Virdea

Yeah, and their GPMGs are doing no better at 400 meters. The issue is like I have been wiring for years, the age of direct fire kinetics except as a local defensive weapon is coming to a close.

You laugh but there is a series of break points with explosive weapons that DO indeed show points where the explosive power versus error rate of hit hit statistical cliffs. The 40mm is an example of where the line was drawn to far on the other side - the weapon has been shown to be less useful in practical engagements because the error rate of the sights and the weapon is below the threshold of its explosives. Doubling the weight of the explosives (a 15% increase in shell mass) actually triples casualty causing power. US forces learned this in Afghanistan and started taking stripped down 60mm mortars into the field, which generate 70% of the offensive power of a unit now.

"More than half of the small arms engagements in Afghanistan are beyond 500 meters" However, they are not engagements between soldiers firing old style rifles at each other. They are engagements between heavy weapons where the infantry basically have to sit on their ass and soak casualties. I have video from a bunch of engagements, and most have M4 armed soldiers going to ground and negotiating rule of engagement with air power until they can get a kinetic strike in, then finding out their own 60mm did most of the damage. Restrepo showed an action just like that, as did that TV doc that is on now.

45-70 sometimes gets a nod in Alaska - many guides won't take people on expeditions with standard .30 type rounds for rifles and in terms of cheap and easy to find the next most common round in AK is 45-70 that fits the outback bill.

It is actually the terminal stupidity of sequestration. The politicos of the time knew that they could screw the US government and when the rubber hit the road no one would equate that stupid time to them. A lot of chickenhawks scream to their constituents about how they love defense, let that bit of stupid theatre mess up defense spending for decades to come.

Khand-e Send me a private mail through the forum with your last name, first initial, province or state of residence, and your nation of residence. I have a certain number of free copies to hand around with the idea people leave responses in the Apple and Amazon stores, but if I run out or the country you are in does not permit this, then I will make you a private PDF. Donward, That is a MAS 1936 shot with closure and dynamic instability in limbo, along with a psychological trick of applying a light coating of linseed to the stock and a very light coating of optically neutral mineral oil to the metal then patting it down with gaffers tape and lightly buffing it with a shammy. However it is an adored rifle even when I have not made the effort to sell it like a used car.

The relation to the thread is this is an infantry tool, and it has a lot of information on tactics.

Ok, to throw a bone to Khand-e. A brilliant author I know has written a book. That book is offered as a free PDF read to this forum. Contact me if you want one and I will make you a personalized copy. It goes on sale next week.

As a police officer we had to deal with a coven of sovereign citizens, and they were such a pain in the balls (note I never curse, save now) that we had to have a manual. One day these twerps would declare they had a sovereign right to occupy an AME church and when we went in to dig them out they would have camcorders in our faces screaming "see, we were right, they are oppressing us!" I would take twenty honest criminal bluff estates crack dealers over a family of sovereign citizens who believe that the only property rights in the world are theirs. Although it is wrong to generalize we picked up one of their kids on the road wandering one day and the kid could not speak and showed signs of nearly constant sexual abuse. Then we had the entire clan screaming that they did not recognize our laws, but when I grabbed a guy who punched a news photographer he starts screaming about his first amendment rights. The problem with the ultra-NRA is the same as any extremest, their argument does not survive extreme interpretation. The second amendment states two rights. The two similar versions of the first amendment upon which firearms right rests are written as this: (1) A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. In this version the division in the sentence turns the second portion of the amendment into a subjunctive clause. Semi-colons were not in common use, but this is not a semi-colon per quod. Taking the definition accepted of militia at the time it means that an adult may bare arms in a regulated manner subject to the rulings of the mustering authority. Thus a nation could rule that weapons must be concealed, or that certain weapons cannot be carried an employed except by specialists. In the second version passed by the states it says: (2) A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Less ambiguity. a subjective clause and a dominate clause second in modern English it would read: Free states should maintain local defensive structures based on the individuals right to bear arms in a regulated manner. This feeds back to the ECL standard of citizen as arrestor and community as legal purveyor of some areas of justice, as long as this is regulated. So - again the government cannot completely block weapons from the people, and the people as a whole are the militia, but they can require many actions short of blocking them. There is no right to carry a rifle in public unless the law enacts that right as part of the regulation part of the amendment. The main problem with these guys is: 1) Complete lack of satisfying and regular sex. 2) Complete lack of satisfying and regular education. 3) Cognitive dissonance from living in a world where their external information is provided only from propaganda sources. 4) Likely, some form of Environmental damage limited their thinking ability.

