The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.
- At most Army schools you will fail if you lose any equipment. Ranger school does a 100% equipment check at the end of every mission and will fail you if any equipment is missing.
- One of the more common ways for an officer to get "fired" (moved out of command early with a neutral or negative rating) is to lose property. This is harder than it sounds since even a Rifle company commander you might have a few million dollars of equipment. For mechanized units (tanks), it's much harder.
Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? One inherent limitation of firearms is that all the energy is released inside the weapon, which has, then, to dissipate the heat and remaining gases and particles. If bullets are self-propelled, a larger part of that output can be released outside the weapon, allowing it to be faster and impart more energy on impact. Unfortunately, it may make following the source of the bullet easier.
> avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.
That a combatant needs to worry about paperwork is the cruelest thing I heard in a long time.
Caseless ammunition is maybe a closer thing, but also tricky (heat dissipation is harder, difficulties in making ammunition robust enough). H&K made a military variant once, but no military adopted it (Germany almost did, but with the end of the cold war it wasn't considered worth the cost)
Even adopting improved versions of existing systems is a big process for militaries, switching to something entirely new for something as fundamental as the standard rifles needs to have really big and obvious benefits to be considered.
Welcome to 1944.
This is exactly why full power rifle cartridges were replaced with intermediate cartridges like 7.62x39 and 5.56x45.
Kinetic energy is only loosely associated with effectiveness, terminal ballistics matters just as much if not more. In the real world intermediate calibers kill people dead enough reliably enough that it's a non-issue and marginal decreased effectiveness is outweighed by increased capacity. The overwhelming majority of shots fired will hit nothing useful anyway.
Case-less ammo was tried (read up on the H&K G11) for slightly different reasons (weight saving was a goal but not the primary goal) but the cold war ended before it could make it into service.
You are basically describing this[1][2][3] and it's not really that great at anything in particular (especially not military use) and are primarily used by people who want to shoot a trophy buck that's 400yd away. IMO they're kind of the hipster beer of the rifle world. They do little a boring old Bud won't do but they sure put a bigger hole in your wallet.
Read up on the history of intermediate cartridges[4] and assault rifles (not "assault weapons", the former is a technical term, the latter is anything but). Earlier intermediate cartridges (were a standard size .30-ish cal bullet on top of a 30-40mm case instead of a 50-70mm case of a traditional full power rifle round. Later intermediate cartridges such as 5.56x45 and 5.45x39 (the Russians stuck a smaller bullet on top of the 7.62x39 cartridge) stick an even smaller bullet on top of an intermediate size case because the smaller bullet going faster does the job just as well with less weight (I'm painting with a really broad brush here). These 2nd gen intermediate cartridges are what I think you're getting at but you're hung up on the rifle cartridge. For simply killing people 0-350yd away you don't need that much bang, it's actually detrimental because it's extra weight and makes the firearm harder to handle.
You also need thinking in terms of energy. All the energy in the world is useless if you can't transfer it to the target properly. It doesn't take much energy dissipated in a human torso to immediately incapacitate and kill. Better understanding of the needs of combat troops and nature of engagements and terminal ballistics is what led to the switch from intermediate cartridges starting in the 1940s.
Of course you have to remember that everything is still a trade-off in cartridge design and the nature of the engagements you expect still plays a large role in what the "best" tool for the job is and often the difference is only marginal at best.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Winchester_Short_Magnum
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Weatherby_Magnum
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Winchester_Super_Short_Ma...
There have been ongoing efforts for years, but there are significant technical obstacles to producing reliable, effective ammunition with reduced weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Small_Arms_Technol...
The whole concept of .223 is to put more propellent behind a smaller projectile. This gives the projectile more speed which makes it exceptionally lethal and accurate at very long distance. Unlike handguns that basically poke a hole, .223 generates a shockwave when it strikes at a multiple of the speed of sound.
Running just on the math, it seems the answer would be "of course":
E_k = 1/2 m \* v ^ 2
But we're not only concerned with kinetic energy. Momentum also matters. Or, in shooting parlance, "power factor", measured in grains (1/7000th of a pound) x velocity in feet per second. Momentum has a much closer correlation to recoil than kinetic energy. It also affects ballistics - a hypersonic lightweight round will have a different curve than a dense, merely supersonic traditional round.
Other practical concerns are also relevant: lead is an excellent lubricant/bearing material and aluminum oxide being an extremely abrasive cutting material...lead, bronze, cast iron, and other dense metals are more amenable to firing out of an interference fit with a barrel than light metals (of which aluminum is just one example, but a fairly representative one). Lead is highly ductile and mushrooms on impact, but aluminum is brittle and shatters on impact. A round fired at higher velocity spends less time in the barrel, so you need more powder, faster powder, and longer barrels to accelerate it more quickly. And the bullet is not the only thing ejected from the barrel: There's a supersonic jet of propellant gasses that contributes to both recoil and noise.
500 years of (un)natural selection in the field of ammunition materials science has left lead at the top of the charts for a good reason. Most lightweighting efforts have focused on reducing weight in the brass case, which is just packaging and becomes extra mass.
Finally, a combatant worrying about paperwork says something about the one-sided nature of recent wars: Million-dollar soliders applying overwhelming force and unimaginable funds against desperate guerillas. I wonder how quickly the slow-changing military will be able to respond if there's a war between superpowers.
Modern projectiles are jacketed so lead never touches anything.
If bullets are self-propelled, they are slower and less stable in the initial portion of their flight, which makes them much less accurate and gives longer time of flight assuming same top speed (which, for a similar quantity of propellant, isn't reasonable anyway; having a gun barrel is an advantage here), rocket and rocket-assisted projectiles work well enough when you can afford less inherent ballistic accuracy because of large targets or self-guidance, but neither of those is really practical for infantry smallarms.
