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I've been watching C&Rsenal's annual Q&A, they obviously put a serious amount of work into it, doing research to answer some fairly esoteric questions. One part though did wind me up.


The idea that soldiers in general and infantry soldiers in particular are somehow prone to destroying their kit either through negligence or for kicks and giggles, is an idea that's been around for a long time. Likewise the idea that logistics systems would somehow crack under the strain of having to supply a wide range of ammunition.

The expression the 'G4 tail wags the dog' applies to both. Where a collection of window licking logistics personnel from Private to General (and of course mouth breathing civvies) get to have undue influence in what type of equipment enters service.

A British Army Bn in Afghan had to supply troops with small arms ammunition of differing calibers, 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, .50bmg, .338, and managed it via a supply chain was run by the dregs of the armed forces, officers and enlisted. The idea that mixed ammo is a massive logistical obstacle rather a relatively minor logistical problem is up for debate.

Even during WWII the British Royal Armoured Corps discovered that you could have .303 Bren Guns, 7.92mm Besas, and 30.06 M1919 Brownings in the same Regiment with very minor problems.

Likewise that idea that troops destroy equipment, is used to push lower spec 'ruggadised' equipment. I'll give you another british example, the army was issued Sig P226's for Iraq and Afghan which the Army loved. However the Arms storemen had to keep track of the rough amount of rounds fired (which was really only a thing in pre deployment training) this caused a massive amount of crying by a group of people that should have just been told to shut the fuck up. In the end it was one of the reasons the Army switched to the Glock (then because the Glock didn't have an external safety mandated a specific holster with two seperate fucking mechanical catches be used).

Soldiers don't destroy their kit intentionally, when something is damaged or lost it's a massive fucking headache, That causes a lot of whinging by both his chain of command and the G4 system.

On another note Othais's comment that the inability of the French to keep the secret of smokeless powder for longer wasn't down to leaking of the actual formula for Poudre B, but the instrumentation used to measure how fast powder burned was really interesting.

However I don't think the reason the French rushed the development of the Lebel was primarily because they wanted to leap frog the Germans in Arms development. It was just the nature of the French Third republic where because governments changed so often there was a push for ministers to have some concrete achievement in their limited time in office, and Boulanger even though he was an Army Officer while minister had political ambitions.
 
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Trig.Point said:
Soldiers don't destroy their kit intentionally, when something is damaged or lost it's a massive fucking headache, That causes a lot of whinging by both his chain of command and the G4 system.
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After talking to a lot of veterans, I've reached the conclusion that even if soldiers did destroy their kit intentionally, any increase in equipment turnover would still be a drop in the bucket compared to just the general wear-and-tear of shit being used in active theaters.

Doesn't help that since most equipment is deployed in batches, even if it's only used for training it also starts breaking in batches. And so armorers report that they "suddenly" had two dozen machineguns coming in with broken firing pins, which results in the logistics and procurement people losing their minds, and in "journalists" and gossipy personnel coming out with pieces talking about how "X piece of gear is shit and breaks after only two weeks of use". Even though said piece of kit might have been used by the soldier who reported that story to them for two weeks... but he's like the 10th grunt to be issued it through the years.
 
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Trig.Point said:
Likewise that idea that troops destroy equipment, is used to push lower spec 'ruggadised' equipment. I'll give you another british example, the army was issued Sig P226's for Iraq and Afghan which the Army loved. However the Arms storemen had to keep track of the rough amount of rounds fired (which was really only a thing in pre deployment training) this caused a massive amount of crying by a group of people that should have just been told to shut the fuck up. In the end it was one of the reasons the Army switched to the Glock (then because the Glock didn't have an external safety mandated a specific holster with two seperate fucking mechanical catches be used).
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Like occasionally it happens see the MAS 36 bayonet issue, but it does happen rarely.
 
JJLiautaud said:
Like occasionally it happens see the MAS 36 bayonet issue, but it does happen rarely.
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I saw some pretty dumb shit done to government property by fellow conscripts during my service. Still, it's not really about "destroying it for fun", rather just treating it improperly. Of course, might not make a difference depending on the type of equipment.

