Tag Archives: commentary

The CAS Conundrum

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Assume a peer opponent, like the Soviet Union in its glory days.

Wait, no. That’s hard to think of. And not necessary.

Assume a relatively peer-ish opponent. Or even semi-peer. The diet coke of peer will do in a pinch. Maybe it’s a revanchist Russia, maybe China, or maybe just someone with their head screwed on right, like Serbia in the late 90s. Someone who has built a nice IADS. Invested in air defense. Trained on it. Got them in your head? Good. Now you’re at war…

We, of course, want to provide air support. And air support can take the form of interdiction or CAS, close air support. Right up at the line of contact. There’s plenty of good historical examples of how to do this right. And it’ll bring decisive firepower to assist. It’s worked in basically every war since the Second World War. If you can bring airplanes to help, you’ve got yourself a big win. And right at the front lines is where it matters the most. But the enemy is going to try to stop you, and therein lies the problem. Let’s consider those defenses.

As far back as the 60s, big medium and long ranged SAM systems were trouble. Remember Gary Powers? Okay, there’s that peer competitor again. But plenty of F-105s and even mighty B-52s were shot down by SA-2s over Vietnam. There. That’s not very peer. The SAM threat was bad. One counter was to build up a big strike package with SAM-suppression aircraft and jamming support. That’s perfect for the interdiction mission, the deep strike. But what about the CAS mission? Are we doomed?

No, we fly low! Perfect. And this is the approach of choice for the Panavia Tornado and the A-10 and the Su-25. If we’re doing close air support, and it’s the 60s or 70s, we only have to worry about anti-aircraft guns. And not like the big 12.8cm guns that defended Berlin in ’44, but small, mobile units. 23mm autocannons are the standard size for Russian units. So the A-10 was built to take shots from those 23mm guns, and it was built around a massive 30mm autocannon that outranged the Soviet 23mm guns. It could win a ‘high noon’ duel with the defending 23mm batteries, and then tear tanks apart with more 30mm gunfire plus bombs.

Perfect. Except that nobody likes to be looking at a losing score up on the board. The Soviets love their tanks, and they weren’t about to sit around while they got torn up from the air. They had enough of that back when they were facing Ju-87Gs back in the Great Patriotic War. They doubled down on missiles, specifically short range missiles. And here was the hard counter they were looking for. Short range systems, plus the famed MANPADS like Strela-3, Igla, and Stinger.

In 1991, lots of aircraft came at the Iraqi air defense system at low level. Again, we had the Tornado and the A-10 as big users of the attack profile. Both were not only doctrinally constrained to low-level attacks, but also had weapons systems that required the aircraft to fly low to be effective. And both aircraft took some significant losses, which forced changes in attack profiles. Back up to medium altitude, where they were relatively safe because the Iraqis weren’t very good at protecting their bigger (and longer ranged) SAM systems from coalition air defense suppression assets.

The Soviets experienced basically the same thing in Afghanistan, once the Mujahedin got Stingers. This forced their aircraft up to medium altitude, where they were safe from the missiles.

And now it gets worse. First, we’re not really doing close air support anymore. We’re dropping from altitude, and can’t actually see the guys on the ground. So we’re dependent on communicated coordinates. Don’t screw that up, or else the bomb might hit you.1 Second, at medium altitude, that big awesome gun on the A-10 is just a lot of weight and drag.

But, no problem, right? We can just use a bomb truck with plenty of gas, like the A-6E. That even has a lot of built-in targeting systems to squeeze maximum precision out of dumb bombs. The even bigger F-111 is another good choice. Or it would be except for those surface to air missiles. We saw in 1999 that an army with old, reasonably mobile SAMs like the SA-6 could make life hell for an attacker by using clever tactics, decoys, and good emissions discipline. And they didn’t even have the widely-exported S-300 family, which are much more formidable.

At medium altitude, there’s no cover, and a bomb truck like an A-6 or an A-10 isn’t going to be able to shake SAMs very well. There is another way to beat the big SAMs though: stealth.

