Virdea

Gewehr 242(f) - possibly the new G36 replacement?

Run toward the blast grasshopper! They cannot hit twice in the same place!

I think because it takes several tries to make it work what you are seeing is micro-protrusion of the firing pin, each time scoring a tiny hit on the primer until one causes a fire. The alternate is that the connector is broken where metal meets plastic in the trigger mechanism. It could be a sear, but I have fired that guns forebear a lot and had it down to the smallest parts and the sear / striker is quite tough. Unless the guy tried to modify the trigger pull and messed with the sear. My best is from the guy's accent (I wish my wife could listen because as a native speaker her ear is better than mine). He has the shhh sound of someone from Rio, but he also has the flattened syllables of a Paulisto. He is on a range, which means he is rich or a cop, but he does not sound rich. So he seems like a cop from a major city who likely dry fires his guns a lot, and who shoots enough to get his weapon fouled with gunk. But you are just as likely right as I am, because I was making assumptions from my own experience on the weapon, and have not read anything yet on the video. I know BOPE, where I have friends who work (my wife was born in Gavea) are not fans of the 24/7 and PT100 series - but I never inquired as to why. Edit - I think one other reason is that I am assuming the 24/7 trigger works just like the 100 series it has no cocked position. The weapons are not cocked the way a normal pistol so the sear is not holding back anything. Instead the trigger pulls an assembly back and at the end of its travel released it, causing the firing pin to hit the ammunition. To slam fire the weapon has to have that mechanism push against mechanical force enough to bring the mechanism back into detent, then allow it to release off the sear. That is like having a double action revolver with a loose trigger cock itself then released and fire - I am just skeptical it can be done. Again - not that your wrong, on a Glock where the striker is held back in a cocked position I would agree.

NATO advisors train many nations on old Soviet hardware - dozens of former nations use the stuff. The Ukraine when it gained independence from the old Soviet Empire started small - scale training with NATO quite some time ago. No one in their right mind really should want an old-style Soviet trainer instructing them in small unit tactics. Soviet theory never got over the idea that dead soldiers was a measure of effectiveness of an officer rather than dead enemy. One way you can get a HUGE bump in combat effectiveness is to take the Soviet weapons and apply western standards to them. And the Ukraine is not showing educated military science people how effective modern Russian power projection is, but how problematic and ineffective it is under Putin. The longer you run an army like a gang of thugs, the harder it is to make it an effective fighting force. Russian soldiers, even special operations soldiers, are not covering themselves in glory fighting a bunch of Ukrainian used car salesmen and farmers.

Two very common causes of this (I mean, besides the fact the Carioca has an IQ in single digits): He dry fired his gun like 2000 times and broke the connector on the trigger and now it is jammed into place, or he failed to clean his weapon properly and grit is hanging the firing pin. I remember my own very young years and failing to clean the firing pin of an M16 properly, and having it go full auto on me when I was instructed to hit the forward assist. Poor cleaning on my part, a floating firing pin design, an old H&R M16 with a mismatched Colt bolt, some mud from crawling around Camp Blanding, and I got to experience emptying a 30 round mag in like 5 seconds.

You are probably right, since I do not do Asia except on some side lines such as tracking Chinese operational capabilities. And you knowledge of China eclipses mine by a great extent. Yes - specialization is France, US, Italy, and Great Britain from 1945 on, plus of course the rest of NATO with less certain knowledge.

It has everything to do with this, and because US units will be having to feed more special ops people from Muslim nations - there had been a considerable thaw in the past five years between the US and nearly every military force in the world, and US operators are having to work with a LOT of very capable people that just a decade ago they were giving the middle finger. Halal rations are part of this.