This was a gun I learned in my youth. Camp Blanding has a wall set up to practice with these. Although maligned and ridiculed they were useful and buttoned up infantry something to do instead of sit around waiting to take a RPG in the gullet. Their main drawback from the army point of view was cost - they were dirt cheap in an era where weapon systems had to have a B on the price tag to make a politician vote yea.

Seasonal tilt idiots

10/3 favor E8 was the realistic kill rate for the US E8 versus the T34/85 in North Korea. Most game designers throw a pretty heavy thumb on the scales, giving the T34/85 a 2 to 1 advantage over the E8, but in 20 odd studies including Zaloga's direct action study, and the tank versus equivalent meta studies, the that 10/3 number seems to be the number that comes out once crew quality is wrinkled out. Tanking the E8 normalized at 3.3 in terms of tank power to the T34/85 1, then 30 to 1 is an unattainable bogus number. The Panther only reaches a mathematical 4.75 and everyone knows German armor inventory had less effective tanks. Assuming that German crew quality has a multiplier of 7.4 is idiocy at its essence.

Doing him a favor really. Well, him and the future of the gene pool. Although with those cheek welds maybe the firing line should be more circular in shape to effectively get everyone deserving of a little 8mm.

Prevents bore wear. Steel rifle ammo used lacquer for the same reason.

I spent most of my wayward youth hitch hiking in Mexico. During the inflation of 1984-85 it was cheap, not excessively dangerous, and a lot of fun. But I never could bring myself to mess around - the image of ugly American was too deeply impressed in my mind. At the time I was a director and could take the time, 2 months or so at a shot, to simply stay in youth hostels. I think on all five of my big trips I met with one or more people and travelled with them - most are still friends, but I never went near the tourist areas and thus was also never in the areas where one could purchase entertainment, and Mexicans in the country side are very conservative even if they are very generous to travelers. My visits to the Philippines, China, Japan, and Korea were likewise sedate. I got to interview a Geisha and they walked me through the entire Geisha routine, but that was for work. I got in way more trouble in France. I will go to my grave never again telling the story of hiding in a recycle bin from Gendarmes after showing too much interest in a ship in Bayonne harbor.

My father ran a factory in Dalian from 1993-1998 and when the local party people found out he like to shoot in the United States they provided him with a shotgun, kept locked up in the shooting club, and he was presented a pistol that was quite gaudy and which they had no problems with him keeping loaded about his apartment. This compared well with his factory in Xaodong where the police "chief" charged him a breathing tax, or the amount of money which would keep him and his senior staff from being arrested and beaten each month, or Shing Xa where they always tried to provide him with female companionship. I am not sure if this was a reflection of the era right at the start of the Chinese resurgence - but my father loved his Chinese made double barrel shotgun, but thought the little .30 cal pistol was a gold plated hunk of crap. He never tried the female companionship as far as I know.

Like I said, this is a Likud party line. Super-right Likudniks like Danny Danon love to scream that the US is interfering with the sovereign right of Israel to do what it pleases whenever Obama says the words "two state solution." Danon is the first person I heard comment that other allies are needed to force the US back into its traditional role of supporting Israel (read - forking over the pork). The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been told in no uncertain terms by Likud that Israel may be moving away from its special status with the US and that AIPAC must move quickly to secure Israel's friendship. Several Israeli speakers have visited AIPAC and warned that the US is moving in the direction of NAZI Germany with its criticism of Netanyahu and the slow speed that it has been approving increased funding, and why these are extreme examples it is souring the US support for Israel among affluent, educated Jews. Most of the divorce between Israel and the US has been quiet. Dermer has stated numerous times in public that Obama is impertinent and needs to learn to "listen rather than talk" when being lectured by him on the Arab - Israeli issue. He also arranged for a number of public embarrassments for Biden. But Dermer does remember that a previous Republican president invited a previous Israeli ambassador into the Oval office and stood there screaming at him in the presence of Marlin Fitzwater and others. So Israel is shopping for a new partner.