As Muhammad Ali would say, your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see. A little route planning, and boom. They won’t be able to touch you. Stealth is cool, but it demands internal carriage of weapons and not being predictable. Both of which make CAS extremely difficult.

But CAS is not doomed. And I’m not about to give the skeptics victory. The Small Diameter Bomb is a good start, since lots of those can fit in a stealthy 5th generation fighter. Remember, the formidable Stuka generally didn’t use giant bombs, and we have way more precision than Rudel could have dreamed of. Plus, we could always loiter on standby near, but not over, the battlefield. And we don’t have any good examples of a stealthy midsize bomb truck. We have big fighters like the Raptor, but only small bombers. A stealthy plane with some bomb capacity would be perfect here. Something F-22 sized or a bit bigger that can haul a decent bombload internally.

1.) By ‘might’, I mean ‘will,’ thanks to that asshole Murphy.

Attack Helicopters for the Modern Army

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Yes, I’m finally getting around to replying to some of Fishbreath’s stuff. You’re probably wondering what attack helicopter we in Borgundy like. The Boeing AH-64E Apache Guardian, with the Longbow fire control radar setup. Duh. Best in-class. Next question.

Why do we like the AH-64E? Mostly on account of being the baddest tank killing thing with rotary wings, and that’s due to the phenomenal Hellfire missiles. It’s got the fancy millimeter-wave fire control setup so that it just has to poke the radar over a hill, or have a fellow helicopter do so, and it can literally rain hellfire on its enemies. Way cool.

This is hardly fair though. The AH-64E has gotten a lot of development money, and the alternatives have stagnated. And the single-seat Ka-50 is basically stillborn.1 The Ka-52, which hasn’t done well at exports, is a two-seater. Well, life and procurement games are hardly fair. But this is shaping up to be a dreadfully short piece, and simply adding tactics will make it boring, so let’s make it interesting (and also add tactics).

What helicopter would we choose if it was 1990? The Ka-50 has just entered production, and the Soviet union hasn’t collapsed yet. We’d still go with the Apache (then, it was the AH-64A, and it was made by McDonnell Douglas, who hadn’t been bought buy Boeing yet). A good chunk of that is political; we’re firmly in the West’s camp. But that’s the cop-out reason. Straight up, the AH-64A/Hellfire combo is still best at what we want it to do: kill tanks. Being semi-active laser homing, the Hellfire can be fired somewhat indirectly, as long as there’s some laser emitter to illuminate the target, the helicopter needn’t be exposed. Hellfire missiles can also be salvoed faster, since the laser only needs to be on target for guidance, not at launch. A ground launch option is available. Oh, and the tandem-HEAT warhead on the Hellfire is really big. So it’s probably going to kill what it hits.

Now we get to the tactics. What are attack helicopters for? Well, we see them as a much more successful manifestation of the ‘tank destroyer’ concept. Helicopters can move much faster than ground vehicles, so they’re perfect for rapidly moving to provide support or counterattack a breakthrough. I don’t have a cute metaphor for this, other than maybe to call them ‘plumbers’.2 They’re to kill tanks first, other vehicles second. So, the powerful, accurate Hellfire missile that can be fired rapidly is just what we need.

I should probably take a moment to point out that deep strikes with attack helicopters are a bad idea. They don’t fare well when lots of things can shoot them, as evidenced by losing one to a flak trap in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They’re not very good at dealing with SAMs, so they need to use terrain to avoid them. Since they fly low, they’re also vulnerable to AAA fire. Again, it’s about speed and using cover and concealment effectively. They’re not well suited to forcing the SAM to dodge, since they’re not very fast.

That aside, we’ve mostly been talking about missiles, not about helicopters themselves. Let’s look more at the Apache and the two-man layout. A two-man crew is perhaps the most intuitive solution. There are two things that need doing: weapons employment and flying the helicopter. Since flying the helicopter is *hard*, and semi-active laser homing weapons like the Hellfire still require quite a bit of operator input for target discrimination and selection, we might naturally choose to have a crew of two, like the engineers at Hughes/McDonnell Douglas did. Or those at Bell, or those at EuroCopter, or those at Mil.