The best reading bar none is to keep up with the Janes series of publication. Defense weekly is a boring read for many, because it has lots of gossipy sounding tittle in the form of articles about this or that contract being cancelled or defunded, but it is the weathervane that everyone in the world literally picks at, Defense News is another one, and it has Gannet backing it up. It is on my weekly reading list and along with Janes I keep them both in my tracking files. You would be surprised at how a few sentence summary of a seemingly boring article on a new logistics data project offering to change software capabilities for a minor NATO country can mean big information when compared with other stories rather than trying to digest the information alone. Breaking Defense is one I have just in the past year started reading. This one seems to get a LOT of information from horny congressional aids - or so I think, because otherwise I have no idea how they get some of the committee insider stuff. I do know that a majority of leaks on military capabilities come from young congressional staffers who wander into bars in DC looking to impress everyone at how much in the loop they are. As someone who is so far out of the loop as to require Hubble telescope to see the edges of known space where the loop exists, I cannot possibly know what it is like to be a hugely knowledgeable congressional staffer working for a guy whose primary skill set that got him elected was hair that stays reasonable in place, but this sort of data is priceless in understanding the modern defense world. The major way to understand defense is to realize that no one sums things up, they provide very close analysis of the type of bark in the trees nearest them, but few people truly synthesize - so the articles that seem boring, like a contract moving 6 RoRo ships from one part of the civilian fleet to another, may actually be a piece of evidence that indicates a return of significant REFORGER capability to the US infrastructure. You then need to see an article on the US military spending millions on constant humidity warehouses, and another about the movement of some obscure logistics units before you have multiple opposing evidence chains that lets you say - years before any announces it to the press, that the US is coming back to Europe. And be careful of general and open discussion sites on the web. This group in this little haven are pretty smart and knowledgeable, but in the general Internet you have lot of, "I heard the post office is buying 7.5 billion rounds of hollow points, that means mailmen are coming to take our guns!!!" political nonsense. For example purchase of halal rations by the Army, which was touted in many chat groups as proof that Obama was going to require the Army to adopt sharia law, was actually a bit of evidence of something much more mundane, but in the light of day, something much more important about Army planning. There are articles here and there about those halal rations that never mention why they are being bought, but do give us hints of why they are needed (and the real answer is not a conspiracy, just common sense.)

Better than the Nagant bolt action rifles that the weapons are replacing.

With only 5 strong maneuver brigades, Germany has in essence checked out of NATO and tacitly accepted a US nuclear umbrella. France and Germany about twenty years back signed that white paper that assured each of mutual home defense. At the time NATO planned for Germany to provide for 15 brigades out front - the core of the European footprint. The US it was believed would have another 15 brigades in Europe, and smaller NATO allies would undertake an individual brigade or team up to do combined brigades. France was out of this picture but it was assumed they would provide crucial strategic reserves. The problem with the Franco German plan is they both planned to take advantage of it to reduce forces. 15 Brigades? Germany saw a chance and said, well France can provide the 10, and we will provide the 5. Money saved (and so much for strategic reserve). To make things look good we will do a combined brigade on the cheap with wheels. France also said the same thing. NATO wants 15 brigades in the shop window? Well Germany can do the 10 and we will do the 5, and yeah, we can throw some effort into the wheeled brigade - the French army is nothing but filled with wheels. Although back in NATO informally they like to be independent. So they ended up with 10 brigades and no strategic reserve. As for the idea that the US would put 15 brigades in the window - they went south with the US believing Europe could handle its own policing while they concentrated on the WOT. The 170th and 172nd went home and no more US heavy brigades. That leaves Poland (9 heavy brigades), the Czechs (2 heavy brigades), the Slovaks (2 heavy brigades), Belgium (1 brigade), Hungary (2 brigades), Romania (6 brigades, plus some strong leg units) and Bulgaria (2 brigades) guarding the front door. Poland is a scary customer and very able. The Czechs and Slovaks could be good but there are indications that they are having issues. Romania is surprisingly good. However all of these countries are in need of modernization. A group of friends and I have been agitated for congress to donate about 2000 M1 Abrams to Poland and Romania. About 210 A10 and 250 F16 are also boneyard ready for return to service. As for Germany and France - that ship has sailed. They won't ever again have a heavy land army sufficient to counterbalance Russia, and both plan on initial use of nuclear weapons to occur on first invasion, thus allowing them to feel justified in their draw down.

