05-15-2011, 05:29 AM
Tony,
For the sake of this discussion, let's say we're only talking about dismounted, Light Infantry operations in terrain similar or equal to the Afghan AOR. The smallest element that a "looking-for-trouble" unit will usually operate in will be a platoon or a Squad + at the minimum. A "Squad +" usually means with a 2-3 man gun team tasked to them and an RTO with a PRC-119 ASIP SINGARS radio. A Squad + in a good unit that knows how to fight its hooahs will send them out with at least one or two DM's if DM's aren't organic to the MTOE, a combat medic, and maybe even a Forward Observer with another -119. Platoons don't usually like letting go of a Squad Leader w/ those PLT and Company-level assets, but let's say that the guys are given a loose leash and they're out conducting a Squad-sized ambush. We've pretty much set them up for a worst-case scenario as far as doctrine goes, because you would preferably like to fight with 3-to-1 odds in your favor. The 9-man squad has now been augmented with 3 guys from the weapon's squad w/240, an FO, an RTO, 2 DM's, and I'll bet the Lieutenant insisted on coming along too. The Squad is now two squads.
So they make chance contact from some well-tuned Muj who have lit them up with the most common thing they like to do in that terrain: the coordinated far ambush with PKM's and RPG's, and maybe an SVD...say from about 300-700m. The Super Squad initiates their Immediate Action Drills and seeks cover behind some boulders or the terrain available. The FO and RTO will immediately be on the -119's calling in the contact and the Fires Officer at Battalion should allocate them the most available and appropriate indirect or Close Air Support assets.
While that game is playing out, the 240 team has gotten into position along with the DM's, SAW gunners, and riflemen, who should be talking with each other at this point. If they are pinned so bad they can't get into position, they simply wait for the CAS, Artillery, or Mortars, while preparing for a possible assault on their position. If they do gain good positions, the guns will start talking, and Team Leaders will control the rate of fire of their SAWs. If any even close to effective small arms fire is raining on the Muj, they will either: 1) ignore it since they fear no death, or...2) run away to fight another day. Maybe they break contact or hold their position and burn through 7.62x54 and RPG rockets until they're tired, then move out.
If a worst-case occurs with the politically-sensitive battlespace managers sitting back in their air-conditioned hangars at Kandahar or Kabul, and all CAS or indirect assets are denied for fear of impacting the desolate ecosystem from whence the Muj have initiated, and a Muj maneuver element is brought into play to assault the Joes in their hasty position, they will have to prep for a close attack. The Patrol leader will keep a certain group oriented towards the Muj Support-by-Fire position, and another group oriented towards the attackers. The 203's will be brought into play at about 400m, and the SAWs will already be plunging controlled busts into the Muj out to 800m in a cone of fire/beaten zone, unless they go down from malfunctions (pretty common with that system).
The DM's engage targets of opportunity and priority, and probably won't start being effective until the Muj assaulters get within 600m, but will have a significantly-increased hit probability at 550m and closer, regardless of whether or not they are using L129A1's, M110's, 5.56 SPR's, or M4's with good optics and 77gr Mk262. There will be very little time to estimate range, but if the guys were doing their jobs and conducting frequent map checks on their en-route rally points and security halts, they should have a good feel to how far the key terrain features are off of their route to within about 75-100m of error.
If the series of worst-case scenarios described stacks up against this small unit, and they are facing an assault, ammunition will count a lot, as in plenty of it. Good leadership and situational awareness combined with a war-fighting spirit, followed by practical marksmanship and small unit tactics will prevail in this encounter. The mix of 5.56 and 7.62 NATO actually are quite well-suited for it. The one caliber/weapon system that would give a major edge to this equation would be the .50 BMG/M107 combo. That could and has convinced the booger-eaters that breaking contact is a better course of action for them.
If I knew in advance that this scenario were to happen to me, I might lean towards having another gun team and at least 4 hooahs with 7.62 auto-loaders like the M110, or 2 M110's and 2 5.56 SPR's, but I would not want to cut my 5.56 guys down drastically since they can carry 2-3 times what the butt fingers will have in an AK chest harness, and my guys will usually be able to carry a 100rd box of 7.62 linked for the gun teams or a 200rd drum for the SAWs when we cross-load during mission prep. Those are two common additional loads to be dumped on riflemen, in addition to other special items of squad equipment.
