The first part of the video really intrigued me. Instead of designated Grenadiers old skool infantry allowed each squad member to fulfill the role. I don't know if the idea of moving to rifle grenades has any merit but the idea should be explored. An entire squad doing a rifle grenade time on target attack at an enemy position should get heads down.
I also found the anti-air drill fascinating. The idea of using small arms to engage fast jets is probably out there today but how about attack helicopters? If threat forces follows the example provided by the US and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan then we will see gun runs being conducted against our forces...especially our expeditionary forces that might not have adequate top cover. Again I don't know how practical it would be but if its a non-starter I haven't heard why.
No so silly against fast jets. The POM's did so in the Falklands during the Battle of San Carlos Water. They didn't really bring anything down but seeing all the tracer fire put the pilots aim off a bit.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Second Iraq War, there was at least one large flight of Apache attack helicopters that took such a beating from massed small arms fire that they were never sent out alone on strike missions again. Whatever success they had on the mission was outweighed by the repair costs and downtime sustained.
DeleteThe Karbala Ambush ? thats not small arms fire.. thats heavy AAA ambush..
DeleteThe 10 April AAR i saw said it was mostly due to small arms. Just a bunch of infantry with AKs firing on full auto at every apache that flew overhead. May not have even been regular infantry and might have been militia.
DeleteWith no suppression of the infantry and the infantry not being the primary target they just tried to stay low and sprint through. Unfortunatly the sprint speed of a AH-64 is right around a early WWII era fixed wing craft and those were downed in droves by infantry. That is actually the reason that tanks still mount 50 cals on the ring mount, it was originally a AA piece.
The othe problem is that modern helos essentially have no armor. If it is hit is probably hitting something important. In operation Anaconda that first two Apaches that were sent in were knocked out of action of regular small arms fire. One of them took a single rifle round into the fire control wiring and knocked the entire fire control off line on it's very first pass.
heck, if your ass is about to be handed to you by fast air or a gunship, I don't see how resorting to small arms is going to hurt your chances!
ReplyDelete>>
DeleteI don't see how resorting to small arms is going to hurt your chances!
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Because you will be looking for cover against blast or frag patterns from other bombs that landed first? Because an F-16 releasing at 16,000ft _with dumb weapons_, after rolling down from 20, is visually all but invisible? Because if you up to smart weapons that slant standoff doubles to 6-8nm? Because it's night time and/or the threat air is called in on GPS/INS tags supplied by either a targeting pod (5-6 miles out and then descend to 200ft for a runin at 550-600 knots) or an enemy TACP/Drone?
Airpower is like nukes. Unless you have something like network ADADS (IRST on a tripod) or FAAD sector radars giving you heads up, you're not going to see them before they hit you and are out of ballistic range (literally, 700-800fps = 1.5-2 seconds and the M855 will never catch up). So if you are worried about that threat, you are better off going to dispersal conditions with everyone occupying wide, well camouflaged, platoon positions and doing as little movement as possible.
F-16 Low Pass Compilation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeI8nQksTJQ
F-16 Night Flight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SixYwbkrJ1A
If you're going to shoot back, do it with something than can hit the threat even if it doesn't pass right overtop you.and works in all weathers as times of day.
M, what he means is that you are screwed already, so might as well go down swinging.
DeleteYou're dead anyway, but at least make that guy remember the fight.
WWII equipment lacked a truly purpose designed Squad Automatic Weapon and the rifled grenades required the use of a blank round loaded in the chamber, so not as convenient as an M203/M302 under barrel launcher. You couldn't just slap a grenade on the muzzle and fire, you had to stop what you were doing, load a blank round, then put the grenade on, and then fire.
ReplyDeleteThe BAR was sort of a SAW, but it had heating issues and only 20 rounds in the box magazine, and despite a number of attempts it never truly succeeded in the sustained fire role. Useful for assaults though.
The anti-air drill is still a valid tactic against aircraft flying low, but no use against aircraft flying high dropping PGMs on your position, so battlefield dispersal remains a more useful technique than massing and firing (tactical dispersal also minimizes the possibility of enemy artillery taking out a whole squad or platoon).
Anyways, there is nothing wrong with the WWII tactics, but the only really make sense with WWII equipment.
i thought modern rifle grenades did away with having to load a blank before they could be fired. i'll check and get back to you on that one. as far as air attack? good point. the problem remains...and its mostly a land combat issue too. at sea the destroyers and carriers can pick up the job. on land it would be nice and probably necessary in the future to have mobile anti-air capability against fast jets that can accompany the march inland. imagine the gulf wars with a credible air threat and no established air superiority.
