FMJ yaw and upset performance

[LRRPF52]

Jason Gillis, a former Army staff sergeant, first witnessed the M855’s shortcomings in 2004 on the streets of Baghdad. He was a squad leader with 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, on patrol when a vehicle began speeding toward his unit.

After several warnings, “both of our M249s opened up instantly, forming a crisscross pattern of tracer that met at the vehicles engine compartment and windshield. Within seconds, riflemen and grenadiers were executing magazine changes while the vehicle kept rolling and finally stopped 10 meters from my lead troops,” Gillis recalled in an e-mail to Army Times. He is now a freelance writer who often focuses on military small-arms issues.

“Assuming the driver was most likely riddled beyond recognition, we were all astounded to see the driver emerge from the vehicle completely unscathed,” Gillis wrote. “Closer inspection revealed that the M855 ammunition had failed to effectively penetrate the vehicle’s windshield despite the fact over 400 rounds were expended at extremely close range and on target.”

That was my Brigade. If I think he is who I think he is, I went to basic training with the guy 10 years before that. It makes sense that we were the same rank, but he must have been in another Battalion. Anyway, it doesn't surprise me at all that his SAW gunners lit up the engine compartment of the car and had no connection with the driver. The M4 and 203 gunners could have been dumping mags in a mad minute at the car all day long, but since they probably were shooting from a kneeling position or standing position in the scenario described for the 1st or 2nd time in their lives, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't getting any driver hits.

You have to realize that at that time, we almost exclusively did marksmanship training from the foxhole supported, or prone unsupported positions. In addition, we would conduct some really lacking CQM (Close Quarters Marksmanship) drills run by people who usually didn't know anything about CQM, unless they had been to SOT while they were back in Ranger Regiment. Even if we did have guys who were subject matter experts in CQM and CQB, the command climate in my battalion was so screwed up that the SME's (Subject Matter Experts) were rarely given the opportunity to cross-pollinate their knowledge and experience in formal training sessions.

Even with the CQM training that I received, being a gun guy, having been through much more marksmanship training in several Scout Sniper Platoons, I couldn't hit the kill zone on a man-size target at less than 75m from a kneeling position with my RAS-equipped M4 during live-fire MOUT exercises, and one of my former Ranger Regiment Team Leaders under me couldn't either. I want to blame the loss of zero or barrel flex associated with the RIS, or something else, but the sad reality is that we didn't ever run marksmanship training that duplicated those scenarios and shooting positions, and practical marksmanship is one of the most perishable skills.

I'm pretty sure we weren't connecting on target effectively because we had the wooden mannequins that were suspended in the houses with 550 gut (the white string within paracord) that was run through a 4" hole and tied to a balloon in the dummy's stomach, wearing BDU's. You lean the target slightly so that a lot of pressure is on the balloon in his or her chest area, so that when a projectile sails through, the target reacts by crumpling to the ground. I have seen instances where during freezing temps, the balloons just don't deflate since they are frozen in their blown-up size, but several more hits will make them collapse enough to slip through the hole and the target will drop at least some.

Another indicator that day in my/our lacking in CQM abilities was that I couldn't even hit a half silhouette target at maybe 15m while moving from the woodline to the first shoot house, and I was supposed to be the leader of my Squad. Reason: I had never trained on shooting moving targets like that with my M4, because we were doing parades, trash pick-up, area beautification, guard duty, and spending more time in starched BDU's and highly-polished jungle boots. I got into USPSA and 3-gun shortly thereafter, and I could make those hits now easily with my pistol, but you see where I'm going with this...

Now ask yourself how many of those Joes had ever shot at a moving target under stress ("You're gonna die if that vehicle gets close enough to you!!!) from alternate shooting positions with IBA on and sleep deprivation. I'll tell you: They probably never did. We occasionally did exercises in the 82nd where these levels of performance were demanded or expected of us, but we had never really done any formalized CQM training to support the building blocks that need to be in-place before we could produce any acceptable levels of individual and collective performance in them.

Another caliber with more recoil and less mag capacity might have gotten them killed in the above-mentioned scenario if the poor driver had actually had a VBIED. My understanding is that there have been some fundamental changes in marksmanship training, the leadership climate, and the underlying culture that created a lot of these problems, but I'm not sure about the 82nd. That unit had some serious leadership issues in the higher echelons that severely limited junior leaders in taking risks or conducting enough realistic training. If you talk to any E-5, E-6, or E-7 who wasn't raised in the 82nd, you'll hear the same thing. The Joes are fresh out of high school, so they are like clay ready to be molded. Most of them are hard-chargers who want to take names and are very patriotic. Some of the officers we had were great leaders who were the same, but most seemed more concerned about their personal careers, were risk-aversive, and were content upon hiding behind the whole airborne mentality that supposedly made us better than our light infantry counterparts in 10th Mountain, 101st, 25th ID, and the few light units in 2nd ID. My experience was that we trained to our METL (Mission Essential Task List) jobs in those light units way more than we did in the 82nd, but were Airborne, you see...

It really came down to the leadership climate at Brigade, Battalion, and Company levels. Some Battalions had a former SF Battalion Commander and a Sergeant Major from CAG. I can tell you right now that those guys trained like it was real around the clock, and had a great time and were quite lethal in OIF1. If you had a non-performer for a BC, a reject for a BN SGM, you were pretty much suckin' when it came to training, unless your Company Commander and 1SG were gifted at conducting good training under battalion's noses, which is not likely. (Try hiding 150 swingin' Joes from the BN weenies...)

You see how this is not a caliber issue though...

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