I generally like a crew of two in combat aircraft. In the fighter realm, the statistics show that for comparable types, the two-seat fighters tend to do better, since they have two pairs of eyes available. This is even more helpful for the attack helicopter, since spotting ground targets is notoriously difficult. Also, two sets of eyes to spot return fire is very helpful, since it’s easy for the gunner to get ‘tunnel vision’ when prosecuting targets. The pilot can maintain overwatch for tracers or missile launches, or keep the helicopter moving. These tactics of attack on the move have been heavily used by Soviet pilots in Afghanistan after Stinger missiles were introduced to the conflict, by American pilots in Vietnam, and more recently by Russian pilots in the Syrian intervention. Movement is good. Movement is life.

Hovering is not a good idea from a long-term survivability perspective. In addition to dedicated anti-aircraft assets, most modern IFVs and some modern MBTs have targeting systems capable of nailing attack helicopters if they hover for a while. Fishbreath and I can also testify that even an old-school T-55 can bag you if you sit pretty and hover for a while. If you’re gonna hover, you have to pop up from some kind of cover, engage, and drop back down (and relocate). Again, that second crewmember allows for a rapid transition to movement to avoid incoming fire, and he can keep his eyes up while the gunner is engaging targets. Or just be looking around and planning where to pop up from next. He can route plan while the gunner hunts targets.

One nifty feature of the Apache in particular is that the pilot has his own independent thermal viewer to let him see at night or in foul weather. The pilot’s thermal camera is slaved to his helmet. Night fighting and operations in harsh weather conditions are also better with the split workload, and the Apache has the vision tech to facilitate this. The Ka-50N might have rectified this a bit, but that was just a prototype, and we don’t know how well it would have done at night.

So there you have it. While you could operate an attack helicopter with a single man crew and appropriate automation, they’re better with a two-man crew. More combat effective. None of this precludes operating attack helicopters in groups; more helicopters are better. And yes, you’ll pay a bit more for the American-made Apache, and you’ll pay more for two crew. But you get more. This is the helicopter that armies want. This is the helicopter foreign designers wish they made. This is the most effective attack helicopter available. The choice is clear.

Geronimo would approve.

1.) Don’t worry, Fishbreath. I’ll be sure to say something pithy at its funeral. And then drink a bunch of good vodka and gloat.
2.) Because they stop leaks, get it? A trifle Nixonian though.

Procurement successes

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I gripe a lot about the sorry state of American defense procurement, and sometimes about the even sorrier state of Western European defense procurement. But there have been successes. In thinking about a few of the recent ones, namely the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, the M1 Abrams tank, and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, I noticed something: all had followed a gross failure.

First let’s define terms. The obvious: failure. A program is a failure when it is cancelled while the need remains. If an army decided it needed no more tanks and cancelled its latest tank design program, that would make sense. At least from a logical standpoint. It follows. If you don’t need a thing, you shouldn’t be buying a thing. But sometimes a program is such a massive overbudget clusterfuck of mismanagement, it gets cancelled even though the service still needs it. And that usually forces some ranking officers to be “forced into retirement” and a lot of soul searching. We’ll see that this is important later.

Next, let’s talk success. I’m going to be mean and set the bar high. A successful program delivers a quality product at a reasonable price. On time. On budget. But it must also be a product that compares well to its peers, regardless of how much gold-plated nonsense is baked into them. Each of our aforementioned projects fulfills both criteria. They are seen as good by both the bean-counters and the warriors. All designs are compromises, and these appear to have made the right ones. Why?

Almost certainly, because the need was great, and the service in question had already tried an “everything and the kitchen sink” gold plated design that failed. Each predecessor was super expensive. Two of the three were cancelled outright. The third just barely made it out of the gate before being terminated unceremoniously. Let’s look at these failed programs.