Traditionally the U.S. called the calibre tune for NATO because major ammunition supply depots are funded by the U.S. This causes a lot of gnashing of teeth sometimes (such as when the U.S. raids these piggy banks for elsewhere in the world. This is changing, so a new calibre is become more possible. War stocks is a major consideration with calibre use. Both the French and the Swiss maintained an unusual calibre for decades because they had a hundred days or more of war stock on hand and the potential replacement was no better than what they already had. WARNING - Long discussion the new logistics, ignore if you wish. Most people who contemplate equipment use such as firearms for the military are shop window types, they consider what the weapon looks like in the window of a store, but not all the factors that it takes to get into the hands of a person who uses it. Supply is an issue since the best weapon in the world is worthless without supply. NATO is the master of supply, keeping dozens of nations both in the alliance and attached supplied around the world. NATO is a master only because three of its member nations - the US, France (sort of member), and the UK are the kings of logistics bar none. Computerization has meant that it is now possible though for supply to integrate new products more efficiently, Up until the 1990s supply requests in NATO in peacetime were based on a paper system that was push / pull. A division would have a "unit of fire" of supply and would be pushed a regular allotment of supplied to a Corps depot, while subunits would indent for their supplies by supply requests to division, allowing for double entry style bookkeeping as pushed product met pulled requests. This system was an American invention of WW2 and in pre-computer days it was the best in the world. The problem came in with non-standard items and with unexpected use. In the 1980s toilet paper was removed from the ration packs and U.S. soldiers started using more toilet paper - there is actually research on why this happened, but it started a period of nearly a decade when military units in Europe could not get adequate supplies of this product. It became desperate when electronics started to demand lilon batteries of dozens of different types - and electronic manufactures are renown for not standardizing batteries as a marketing strategy. This has been changing the last decade as NATO has developed a new supply system to deal with the War on Terror. It is still being standardized and moved into place, but it is based on the supply system used by Amazon and Best Buy. Go on the Internet and search for some looney decrying the US will be taking all their rights and as proof they point out that the Post Office signed a contract for 3.4 billion rounds of ammunition. This is one of the aspects of the new system. The Army will line up contractors for logistic items, and the contractors will specify their immediate and emergency capacity to supply product, along with their contract maximum (the absurd number of rounds listed in the contract). When the Russians decide they want to threaten the Ukraine they start rolling thousands of trucks to build up their logistics foot print - their supply system is about as good as the US in the 1960s. When NATO (in our new systems) decides that it wants to have forward combat capability to defend Estonia SACEUR makes a notional movement order in the supply system (the units mostly remain in place) that starts the supply system bulking up supplies, but these supplies movements are nonlinear. A base in Germany gets 500 cases of toilet paper more than it needs and the system knows this, because it has internal smarts and it knows that this toilet paper will get married with other items and form part of the supply picture. The bad guys in this case have no idea that NATO just changed its operational tempo because the system is programmed to avoid huge lifts of ammo and weapons to right next door to the trouble spot. Computers make this all work. This smarts means that if your unit uses .338 you can order it, and the system remembers and starts putting it on the list of supplies you need. Back at the tail of the system the 27 units that use .338 get tallied together and that ammo is ordered JIT from industry, plus additional capacity for emergency surge is paid for. When your unit moves to a new place the system moves boxes of .338 shift through the system virtually, following you without moving warehouses. If your supply situation makes .338 supply an issues then sometimes there needs to be some cross decking so the .338 is moved to a new place that is more efficient to supply it to you. Some products are important enough that JIT policy is removed and they get predictive chaos theory applied to them. So perhaps .338 is hard to predict in usage since special operations soldiers move around the globe so much and operational tempo is not linearly predictive. So the .338 gets over supplied and additional supplies are sent to warehouses that may not be predictive of current tempo, but may be predictive of future tempo. Also, logistics covers are important. Since many SO teams use .45 ACP and .45 ACP deliveries could be used as intelligence to predict their movements, .45 ACP may be purchased and shipped to random places to remove this as a potential source of intelligence. The system is smart in that it knows how much it costs to lift a product, how much it costs to store a product, and the database collects data on its own mistakes to improve its own operation. In 1990 creating a new calibre of ammunition required that millions of forms be discarded, thousands of square meters of warehouse space be opened, tens of thousands of logistics people be trained, and the logistics footprint of every unit in the military be recalculated to determine the changed supply lift and delivery needs - a process that could take five years. Today using the new system a soldier handed a new rifle with an unusual ammo can have that ammo specified in the system in a few days. In four months that ammo will arrive anywhere in the world where that soldier is without fail (although oddballs tend to require human staff time for the first year as they need the system occasionally to be overridden - which is why end users now can order supply like ordering from Amazon).

I think the only disagreement I have with you on anything here is that killing power is not always the main factor to consider. You are correct that bigger is better, more energy is better is a flawed model, or so I think, but the one think I think is flawed is when the shooting you do is not depending on random killing power but on precision shooting. Except for shooting under the mirage line in the desert or over water, the most difficult issue to deal with in shooting for accuracy is windage. A human is pretty much a vertical even when they are laying down. The take up more space on the vertical plane that the horizontal. The more windage that has to be adjusted for the more chance of a miss even if you get the windage right, because small murphy factors can creep in. And heavier bullets with more mass require less windage adjustment than lighter. Now its been years since I had to qualify on a military rifle, but I remember my M16 was 8 clicks windage at 10MPH at range distance, while the M14 was 4 or 5. Heavier bullets drift less in wind. Faster bullets of course are easier to get for elevation, but again you have more wriggle room here. So here I think the one error in your thinking is: can a 5.56 really be made as friendly at long ranges for DMR as a 7.62 using the same technology. IT may be possible, and again, this is devils advocate.

