Well said. The SAW supposedly failed too, is there someone screaming that it should be replaced as well?
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Got to digging around on this. Not that Wikipedia is the ultimate source, but compared to the NYT...So here is the address for that article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wanat and more importantly, the military reports: # "AR 15-6 Investigation Findings and Recommendations — Vehicle Patrol Base (VPB) Wanat Complex Attack and Casualties, 13 July 2008" (pdf). United States Army. August 13, 2008. http://www.stripes.com/08/nov08/wanat01.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-11. (Part 1)
# "AR 15-6 Investigation Findings and Recommendations — Vehicle Patrol Base (VPB) Wanat Complex Attack and Casualties, 13 July 2008" (pdf). United States Army. August 13, 2008. http://www.stripes.com/08/nov08/wanat02.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-11. (Part 2)
The upshot seems to be that the base was set in a less than ideal location, undermanned and undersupplied, very recently established, and in VERY hostile country. The process of getting permission to build it took 11 months during which time the local bad guys had all the time in the world to plan an attack. They used the terrain very well, had LOTS of bad guys and LOTS of weaponry. The word $**tstorm comes to mind. All their heavy weapons got taken out early on, and without air support the place would have been a grease spot in short order. Reminiscent of "Zulu".
Doesn't sound like anything mechanical could have been expected to work 100% under those conditions, including small arms. Simple survival was remarkable.
Yeap These are air cooled weapons thats why the SAW has the quick change barrel feature and every other modern GPMG has that feature. Never had the chance to train with the SAW :mad: when I was in service but my best friend trained on the SAW and was a assistant gunner on the 240G he commented on every time the SAW would act up on the training range the fix was to pour generous amounts of CLP in it bingo ran fine until it need more CLP . Funny when you are tought PM for the weapons they stress minimal amount of oil on everything.
Our SAW's ran best when nearly dripping with CLP. If they were lightly lubed (if at all) it probably wouldn't make it through the first belt. They are weapons that LOVE generous application of lube IME. Once lubed they ran very well.
Again most of the failures I saw on mil guns was lube related or lack thereof.
You also have to look at the context of the situation. Not only is "clean and dry" ingrained into people [for inspection purposes]....but I also remember all the BS about VERY light lube to keep dirt and dust from sticking to the weapon. Some tests were done, and even in dusty conditions running the gun wet is best. But people were still doing the whole "dry lube" and light lube thing because that information didn't get distributed well enough. This can wreak havoc on a unit if you have a leader telling all their soldiers to do that as well. You have a squad or platoon's worth of guns improperly lubed and can result in these types of situations with multiple weapon failures during an engagement.
This rough draft was posted on another website, and goes into much detail of the lead-up to the battle, as well as the fight itself. It's a rather long read, but very detailed.
http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/co...draft-release/
Disregard.
Comments on the M4 aside, I've been reading that a loss of intel directly after the gunship attack on a local medical facility contributed to a window of opportunity and motivation for the Taliban.
Conversely, it took 300 Taliban to attempt and fail. As discussed, "weapons failures" may be more overemphasized because, at Cubbison put it, "kinetic" interaction with the population is often prioritized.
The boring dirty work of actually improving and relating to local villagers - the same kind of work missionaries do world wide - is strongly intimated as not being done. Ooops.
Having that exact same difficulty presented to my MP unit the last time I was in the box at Polk stems from (what I speculate as) the same cause - command micromanagement that overrode our SME's. They were fully prepared to engage the population and open channels of communication. As I understand it, the lessons learned and the AAR in that scenario promotes "imbedding" troops - not building segregated targets of opportunity.
If COIN was being improperly executed, don't look to blame being fixed, look to each of us learning better.