DeleteModern ones could take a live round
Deletedo you suffer a range penalty compared to what we're using now?
DeleteAccuracy penalty rather. No sights, you had to do a by gosh/by gee approximation. The M-203 had a quadrant sight that allowed you to drop a round right on target.
DeleteThe "live round" one is called a "bullet trap" grenade. Damn that was so long ago. There was an old british one, think they called it the ENERGA?
The problems with them were the upper limit of the warhead that you could fit onto the end of a rifle, race between armour and warhead, this one, the armour won, you can't put too heavy a warhead on a rifle grenade or it does bad things to the range and accuracy, and these days, it's simply just too small, hence the move to a LAW/M-203 split (anti-tank/anti-infantry). LAW rounds these days come in at 84-90mm.
Then there was also the problem that you can't use your rifle until you fired off the round.
VSRAD oh my god, those were the days. Think it's no longer in use, fast jets are way too fast these days.
"AIM 2 PLANES LENGTH AHEAD!!"
Sol, think the problem with manpacking a MANPAD (dang newfangled new terms... :) ) is that any decent one weighs a ton (not literally) and becomes the person's primary weapon, which means that the guy is dead weight in a firefight. Guess the middle ground is probably something like the US Avenger Humvee, not manpacked but on a light mechanized platform. Which might mean mechanizing your infantry.
A squad full of rifle grenades are likely to be better than one or two under barrel launchers, but in my view, a specialist automatic grenade launcher is always going to be the best solution.
ReplyDeleteA dedicated automatic grenade launcher, with a specialist operator, specialist sights, fusing ect and so on is going to be the best option for grenade usage.
The problem, is that much grenadage necessary.
The UK sent a lot of hmgs to the Falklands as last chance air defence.
Few kills, but the Argentine air force was wildly less effective than anyone predicted, and some of that can probably be attributed to the guns.
However, now, surely a couple of manpad operators within a platoon would make a better threat than rifle fire.
If they for some reason asked me I would say that each rifleman should have an under-barrel launcher with at least a couple of grenades and the the actual grenadier would carry something like the Milkor launcher. Then you could put out a couple of multiple shot grenade attacks if needed and keep up a sustained little bombardment with the milkor. Of course all this costs money and weight. Same reason wouldn't have that many manpads, but I think adding them in at the company level would be a good way to quickly upgrade our air defenses. That seems to be an area where we are severely lacking. They converted all the linebackers back into regular Bradleys and I wouldn't want to put the Avenger hummvees very far forward, they look like they would be super vulnerable to artillery. Some more stuff the F-35 money would be better spent on.
DeleteI was exremely happy with the M32 MGL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkor_MGL
DeleteI preferred one Grenadier with this bad boy over a dispersion of M203.
I actually would have taken a SMAW and thermobaric rounds over everything but i could never get one. Had to make do with LAWS instead.
USMC, this is in addition to an anti-personnel weapon or as a standalone? Think that is where a few of the hang ups are, you end up carrying 2 weapons instead of a single one.
DeleteOf course, carrying a LAW is essentially carrying 2 weapons too, but if you compare it to a -203, it is an additional weapon to carry. Not sure how big a deal breaker that is, never got my hands on a Milkor. Was juggling 2 weapon systems a problem?
Great catch Sol. Saw this along time ago. It was meant as a confidence builder for new troops. Interesting with the anti-tank guns. Enough said there for the 37mm. The towed anti-tank units with 57mm eventually went away as much as possible because they were vulnerable to artillery and mortars. More and more M-10s, M-36s Tank-Destroyer Battalions took up that role. You can Google some after-action reports for the tank-destroyer units. Not always that many enemy tanks around. They also did stuff like area bombardment and harrassing indirect fire. Don't know if the Regimental Canon Company lasted the TO&E throughout the war?
ReplyDeleteYou have to get some insight from the French as they seem to be avid rifle grenade 'operators' and yes modern rifle grenades are fired with a normal bullet.Other regular users of rifle grenades seem to be the Israelis.They have all sorts of rounds form door and wall breaching to non lethal outfited with a camera and parachute
ReplyDeletehttp://otomo68.over-blog.com/article-31388789.html
Hitting aerial targets with small arms is still practiced today:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7REgT6YunOo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0_RLIJwk6o
1. While it is unlikely to down a target it may cause damages demanding repairs grounding the target for some time.
2. It is difficult tell apart tracers from small arms and AAA making a successfull evasive action less likely.
3. It encourages planes to fly higher to become better targets for SAM:s and interceptors.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on in AfG. Obviously, from the FLIR, it's nighttime. Yet the shots I have seen show Tali doing the snake walk like they can't hear the helos but then the M230 opens up and 'shock, surprise!' body parts start flying and -then- they scatter.
