cavalry was effectively dead as a major weapon of decision with the advent of the machinegun, which was basically distilled infantry firepower. Cavalry held on, for a few more decades, in terms of usefulness, but where it was still effective were peripheral parts of the conflicts.
The thing to bear in mind is that WWI, with all of its slaughter and horror, could only have happened at that specific historical moment. A decade earlier, no Haber-Bosch process, no munitions. Germany would have been blockaded into submission sometime in 1915. They were that bad at stockpiling nitrates; as it was, the capture of significant stocks of nitrates on the docks of Antwerp were the only things carrying them through until they got large-scale Haber-Bosch processes running.
Had WWI happened a few short years later, when mechanization had taken off, along with portable radios? Oi. Imagine the way the war would have looked, had von Kluck had decent truck transportation to supply his troops there on the outer edges of the sickle? What if they’d had decent radios, plus better aircraft? How lethal would French artillery have been, with air-to-ground radio communications and all the rest of it…?
Any other period aside from the last half of the 1910s, WWI would have been a much different, likely much shorter war that killed far fewer people. As it was, it was the perfect technological storm, in terms of turning it all into a charnel house.
So, too will the conflict in Ukraine be seen, once we’ve enough information about things to make these same sorts of judgments. At the time, nobody was looking at things in these terms; the Germans did not, for example, make the calculation that truck transportation was improving, and that if they merely waited a few years, they’d have all the logistic enablers in place to actually make the Schlieffen Plan work.
Be patient; the drone thing is but a passing moment in things. Where it will go, and what the solutions are we cannot yet say, but something will come along. That’s how the history works, if you pay attention.
@ Kirk
It seems that manufacturers are betting on automated turrets, laser of kinetic. See the Slinger, already used in Ukraine, or the Bullfrog. It makes sense, since they can deal with at least small swarms, and the cost per kill will be negligible (Bullfrog manufacturer claims $10 per drone killed).
@Dogwalker,
They seem to be looking that way, but if you squint your eyes, you can already see the outlines of how those CIWS weapons will be countered: They rely on point sensor systems with signatures, so what you’ll have as a first counter to the counter will be itty-bitty HARM weaponry that will address the problem of CIWS with active sensors… Explosively.
I think where they’re inevitably going to wind up is “drone swarms with distributed sensor networks” such that finding the sensor emitters themselves will be very difficult and taking out one or two nodes will be ineffective. You’re basically going to have to wander the battlefields with your own drone swarms surrounding you, serving as defense, sensors, and offensive capability all on their own.
I suspect that a lot of the actual “soldier mission” remaining to future human-type soldiers is going to be maintaining said drone swarms while doing command and control thereof. The odds are that the infantry squad will wind up becoming what amounts to local security for the drone operators, and their primary mission will be carrying replacement drones and/or reloading them with munitions. The whole thing is just going to get extremely convoluted and really intensely focused on keeping drones in operation while trying to get close enough in that you can overcome at least some of the countermeasures.
Expect that the fiber-optic control systems are going to be hacked/countermeasured at some point, likely in order to find where the control nodes are located, and then we’ll be back to electronic spectrum for command/control, until the fiber-optic systems get countermeasures designed in… ad infinitum…
Where the hell it will pause, and what it will look like once equilibrium is met? Ya got me. I have this feeling that a lot of what we’re talking about here in terms of small arms may well be tactically irrelevant beyond historical interest, because the drone situation is only going to keep getting more and more complex and effective; we’re currently about where firearms were, back when the transition between matchlock and flintlock were taking place. Drones are just effective enough to start centering units on, and we ought to be looking at that and how we’ll likely be moving forward.
What I find interesting is that we’ve yet to see actual optimized drone-carrying vehicles serving as base-stations and command posts for the drone swarms on the front line. You would think that such a thing would be featured, already, but… Nope. Not sure why; a ready-made mobile command post/launch point/maintenance/rearming vehicle strikes me as something we should already be seeing. Think a tactical version of those cargo containers the Ukrainians used to launch the drones that attacked all the strategic air bases deep inside Russia, and imagine a vehicle designed and dedicated to doing that same task on a tactical level. Something you could operate remotely, drive up close to the lines where it’s hard for troops to operate, and then serve as a command/control/logistics node for your drones. Not to mention, a forward AD site.
