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Thread: Weapon failures failed for US troops death

  1. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by John_Wayne777 View Post
    What AK? Firing what ammo? How was it maintained? How was it lubed?

    There is a persistent belief out there that the AK is somehow magical and immune to maintenance requirements, impervious to QC issues, and unconcerned with what it is fed simply because it is an "AK". Nothing could be further from the truth. If you talk to the guys who have spent time in the sandbox (especially working with the locals) they will tell you that they've encountered plenty of AK's that don't run.

    Any individual specimen may handle it just fine or may choke like a politician trying to tell the truth depending on a number of factors. It's impossible to say.

    What can be said with relative certainty is that there's no assault rifle on earth that can do mag dump after mag dump without encountering a problem sooner or later.
    I was in no way trying to indicate that I thought it would be impervious to malfunction, in fact I was thinking the opposite, that it too would fail. So for the sake of this discussion, let's say an average AK from a decent manufacturer that was shooting military issue bulk ammo, and hadn't been properly maintained by it's owner.

    edited to add:

    I was posting the question as a potential counter study to all of the hype that this story has gotten. I was thinking that since everyone thinks the AK is the "super gun", that it would provide a good platform to show that ANY gun if treated wrong will malfunction. For example what about a SIG, or a SCAR? Would it fail after 360 full auto rounds in less then half an hour?
    Last edited by Mac5.56; 10-13-09 at 21:40.

  2. #82
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    Anyone who claims that the AK is a Wunderwaffe has never worked on them. They can be a PITA to work on as well. And when the ejector goes, then so does the entire receiver unless you have someone who can skillfullly remove and weld another in place.

    I had AK's from at least 7 different countries and multiple variations on my last contract so I have seen a few.
    Last edited by Iraqgunz; 10-13-09 at 23:14.



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    The point is that the M4 will run easily 360 rds in 30 min, if it does not it is an operator issue - being that it is either not lubed correctly (and somewhat cleaned) or defective/worn parts should be cleaned.
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  4. #84
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    Quote Originally Posted by The_Katar View Post
    Sam posting the article for information purposes is just fine. Speculating on the actual fight that occurred and the role that the M4 carbine and other US issued weapons played is pretty pointless without first hand or trusted second-hand info.
    Here is a link to the actual Army report. More info than you can read in one sitting here, especially in the recomendations part. http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/co...draft-release/

    Quote Originally Posted by westcoastfrog View Post
    AW fire does not automatically mean "spray and pray". Just because every round doesn't hit an actual human being doesn't mean it doesn't have a critical role on the battlefield. Having been on the receiving and sending side i can say that AW fire is absolutely an effective/essential tool in a firefight. I would question anybody's tactical experience and knowledge that couldn't see the advantages of having AW support in any fight whether that fight be in the mountains or in the house (yes, AW's are used in the house and work). agree or disagree....just my two cents.
    I absolutely agree. Keeping the other guy's head down while your fire team makes a rush forward is essential. AW fire is absolutely necessary in an actual force on force encounter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bat Guano View Post
    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.
    As a military historian, I have done a lot of work on the Korean War, and this sounds a hell of a lot like the fights our boys were in in the stalemate phase of Korea, isolated in an OP, surrounded by enemy, and then all hell breaks loose. Some questions that the full report almost assuredly address are: why wasn't artillery fire sighted in to enclose the Army's fortifications in a wall of steel? Or if it was, why was this not effective? Why were fu-gas and claymore's not set up to repel an assault? If they were, what went wrong and how did the enemy get past these defenses? What about barbed wire? In other words, the Army has numerous resources that should have been in place to keep an enemy mostly armed with small arms and mortars from being able to make an overwhelming assault. I am sure the report addresses these issues in more detail and explains why such measures were either: not employed, or did not work. So to blame everything on smallarms failures begs a much larger question.

    Quote Originally Posted by rharris2163 View Post
    The overall problem is a lack of continuity in training and combat experience. Experienced NCOs and Officers, rotate out, and new, inexperienced ones, take there place. Lessons Learned, are not documented and stored in a historical file with most units. Which the objective is to learn all that was gained from past mistakes on deployments, on every issue, from training to maintenance. Some of the units I was in, had files going back greater than 15 years. There was everything on how to plan, what resource you will need on a particular mission, how to plan and conduct two gun raids, night aeriel gunnery, etc... Our AAR were known as "shootouts", due to every unit member had a say in what part of that mission went right or wrong and how it went right or wrong. A lot of folks got butt hurt, but everything was recorded, to be placed in historical records to be past down.
    Outstanding job in your units. I wish all units did that.