ReplyDeleteThe rounds are on target in less than 2 seconds. Since the 30X113 is essentially the old ADEN/DEFA ammo (going back to the Mauser Mk.213a of WWII), we are talking 2,600-2,800fps. Which is not exactly speedy Gonzales. Nominal effective range is <800m.
My suspicion is that they have something like Whisper Mode tech (as A-sound generators and vibration dampeners plus shaped rotors) and/or they are diving down from 3,500ft or more to make initial attacks before coming on the power. Which is dangerous in AfG especially because you are already pretty high up and your depth references are not good.
Oriented On U.S. Ground Force
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ztfPLaStg
Patrol Walk with Helo in Guns Range
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5_hEWYihaM
Switchblade UAV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdRjYkEU-N4
My thinking is that:
1. You are useless if your air defense happens as the weapons come off the pylon or /when/ you are not in fact that target at all and have a need to intervene as those who are are heads down, totally defensive.
This ideally means you want to be able to emplace network sensors like ADADS-
http://pilkoptr02.uuhost.uk.uu.net/downloads/ADAD%20Product%20Information.pdf
And kill threats before they LOS you.
2. You have to be able to hit targets which are very fleeting, preferably by prelaunch into their aligned ground track or, in the case of helos, as they approach their bobup point in NOE. This means that the Switchblade's propeller is too damn slow.
This isn't.-
Tin Can Turbine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trcnd7qs-S8
RC Jet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RIPDtTPbZg
And it's clearly cheap
Taken together with some form of Bluetooth sensor and a high capability (tracking video) seeker (DARPA Hard) you can launch a swarm of the beasts and saturate threat evasion options or shootback. Treating the jet as the equivalent of a high speed guided bird collision as much as a missile.
I have long advocated the use of 'Turbo-SAM' in a larger size (MIM-160 MALI) for use against lolo threats for the simple reason that it takes the target acquisition portion of the engagement out of the hands of fixed radars which instead serve as cuing systems to put missiles into ground tracks.
We need to keep this in mind because threats will go assymetric with light aircraft or turbo trainers as much as heavy helos and fixed wing and just because we have VLO and EWF doesn't mean that potential enemy will not choose the lolo route nav alternative to either improve a lower standard of stealth engineering with clutter or avoid radar detection at all, by extreme low altitude flight.
Remember this fellah-
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20609795
And understand that a missile which performed like an RC Jet as a SAM could quite readily stop Mr. Rust in his hairbrained attempt. Or be used on a threat mortar/sniper/RCL position, just like the normal Switchblade.
Actually, from later reports, he was intercepted by a MiG, but the pilot chickened out on taking the shot without someone from higher command to cover his arse. Don't really blame the pilot, civilian plane, if spun wrongly, the poor pilot can end up facing a firing squad as a sacrifice to the media.
DeleteRust later made a real name for himself as a pervert IIRC.
BTW, how much more expensive is your Jet Bomb vs the Switchblade and does it have fueling requirements that a grunt might screw up? Switchblade looks battery powered, plug and play. RC jets? Do you have to fuel it before launch? Can the canister leak into someone's pack? Can it take a round without igniting the pack?
All the little questions.
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DeleteMay 6, 2011: Last year, the U.S. Army bought ten Switchblade UAVs for testing and evaluation. The tests were successful, and now the army wants to buy and deploy them. The only problem is tight budgets and the cost of this one-use system. Depending on the number ordered, each Switchblade round (the UAV in its storage/launch container) will still cost over $10,000. If it becomes popular with the troops, demand for more would have to be filled, and that could put a dent in the shrinking army budget
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http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/20110506.aspx
2,622 Dollar F-117 RC
http://www.aviation-design.fr/?rc-jet-model-f-117
400mph Generic RC Turbine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU
_Even If_ the price doubles for addition of a turbine (5,000) in the F-117 kit and doubles again for the various secure datalink and warhead bits (10,000 dollars) it is no more expensive than the 1km/min Switchblade.
As for fuel volatility, consider what would happen if someone shot you while you were carrying a FIM-92 Stinger or an FGM-148 Javelin. Warhead head = you dead and all your friends within a 20ft radius wearing bits of your body in theirs.
Javelin costs 72,000 dollars.
Stinger costs 38,000 dollars.