Now, let's throw the magic switch and say that these guys can have any caliber we want. How about a hypothetical .280 Enfield in match-grade Bullpups with modern metallurgy pushing 7mm Multi-Purpose, barrier-blind, eco-friendly, 2" neck penetration and 90 degree yaw on heated ballistic gelatin with bone simulation, engine-block crumbling projectiles with .6 G1 BC's at 2800 fps, which is way faster than the original cartridge. That cartridge would be awesome for the gun teams, especially for the SAWs and 240's, which could be one platform now, as well as for the larger DM rifles. It would give the reasonably-trained rifleman probably a 50m to maybe 75m increase in hit probability compared to 7.62, and add at least 100m of hit prob to the well-trained DM or sniper.
The rest of my hooahs should most probably NOT have that caliber in their carbines, as it would add significant weight to their loads, and thereby reduce their carrying capacity for basic load and squad equipment. Even a lighter 120gr projectile weighs about twice as much as M855, not counting brass.
The next issue would be logistics, even if we waved a magic wand and converted every minigun, crew-served weapon, and tank coax in the entire NATO inventory, because the longer projectiles with awesome BC's would have a longer bearing surface in the rifling, which would most likely lead to shorter barrel life, unless we nitro-carb'd, but that isn't full-auto rated since it is a 70 rockwell hardness. Which takes us back to square one. Given modern metallic ammunition and the limitations of the technology, we are pushing the threshold of what is practical when all things are considered. The investments we would have to make for a marginally-better caliber don't pay off when compared to what Joe can do with it, and how unnoticeable the advantages would be in actual combat, except for the as-of-yet hypothetical lighter/smaller multirole machinegun.
This is not meant as a discouragement, because there eventually will be a replacement for these calibers, and all the number-crunching will feed into the next proposed solutions, RDT&E, and what is actually fielded to our grandkids. I would like to see my Machine-Gunners get a lighter profile gun and ammo system, with less weight, and equal or better ballistics to the 7.62 NATO with 60% of the recoil or less, with the same or better barrel life for the pipes. The M4/5.56 is an excellent system and only really needs the original fire-control mechanism (AUTO-not for auto, but for the consistent trigger pull), a long free-float tube, and Mk262 for the DM's that use an AR family precision rifle with some basic tune-ups. Giving much more caliber-wise to my riflemen/assaulters will be counter-productive, in my opinion, especially when they need to make their money for the close-in fight. They definitely will not be making predictable 700-900m hits with anything other than a laser gun or the Barrett (with some training that we just can't give to every Joe), that I can promise you, regardless of the enemy situation.
I have a hard enough time making those hits with a .260 Rem pushing match bullets with .5 or higher G1 BC's at over 2850 fps in bad conditions, and that's in my comfy clothing with no real stress, and I've spent the better part of my life shooting on a regular basis, to include long-range shooting with formal training and a lot of time behind spotting scopes in military settings as the norm. Maybe a DARPA unobscopium would be able to project a thermal interpretation of chaos theory and fluid dynamics with regards to doping the wind so I could really be an idiot, but the costs of such an optic/one-station ballistics unit would be wasted on 1st-term grunts who can barely qualify Sharpshooter on a qual range with targets that go out to only 300m. Unless the $50k DARPA optic comes with soldier stabilization and a Predictive Human Error Gun Enabling Turret-Infantry Troop model (PHERGET-IT), the taxpayers will really be wondering what is happening to their money.
So that being said, I still would like to see the caliber and projectile we're talking about, but understand that it should have a limited role to the machineguns, designated marksmen rifles, and intermediate sniper rifles. Carbines and basic riflemen need to have freedom of maneuver, and be able to carry a significant load for their individual weapon, as well as the for the pigs. I just want anyone who is genuinely concerned over this to realize that this is not a caliber issue so much, and any projectile limited by modern metallic cartridge technology that reasonably fits into a soldier's load will not have much positive affect, if any, for a basic rifleman duty position.
Sorry for the rant, just my perspective and fallible opinion.