The Abrams was preceded by the MBT-70, a case study in multinational mismanagement. It was a joint German-American tank project, but the Germans and Americans couldn’t agree on anything. Rather than actually make hard decisions, the project team let each country do its own thing. Since work was duplicated and the project had to work with both, costs skyrocketed. The Germans wanted a 120mm smoothbore gun. The Americans wanted a 152mm short-barrel gun/missile system. So they compromised. Both were developed and integrated. The Americans wanted a gas turbine. The Germans wanted a diesel. So they compromised. American versions had a gas turbine; German versions had a diesel. The design teams couldn’t even agree on whether to use metric or SAE measurements on bolts and nuts. You guessed it, both were used. Plus, they wanted to integrate an autoloader, which had never been done in the West. They also wanted an active hydropneumatic suspension that could “lean” and “kneel”, another novelty. Costs spiraled out of control, and eventually, Congress and the Bundestag agreed on something: the MBT-70 had to go.

The Super Hornet had an ill-fated predecessor in the A-12 Avenger II. The Navy wanted to replace the A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair II attack aircraft with a cool new stealth attack aircraft. Stealth was cool. The USAF had the awesome F-117A and B-2A. Stealth meant you could go anywhere, and the pesky Soviet air defense systems could do nothing to stop you. But stealth was expensive. Very expensive. And the A-12 program was probably the worst-managed aircraft program in history. Composites were new, and screwups led to the plane coming in overweight, and the weight growth never stopped. The multifunction radar had development problems as well and started to rapidly consume the navy’s budget. Delays in the prototype design pushed back early flights, and added to the cost. Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney cancelled the program in 1990.

Finally we come to the Seawolf class, the predecessor of the Virginias. At first, you might object. Seawolfs were commissioned! And yes, they were. But only three of them ever put to sea. THREE. They were supposed to replace the Los Angeles class attack submarines. But how can they do this when there are more than twenty times as many of the Los Angeles class boats? Yes, it failed. Get over it. Loaded with everything from a fancy new sonar with battle management system and newer hull construction techniques, and even new steels, it came in overbudget and at the wrong time. Even though they’re really great boats, there’s only so much you can do with three hulls instead of sixty two.

After failure, each service went back to the drawing board. They thought long and hard about compromising to get the price down. What did they really need now, what could they add later, and what could they do without. They relearned that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and a piece of hardware that you have is infinitely better than a cancelled project. It’s a pity this lesson is so very hard to remember. The results are excellent vehicles that have received a large number of upgrades.

More on That Kat Dame

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A few more thoughts on that dame Fishbreath is taken with.

I got her back in New York, before I became the AR guy that I am today. I figured I should have and get familiar with an AK. So I picked out a reasonably-priced WASR from my local gun shop. I picked carefully and got lucky. Maybe mine was made on a Tuesday. Maybe the apes at Century Arms were out of vodka when they assembled mine. But they sight and gas tube aren’t canted at all, and the rifle runs great. And doesn’t look dopey. Perfect, right?

A few range trips later, and I had my answer: no. You see, I had already bought an AR, so I knew what this fancy new thing called “er-go-nom-ics” was. And the AK didn’t have it. So, like any good American with a credit card and an internet, I got to work trying to fix everything that I could that I found wrong with it.

PROBLEM: The safety.
The stock AK safety is pretty crap. It’s awkward and hard to manipulate. It has very small tabs that are hard to get a good purchase on. Plus, it’s nearly impossible to manipulate without taking your strong hand off of the fire control position. And taking your strong hand off that position is a Cardinal Sin in the Orthodox Church of Tacticool. You can’t look derpy at the range! Plus, it feels dumb.

SOLUTION: The Krebs Mk. VI safety
Fishbreath has already gushed on about this. There’s not much more to tell, it does exactly what it says it will. Now you can use your trigger finger to manipulate the safety easily and comfortably without removing it from the fire control position. Perfect! There’s also a notch for locking the bolt back administratively if you need to. You can’t use this as a last-round bolt hold open like you’d find on an AR though. That’s not moddable onto an AK.

PROBLEM: The Pistol Grip
Ugh. This thing was crap. It was tiny and uncomfortable and had no grip at all. No grip, I tell you! Maybe it was designed for Russians, wearing big gloves and who have tiny hands. I don’t know. All I know is it doesn’t work with my hands.1 It sucked.