My contact tells me the French love grenades in Afghanistan because they are very difficult to trace back to their source of origin and even though 200 bucks is expensive, it is cheaper than firing a $10,000 ERYX down range. They also love the AT grenades because the Taliban do not fortify their positions heavy enough to keep the weapons from punching through their cover. Khand, that is an interesting diagram.

There is no standard load out as the squad is suppose to decide what the optimum mix of ammo and grenades is. Each squad will have a GPMG, a designated marksman, a rocket launcher (sometimes a obsolete LRAC, sometimes an ERYX) and from 5 to 7 rifleman. Most interviews I have conducted have each rifleman carrying either a rocket or a belt of ammo for the crew weapons, and a collective 40 grenades. Standard practice for French special operations is to suppress enemy with a one minute barrage of 20 grenades while the LRAC, MG, and GPMG find covering positions, then these elements engage in a more sustained fashion.

I did a lot of checking and finally consulted a person who actually fires them and trains others to do the same. The current French AT grenade is the grenade à fusil antichar de 58 mm Mle F1 PAB - ACS58 to the world as a whole. The grenades cost France $200 and have a shelf life of 24 years. The mass .5 and have a 95% chance to hit a tank sized object at 100 meters. The manual says the weapon has a RHA rating of 350 (I will leave that to the armor experts to figure) and can penetrate 800mm of bunker quality concrete. The trainer for the weapon informs me that the grenade actually penetrates better than what it says since the same warhead is used in other instances and has a higher factor, and they inform their students to count on an RHA of 400. In terms of anti-personal use they are instructed to treat each grenade like a 60mm mortar in terms of danger close fire. A special trick for users of this and the main AP grenade is to have five rifleman fire five grenades into a star pattern around an enemy position with a TOT burst. Another trick is to fire it at a tree which I gather causes terrible secondary wounds.

Israel is moving away from the era when it was all about protecting world Jewish rights, and is moving toward an era where it is about control the power they never expected to have. In some ways Israel is color blind anymore to choosing it allies, as long as its allies give them what they want and keep their mouth shut. Good old Ben, by involving himself in US politics and not being very subtle about his criticism of his allies, is signaling that Israeli loyalty is for sale. In Likud thinking, the weak Americans will not be able to avoid giving them something, but that better deals can be had with some other ally - China or Russia being only examples. The same thing happened when Israel kicked France to the curb in the 1960s for the US. No one expected that the French / Israeli axis would ever fall, but it did and dramatically. We are moving to a time when Israel is going to try and throw off its "protectors" and seek better deals for itself. The only question is how graceful this realignment is.

This is not uncommon in history. During the Great War better than half of the weapons made for the allies were made in the US, and the loans that paid for them came from US banks. BEFORE US entry into the war the US was the largest participant in terms of dollars invested in fighting. While allowing millions of US soldiers onto the continent trained to the highest standard of small unit advance tactics was stupid on the part of Germany, they had been fighting the US already for three years. In WW2 30% of every dollar spent by anyone, Axis or Allies, was a US dollar. In defense seminars it is said if you want to build up your defenses cozy up to the US, if you want to invade your neighbor call the US names and collect the check from Russia. Getting US aid is like buying from the Apple store - great products that go bang every time and look good doing it, but you do it Apple's way of no way at all. Russia is like the Dell store - cheap beige boxes which work (sometimes) but no one cares if you run your child porn empire on it. Israeli criticism of the US has become existential and dangerous. In Israeli Likud circles the US is referred to quite openly as a weak and overbearing nation of idiots, and there is wistful talk that Israel would prefer a supporting nation that had the technology and money of the US, but the social and foreign policy of Russia.

Yes - since much of it retains top secret clearance they do not have to fight hard.

Institute 8511 announces that anti-drone AA batteries are in place now and authorized to down "intruders who enter Chinese air space." Back channel communication, mistaken utterance, or hyperbole?

Several compatriots of mine study international subversion of media and online communication as well. Many papers have money trails that lead to interesting places, and a lot of Middle East money, Chinese money, Russian money, and so forth moves around in interesting patterns. In addition IP traps show some massive online posting schemes where forums are overrun by postings that could be written in various national capitals. This sort of information warfare is a weak point in US / NATO skills sets. So far the US / NATO monitors but rarely influences the press and the online chatter sphere. Millions of released and leaked documents show many intel operations by the US, but nothing in the agitprop. When they do get to it they rarely do it well, posting red white and blue websites and inviting Jihadi Jane to come in from the dark side.