LRRPF52
For the sake of this discussion, let's say we're only talking about dismounted, Light Infantry operations in terrain similar or equal to the Afghan AOR. The smallest element that a "looking-for-trouble" unit will usually operate in will be a platoon or a Squad + at the minimum. A "Squad +" usually means with a 2-3 man gun team tasked to them and an RTO with a PRC-119 ASIP SINGARS radio. A Squad + in a good unit that knows how to fight its hooahs will send them out with at least one or two DM's if DM's aren't organic to the MTOE, a combat medic, and maybe even a Forward Observer with another -119. Platoons don't usually like letting go of a Squad Leader w/ those PLT and Company-level assets, but let's say that the guys are given a loose leash and they're out conducting a Squad-sized ambush. We've pretty much set them up for a worst-case scenario as far as doctrine goes, because you would preferably like to fight with 3-to-1 odds in your favor. The 9-man squad has now been augmented with 3 guys from the weapon's squad w/240, an FO, an RTO, 2 DM's, and I'll bet the Lieutenant insisted on coming along too. The Squad is now two squads.
So they make chance contact from some well-tuned Muj who have lit them up with the most common thing they like to do in that terrain: the coordinated far ambush with PKM's and RPG's, and maybe an SVD...say from about 300-700m. The Super Squad initiates their Immediate Action Drills and seeks cover behind some boulders or the terrain available. The FO and RTO will immediately be on the -119's calling in the contact and the Fires Officer at Battalion should allocate them the most available and appropriate indirect or Close Air Support assets.
While that game is playing out, the 240 team has gotten into position along with the DM's, SAW gunners, and riflemen, who should be talking with each other at this point. If they are pinned so bad they can't get into position, they simply wait for the CAS, Artillery, or Mortars, while preparing for a possible assault on their position. If they do gain good positions, the guns will start talking, and Team Leaders will control the rate of fire of their SAWs. If any even close to effective small arms fire is raining on the Muj, they will either: 1) ignore it since they fear no death, or...2) run away to fight another day. Maybe they break contact or hold their position and burn through 7.62x54 and RPG rockets until they're tired, then move out.
If a worst-case occurs with the politically-sensitive battlespace managers sitting back in their air-conditioned hangars at Kandahar or Kabul, and all CAS or indirect assets are denied for fear of impacting the desolate ecosystem from whence the Muj have initiated, and a Muj maneuver element is brought into play to assault the Joes in their hasty position, they will have to prep for a close attack. The Patrol leader will keep a certain group oriented towards the Muj Support-by-Fire position, and another group oriented towards the attackers. The 203's will be brought into play at about 400m, and the SAWs will already be plunging controlled busts into the Muj out to 800m in a cone of fire/beaten zone, unless they go down from malfunctions (pretty common with that system).
The DM's engage targets of opportunity and priority, and probably won't start being effective until the Muj assaulters get within 600m, but will have a significantly-increased hit probability at 550m and closer, regardless of whether or not they are using L129A1's, M110's, 5.56 SPR's, or M4's with good optics and 77gr Mk262. There will be very little time to estimate range, but if the guys were doing their jobs and conducting frequent map checks on their en-route rally points and security halts, they should have a good feel to how far the key terrain features are off of their route to within about 75-100m of error.
If the series of worst-case scenarios described stacks up against this small unit, and they are facing an assault, ammunition will count a lot, as in plenty of it. Good leadership and situational awareness combined with a war-fighting spirit, followed by practical marksmanship and small unit tactics will prevail in this encounter. The mix of 5.56 and 7.62 NATO actually are quite well-suited for it. The one caliber/weapon system that would give a major edge to this equation would be the .50 BMG/M107 combo. That could and has convinced the booger-eaters that breaking contact is a better course of action for them.
If I knew in advance that this scenario were to happen to me, I might lean towards having another gun team and at least 4 hooahs with 7.62 auto-loaders like the M110, or 2 M110's and 2 5.56 SPR's, but I would not want to cut my 5.56 guys down drastically since they can carry 2-3 times what the butt fingers will have in an AK chest harness, and my guys will usually be able to carry a 100rd box of 7.62 linked for the gun teams or a 200rd drum for the SAWs when we cross-load during mission prep. Those are two common additional loads to be dumped on riflemen, in addition to other special items of squad equipment.