SOLUTION: The Hogue Pistol Grip
This thing is awesome. There aren’t a ton of aftermarket grips available for the AK, but Hogue makes the best I’ve found. Comfortable and grippy.

PROBLEM: The Charging Handle
So the stock AK charging handle is a little piece of metal that curves forward a bit. It’s small, and if you grab it in a hurry you’re liable to jam your palm with it. Especially if you’re using your support hand to charge the gun like a cool kid. After a few attempts to go quick ended in pain and cursing, I had to fix it.

SOLUTION 1: Rubber Nubbin
This came in the box for my WASR. Didn’t know what it was for until I smacked my hand a couple times. Ow. It sort of helped. The charging handle didn’t hurt, but it was still damn small. And the rubber nubbin had a tendency to fall off. Eventually it started falling apart, and I looked for something better.

SOLUTION 2: Haji Cartridge-Handle
I took a spent casing and bashed it into place with the back of a magazine. Say, maybe them Ruskies had a point with these damned clunky, heavy-ass magazines. That was better! Now, I had a charging handle that was a lot easier to grab. It still fell off a lot though. And bashing it on only got me so far before it got all deformed and I had to scavenge another cartridge. Screw that. This is America, not Fallujah. I can do better.

SOLUTION 3: Tromix Charging handle
I found this bolt on jobber somewhere on the internet, and it’s just what the doctor ordered. It’s big, and knurled, so you can get a good grip, even if you’ve got gorilla hands. When I first put it on, it rattled a bunch, until I noticed they included a vial of red loctite. “Light bulb,” said I, and I slathered the tromix bit with the stuff, torqued the bolt down as hard as I could and let it sit. Perfect. No wobble.

PROBLEM: The Stock
The factory stock was some cheap laminate stuff, with lame finish. It was also wicked short. I’m not the tallest guy around, but I wanted more length of pull. At least when I’m not wearing three parkas and body armor.

SOLUTION: K-Var ‘NATO Length’ stock
Perfect! A stock for us apes. It’s polymer, adds about 1.4″ to the length of pull, was fixed so it was stupid-state compliant, and was cheap. It took a bunch of work to fit, but never say my Marine Uncle Sam2 didn’t teach me anything.

PROBLEM: The foregrip
The basic foregrip was made with more shitty Romanian laminate. And more than two mags at a good pace made you rue the day you forgot to take your gloves to the range. Again, it would also be nice if someone could add some freaking ergonomics to the front end of this stupid thing.

SOLUTION: Hogue Foregrip
Man, Hogue makes some nice grips. These have a palm swell even. And a heat shield! Yeah, just like on your M4. Because we Americans like to shoot a lot, and it’s sometimes not super cold here. Who knew? Anyway, this is so much better.

PROBLEM: The Sights
Are they intended to actually be used, or are these just for show. Seriously, they’re slow and imprecise, and the sight picture is terrible.

SOLUTION 1: White out and a file
I put some white out on the front sight, and took a triangular file to carefully open up the rear notch a bit. This actually helped quite a bit. Highly recommended if you like iron sights. You weirdo.

SOLUTION 2: Clamp-on Rail
The WASR comes with one of those russian side-clamp things. So I got a bit of rail that used the interface and put a red dot on that.
Perfect, right? No. Not at all. It’s super awkward because the Nato-length stock extends down quite a bit. Plus, my red dot had a mount on it to bring it up in line with AR-type iron sights. Super awkward. And ‘chin welds’ are retarded, so back to the drawing board I went.

SOLUTION 3: Ultimak Railed Gas Tube
This thing was a right pain to install, but it’s sturdy and gets the red dot down close to the barrel where it’s easy to pick up and still have a cheekweld. Also great if you want a convenient place to mount a light. It does get hot though, so be sure to never actually do much shooting outside of Siberia.

