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Pfc. Kevin Irving, a point man with, 3rd
Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, lays in the prone and shoots down range
at targets a part of his evaluation. Marines with the unit were
evaluated for their offensive and defensive fundamentals during a
training exercise aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune June 18-22.
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Hmmm. When I first saw this I was rather jazzed at seeing one of the few clear pics of a Marine using the M27 IAR. But the caption left me cold. Are we seeing confusion regarding the employment of the M27 in line companies? It could be wrong. The Marine might be boasting a bit, but the idea that your Machinegunner is used as your point man seems off. I remember writing the 24th MEU asking how they planned on using the M27. The Public Affairs Officer wrote me back stating that (I'm paraphrasing) they would employ it as needed in roles that they deemed fit. I'm good with that.
The M27 was brand new to the fleet, and the book hadn't been written yet.
But getting back to the photo. You're going to have one of your machine gunners as point man on patrols?
Definitely time for the Infantry School House to start writing up some type of manual on the employment of this weapon. Its really starting to look like its just being used as another M-16A4 in the field. If that's' the case then I say again....redesignate it as the M-16A5 and get them in the hands of all Marines.
'Nuff said!
Cross training maybe? In Nam, the entire machine gun squad of my platoon was cut down by NVA heavy machine guns in an ambush. Both of our Corpsmen were killed, too, over the course of four hours. One of the things that saved our asses was some of the riflemen put the two guns back in action. Fortunately, they had familiarized with M60s in ITR. (The hard part was crawling out under fire and setting up the guns.) The M14 AR men were too busy at the time. We ended up with 6 killed and 12 medivaced. The NVA heavy weapons company ended up with 150 killed - must have been all newbies. They couldn't throw grenades for shit.
ReplyDeleteComing up next month is the 46th anniversary of Operation Hastings.
i hope you're right. cross training is still in vogue but i have yet to see anything regarding the use of the M27 in a Marine Rifle Squad. that's what i was trying to get at in my usual clumsy way. i guess i was also trying to lobby for making the M27 the next rifle for the Marine Corps and just do away with the automatic rifleman concept. but that's of little concern. you talked about some hardcore old skool action! thanks for your service. Semper!
ReplyDeleteAin't it a SAW replacement? Trading volume for accuracy? I'd love to see how they keep the 3rd-5th round on target.
ReplyDeleteHaving shot the rifle I can tell you its easy to keep on target, its just simply a great rifle and I agree it should be the replacement for the m16, and the make a carbine so you can replace the m4 with it. 3/9 really doesn't have a plan for the employment of them, they have the a gunners using them.
ReplyDeleteso it has replaced the SAW? i heard that its like hyper accurate.
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