If you look at the size of a common rifle projectile vs. a conventional cartridge, you’ll recognize that you’d need enormous energy density for any such booster system to do anything noticeable at all besides screwing with the reliably, safety, and stability of the round. A
https://archive.org/details/UsmcSmallWarsManual1940Reprinted...
SF have been using horses in places like Afghanistan for the past 2 decades and while DARPA is working on a robotic mule the DoD has brought in consultants to advise them about actual mules.
You'd be surprised what the military still does with animals, the Army even still has the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps with 700 something veterinarians for dogs, ceremony horses, working animals etc.
[0] https://www.forces.net/services/tri-service/leading-charge-t...
Also a related BBC article with more background: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-22951...
"The figures don't necessarily mean we have got too many horses, it's more likely the figures mean we don't have enough tanks."
Edit: Mind you, on reflection, 485 horses does seem rather a lot.
I'm not vouching for the authenticity of this story, but it is a good story none the less.
I guess the endgame is remote drones and similar with the controllers sitting in a safe building miles away?
How does this compare to say Vietnam? It feels to me like the populace is worse divided, it’s disaffected. It seems like the new normal to have some god forsaken outpost where a few dozen soldiers die a year (not to mention thousands of local population - they’re even less of a consideration).
<snark> Please tell that to the kids that are enlisting so they can actually afford to go to college in the US. </snark>
I know there is a difference between drafting and enlistment, but I know there are a lot of people in the military because it was "the way out" of their situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States...
> “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.)
Thing is there were also a lot of contractors in Vietnam just not the Blackwater type that gets a lot of the press in this era.
Not all of that is just physical conditioning, there's a sizable mental component to it that helps condition you to less than ideal situations so you don't go "welp, I'm tired, fuck it, I'm sitting down to die" when you're in a bad situation and instead you're like "I got this, I've done worse, this is nothing, just a little farther" as well as equipping you to know what your body is capable of and that the burning in your calves and quads isn't that bad yet and you know you've got to slow down for the next few minutes or that you've still got this much left in your tank and should be able to complete task without any rests.
There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries.
I'm curious, could you expand on this, or post a link for further reading?
Also look into the history of Special Forces in the United States. WWI was in large part trench warfare, the Civil War was largely fought in open fields in lines not unlike trench warfare. Marching was something you did for parades and pageantry.
Basically though if you look at ancient armies like the Romans had you needed to be able to march 15-20 miles in full kit over most terrains and this is how you trained.
If you want to dive into the current Special Forces community you need to start with the First Special Service Force where you first start seeing long marches (on a 60 mile course) as well as learning things like hand to hand combat, skiing, mountain climbing, parachuting. Then go look at Darby's Rangers and Merrill's Marauders. From there jump to to Vietnam and the 5th SFG[A] and look at some of their feats.
Today you have stuff like Robin Sage and Operator Training Course which, special tactics aside, some ancient soldiers would felt right at home with the long range marches and covering unimproved terrain as well as handling shelter and meeting their basic needs.
If you really dive into the history of special forces and the backgrounds of the original trainers/leaders, you'll see men with well rounded knowledge of ancient tactics/warfare as well as knowledge/training in more modern, yet primitive, tactics like guerrilla warfare and taking on much larger forces (again, something that there are great examples of in ancient warfare like the Battle of Marathon, Battle of Julu, Battle of Badr) as well as ancient units/groups (Medjay, Akkadian, Spartan, Sacred Band of Thebes, Dacian, Varangian Guard etc).
The Civil War actually looks like it was a low point in historical military kit weights. (see The History of the Soldiers Load by Lieutenant Rob Orr Volume 7, Number 2, Winter 2010 https://www.army.gov.au/our-future/australian-army-research-... )
No end of scenarios where helicopter / jeep isn't going to work, or are being shot up, or can't fly. Yomping 50 miles across rough terrain, over 3 days with 100lbs and capability to fight when they arrive probably isn't a capability you want to scale back. It's used too often.
There's good reason it's a usual part of the combat fitness test for recruits.
I agree with everything else though.
sa46 addresses it a little bit above that there are different loadouts depending on how you're operating. It wasn't uncommon to move from one place to another with 100 pounds, then drop gear and patrol with a far smaller loadout.
Then again, sometimes your vehicle breaks down and you're now "man packable", which means you do need to be ready to carry a lot. This is really one of the sticking points for women in the military. It's nice to imagine that a specific job will always have a vehicle, but it is doctrine to be prepared to step into the role of infantryman.
Good point. This is a big deal because load carried in your hands or, to a lesser degree, on a shoulder strap is more taxing than load carried on a vest.
The Army doesn't use the M249 as a crew served weapon (unlike the Marines) so the automatic rifleman on each team usually has 600 rounds of 5.56mm linked ammo to carry around.
I'd be curious to see standard ammo load-out by conflict and country.
This is a pretty well done article. Here's some general ideas to keep in mind.
- Most dismounted missions are run from trucks or an established forward operating base, so you don't carry a huge rucksack most of the time because you can just go back to your base.
- Like the article states, even a day pack with body armor gets you up to 70lbs quickly.
- Ammo is really heavy, it being made of lead and all. 100rds of 7.62mm ammo weighs about 7lb. You want at least 800rds per M240B.
- Rucksack weights are sometimes inflated because it's a way to brag.
- The Marine infantry officer course requirement for 152lb load is excessive. At that weight, you can only do an admin movement on a road. All the anecdotes I found about combat loads that heavy were for an initial, short infil followed by a stationary mission.
I think the article nails the root cause towards heavier protective equipment. Public perception and the news cycle makes the death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflicts.
It will be a long time before we get electronic mules in the Infantry. Adopting the mules adds a huge complexity budget to a simple movement. The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.