US infantry accuracy

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by sunnyside, May 25, 2011.

  1. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    It's not "modern combat" if they were learning about it in the 60's. Get with the times old fella...
     
  2. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    Do individuals with assault rifles still do much supressive fire? Or with so many SAWs in squads do they just leave it to them these days?

    Actually, you seem to be making a pretty solid argument for why they shouldn't do things that way.

    Still though, wasn't basic compressed during nam? Did they have anywhere near the time to cover accurate fire?

    My Dad's stories of getting trained during nam for work as military police paint his firearms training as being very brief.
     
  3. Ethereal

    Ethereal Well-Known Member

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    It depends on the situation. If it's a heavy firefight, they might try to provide some measure of suppressive fire, but normally it's their job to take well-aimed shots.

    Yea, mostly.
     
  4. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    Hmm, since the 7.62, or .308 round I was addressing was the military and NATO standard a few years ago, I was not speaking of the RUSSIAN or AK-7.62 round. The NATO 7.62 has far more penetration than any 223 made. Oh, and as far as handling in close quarters, hmm, you do know they make (for the military and others) a top receiver for the standard m-4 that converts it to 7.62 NATO and is widely accepted in swat teams as well as special purpose military teams. The control-ability of ANY weapon is learned. I have fired the M-14 one handed and hit targets, I have fired it with the butt on my chin and in my groin. The .308 or 7.62 NATO is far better than the 5.56 for anything but number of rounds an individual can carry. However, it, LIKE the 5.56 are not great in civilian swat teams for general usage, since, they both have far too much penetration for urban civilian areas. In a combat zone, when a bullet penetrating the next 5 walls in front of you may even be desired, that can be a good characteristic. However, the stopping power, accurate distance, penetration and all ballistics of the .308 NATO round far exceed anything the 223 is capable of. A 7.62 M-4 design, hmm, I have heard them called AR-10's, would be far more to my liking than anything made in 223. And that includes full auto, burst or single fire. If our fathers and grandfathers could handle the BAR in 30-06 and the M-60 in 7.62, any modern soldier should be able to handle an ergonomic M-4 type 7.62--if accuracy, near and far, were the aim of the military.
     
  5. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    The Army dropped target shooting in the 1950's and went straight to combat shooting at realistic pop-up silhouettes. When I trained in the middle 60's the Army and Marine training was almost identical, except the Marines did 3 more weeks of marching in formation, lol. Oh, they did still use bullseye targets at that time, but not the Army. The training was a standard 8 weeks of basic and then 8 weeks of AIT, advanced individual/infantry training, depending on speciality. Not all in the army got Advanced infantry training, which is a difference, at that time, between the Army and Marines. The Marines are a smaller force, with combat and support duties all combined, while the ARMY is a much larger unit with separate support units. Both concepts work quite well, for some things.
     
  6. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    I guess you were all too busy shooting at the time of the first and second "Iraqi Wars" to watch the imbedded press and their films. It was quite interesting to watch our American Ground-pounders, firing magazine after magazine, at empty space. Several times, they were doing such a great job of burning up the hilside, they had small pallets of ammo moved up beside them, so they could grab, load and burn, grab, load and burn. Seldom was any return fire ever seen-hmm. I am sure this was NOT anything but small groups, with everyone else placing accurate fire on target and getting at worst on kill for every 3 shots. But they did need someone to waste the ammo to run the average per kill up to 20,000 rounds. I guess they just set up fire teams to waste ammo into the desert sand to avoid having to ship it back to the states.
     
  7. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    I thought the BAR was considered and used as an LMG, and an unweildy and heavy one at that.

    If you're only looking for accuracy and power, a .50 beats out the 7.62, and an old 20mm anti-aircraft gun should beat both.

    The point being that at some point the weight, length, recoil, cost etc outweigh the increased advantages of a bigger round.

    If the 5.56 is indeed accurate and fatal at 500 yards, are you neccessarily getting that much more for the weight?