Now, let's throw the magic switch and say that these guys can have any caliber we want. How about a hypothetical .280 Enfield in match-grade Bullpups with modern metallurgy pushing 7mm Multi-Purpose, barrier-blind, eco-friendly, 2" neck penetration and 90 degree yaw on heated ballistic gelatin with bone simulation, engine-block crumbling projectiles with .6 G1 BC's at 2800 fps, which is way faster than the original cartridge. That cartridge would be awesome for the gun teams, especially for the SAWs and 240's, which could be one platform now, as well as for the larger DM rifles. It would give the reasonably-trained rifleman probably a 50m to maybe 75m increase in hit probability compared to 7.62, and add at least 100m of hit prob to the well-trained DM or sniper.
The rest of my hooahs should most probably NOT have that caliber in their carbines, as it would add significant weight to their loads, and thereby reduce their carrying capacity for basic load and squad equipment. Even a lighter 120gr projectile weighs about twice as much as M855, not counting brass.
The next issue would be logistics, even if we waved a magic wand and converted every minigun, crew-served weapon, and tank coax in the entire NATO inventory, because the longer projectiles with awesome BC's would have a longer bearing surface in the rifling, which would most likely lead to shorter barrel life, unless we nitro-carb'd, but that isn't full-auto rated since it is a 70 rockwell hardness. Which takes us back to square one. Given modern metallic ammunition and the limitations of the technology, we are pushing the threshold of what is practical when all things are considered. The investments we would have to make for a marginally-better caliber don't pay off when compared to what Joe can do with it, and how unnoticeable the advantages would be in actual combat, except for the as-of-yet hypothetical lighter/smaller multirole machinegun.
This is not meant as a discouragement, because there eventually will be a replacement for these calibers, and all the number-crunching will feed into the next proposed solutions, RDT&E, and what is actually fielded to our grandkids. I would like to see my Machine-Gunners get a lighter profile gun and ammo system, with less weight, and equal or better ballistics to the 7.62 NATO with 60% of the recoil or less, with the same or better barrel life for the pipes. The M4/5.56 is an excellent system and only really needs the original fire-control mechanism (AUTO-not for auto, but for the consistent trigger pull), a long free-float tube, and Mk262 for the DM's that use an AR family precision rifle with some basic tune-ups. Giving much more caliber-wise to my riflemen/assaulters will be counter-productive, in my opinion, especially when they need to make their money for the close-in fight. They definitely will not be making predictable 700-900m hits with anything other than a laser gun or the Barrett (with some training that we just can't give to every Joe), that I can promise you, regardless of the enemy situation.
I have a hard enough time making those hits with a .260 Rem pushing match bullets with .5 or higher G1 BC's at over 2850 fps in bad conditions, and that's in my comfy clothing with no real stress, and I've spent the better part of my life shooting on a regular basis, to include long-range shooting with formal training and a lot of time behind spotting scopes in military settings as the norm. Maybe a DARPA unobscopium would be able to project a thermal interpretation of chaos theory and fluid dynamics with regards to doping the wind so I could really be an idiot, but the costs of such an optic/one-station ballistics unit would be wasted on 1st-term grunts who can barely qualify Sharpshooter on a qual range with targets that go out to only 300m. Unless the $50k DARPA optic comes with soldier stabilization and a Predictive Human Error Gun Enabling Turret-Infantry Troop model (PHERGET-IT), the taxpayers will really be wondering what is happening to their money.
So that being said, I still would like to see the caliber and projectile we're talking about, but understand that it should have a limited role to the machineguns, designated marksmen rifles, and intermediate sniper rifles. Carbines and basic riflemen need to have freedom of maneuver, and be able to carry a significant load for their individual weapon, as well as the for the pigs. I just want anyone who is genuinely concerned over this to realize that this is not a caliber issue so much, and any projectile limited by modern metallic cartridge technology that reasonably fits into a soldier's load will not have much positive affect, if any, for a basic rifleman duty position.
Sorry for the rant, just my perspective and fallible opinion.
LRRPF52