And naturally, if a soldier goes to an active war zone he's more likely to take good care of his equipment, because his life depends on it.
Trig.Point said:
A British Army Bn in Afghan had to supply troops with small arms ammunition of differing calibers, 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, .50bmg, .338, and managed it via a supply chain was run by the dregs of the armed forces, officers and enlisted. The idea that mixed ammo is a massive logistical obstacle rather a relatively minor logistical problem is up for debate.

Even during WWII the British Royal Armoured Corps discovered that you could have .303 Bren Guns, 7.92mm Besas, and 30.06 M1919 Brownings in the same Regiment with very minor problems.
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"Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, professionals talk about logistics" as the saying goes. Still, very much agreed that when it comes to small arms ammunition, it's not a real problem in the big picture. I've always been kinda confused why most western militaries insist on having the SAW in the same calibre as the riflemen. If you want rapid fire capability in your squad, just put a proper LMG there with 7.62 NATO /54R. It's not that big of a hassle.

The Finnish military is about to have 3 different calibres for infantry squads: 7.62x39 for assault rifles, 7.62x54R for the LMG, and 7.62 NATO for the DMR. And in the upcoming years, they are going to adopt a 5.56 assault rifle so the whole system is going to have 4 different calibres for infantry squads. Obviously with the assault rifles 7.62x39 and 5.56x45 guns are probably not going to be mixed at a unit level, but in the big picture it's going to be harder for the logistics. Still doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
 
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Foley said:
I've always been kinda confused why most western militaries insist on having the SAW in the same calibre as the riflemen. If you want rapid fire capability in your squad, just put a proper LMG there with 7.62 NATO /54R. It's not that big of a hassle.
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I suspect the reason is two fold. Ammo compatibility was certainly a factor. Not just in general terms of calibre, but the fact that SAWs could at least nominally feed from the same STANAG mags as the rest of the squad if SHTF. More important was probably weight. I know the GMPGs in the British Army are more than 50% heavier than the Minimi's, and the ammo is almost double the weight per round, that's a not insignificant difference.
 
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Iraqveteran8888 is selling nearly all of his collection:
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Source (Archive)
 
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East_Clintwood said:
I suspect the reason is two fold. Ammo compatibility was certainly a factor. Not just in general terms of calibre, but the fact that SAWs could at least nominally feed from the same STANAG mags as the rest of the squad if SHTF. More important was probably weight. I know the GMPGs in the British Army are more than 50% heavier than the Minimi's, and the ammo is almost double the weight per round, that's a not insignificant difference.
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Yeah, to be fair the FN MAG (11.8kg/26lb) is pretty heavy compared to it's Soviet counterpart the PK (9kg/19.8lb). But they do make a 7.62 NATO version of the minimi these days I think?

With the ammo, yes that is true. You can carry more 5.56 vs 7.62. But with 7.62 you also get much better effective range and better effectiveness overall I would say with better impact on target. While I think the US Army is out of their minds going to battle rifles again with the XM7, I do think that with machine guns going for the bigger cartridge makes sense.
 