    Also, inertia could come into play. They've already got the guys armed and trained on 5.56 . If they'd decided a while ago to stress accurate fire, it seems like throwing optics on an M-4 as opposed to re-equiping is the sort of thing they might do.
     
  8. IgnoranceisBliss

    IgnoranceisBliss Well-Known Member

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    What? The U.S. military has been using 5.56NATO since the late 60s. What caliber/grain are you talking about? It's been decades, not a few years.

    5.56 NATO shoots at a much higher velocity than many 7.62 variants. The 7.62X51mm found in the M14/M60 likely has more ability to defeat body armor, but not by much. Both are significantly better than the 7.62X39 fired by the Ak-47/74. Stopping power is another difficult issue to differentiate. The 5.56 is known for its yawning and fragmenting, which have actually been shown to cause bigger wound cavities than many 7.62 varities. The only problem was some inconsistencies in ammunition that meant at times rounds fired at close range weren't reaching their terminal velocity. Another issue was hits on extremeties where the bullet didn't have enough flesh to fully fragment. The military has begun improving its ammunition, most notably for special forces, and has apparently solved this problem.

    The BAR was a good weapon for its time, but in today's world is garbage. The BAR weighed about as much as a SAW, but fired tiny magazines and had very heavy ammunition. A modern skilled SAW gunner can easily carry 1000 rounds by himself and probably reload and fire all 5 boxes in under 3 minutes. A BAR gunner would be lucky to carry 1/3 of that and fire it all off in 5 minutes. The M-60 has been replaced by the superior M240 variety (E, B, G, Coax etc.). This machine gun fires the same round as an M-60 so you can't really complain about it.

    Our grandfathers and fathers aren't good comparisons. Soldiers today carry a significantly heavier load out than their forefathers. Weight is a luxury.

    If you can train someone to compensate for the greater recoil of the 7.62 you can train the same person to be even more effective when accounting for the 5.56's recoil.
     
  9. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Bliss wrote: Well-aimed single shots are the name of the game today for riflemen, especially with RCOs. During the battle of Fallujah when the RCOs were first given to Marines there was a big investigation because so many insurgents were found to have been killed by headshots. It turned out the RCOs were responsible.

    Granny says, "Dat's right...

    ... wait till ya see the whites o' their eyes...

    ... den shoot `em `tween the eyes."
    :fart:
     
  10. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    Oh hey, on the note of pouring shots downfield, what's the reset, travel, and trigger weight like when using three round burst mode on a modern M16/M4?

    It seems like in principle you should be able to manage ten pulls in three seconds, allowing you to keep up with the cyclic rate if you wanted to.
     
  11. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    The BAR was a fully automatic rifle firing the 30.06 cartridge. It had a 20 round magazine. and weighed with ammo about 4 pounds less than an empty M-60. It has been called a light machine gun, but it was nothing more than a rifle similar to the M-14 full selective fire versions firing a slightly larger round.

    The Manual for the M-4 says its maximum effective range (which is definded by the military and NATO as being the MAXIMUM distance at which a Point{HUMAN} target can be hit 50% of the time) as 300 meters. The Maximum effective range on an area target (vehicle) is 500 meters. In other words if you can hit the side of a barn with an M-4 your either lucky or hmm, lucky.

    The maximum effective range on a point target with the 7.62 is 650 meters, more than twice that of the 5.56. Oh and at 600 meters the 7.62 delivers 4 times the energy to the target than the 5.56 does at 300 meters. Weight and size mean a whole lot when shooting at longer ranges.

    Once a person is really trained how to shoot, it takes very little to move to a new caliber. When the Army switched from the M-14 to the M-15. we got 3 hours training in assembly and disassembly and 4 20 round magazines to fire at the range and then it was Indian country.

    Optics do not help at ranges where the bullet is ineffective. extremely lightweight bullets are incapable of maintaining as accurate a downrange accuracy as heavier bullets, and the 5.56 ball weighs 60 grams and the 7.62 ball weighs 142 grams. Weight equals stability. Snipers and Match shooters consistently hit 1000 meter targets and farther with the 7.62.