The French integrated a sniper on each squad on infantry in 1951 and was based on a common practice that went back to 1915. French snipers were deployed differently than German. A German sniper was part of a special hunter team. In France it was just the guy in a squad who was the best shooter. So here the goal of GPC would not be to keep the MG and rifle fed by the same ammo, but to keep the rifleman and the sniper fed with the same ammo - IF that sniper is squad based and part of the maneuver element and not outside. The FR-F1 was the eventual French solution, even though every French rifle after 1956 had rails for telescopic sights. Again, the solution the French now use is two rifle calibers. I am just saying that the GPC does not make much sense applied to machine guns, but may make more sense applied to infantry rifles that have to pull double duty as individual marksman and defensive rifle.

My theory is radical, but untested except by special forces, who of course choose their battlefields carefully and use training to get the best from their weapons. I propose it merely as a route to look into.

I will take a shot at a rational defense of GPC, even though I am not a big advocate. Here is my vote for the best infantry rifle of all time. In the 1950s and 1960s the French took it and jiggered with the design a lot. Out of that came some one offs that were very impressive - it was the MAS 1954. Basically is was the MAS49 action with an inline stock in a bull-pup configuration. It was perfect in every test except one problem - the 7.62x51mm was too heavy for automatic fire. The weapon was given a makeover then using up spare parts from previous weapon trials and it was several 7mm rounds before being tossed. It was one of these conversions, I think to the 7x33 wildcat of the German intermediate round, that they discovered some interesting trains. The gun was till rock solid reliable - scoring better than the G3, M14, and FAS in almost all tests. But the weapon was now capable of firing automatically without too much muzzle rise. The rifle had integral grenade launcher with full sights allowing accurate use of rifle grenades, and it had a quick release scope mount. The 7x33 was fed through a 30 round magazine based on the STG44 design. The more "normal" 56 design was eventually adopted, but the testers said that the rifle was as close to a multi-purpose rifle as had ever been tested in France. So here I would advocate a GPC round that did not try to do the job of heavier GPMG weapons. Get rid of the requirements to be in a machine gun and I think GPC might be doable.

The Chinese are - in fact they are scary - only the fact that their training is far below what is considered standard has kept their effectiveness low. The French are who have been ahead of the curve since the 1960s. The Germans in WW2 stumbled into it with a nice selection of explosive throwers added to squads built around a GPMG.

Not to be a Philistine, but I am a fan of the P90 and do not think that it needs some crazy boost in power to be effective. In essence, I believe that the kinetic hand weapon has ended it useful life, and that the P90 represents a useful departure point from a logistics chain point of view because it can be chambered in pistols - and I class kinetic weapons as defensive envelop weapons. 600 extra FPS in a P90 is not needed. It handles engagements at under 200 meters now. The P90 and 5.7 pistols are the weapon used by soldiers for clearing buildings, guard duty, snap shooting in the initial contact phase of combat, and for other work in the 200 meter defensive envelope. They are not the power of the unit. Imagine a German squad in WW2 where the MG42 was the core, and half the squad would be lugging Panzerfausts around. Create a basic squad format that looks like this: Grenadiers x6 Marksman x1 GPMG x1 Rockateer x1 Each P90 carrier has 1 load for the GPMG, 2 rocket grenades for the Rockateer, and 5 kilos of advanced rifle grenades (10 grenades each). As a defensive weapon the P90 is used for immediate suppression of enemy in close contact. The rifle grenades rain hate down on the enemy from 30 to 300 meters. The GPMG, Marksman, and Rockateer are for engagements up to 800 meters. From 200 meters to the horizon advanced delivered weaponry take care of business. This is not to say everyone is not correct about the P90 being a bit weak. But the above squad can for at least five minutes land as much explosives as a battery of 60mm mortars on an enemy. And unlike the 60mm team their first grenade is off in the first thirty second of contact.

Glocks can be ordered with manual safeties by police departments. It is a stupid feature that I do not know of anyone ever taking advantage of. The safety physically blocks the striker.

I agree. Take an infantry rifle and put a grenade launcher on it. Not much weight and it expands the envelope of what the soldier can engage. Give them a scope designed for short range use and they increase the effectiveness of their local engagement options. That combination has existed pretty solidly since the 1950s although I think the 40mm is a weak contender for a firepower thrower and should be replaced - and not by a 20mm that is even less effective no matter how smart. However, kinetic energy man portable individual weapons are limited to a 200 meter envelope no matter how power the ammunition they throw is. Let them keep the 556x45 and be done for now. I think there is an argument to be made for what ammunition that a squad automatic weapon uses, and I certainly think that the designated marksman can carry different ammunition as well. One issue as well is no longer the huge problems. Computers have changed logistics a huge amount, and even in the pre-computer days the logistics arm kept 3 distinct ammunition types flowing to combat units without issue.

