Weapon selection without doctrine. Say hello to the IAR.

You ever read an article that has you ready to punch walls?  Well check out a few lines from the Marine Blog.

“It’s a huge improvement to have a more accurate weapon,” said Staff Sgt. Mathew Henderson, the platoon commander of Personal Security Detachment, 2nd Bn., 7th Marines, currently on his fourth combat deployment. “We want to broaden the application of its use. For instance, using an IAR in a sniper platoon instead of a SAW would be a huge advantage.”To potentially lower costs, Marines with the battalion are looking at ways to implement the IAR in place of a more expensive weapon already in use.“This weapon platform could be used as a multipurpose weapon system in the infantry squad, i.e., using an IAR as an automatic rifle and as a designated marksman rifle,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chris Jones, infantry weapons officer, 2nd Bn., 7th Marines. “In the current fight when there is a limited exposure and a fleeting target that blends in with the local populace, it is more important to have a more accurate rifle with a better optic. If you can get positive identification faster, you can kill the enemy rather than a weapon that provides audible suppression; audible suppression being the bullets hitting everywhere but on target, and the enemy only hearing the sounds of gunfire.

Have we forgotten tactics?  Suppression allows you to maneuver.  It forces the enemy to keep his head down.  If you're able to directly target the enemy then you don't need to suppress him!  Someone is mixing apples and oranges...and I've never heard suppressive fire referred to as audible suppression.  Bullets smacking around would be actual physical suppression.  An F/A-18 blazing overhead would be more like this mythical audible suppression.

But what has me scratching my head is this.

The IAR has been in the Fleet how long now and they're still trying to figure out how to use it!  Amazing!  But this part has me in the wall punching mood that I was talking about earlier.

“We’re going back to what we had in World War II with the Browning Automatic Rifle,” Henderson said. “Since the 1980s, we gave the infantry squad the light machine gun, and now we’re having another shift in the Marine Corps to get back to what we were doing right the first time.”

I don't think the guy knows the history of the BAR.  I don't think he's studied the fighting that took place in the jungles of Vietnam or on the islands of the Pacific.

They're not getting it.  But that's my opinion, read the entire article here.