Neither of those weapons will engage a target over the horizon which means, by the time you are aware of the threat and unpacking your Man Portable, you have been in his powered optics gunsights for MINUTES.
There is really only one reason why the Army gets to play second fiddle to the AF with local area air defense-
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a. Hellfire had a designed range of 18 kilometers, compared to FOGM's then and still current 10km. Since the Hellfire range was classified (public references only said "in excess of 3750 meters") outsiders were confused. They didn't know it was going to be 5 TIMES in excess. This range of course put the AH-64 well outside the current and 20 year projected Soviet SHORAD (Short Range Air Defense) umbrella. You know the 'upsided down wedding cake' model for ADA (Air Defense Artillery) coverage.
...
Deleted. Threat analysis revealed that there was one significant threat to the AH-64 before 2000: You wrote: "Even attack helicopters would stay clear of areas where EFOG-Ms were reported, since EFOGMs can be used against them."
We realized that in 1977. And when that datum fell out of analysis, it was the end of FOGM for that generation. General E.C. "Shy" Meyer, then Chief of Staff, crushed the FOGM boomlet personally. Why should we do the Soviet's development for them? It took the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) almost no time to get the blueprints for most of the AH-64 itself. Only way to keep them from getting FOGM was to not build it, even as an R&D (Research and Development) project. I was told Meyer had said he would personally end the career of anyone, military or civil service, who spent one more penny or said one more word about FOGM. It was another example of the aluminum strip 'window' radar jamming story from World War II. Discussion, comment and criticism continued in thinking circles outside. But it was impossible for anyone in possession of the facts to educate the well meaning outsiders without educating the non-well meaning Soviets, too.
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http://www.g2mil.com/efogm.htm
Since the F-35 is only an evolutionary extension to the enormous waste that conventional air power represents (20,000lbs of fuel to deliver 4,000lbs of ordnance, to a <500nm radius with a 40-100 million dollar jet, twice a day...), the only reality that matters here is the one where the developed /system/ of airpower has so much investment that it is not seen as being beneficial to it's advocates to transition to something that might actually work well enough to render Helos obsolete and would be at least a swarm menace even to fixed wing airpower.
Of course those same generals live in a 1950s mental world where the U.S. was the only industrialized power and nobody had things like CATIA or NMC or 3D Printing with which to turn a hobbyist level toy into a weapon.
China will listen. China will make systems that 'the next guerillas' in SWA or PacRim or Africa can use against U.S. dominant/dependent airpower expeditionary doctrine. And then it will be a slog for all of us as we are deprived of our rapid mobility and concentrated weapons delivery effects.
And if not China, then Iran.
M&S... warheads are not armed in storage, they are physically incapable of going boom...
DeleteOperator hint.
Remote piloted systems when encrypted have a 2 second "lag" in the encrypt/decrypt phase. They can't be used at very high speeds as they react too slow. A tank can't run fast enough for it to matter, but a plane won't be where you aimed the missile. Next time you see a plane fly past, time it and mark the distance difference in 2 seconds.
Try playing FPS with a 2 second lag. it's something like that.
My bet is China. They're putting serious bucks into the tech, while msnbc the FDA and the usual suspects here are working to kill the technology for any but people like schlockmart!
DeleteI mean, yeah things like f35 really damage the country, but the real damage that company is doing is far more insidious!
The World War II rifle grenades did in fact require dedicated operators, because in addition to loading a blank round to fire the grenade one needed a special adaptor on the end of the rifle - one man per army squad was equipped with this adaptor per TOE; end of war Marine Corps had one adaptor per fire team. Range was less than the grenade launchers beginning with the M79. The Marines were last to use rifle grenades in combat - early Vietnam war with an adaptor on M14s. The point that today with "bullet trap" rifle grenades, elimination of special adaptors, and perhaps making the rifle grenades dual hand/rifle capable we should revisit this concept is well taken.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but remember, we lowered the calibre of the rounds from 7.62 to 5.56, which affects the total energy that can propel the round if there is no propellant section (pure bullet trap). For example, the quoted range for a SIMON door breacher is only 30m compared with the 200m of a LV -203.
DeleteThe first half of the video is a fun watch too:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KqemCtq3B8
Check out FM 44-8 "Small Unit Self Defense Against Air Attack".
ReplyDeletehmmm... so the opening of "Flight of the Intruder" is fake ? a single vietnamese farmer with ancient bolt action rifle , singleshotted the low flying A6 and killed the copilot/navigator...
ReplyDeleteIt's a fake? No way, soon you'll be telling me that the events in Aliens didn't happen.
Delete.....
Sarcasm intended.