That is the 1898 sawback. It was replaced in 1905 by the 1898/05 sawbuck (6 inches shorter). The 1884/98 bayonet would become standard - 250mm blade compared to 500+.

I believe this is correct, and we have had the data for a long time on this. The French when facing machine guns in WW1 developed a solution in 1915 that included snipers, portable automatic weapons, and grenade launchers. The rifle was at most a defensive weapon to protect the guys who were going to smack down the machine gunner with grenades and suppress him with their own machine gun fire. It is interesting that the best research on weapons in the 1950s and 60s lead to a conclusion that large explosives were the route for infantry. Salvo tried flechettes and this was shown to be a non starter - but they discovered that throwing grenades was a better idea. So NIBLINK built the grenade launcher, but they selected a design that threw a shell with only half the explosives research said was needed. Meanwhile the army kept trying to take away the rocket launcher from units who were, the dastards, using it not to attack tanks but to blow up enemy soldiers. The M72 was suppose to solve some of this because a unit would get a couple and be told not to use them except if they see a tank. They would use them on a tank shaped like a machine gunner and ask for more. So I think that a moderately smart rifle grenade and a return to having clear rifle grenade sights on each rifle is the way to go until technology hands us something better.

Laughing aside, a true story. When the Gewehr 98 first came out it was given a huge bayonet that actually embarrassed the German army, who immediately called for it to be replaced by something a bit more useful. The reason was a simple mistake. The G98 was shorter than the preceding rifles it replaced and the specification for rifle+bayonet length was not changed in contracts -- and no one questioned the absurdity of the bayonet being twice as long as that adopted in 1884 - until they saw the first test rifles with this pig sticker sticking out. Then they immediately moved to change to a shorter bayonet (and eventually, and even shorter K version of the 98 rifle). The British though saw this bayonet and the British press went nuts. British manhood was under attack. The Tuetons were building bigger battleships, but this was the law straw - a bigger bayonet could ruin the British empire in a fortnight. A British lawmaker stated in parliament that "length matters when two men face each other on the field of honor, and I would not want to face another man who has five inches on me!" Longer bayonets were designed for the Lee Enfield, and Britain went to war with a pig sticker that made the short Lee Enfield the envy of the world. Only by then the Germans no longer had many long bayonets.

The loss of officers was pretty good - 23,000 experience wartime officers is a lot, added to 200,000 people on the bans list who could no longer work for government. The so called massacres had no one killed, they refer to the fact that the people replaced never came back like they were dead. As you say it grew worse as Monarchists went to Republic went to Napoleonic lunatic. France suffered not because it beheaded anyone, but because simply it kicked too many smart minds to the curb. Even then France was a leading innovator - it just could not get its politics straightened out. The period 1870 to 1900 was the French high point in terms of reversing this trend.

This is a great note Zinegata. Institutional memory was lost at the end of the Napoleonic era for France because the July Massacre, when more than half the army was demobilized (and it was the better half, with Napoleon trained officers) and later the White Terrors literally gutted the pragmatic wartime military infrastructure. Then they passed the military laws of 1818 and 1819 which returned the Army to its former size, but no officers from the old Army could be employed - so they ended up with a pretty half-witted military force. Unlike Germany post WW1 there was not a backdrop of officers who could be called back - the monarchists were incompetent and the Napoleonic corps was tainted. One only has to look at the list of dead or exiled officers to know what France lost -Ney, Brune, 12 of the 18 Marshalls of the Grande Armee. If I am not mistaken Antoine-Henri Jomini himself went to Russia or Sweden or something like that after the return of the Kingdom. Britain and France both drank the bayonet cool-aid because they found the weapons useful in the empire.

Lots of evidence for the noble savage being a driving social meme in the 1880s at least. A lot of that meme would end up resulting in some great work by social scientists. Nanook and Ishi are examples of great studies that came from the noble savage routine. The most important part of Marxism is not what Marx was looking for, but the tool he handed scientists to understand the worlds. Just like social relativism is an important tool is scientific understanding of human group behavior, Marx gave us a cluster of ways of looking at the world that collectively are known as Neo-Marxist theory. Think of that as a wrench in the tool box of a social scientist. Balls out worthless for most things, but when you have a nut to break, the wrench is the tool of choice. The main problem with Marx like all social theories is when it becomes normative, and then when people forget that normative theories are the first step to creating a pseudo-science.