Of course, there are a lot of things that the Ukrainians don’t have the resources to do, and which the Russians don’t have the imagination or capacity to execute on, due to rampant internal corruption.
Sorry, 16, not 60.
As for magazine capacity, someone should maybe research what kind of round dimensions and taper (or no taper??) would get you a sweet spot for 40 or 45ish capacity, in other words designing a round not around the ballistics but around best possible feeding out of this über-30 (banana) magazine.
Why on God’s green earth would you prioritize something as irrelevant as magazine capacity over ballistics?
I can cram tons of .22LR into a magazine. Does that make a .22LR better than anything with lower potential capacity?
Case design for “better magazine fit” is absolutely not a priority. It’s a consideration, but nothing you’d warp the entire weapon design around.
The reality here is that you need to first figure a bunch of things out, then design: How do you intend to fight? That’s the first damn thing. If you’re not going to be using your infantry for close-in battle in restrictive terrain, then who cares about magazine capacity? It makes no difference; if you’re not going to worry about full-auto capacity in the individual weapon, again… Who cares about magazine capacity?
There are so many other things to be concerned with before you start designing for magazine capacity that it’s not even funny. Little details like “Should my cartridge have a strong taper, to make extraction easier…?” and “Yeah, we’ve got tons of tooling for making cases with this base diameter, so let’s go with that…” play into the whole decision-making process.
Like I said: It’s a consideration, not something to emphasize for your design.
Yes, even 6.8 x 51mm has the same case head as 7.62 x 51mm, .30-06, 7.65 x 53mm, 7.9 x 57mm, and of course 7 x 57mm. Not to mention most of the ballistic “clones” of the latter.
People have been looking at that .471 to .475in diameter case head with various headstamps since 1889. (7.65 x 53mm was introduced three years before 7 x 57mm.)
Why?
That’s what everybody’s machinery is set up to manufacture.
Some people define 6.5 x 55mm (Swedish) Mauser as “strange”. Because its base/rim diameter is .480in exactly and it has a different case taper than most proprietary Mauser cartridges.
It does feed better in self-loading actions, especially belt-fed ones. Whether that was a consideration when it was adopted, nobody really knows. Norway stuck to it long after everybody else, even having FN MAGs in 6.5 x 55mm when everyone else was happy with 7.62 x 51mm. But then, like Sweden, that’s what their industry was set up to make.
There probably isn’t a single “optimum” case profile, head size, or etc. in rifle cartridges. Or pistol cartridges, for that matter. It was just coincidental that .223 Remington or etc. has just the right case head dimensions and wall thickness to make really sturdy 9 x 23mm pistol cases, hence Cooper’s “Super 9” if you remember that one, and the later 9 x 23 Winchester.
Maybe while we’re debating new rifle rounds for “taking back the infantry half-kilometer”, maybe we should be asking why we’re still using essentially 135-year-old cartridge designs.
clear ether
eon
Even the .264 LICC, that started as .264 USA with 11.41mm X 48mm (shortened Carcano case), ended up with 11.96mm X 43mm (shortened .308 Winchester case).
And that cartridge has a stainless steel two piece case, so that was not realisitcally due to reusing existing tools (maybe they were thinking to civilian sales?).
At the time I was precisely thinking if it wouldn’t have been better to use the 10.7mm base .30 Remington as a parent case (so obtaining a longer 6.8 Remington SPC), exactly to have a more compact magazine, even if at the cost of a slightly longer receiver.
500 yd is 457 m or 1500 ft. The bullet drop for 338 Lapua magnum at 500 yd is -43.3 inch. Lapua magnum is used up to 1500 m. The bullet drop for 168 gr 308 is -60.1. All are zerode at 100 yd. With a SVD sniper rifle ( with by todays standards is more of markmens rifle ), you have a 50% probability of hitting a standing, man-sized target at 800m (875yd), and an 80% probability of hitting a standing, man-sized target at 500m (547yd). You provide me no reason not to believe SIG.
.338 Lapua rifles generally have lead-computing telescopic sights up to 20X magnification with built-in Bullet Drop Compensators. They are essentially computerized sight systems similar to those used on MBTs’ main armament.
One sight costs more than four average infantry rifles.