    Quote Originally Posted by DMR View Post
    Kevin you and several others havepointed out some good issues. For some reason I spent about four hours last night looking into some issues that I thought related not only to this contact, but OEF in general. I've been out of country for what five years now, but from all the photo and video eviadance I see a few things have not changed.

    1. Weapons Station SOPs. First SOP's should include those gallon jugs at every weapon station on the FOB, MG's in particular. When the weapons start to act up dump lube on them and things usualy smooth out. Ammo storage. I can't count how many times I found belts of ammo that had been exposed for so long the belts were rusty or dirty. Ammo needs to be rotated and cleaned often. Ammo in fixed sites should be stored in ammo cans. We would link our 7.62 in to long belts and stow them like that in the cans in the positions. 203 rounds also were bunkered in the firing positions.

    2. Fire Suppression capablities on the FOB's is lacking. I had traced out a few concepts based off of the old TPU tanks, but you could do it with a blivet to. Bottom line the FOB's need some way to fight a fire if they have one from a TIC such as this.

    3. Plunging fires vs. grazing fires. Defense in the mountains is VERY differant then defense in the open. In 95% of all situations you will use plunging fires to engage your enemies. Extreme elevation changes that are often required are not well supported by either the M-192, M-3 or M-122A1 tripods. We often only used our M-240s off the bipod, because we could not get the tripods set up well enough to cover the sector. "Mountain" tripods, the rebirth of the old anti-aircraft tripods, mounting M-66 ring mounts on some sort of hard stand or something like the FN Medium Boat Pintle would assist with returning fire on super elevated targets from a FOB. Free gunning a M-2 or MK-19 at max elevation and max range from a M-1152 isn't going to end a fight.


    4. I see video on the new it seems every night showing soldiers and marines in the defense on FOB's engaging targets with the m-249 from the standing position. It's unclear how far away the targets are, but it appairs safe to safe that they are outside 100m. The beaten zone for a 249 fired off hand at a Talib hiding by a rock is preety full of large holes at 100m for the average gunner. From video you can't deduct the reason for the shot being taken in such a manner. Underlying reasons can be as simple as poor positoning of firiing positions. Fighting positions being to shallow and the shelf to narrow to get a good firing position. Target of oppertunity, ect. I keep coming back to construction of the firing positions though. HESCO bastions while solid and simple cause many issues when attempting to depress to engage targets and with construction. Every one we recieved was either to tall or too short to make a good firing position. In all but the oddest terrian grazing fire is impossible from a weapon mounted on a HESCO. While at Baghram we had some high speed conex fighting positions and the shelf was too narrow to mount a tripod.

    Of course all of these observations are from the safety of retirement. Of the 4 observations I make, only one cound have been easily dealt with by a PL/PSG or even a BN Commander.

    It would be nice to see if SinnFéinM1911, Riverine and some of the SME's down range could comment on these aspects, at least so I don't loose another five hours sleep working on a info paper that will most likely take 3 years to see an outcome.
    Your point about plunging fire is right on. When firing down or up hill you have to compensate, especially firing downhill you have to aim low. I'm not sure how much elevation had a role in the Wanat fight, however. As for suppressing fire, how about some quad fifties? Or even just a few tanks? of course, hindsight is 20 20. There may have been all kinds of tactical and operational reasons why things were not set up what we would consider ideal for defense, not least of which is the thin allocation of resources to OPs, and training, which has already been mentioned.

    Quote Originally Posted by armakraut View Post
    It wouldn't be a terrible idea to design and issue a piston upper for the AR that functioned a bit more like an AK (IE BCG rides way different), nor would it be a terrible idea to start buying magazines like the P-mag or E-mag instead of the standard aluminum ones.

    The problem with putting a well engineered piston upper on an AR is that it's going to raise the receivers height by .25-.5 inches.
    You mean like the Magpul Masada? It's not a dedicated upper for an AR, but it does use some existing AR components.

    Quote Originally Posted by John_Wayne777 View Post
    What AK? Firing what ammo? How was it maintained? How was it lubed?