Trig.Point said:
A British Army Bn in Afghan had to supply troops with small arms ammunition of differing calibers, 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, .50bmg, .338, and managed it via a supply chain was run by the dregs of the armed forces, officers and enlisted. The idea that mixed ammo is a massive logistical obstacle rather a relatively minor logistical problem is up for debate.
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I think you are forgetting that Othais is a man stuck in 1910. Logistics seems easy in current year when fighting sand people and you can just fly in supplies if need be. Before the mass adoption of combustion engines you had to hand load the ammo in a box, hand load that box in a crate, hand load that box into a train/ship, get that train/ship safely as close as you can to the front, put the crate on a cart and get it to a supply depot, unbox the crate, get the box from that crate to the company/regiment, open the box and give it to a couple of idiots that may or may not have a donkey to take it to the front line unit so they can hand distribute it. And even that is describing post Franco Prussian warfare. In wars before that you didn't really use trains or distributed supply chains. A solider would be given ~100 ish rounds and he was expected to only need those 100 rounds until a major engagement afterwards their unit would be moved to a spot where they could get more ammo.
Trig.Point said:
The idea that soldiers in general and infantry soldiers in particular are somehow prone to destroying their kit either through negligence or for kicks and giggles, is an idea that's been around for a long time. Likewise the idea that logistics systems would somehow crack under the strain of having to supply a wide range of ammunition.
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Like wise you are thinking of modern people that have spent between 12 and 16 years in some form of education, are around electronic and mechanical implements and not some farmers boy that may or may not have been taught to read and it's his first time being more than 20km from his house. Not to mention things like language barriers or national loyalty in the case of empires.
It's easy to make fun of people from a century ago for being backwards but some of their concerns were legitimate or were at least logical. To give an example of how logistics have evolved. During the 2nd Balkan War the Romanian army sustained an order of magnitude more casualties to do a Cholera outbreak than from Combat. And at the time the Romanian army was considered a modern force.
Foley said:
"Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, professionals talk about logistics" as the saying goes. Still, very much agreed that when it comes to small arms ammunition, it's not a real problem in the big picture. I've always been kinda confused why most western militaries insist on having the SAW in the same calibre as the riflemen. If you want rapid fire capability in your squad, just put a proper LMG there with 7.62 NATO /54R. It's not that big of a hassle.
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You are thinking in terms of pure fire. And forgetting about the whole maneuver part of fire and maneuver. Automatic rifles and intermediate cartridge lmgs are lighter, quicker to deploy and can be operated by one man unassisted if need be. The RPK is in my opinion the best implementation of this concept but the Ultimax gives it a run for it's money. And ideally you would have one or two Automatic rifles and a GPMG. That way you can set up the GPMG as a base of fire while maneuvering the ARs as necessary.
 
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Not really a Guntuber, but it's a YouTuber and it's gun related so I'll post it here to spark a discussion.
A NYC judge straight up said "The Second Amendment doesn't exist in this court" and convicted someone for simply building guns that never fired a single bullet. God I want to see this go strrrraight to the Supreme Court. At this rate NY, and perhaps by extent the whole of US' justice system will devolve into USSR style show trials. Fuck your rights, fuck your freedoms, we own you.
 
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What's with the fudbuster guy beefing with Cody Wilson and calling him a pedo
I thought the consensus was Cody was set up by the government
Either way it's fun seeing the 3d print tranny community fight
 
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Devious Dave said:
What's with the fudbuster guy beefing with Cody Wilson and calling him a pedo
I thought the consensus was Cody was set up by the government
Either way it's fun seeing the 3d print tranny community fight
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Cody's autistic and people formed opinions from interactions that it may be possible he's a kidtoucher
Allegedly stole the Liberator design
His website requires everything up to and including your social security number for registration, people who had signed up now don't want to badmouth him
The initial 3D prints offered alongside the Liberator were non-gun replicas(Apparently people were retarded and thought you could just print out an entire AK)
Has allegedly taken free designs posted elsewhere and placed them behind a paywall, also allegedly claiming it's an original design
 
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Foley said:
But they do make a 7.62 NATO version of the minimi these days I think?
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Sure they do now, but this is military procurement we're talking about. Getting them to buy new shit, when you have old shit in stock is like getting blood from a stone.


Foley said:
With the ammo, yes that is true. You can carry more 5.56 vs 7.62. But with 7.62 you also get much better effective range and better effectiveness overall I would say with better impact on target. While I think the US Army is out of their minds going to battle rifles again with the XM7, I do think that with machine guns going for the bigger cartridge makes sense.
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That's definitely true, but it was a case of no-one knowing exactly how much more effective it was in practice until we got some actual combat use. As an example the GPMG has replaced the Minimi in all non-SOF infantry sections in the British Army, based on out experiences in Afghanistan. However even that took 5 fucking years after the end of Operation Herrick, and probably 10+ years after increased combat effectiveness had been essentially proved.
 
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