    While the military seems to prefer MORE AND MORE AMMO over and above distance and accuracy, personally I would rather carry a few less rounds that were more accurate and could do more damage at any range, than carrying lots of (basically) 22 caliber ammo.
     
  12. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    Got me, but 20 aimed shots at 600 meters with the M-14 and 7.62x51 ball ammo in 8 seconds was what we tried for and often succeded in making. And this with a semi-auto man-killing recoil, semi-auto weapon (LOL). Oh and that meant aiming and pulling the trigger, recovering from recoil and doing it over again, 20 times in 8 seconds.
     
  13. IgnoranceisBliss

    IgnoranceisBliss Well-Known Member

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    I don't know where you got your 300 meter figure from. I qualified on the rifle range at 500 yards with my M-4. We were taught 550 yards for a point target.
     
  14. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    Maybe that's just the practical difference between iron sights and optics when it comes to how far you can hit 50% of the time?

    http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/m4/m4-study-guide.shtml

    Puts it at 500 meters for a point target, which I suppose rounds to 550 yards.
     
  15. Panzerkampfwagen

    Panzerkampfwagen New Member

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    The BAR was called both an automatic rifle and a light machine gun depending on which model is being talked about so both are correct depending on the model.
     
  16. IgnoranceisBliss

    IgnoranceisBliss Well-Known Member

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  17. wezol

    wezol New Member

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    Yeap, it comes down to training and trigger time, which has greatly improved since the Vietnam war, mostly the training.
     
  18. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    My info came from two separate military manuals on different versions of the M-4.
    By the way, my statement said NOTHING about the distances you trained, it gave a statement about ballistics of the weapon, which is what MER (maximum effective range) is, and it is determined with a weapon LOCKED into a gun vise and fired stationary and determining where the rounds hit. 350 is the maximum range at which the M-4 will REPEATEDLY hit a point/human sized, target. That does NOT mean you were not taught to shoot at 5000 meter targets, it just means that beyond the 350 meters, the accuracy is increasingly worse. The MER is about accuracy of the weapon, not about training distances, it is about ballistics, not about ability. Oh and NEVER forget that at least half the things you during your initial military training are designed to give you confidence, in yourself, your teammates and your equipment. There is nothing that says you cannot shot at a target 1000 meters away with an M-4, but, the chances of hitting it are far less than with any 7.62 variant, including the AR-10 style weapons. Oh and at 600 meters the 7.62 has almost exactly the same energy as the 5.56 at 100 meters. In other words, the 7.62 is 6 times more effective at distance as the 5.56.

    In summary once again, the ONLY advantage the 5.56 really has over the 7.62x51 is the ability to carry more ammunition. it does not have more range, it does not have more stopping power, it does not have more penetration, it is NOT more accurate. Oh, if you consider recoil, which to mean is absolutely meaningless, unless you are firing full auto, then the 5.56 is a winner there. The weak, no power 5.56 will not bruise a babies shoulder (nor does the 7.62x51 for anyone trained in how to use one).
     
  19. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    Yes, you are correct, but the fact remains that no matter what version it was, or what it was called, it was a full auto magazine fed 30.06 with 20 round magazine capability. It was a rifle, it was magazine fed it was fully automatiic. If someone wishes to call it and the M-60 or saw M-249 a light machine gun, they are free to do so, I however can see the differences.
     
  20. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    During basic with the M-14 and its iron sights, we fired at targets said to be 1200 meters away, using the 7.62x51 cartridge. That is NO way says anything about the maximum effective ranges. In fact, I have seen my bullets strike far beyond the 1200 meters they claimed we were shooting at. MER is a scientific bit of data, not just "what we shot at".
     
  21. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    I was able to hit a man sized target 10 times out of 10 with the M-16A1 at 500 meters. And the A1 only had an effective range of 450 meters.

    And in 15 years, I have never used anything other then "iron sights", both the horrible "half wheel-half kentucky windage" of the A1, and the fast adjustable A2.

    Oh, and the optic sights used by the military are not sniper scopes. Most of them are simple reflex sight, which "paints" a red dot on the target (think of it as a virtual laser sight). Unlike the iron sights, they are not adjustable for differing ranges, so are generally "bore sighted" for a specific distance, normally around 200 meters.

