KISS rifle Mandatory Upgrades/Mods

[Jay Cunningham]

Wow, now I see why Katar hates this subject.

Indeed.

[Treehopr]

...if you're stationary using a good white light with a good shoulder mount of the weapon firing at a stationary target, the irons can indeed be used quite easily.

It becomes significantly more difficult if you are shooting on the move with a less than ideal cheek weld on the weapon as you may be in a CQB type scenario. There are a number of trainers out there who worked as assaulters in Tier 1 units for a number of years...doing CQB at the highest possible level...who regard red dot sights as a mandatory upgrade.
This would be a clue as to their importance and utility in real life.

I wasn't arguing the value of RDS over irons, I was commenting on the value of the tritium post if the shooter has a white light.

Basing all your TTP's off of what Tier 1 units is flawed since they can also use NOD's and IR lasers which may be at best prohibitively expensive or inacessible for most civilians.

[Treehopr]

There are lots of situations where you will be able to see your target where standard sights will not be visible or will not be fast to pick up. Such as when the target is back light and you are in a dark area. Weapon lights are great but you should only use then to ID your target. If you know where your target is using a light will only give away your position. Also tritium sights and red dots are a lot faster to pick up. There may be situations where you can still see your sights but due to the low light they are very slow to use vs an optic or tritium that stands out against the target area.
Pat

Alaskapopo,

Thanks for pointing out the back light effect, I hadn't considered it.

Understood that tritium and RDS are faster to pick up.

We may be thinking of different scenarios. For myself, if I'm pointing in on a target I will either already be able to identify using ambient light or will need to illuminate with a white light.

In that case either the RDS or the irons will be on target- I have an XS tritium stripe on one of my AR's and have never had a need for it with the Surefire and Aimpoint mounted.

[John_Wayne777]

Basing all your TTP's off of what Tier 1 units is flawed since they can also use NOD's and IR lasers which may be at best prohibitively expensive or inacessible for most civilians.

Whereas NV is prohibitively expensive and useful only in certain limited circumstances, a good RDS is fairly affordable and useful under any circumstance where you have to take a shot....except when someone is wearing NV gear that prevents getting a decent view through the red dot.

The Tier 1 guys started using the RDS for reasons that ANYONE who might need to make a shot when it counts will share.

[Alaskapopo]

I have never seen a chart categorizing fighting units as tier 1, 2 and 3 and so on and so forth. Who came up with this and what are the criteria.

[zushwa]

I have never seen a chart categorizing fighting units as tier 1, 2 and 3 and so on and so forth. Who came up with this and what are the criteria.

That's probably worth another thread. It also isn't something that should (although often is) be talked about on an open forum.

Briefly, Tier 1 units are the very tip of the spear, funded and commanded from outside the normal channels, and missions and existence should be classified.

Tier 2 units are SOF that have some, but not all of the above characteristics.

All other tiers, if there is such an animal, are known SOF (also called vanilla or white SOF) units.

Since I'm not, or have never been any of the above I'm sure more knowledgeable and pertinent members will chime in. I'm just trying to give a brief synopsis of the tiering usage.

As to this thread, I'm reminded of the old saying "if we were intended to fly, God would have given us wings....". There are some opinions here that have such a legacy mentality that I'm surprised we aren't talking about typewriters and telegraphs.

Just because the AR15 platform doesn't come with a white light, an RDS, and a good sling doesn't mean they aren't force multipliers. They SHOULD be standard equipment. All three of those items have proven themselves (obviously some brands better than others) and give the ability to ANY shooter to FIGHT BETTER.

Buy a quality sling, a quality RDS and a quality white light (and batteries ), put them on a quality AR15, shoot quality ammo, and seek as much quality training as possible. Sounds pretty simple to me.

[KevinB]

SOF tierings

Tier 1 units have a CT/HR role in National Level of Importance (NLI) incidents. They are not necassrily black covert.

Tier 2 units support Tier 1 unit - which gets confused this days and age as a lot of the TF's get 'spliced'

Tier 3 'vanilla' SOF are the rest.


There are 6 accepted Tier1 units in the world.
1 SFOD-D
DevGru
22SAS
JTF-2
SASR
GSG-9/KSK (they have an odd mission split relationship)

FBI HRT is excluded as they are an LE element (while the GSG9 is too I did not come up with the definitions or the inclussion.)

[Robb Jensen]

Kevin where would you rank the 3 branches of the SAD?

[rob_s]

The more this thread gets rehashed here and elsewhere, the more I think that we actually succeeded pretty well in answering the OP's question. He asked for "rifle Mandatory Upgrades/Mods". If you throw out the buzzwords that offend so many, and the outliers on either end (the parade sling, iron sights crowd on one and and the bi-pod, FF rail, laser crowd on the other) you'll find that the vast majority of posts actually have a lot of overlap and consensus.

QUALITY carbine (6920, BCM, DD, Noveske, LMT, KAC, etc.)
Light (Surefire)
Red Dot Optic (Aimpoint)
Sling (VTAC or VCAS)

THOSE are the basis of what make up the Mandatory Upgrades/Mods IMHO, and can be thought of as M4C-KISS rather than the "retro" or "legacy" less-capable guns.

[Treehopr]

SOF tierings

Tier 1 units have a CT/HR role in National Level of Importance (NLI) incidents. They are not necassrily black covert.

Tier 2 units support Tier 1 unit - which gets confused this days and age as a lot of the TF's get 'spliced'

Tier 3 'vanilla' SOF are the rest.


There are 6 accepted Tier1 units in the world.
1 SFOD-D
DevGru
22SAS
JTF-2
SASR
GSG-9/KSK (they have an odd mission split relationship)

FBI HRT is excluded as they are an LE element (while the GSG9 is too I did not come up with the definitions or the inclussion.)

KevinB- thanks for posting that, I've not seen that listing before.

FWIW- I took a class with some FBI SWAT guys and they defined their "Tiers" as

Tier 1- HRT
Tier 2- I forget the terminology but larger field offices such as NYC or WFO with more manning (roughly 4x larger than a local FBI SWAT team) IIRC
Tier 3- Local office

Tiers 2 and 3 were part time teams while HRT was obviously a full time team.