    There is a persistent belief out there that the AK is somehow magical and immune to maintenance requirements, impervious to QC issues, and unconcerned with what it is fed simply because it is an "AK". Nothing could be further from the truth. If you talk to the guys who have spent time in the sandbox (especially working with the locals) they will tell you that they've encountered plenty of AK's that don't run.

    Any individual specimen may handle it just fine or may choke like a politician trying to tell the truth depending on a number of factors. It's impossible to say.

    What can be said with relative certainty is that there's no assault rifle on earth that can do mag dump after mag dump without encountering a problem sooner or later.
    The problem over in the ME is not like here where you know an AR made by Bushy sucks and one by BCM rocks, just over the damn border in Pakistan, they make AKs and anything else you can imagine in little huts. I would not be surprised to see many of weapons so made have catastrophic failures. See this video for documentation on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGVia...om=PL&index=11
    Last edited by KevinB; 10-15-09 at 20:00.

    "Addressing the problem of shootings by ban or confiscation of non-criminal's guns is like addressing the problem of rape by chopping off the Johnson of everyone who DIDN't rape anyone while not only leaving the rapists' equipment intact, but giving them free viagra to boot." --Me

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    winfield - thanks for posting the historical analysis draft. As a historian, I hope you continue to add light to the heat here.

    The best part of the paper was this quote by Clausewitz:

    “Woe to the government, which, relying on half-hearted politics and a shackled military policy, meets a foe who, like the untamed elements, knows no law other than his own power! Any defect of action and effort will turn to the advantage of the enemy, and it will not be easy to change from a fencer’s position to that of a wrestler. A slight blow may then often be enough to cause a total collapse.”

    And it is for this reason that I am deeply skeptical that we will 'win' in Afghanistan.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Armati View Post
    winfield - thanks for posting the historical analysis draft. As a historian, I hope you continue to add light to the heat here.

    The best part of the paper was this quote by Clausewitz:

    “Woe to the government, which, relying on half-hearted politics and a shackled military policy, meets a foe who, like the untamed elements, knows no law other than his own power! Any defect of action and effort will turn to the advantage of the enemy, and it will not be easy to change from a fencer’s position to that of a wrestler. A slight blow may then often be enough to cause a total collapse.”

    And it is for this reason that I am deeply skeptical that we will 'win' in Afghanistan.
    Great Clausewitz quote, I love that old Prussian. Well many people were sceptical about Iraq, too. I am a firm believer in the idea that no war is unwinnable if one fights the war one has and not the last war or the one one would like, that being said, my impression thus far on Afghanistan is that we are vastly underallocating resources to our boys on the ground. However, that is just an impression at this point, hard facts in a war take years of study and research over many AOs to come up with things that are generally true for an entire theatre and not just for one company or for one squads' time in country.

    One thing that is pivotal on a larger scale (the strategic and policy levels rather than the tactical and operational levels) is the will to win.

    I know this history stuff is too dry for most people, but the American Revolution was a failure of will on the part of the British, not a failure of ability. After Cornwallis was pinned in at Yorktown and surrendered, that did not HAVE to mean the end of the war. But the British had lost the will to pursue it further.

    Clausewitz believed in something called the triumvirate of war. This is what determines what is decisive in a war. The triumvirate consists of three things, the head of the enemy government, the will of the enemy people, or the enemy armed forces. You must decide if what will be decisive is to take out the enemy government, to attack the enemy army, or to attack the will of the enemy people to continue the war.

    In Vietnam, the NVA and VC attacked the will of the American People to continue the war and that proved decisive. In Somalia, it was not the will of the people or the ability of the American armed forces to continue the war but the will of the government to commit further.

    All of this remains to be seen in Afghanistan, but if we figure out what type of war this is and what is decisive, ultimatley, we can win, but do we have the will?

    Remember the enemy is also seeking wehat is decisive. He cannot obliterate our armed forces, we are too many. He cannot directly attack our government, ultimatley he must rely on the third leg of the triad, which is the will of the people and the will of our government to continue, only by this can we be defeated.

    Too, comparisons to the Soviet experience in Afghanistan are misleading. The situation was different, the Afghanies were united against the Soviets, whereas today the Afghanies are divided among tribal and regional loyalties and warring with each other in some regions not just with us.

    Anyway, I am by no means an authority on Afghanistan, I am a student of American wars in general and this policy and strategic level analysis is usually too broad for the guys on the ground. Their concerns are not strategy and the will to win at large, but whether they or their buddies will survive the day, the week, the month, and make it home--that's their concern.