If you believe that procurement (or the holders of the purse strings) will give every infantryman a rifle/sight combination in the same price range of a dedicated scout/sniper’s weapon, I can’t help you.
Furthermore, remember that sales brochure statistics are mainly intended to sell the product. When it fails to measure up in the field (as it inevitably does), the manufacturer’s excuses start coming thick and fast.
“You were not in optimum conditions.”
“You had it improperly calibrated.”
“You were using the wrong ammunition.”
“You had the wrong app installed.”
“You weren’t holding your mouth right.”
“Our equipment is perfect. You are just too stupid to use it correctly.”
And on and on and on.
Nobody wants to admit that, just as in the “civilian sector”, marketing geniuses make wildly inaccurate and unrealistic claims for the product. And the customers line up to buy because they are either (1) too carried away by the glamour of the claims (common among government officials and wannabee generals who want their names on the project) or (2) actual end-users desperately hoping that this one time the sales department is telling something somewhere close to the truth.
The people in category (2) are invariably disappointed.
The people in category (1) simply don’t give a fuck. They got theirs up front, the money and the promotions; to Hell with everybody and everything else.
And yes, they count on people who just read statistics in sales brochures to cover their asses.
clear ether
eon
eon has this exactly right.
You are not going to compensate for your poor marksmanship training with some uber-sight. That does not work, and adding in the complexities of the uber-sight likely means that instead of multiplying your effectiveness, you’ve actually drastically lowered it.
Something like the ACOG or the M68 red dots are just fine; they hit that sweet spot to where you can have experienced cadres help the soldier dial in the sights, while also being dirt simple to use. Even if the idjit in question has forgotten how to use the ranging features of most ACOG reticles, they’re still able to use the 4X optic to get better-than-iron-sight results.
You get above the complexity level of those sights, and you’re in the arena labeled “diminishing returns” and “You thought this would work?” Average soldier and Marine never used the complicated rear sights on the A2-series rifles; there’s no time to be doing that under fire, and if you’re in a position to where you need to use the features of those sights, odds are you f*cked up pretty badly along the line, and don’t have MG support to really plaster where you’re taking fire from.
It’s a mentality-of-combat thing: The individual weapon is the king of the close-quarter fight. The sights need to be simple, effective, and rugged enough to where you could use the empty rifle as an impromptu club, beat several people to death with it, and then reload and still have the sights aligned…
The individual weapon is not for playing Carlos Hathcock; that job isn’t for the general-issue rifleman. That job should properly be answered, in the majority of tactical situations, by machinegun fire. Why? Because, again, the whole idea of modern war is wholesale slaughter. You just shoot the one guy you see, you’re missing out on the opportunity to eliminate all of his friends and family that are likely doing a better job of hiding out there at 800m… You don’t want to miss that opportunity.
Assuming, of course, that you really and truly want to win.
Something I’m starting to think the US military isn’t actually all that interested in.
I’d like to propose a counter-question: Why aren’t we debating the how and why of what actually went in to losing that “infantry half-kilometer” in the first place? Not to mention, the “infantry kilometer” and “infantry kilometer-and-a-half”?
Precisely none of those things are due to individual weapons or their characteristics. The M16/M4 is as lethal today as it was during Vietnam, within its limitations which are inside that “infantry half-kilometer”. The real issue isn’t the weapon, per se, but the fact that most of our leadership has no idea how the hell you actually fight an infantry-centric battle in the first damn place.
A weapons-free Afghanistan or Iraq would have been a far different battlefield, and one that we’d have arguably done a lot better on, because the enemy would have evaporated like a water droplet on a hot griddle, in the face of modern American combined arms. The real problems we had stemmed from austere supply conditions (self-inflicted, BTW…) and restrictive ROE. So long as the idjit class insisted on fighting small arms battles with our hands quite literally tied behind our backs, then the outcome was what it was going to be, with all the predictable side-effects thereof.
We did not “lose” the supposed “infantry half-kilometer” so much as we ceded it to the enemy. Like dumbasses. Similarly to how we’ve lost all our conflicts over the last few diabolically delusional generations.