    More and more of our servicemembers are being issued these. But "scopes" are still very rare, and require a high amount of training to use effectively (in addition to time, which is normally not available).

    Yeap. I think the problem here is that most of the people are getting their information from Army training manuals and sites.

    The difference between how the two services train and shoot is huge. The Marines are much more interested in accuracy, especially at medium and long range (250 meters and up). The Army is much more interested in firing at short to medium ranges (25 meters to 300 meters). In fact, I often shock soldiers I serve with that the shortest distance I ever shot for qualification was 200 meters (the Marines shoot at 200 meters, 300 meters and 500 meters). The Army shoots at targets from 25 meters to 300 meters.

    To us that served in the Marines, 200 meters was almost "reach out and touch it range". 300 meters was "half way of a challenge". To the Army, 300 meters is "maximum range", and 500 meters is "forget about it".

    Same, both Yards, but much more commonly Meters (500 meters = 546 yards).

    Out of all the ranges I ever qualified on, only one of them was ever set up in yards. That was the one I worked at, at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. That range was constructed in around 1912, and had 200, 300, 500, and 600 yard ranges.

    And yes, quite often we would allow the Marines to shoot at the 600 yard line (548 meters), for "familiarization". I seem to remember the average at that range was around 8 out of 10. Not to shabby for being a hair under the maximum effective range of the weapon.

    Sorry, but the official TM for the M4 (TM 9-1005-319-10) listes the Maximum Effictive Range (Point) as 500 meters, 600 meters for Area target.

    http://www.ar15.com/content/manuals/TM9-1005-319-10.pdf Page 3

    That is a degredation of 50 meters for a point target, and 200 meters for an area target.

    And this is not much of a factor, since as a general rule, soldiers are trained to shoot at targets only within 300 meters, and Marines to shot at targets only within 500 meters.
     
  22. IgnoranceisBliss

    IgnoranceisBliss Well-Known Member

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    See Mushrooms post. Your sources are wrong. I would routinely hit 10 out of 10 targets at 500 yards in the prone with both an M4, M16A2, and M16A4. This wasn't "confidence" training. I appreciate your attempts to discredit me. I shot at these distances during our "advanced" predeployment work up training.

    You're speaking generically of 7.62mm. What grain? An Ak-47 has crap for range beyond 300 yards. It has nothing on the M16/4. The energy of a round also isn't the sole determinant of a rounds ability to penetrate body armor and inflict damage. Tumbling and high velocity rounds have to be considered. Can the NATO 5.56 compete directly with the 7.62X51mm? No, but its not too far off, is significantly lighter, and has much less recoil.

    The fact that you consider recoil "meaningless" shows that you clearly aren't familiar with Infantry combat. Recoil is extremely important during CQB. When firing on the move or firing rapidly during failure to stop drills recoil is vitally important. This is why Special Forces units, with their unlimited funding, almost always use MP5s or M-4s for close range. When you're the entry man on a stack you want to be able to quickly and smoothly put multiple rounds in multiple targets quickly and efficiently. A single 7.62x51mm round to the chest doesn't compare to two 5.56X45mm rounds to the chest and one to the head.
     
  23. IgnoranceisBliss

    IgnoranceisBliss Well-Known Member

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    The Marine Corps uses RCOS today which actually have elevation notches within the sight. You BZO your rifle and then can quickly and efficently adjust for elevation and even windage. Just as my enlistment was ending they began requiring everyone to shoot with their RCOs on the range to give you an idea of just how accurate these RCOs were.
     
  24. sunnyside

    sunnyside Well-Known Member

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    My impression was that it was more of a practical measure for use on the field. i.e. from experiments with actual representative shooters.

    I think occasionally you'll get MOA measures of accuracy done that way (though often those aren't for locked down weapons either). However I think measured that way the maximum effective ranges for the weapons should be notably higher.
     