    Besides, we've gotten off topic now. The subject originally was the performance of small arms in one battle in Afghanistan and whether or not their malfunctioning was a contributing factor to the death of US troops in battle.
    Wepons have failed in every war we have ever fought. Even the venerable M1 and BAR had issues at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. It would take a much larger systematic analysis of the m4's performance in combat to conclude anything decisive about the weapon in general and whether some or all m4s in this battle broke down is in the larger scheme only anecdotal and not quantitative data.
    Certainly we have seen a number of posts by men who have fired the M4 in anger and lived to tell about it and their experience weighs against the happenings here. My final point is that there is much more to a fight that determines whther men live or die than simply small arms' performance. The list of possible contributing factors to the given outcome of a fight are infinite: how much sleep had your guys had, how were they disposed emotionally, physically, what their mindset was, was the enemy well led, well motivated, did they plan their attack well, did it go according to plan, what was the weather like... the list is infinite and the factor of small arms is only one among many.

    "Addressing the problem of shootings by ban or confiscation of non-criminal's guns is like addressing the problem of rape by chopping off the Johnson of everyone who DIDN't rape anyone while not only leaving the rapists' equipment intact, but giving them free viagra to boot." --Me

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    "Of C-Wire and HESCOs", an informative article at DefenseTech.org (one of a series)

    http://www.defensetech.org/archives/005062.html

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    Interesting...

    No Issues with M4 at Wanat


    Now back to the M-4 COP Kahler/OP Topside debate.

    I spoke with Col. Doug Tamilio, Program Manager for Soldier Weapons and Rich Audette, the Soldier Weapons deputy PM on Oct. 15 about the findings in a draft report on the so called "Battle of Wanat" that called out the M4 and the M-249 for multiple failures at "high cyclic rates" during the battle.

    We've had a bit of a back and forth on this issue here at DT: was it a fundamental flaw with the M4 or was it a problem of leadership? Both sides are well represented here, but I thought I'd give the Army its say in this debate.

    Tamilio said he was surprised with the findings and that he did not agree with the author's call for a systematic look at the M4's ability to keep up at high rates of fire.

    "To date, I have never had a Soldier or a commander or an NCO come up to me and say 'these weapons are terrible'...Now I'm just talking about the M4. we don't get anything, no feedback, and you know if there was a serious issue out there somewhere in eight years of fighting with all the battles that we've had we would have some serious data."

    Obviously Tamilio is defending his service's rifle, but he has a point. We all know that there are less maintenance-intensive options out there for troops who do their work in dusty environments (which is just about everywhere except the arctic and the jungle). But this issue of high rates of fire hasn't been brought up earlier.
    The requirement for the M4 "mean time between stoppage" is 600 rounds. But Tamilio said today it demonstrates "3,600 rounds before stoppage...So that's a world-class weapon."

    Tamilio said there are some "inconsistencies" between the draft history report and what he read and heard just after the battle. "We talked to the unit sergeant major a year ago and the report is not what I got first hand from him."

    "I truly believe that some of these Soldiers fired so many rounds so quickly that could that happen? Yes," he added, explaining that he'd done tests with SOCOM where they fired 560 rounds in two minutes before the barrel warped.

    "We knew this happened," Tamilio said. "We interviewed the unit, talked to them and then went on about our business because we didn't at that time think we had any issues with the M4 in that incident."

    -- Christian

    October 20, 2009 02:36 PM | M4 Monopoly | Discuss (92 comments)


    http://www.defensetech.org/archives/..._monopoly.html
    "Facit Omina Voluntas = The Will Decides" - Army Chief


  9. #89
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    Quote Originally Posted by KevinB View Post
    Blah Blah Blah,

    30min TIC, fired 12 mags...

    WTF are you shooting at -- shoot less, aim more

    The peanut gallery here that has not been in combat should STFU.
    Amen.

  10. #90
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    http://www.armalite.com/images/Tech%...4%E2%80%A6.pdf
    Here's some great info on heat and weapon's failures that Sinister posted on another thread.
    Last edited by Cincinnatus; 05-07-10 at 02:56. Reason: Bad link

    "Addressing the problem of shootings by ban or confiscation of non-criminal's guns is like addressing the problem of rape by chopping off the Johnson of everyone who DIDN't rape anyone while not only leaving the rapists' equipment intact, but giving them free viagra to boot." --Me

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