Most of the “overmatch” issue, which is in and of itself another bit of spectacular idiocy in terms of ideation, stems from an inability to comprehend how you actually effectively fight in modern war. It ain’t about “eliminating point targets” out past around 300m, it’s about eliminating the enemy in job lots through entirely unfair processes that the enemy cannot match; you drop a barrage of MG and mortar fire on locations where you detect one enemy combatant, such that you eliminate said combatant and, more importantly, all of his friends. You do not “play nice” by sniping his ass as an individual; you murder all of his friends and family while you’re at it. Anything else is just wasting your time.
“Overmatch” is basically an admission that we forgot how to do long-range effective MG fires, and we couldn’t be arsed to re-learn how. As well, nobody wanted to tell the lawyers and politicians to piss off, and that requiring PID and point-target individual target service was a waste of time likely to result in a tactical/operational loss.
Ya wanna know why we had problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan? We never, ever closed the kill loop: Every single engagement we did, we failed to run every single enemy combatant to ground and kill them. We weren’t running a war so much as we were running a training event… For the enemy.
You want to know how you win a counter-insurgency? You kill ALL of the insurgents, such that when someone goes out into the villages and tries to recruit, all the people in them say “Yeah, not so much… We’ve already played that game, and nobody came back, so you can piss off…”
The fact that we lost a counter-insurgency in, of all places, Afghanistan? It’s nuts; there should have been almost no way to evade properly deployed recon assets such that we caught every participant in every raid on our forces. We just didn’t, because again, lawyers and politicians recoiled from what was necessary, namely killing a whole bunch of people.
You can see where “restraint” got us, along with poor tactical/operational thought. “Overmatch” ceases to exist once you properly deploy MG fire along with mortars, but our MG training and doctrine were so inept that it seemed as if nobody could answer insurgent fires effectively. Which was so much BS; the gear to do it was never issued, and the training…? Never conducted.
Wars run by lawyers and “activists” are generally losing propositions.
As Tom Clancy once observed re Somalia, they want to bring the enemy into the fold to “help resolve the issues” when the enemy is mostly responsible for the existence of the “issues” to begin with.
We should probably deploy our “social justice warriors” and their “quality of life advisor teams” first.
After the enemy has captured them all, gang-raped them, eviscerated them while alive, beheaded them, and posted their phone-video “Look What We Did!” brags on YT, then maybe we can get down to the business of actually winning the war.
As in;
1. Never send a rifleman to do a machine-gun team’s job.
2. Never task an MG team to do artillery’s job.
3. Never task arty to do air support’s job.
4. Never use conventional munitions to do a nuke’s job.
There is no such thing as “proportionate response” if you actually want to end the war and win it.
Something we seem to have lost since 1945.
cheers
eon
Kirk,
We’ve discussed it around traumatic “fall of Kabul”, but problems with wars in middle East is that the countries where US tried to install its own views of government and way of life, they are culturally and religiously completely opposite of anything in the so called west, and only way they could yield good results if the whole population of these unfortunate hellholes being replaced for example, with 20 milion americans shipped from US. Which is of course, ludicrous option.
They could be run for some time solely on money as you always will find 10-20% of “quislings” inside that would play up with the new system, but once money starts drying up (and usual US taxpaxer that is not a carefree rich man and works more hours then these cozy middle easteners, also always has legitimate question: why should he finance such BS?), even these fellas revert to their usual culture and modus vivendi.
@eon: Again, GMTA.
@Storm,
See, here’s the issue with what you’re saying, which is that you’re addressing a totally different proposition than am I. I am not discussing the politics or the culture of the country Afghanistan; I’m telling you how we fought it improperly at a tactical and operational level.
Getting involved there was very much a Dien Bien Phu sort of thing… At the time, I was highly dubious of the entire proposition, and felt that “Afghanistan” should have been “Pakistan burnt down to bedrock”, because the problems in Afghan-land were purely due to the machinations of the Pakistani ISI. As such, the center of gravity was not in Kabul, but in Abbottabad and somewhat less in Karachi.
Do remember where we finally found bin Laden, won’t you?
Politically and sensibly, both Afghanistan and Iraq should have been far more “Saudi Arabia and Pakistan”, because those two asshole nations are who were behind the curtains for 9/11. Salutary lessons should have been delivered, and reparations taken. Had I been in charge, I’d have quite happily delivered ultimatums for the delivery of bin Laden and his boys, plus all the worthies in the Saudi Arabian government that erased the traces of the “Jihadi Trail” on the passports of the hijackers, and then vetted them for the State Department. Saudi Arabia collectively betrayed our trust, and should have paid the headsman’s price. Along with our putative ally Pakistan, which should have gotten all their military aid in the form of Arc Light strikes from Diego Garcia.
