Just finished a war documentary series called The Fighting Season, which follows 2 divisions of the 18th Airborne Corps: Task Force Spartans of the 10th Mountain Division and Task Force White Devil of the 82nd Airborne. Both divisions are followed during their deployments in Afghanistan back in ~2014. The following are my observations about weapons used in the recorded firefights, as well as some brainstorming on how their loadouts could have been more effective, in an ideal hypothetical situation.
Both divisions were engaged in one major firefight each. Both fights were on open, flat ground with little cover, and both times the Taliban engaged them from very far away. It was difficult for the Americans to identify any enemy targets aside from the occasional muzzle flash, and any rounds that they fired were essentially suppressing fire only since there were no point targets to aim for. During the 82nd Airborne's engagement, one infantrymen tells the mortar specialist that the Taliban's position is 1,700 meters away. That surprised me, considering both sides of the fight were shooting at each other, and it sounded like the Taliban's rounds were getting pretty damn close. Later they recovered some spent PKM casings.
During the 10th Mountain Division's engagement, a comment was made that the 7.62 machine guns were running out of ammo faster than their 5.56 counterparts. They looked to be Mk. 48s.
All riflemen were armed with M4s with standard stocks and grips. There were a couple hand stop kits and angled fore grips being used, other than that they were either Knights foregrips or nothing at all. Oh, or an M320. Occasionally PMAGs were seen. Optics consisted of either ACOGs or CompM3/4s. Every US rifleman had an optic and PEQ-style attachment. The only soldiers using M16s were members of the Afghan National Army, iron sights only. No sound suppressors were used on any weapons.
My first impression when seeing these firefights was man, these guys need more magnification. I didn't see anything with more than 4x the whole documentary. There may have been an EBR at one point. Half the time they didn't know where the enemy fire was coming from, and the other half they were just shooting in that general direction. Many times you'd see both American and Afghani forces shoot bursts where the 2nd through 5th shots clearly sailed over any target they would've been aiming at. A lot of shooting, particularly during the 10th Mountain Division's engagement, was done standing or kneeling, despite the range of the battlefield.
There was also noticeable difficulty communicating down the line due to the cacophony of the gunshots, particularly the machine guns. Many commands had to be repeated.
Service rifle upgrades are incredibly difficult because the modern infantryman may need to use his rifle in any number of situations. For the sake of argument, let's say that these guys would've needed to clear structures in a village the day after their spread-out firefights, but they also wanted to be as capable as possible for what went down in the docuseries. Here are my personal thoughts:
Barrel lengths should be increased to 16-18 inches, with QD muzzle devices and accompanying suppressors. Having an entirely suppressed fireteam would not only conceal their position better during shootouts, but enable a much higher level of communication. Suppressors could be quickly removed for closer urban work. KAC's QDC line comes to mind.
Optics should be switched out for something in the 1-8x range. This is prohibitively expensive (as are cans), but this is hypothetical and I think that with future technological advancements this could be accomplished over time. This would allow better target identification at medium-long range, but would maintain sufficient FOV and speed at close range. The Nightforce NX8 comes to mind.
The distance of these engagements really blew me away. It almost makes you wonder if the divisions would have been more effective with a longer-range weapon. At the very least, I think that they should be using heavier 5.56 rounds like 77 grainers. Their adversaries were not wearing body armor. If the Hague Convention would allow it (or even if it doesn't, since we never signed), the Black Hills 77 TMK comes to mind.
I think that some of them could've benefited from a bipod.
Would've loved to see some Raytheon Pikes being deployed, which would have been PERFECT for those engagement distances.
I'd love to hear from anyone who watched this series or has relevant experience. It was amazing to watch these guys work and I have the utmost respect for them. I also think that we should be arming our soldiers with the most capable weapon systems available on the market.
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Originally Posted by sinister
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