  25. tomteapack

    tomteapack New Member Past Donor

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    I have addressed everything you said in other posts, but must say again, if you believe that for an infantry soldier that the recoil on the 7.62 military ball ammunition is something that degrades performance it just shows you have had little to no experience with the .308 or anything larger. I own an M-1 Springfield target rifle in 30-06 which has much more "kick" than the 7.62x51 and have no trouble sending 8 rounds down range to a 600 meter target in less than five seconds. Recoil only scares children and women. Every infantryman in US uniform during WW2 fired an M-1 in 30-06 and killed many an enemy, in far more dangerous conditions than that of Vietnam or Iraq/Afghanistan. Mountains, forests and literally hundreds and hundreds of cities towns and villages, with entrenched ARMIES of equally or better equipped soldiers.

    If recoil bothers you it is your problem. I guess I need to take you out to shoot my .444 Marlin lever action some day. With it I can hit an elk at 300 meters twice in one second or less--TRAINING is the key, y9u need to learn how to handle the recoil, and not let it handle you.

    Any soldier going into general combat with an Mp5 is under-gunned. They are great for crash and bash of buildings, but little else. The 9mm is a pistol cartridge. I had no problem firing an m-14 on the move, in rice paddies or when kicking the reeds off a hootch. On the tanks I carried the M-3 but soon got an m-14 to replace it with. A pistol cartridege is for very short ranges and worthless across a couple rice paddies or in serious jungle. When someone is hiding behind a 12 inch tree, and I shoot the tree with an M-14, they go down, when the same target is shot with a 9mm, .45, or even the 5.56, the person behind the tree is perfectly safe. Oh, and since ballistically, the .308/7.62x51 is far more accurate at far more range than the 223/5.56, the odds of a head shot are far greater with the larger cartridge. You can make all the CLAIMS you wish about accuracy and stopping ability, the SCIENTIFIC facts do not support you. What you are claiming as fact is military propaganda.

    The single valid reason for the 223 is more ammo, not more accuracy, not more stopping power and NOT more distance. In every ballistic category except muzzle velocity. Muzzle velocity is great, when using soft or hollow point bullets, but with the full metal jacket in use by the military, all it does it let you punch a tiny hole. No expansion. Oh, you might hit a bone and corkscrew, but even that is not a sure thing except at the longer distances when the bullet is traveling slower. A 22 caliber hunk of metal jacked ammo will punch a tiny hole in a bone at ranges under 200 meters because of its speed. The jacketed 223 has almost NOT expansion cavity (the single greatest cause of damage to a target). While the .308/7.62x51 jacketed ball has a similar problem, its much greater cross-section area does give it a fairly decent expansion cavity.

    As I said earlier, I trained on the M-14 and then had retraining in my first tour in Nam on the M-16. Although the original M-16 had many problems that were later alleviated (barrel twist, buffer system, jamming from dirty ammo) it was a nice little gun, and on LRP'S it was nice to be able to carry a bit more ammo. However we also had people with real weapons in the squads, shotguns, M-60's and M-79's. And we always had at least one person carrying a real battle proven weapon, the most used in the world--SKS/AK-47.

    Personally, I would far rather carry and old AK in 7.62x39 russian than any 5.56 weapon. More durable, bigger bullet, better stopping power, and the ammo is approximately the same size as that used in the M-4 etc.

    Suffice it to say, I am not a fan of the 5.56 for anything but relativly close range varmint shooting. I do not and will never consider it to be a viable military weapon. It is a political project forced on the USA and NATO and to me useless.

    Oh, if you really want a decent forced entry weapon, drop the Mp5 and get a P-90
    Caliber: 5.7x28mm SS190
    Weight: 2.54 kg empty; 3 kg loaded with magazine with 50 rounds
    Lenght: 500 mm
    Barrel lenght: 263 mm
    Rate of fire: 900 rounds per minute
    Magazine capacity: 50 rounds
    Effective range: 200 meters

    It is by far a better design, smaller, lighter, more powerful (will defeat body armor) more accurate, larger magazines. My PS-90, semi-auto is the most easy to handle and capable small arm I have ever fired and I have fired a great many.
     

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