George Bush thought he’d pull an international ju-jitsu move, and take away Pakistan’s toy, plus screwing the Saudis over by planting an Arab democracy right next door. Didn’t, and probably couldn’t have, work out.
International politics like we saw on display in both campaigns can’t work when you have someone who has a really unrealistic understanding of the potentials involved; the most military action in either Iraq or Afghanistan were ever going to get us was “punitive expedition”, and if either campaign was deemed necessary, that’s all it should have been. Trying to “fix” either so-called “nation” when the participants aren’t interested or capable of modern civilized conduct? LOL… Yeah. It should have been a pair of short, sharp homicidal examples, followed by departure after leaving an epic trail of outright destruction such that it would be remembered for millennia: “Remember when we pissed off the Americans, and they destroyed everything in the country…?” “Uhmmm… Yeah…” “Let’s not do that again, shall we? Ever?”
All four involved countries should have been left in a state to where they would look back on the Mongols fondly as a better alternative.
That’s if you are not A-OK with wasting human life egregiously, the way our leadership in the United States is. They behave as though they have an endless supply of idiots like me, who will do as they are told, in hopes that something good and decent will come out of it. This time.
Frankly, I’m just sad I ever fell for the “No More Vietnams” bullshit, and trusted the assholes not to waste the lives of my fellow soldiers. They weren’t trustworthy, at any level above about Major.
What is a XM157 sight ? My understanding is every soldier is going to get one.
What is the M157 optic…? Something that I suspect is going to get a lot of soldiers killed, dead.
Overly complex, overly priced, and I’m dubious of the benefit to be gained from it. Just like I’m dubious of the various “magnifier” setups on red dot sights. The issue here is that the Army, in its infinite wisdom, has totally misunderstood the role of the individual weapon in combat.
It’s more like “skeet shooting” more than anything else; the individual weapon should have a role to where the user is constantly on guard, observing and taking whatever point shots are presented. By nature, they’re going to be fleeting observations, and the shooter has to be able to bring his weapon to bear and fire quickly enough to kill. This is why the red dot was such an advance… And, why things like the M157, which actively militate against “simplicity” and rapid reaction shots, are antiethical to the mission of the individual weapon.
Yet again, the delusional fools have heard the siren song of “individual weapons are for engaging point targets past 300-400m, we must give them sights for that…”, and here we are. The actual reality is that the majority of the time, inside the appropriate range band, being able to make rapid shots accurately and effectively trumps everything.
The only way that you might want to actually go to something as complex as the M157 is if you were to somehow network the damn things so as to effectively share targeting and observation information across the squad. That ain’t happening any time soon, so… You’d really be much better off with a rugged red dot that was sturdy and simple, making those rapid shots easier to make and more likely to connect.
I really don’t even like the M157 for the MG role, either… It ought to be periscopic, and capable of getting the gunners head down from the line-of-sight plane. Not to mention, also be capable of accepting targeting data from external sources like the MG team leader’s rangefinding optic.
Description:
The XM157 system is a ruggedized fire control that increases accuracy and lethality for the Close Combat Force. It integrates a number of advanced technologies, including a variable magnification optic, backup etched reticle, laser rangefinder, ballistic
calculator, atmospheric sensor suite, compass, Intra-Soldier Wireless, visible and infrared aiming lasers, and a digital display overlay
And, while you’re trying to get all that to work for you, someone is going to slip up behind you and brain your ass with a large rock…
I’ve talked to guys who’ve gotten time on those sights. Much of the stuff on them doesn’t actually work, and the rest is nested behind so many menus and control options that you’re probably going to die of old age before you get the right setting for what you want to do.
Overly-complex was the kindest thing any of them said. Especially the network stuff, which apparently nobody has ever seen working right.
Multiplicity of options translates into time lost. The rifleman here is put in the position of the kid plunked down at a Baskin- Robinson counter. He might’very been here fifty times before but 100+ flavors is 100+ flavors. Add in the whole hot and hungry Sixth Grade class behind him and things could get ugly
Robert Heinlein had a line in Starship Troopers that I’ve always found rather on-point in these matters:
In the novel, the character Dillinger states: “If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier”
This applies to nearly everything related to war and the military. Another wit said something to the effect that any plan which could not be summarized and drawn out on a ration carton was probably too complex to really succeed, and was likely doomed to failure. As well, anything which required three things to happen or go right, out of the control of the people doing the planning, was equally doomed to failure. Two things? Maybe… One? Certainly.
Complexity is the enemy of success. In any endeavor.
e should have stayed with with Springfield trapdoors. Optics is to complicated….
You seem to love hyperbole.
The Trapdoor was a disaster that was more dangerous to its user than it was to the Indians. The simpler and safer Snider was turned down because the guy responsible for the trapdoor, Erskine Allin, ran Springfield.
Jacob Snider took his breechloader to England, and the British used it right alongside the Martini-Henry in their reserves until WW1. (Hell, POW guards were still using Sniders converted to shotguns in Canada in WW2.)
Allin ended up getting the Army sued by Hiram Berdan’s widow for copying her husband’s Berdan I rifle action without paying royalties.
The Trapdoor also mainly prevented anybody “Over Here” from adopting a bolt-action repeater from 1867 to 1891. And we ended up with the Krag, which was definitely a second-or-third choice. (One locking lug. Weak action. Accuracy best defined as “better than a Brown Bess but not much”.)
The only exception? The Marines got the Remington-Lee .45-70, the forerunner of the SMLE 0.303in, because nobody else was smart enough to realize that it was the best bolt-action repeater around until the Mauser 96 and 98 came along.
Then Ordnance tried to get away with an unlicensed copy of the 98, the Springfield 1903, and got slapped with a big fat lawsuit. $100,000 sounds like pocket change today, but in 1904 that was equivalent to about three-quarters of a billion bucks in 2025 money.
The Ordnance Story is one of internal empire-building, missed opportunities, and a total lack of interest in the needs of the soldiers on the part of the Ordnance Board.
The Board was mainly interested in self-promotion. It’s not a coincidence that when somebody further up the ladder realized that “something needs to be done or we’re fucked”, the result was a program outside of the Ordnance Board. (See “Westervelt Board” re 105mm gun/howitzer.)
About the only smart way to do it is the way most other armies do it. Write a Request for Proposal (RfP), hand it to half-a-dozen manufacturers, and see what happens.
U.S. Ordnance is more prone to writing an RfP with impossible parameters, and when nobody antes up, adopting their in-house gadget they wanted all along. Once more proving in their own minds that they are brilliant, and everybody else is just too stupid to understand them.
Lose a war? Who cares?
The Ordnance Empire Remains Inviolate.
clear ether
eon
Hard realities of infantry combat. Verified by multiple observations since WWI.
90% of rifle exchanges happen at less than 100m distance.
99% of rifle exchanges happens at less than 300m distance.
About 5000 ammo are spent for any actual wound inflicted to an enemy.
In 90% of possible battlefields, a soldier is not able to spot an enemy standing in broad daylight at 300m distance, because there’s something between them.
So what this, or any other super-duper sight, is bringing to real life combat over a 1.5 magnification night sight (because, since human eyes have problems in the dark, night sights are really the first improvement over metallic sights)?
Little, really.
Much of ammo in combat are fired without even seeing the enemy and, at realistic combat distances (dictated by the fact that soldiers don’t fight on a euclidean plane without obstacles) even metallic sights are accurate enough to rapidly acquire and hit a human-sized target.
With one exception.
If fragmentation anti-drone bullets like the one Ukrainians have recently homologated, become standard, a predictor sight for drone flights can be handy.
https://uklandpower.com/2017/11/29/the-case-for-a-new-military-calibre
A clarification on that article.
“engagement” is not “rifle exchange”. The weapon in 7.62×54 mm Russian those western soldiers were targeted with in Afghanistan was a PK machine-gun. And the way you respond to machine-gun fire is with another machine-gun, or a mortar. Not with a rifle.
The facts are as you state…
The issue is that the idjit class that runs procurement is delusional about those facts, and fails to comprehend that the real utility in the individual weapon is not engaging targets out much past 300m, but in doing the close-in defense and offense which basically requires a weapon that’s more geared towards rapid snap-shots and fast follow-up shots. In other words, the individual weapon is more a skeet shooting shotgun, and the real killing out past the close-in range band is something you leave up to the purpose-built killers, the machine guns and mortars.
Or, at least, this has been the case up until the current drone situation eventuated. Now? Who the hell knows, but I am pretty sure that the same reality of “close in killing” for the entire individual weapon raison d’être is probably still in effect…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6nob-XOBt0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5YWXrZdNpA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8fQEjWC9eU
Eon
Thanks for the history lesson. I could have started with a musket, but I wanted to see the reaction with the trapdoor. Clearly you missed the point. Is a musket more complex than a rifle? Yes. Is smokeless more complicated than black powder? Yes. Is repeating more complex than a single shot? Yes. Is automatic more complex? Yes. Is the P-51 Mustang more complex than a Sopworth Camel ? Is F-16 more complex than P-51? The problem is not complicated. It is added utility. Is Garand better than a musket ?
6×2=12. I can do that without using a pocket calculator. 63×23. That is going to tax my head-calculating capability and I will be better served by using a pocket calculator. A calculator will provide me with a more accurate and quicker answer. A pocket calculator changes me into a math savant. A red dot sigh on a pistol is more complicated. Will this add to shooting distances of less than 7 yards? Probably not. But does it extend my capability to engage targets at longer distances? Yes. Users find this benefit more useful than the extra complication.
If 90% of the engagement range is less than 100m, the military will be better served by a submachine gun or the modern equivalent, like HK MP7 or FN P90. If 99% of engagement is less than 300m, carrying a machine gun tripod is utterly useless exercise. That U need to take up with Kirk. Is that 300 or 350 m? 350 m! That is beyond our job description. Let’s brew tea. Maybe you should convince a self-serving ordinance officer that MP 7 is a good idea and promise him a job at HK or somewhere in Ceylon.
When the Germans started WWII, they used a 37mm ant-tank gun. They ended the war with a 127mm gun. Could a normal infantryman move it 37 mm ant-tank gun? Yes. By the end of the war, you needed a tractor to move an ant-tank gun. Why? The tank armor evolved, becoming thicker. Can 5.56x45mm defeat level 4 body amour ? Only in your dreams. That is the nature of things. Thicker armor, bigger bullets. Unless you want to equip each soldier with a TOW missile. Is that level 3 or 4 body armor? 4! Let’s brew tea.
To range a target. A soldier must first put the target-ranging reticle on the target. Then estimate the distance to the target. Then work out the offset he has to hold. With the xm157 scope, he presses a little button and viola, the distance is calculated, and a dot appears on the scope to where the soldier should be holding the scope. The Xm157 scope turns the average soldier into a ballistic savant. But instead, you can always provide tea.
The point that you’re missing, Lallie, is that putting a device like the M157 on top of the individual weapon is as senseless as putting a tripod on a submachinegun.
The role of the infantry individual weapon is not “provide effective long range fires”, it’s “close-in defense or assault”. For that, the complicated heavy sight is an actual detriment.
Individual weapons are basically skeet shotguns. They have to be light, handy, and quickly accurate. That precludes some complicated BS that just adds weight and whose functions will never, ever be effectively used by the average combatant. It’s the modern equivalent of slapping the M16A2 rear sight onto the rifles, a totally extraneous and excess weight of both mechanism and doctrine.
The freakin’ Marines and the acolytes of the “individual rifleman” in the Army have never quite gotten the entire assault rifle idea right in their heads. They still think they’re fighting a war where the individual rifleman matters, and the reality is that “No, no they do not… They’re important, but their real importance lies in keeping the other weapons systems like the MG team and radio operator in business, not killing the enemy like mini-snipers at 700m…”
This inability to distinguish reality from fantasy is very much the equivalent of the old horse cavalry proponents during the days of WWI and into the 1930s: Combat reality has shifted, and the winds of war are taking us far, far away from fantasy-land.
Make the M157 a periscopic sight, get the gunner’s head below the barrel-line, and then maybe you’ve got something worth the money. Until then, this is a waste of time that’s actually going to reduce “rifleman effectiveness” in that below-300m range band.
What is a ACOG ? Why do the Marines have one for every rifle and carbine in the Marine Corps inventory? What is AK-12? Why change over from AK-74?