PROBLEM: Muzzle Device
My WASR was bought behind enemy lines. So it had a thread protector that was silver soldered on. But eventually I brought my rifle to Freedom and Real America, and I needed a muzzle device. But none of my usual suspects for AR competition brakes made anything with the right threads. Again, I hit up K-Var and found an AK-74 pattern muzzle device sized for the 7.62x39mm round. Add an adapter, and we’re good to go! It even works pretty well.

Eventually though, I found I spent more time at the range shooting my ARs, and wanted to consolidate calibers a bit. So, I sent Kat to Fishbreath as part of a wedding gift sale.

Better treat her right, Fishbreath.

1.) Fishbreath has called these “gorilla hands” on more than one occasion.
2.) No really. I’m not just super patriotic. I do have an Uncle who’s name is Sam and who served in the Marine Corps as a sniper. Great guy.

Pereh Missile Carrier

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The Israelis have finally allowed details of one of their weapon systems to become public. Let’s take a look.

To understand the weapon system, we need to go back to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During that war, the Israelis were fighting (and mostly losing, though it worked out ok in the end) a war on two fronts: against Egypt in the South and Syria in the north. There were considerable fears that the two Arab armies, with their new Soviet hardware, would overrun the Israelis.

While the Israelis got plenty of support from the Americans, they were also deeply aware of how fickle allies could be. France and Britain had abandoned Israel after the Six-Day war in 1967. So Israel decided to do a lot of indigenous work. You can always rely on yourself. One such bit was the development of an indigenously produced tank, the famed Merkava.

But, what to do with the old tanks? They’re not suitable for frontline service, but throwing them out would be wasteful. And, more anti-tank firepower was needed. The Israelis had already put quite a bit of effort into upgrading their outmoded M48 and M60 tanks. These were called the Magach series, but eventually the Soviet tanks were too good.

There’s a long history of converting old tank chassis into support vehicles. The Germans did this in the Second World War, making the well-regarded StuG III off of surplus PzKpfW III hulls. The Israelis went a similar direction with their old Magachs. Time had marched on, though, and the Israelis installed Spike-NLOS ATGMs instead of a gun. The result is called Pereh, which is probably a terrible transliteration. It means Onager in Hebrew.

Let’s talk about the missile: Spike-NLOS. These are big, long-ranged missiles. They’ve been around since the 80s, so quite a bit longer than the small Spike that’s a Javelin competitor. They’ve got a range of about 25 km, and weigh in at 70 kg or so. Spike is, uh, well, I would say SACLOS, but the wireless datalink doesn’t require line of sight to work. So, SACLOS-like, I guess. You can also provide midcourse updates via the wireless datalink, or even program target coordinates for the missile to hit. Maybe we should call it SACLOS++ or SACLOS# guidance. Bad programmer jokes aside, the Pereh carries twelve of them.

Structurally, the Pereh is rather interesting. The Israelis went to great lengths to disguise it as a tank. It has a dummy turret, complete with dummy gun, built around the box launcher for the Spike missiles. The box launcher retracts into the turret bustle, and the antenna can fold down. The turret has a pretty serious looking array of explosive reactive armor on it. Remember, the Israelis came up with this stuff first, and they’re pretty good at making it. It would not surprise me if the Pereh kept a bunch of the turret armor of the parent M48/M60/Magach.

So what are the uses? Well, the enemy will see a second-line tank, sitting in the second line, just where they would expect to find it. But from there the Spike missiles can still reduce an approaching tank assault force. The Spike missiles can also be used as precision, short-range artillery against fixed positions, and the IDF has used the Pereh this way to great effect in conflicts in Lebanon. So it’s got shades of the classic M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, but also the StuG III assault gun. And all that ERA will make it more resistant to enemy rockets and ATGMs that might come after it.

We think these are great. And Borgundy would like them too. I wonder if we have any M60s lying around.

Battle Royale: P320 vs. PPQ vs. VP9

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You’ve been waiting for it, and here it is. Parvusimperator’s take on the new crop of striker fired handguns. Well, newish. I’ve waited to see if any bugs fell out (they haven’t). I would get Fishbreath’s opinion too, but he doesn’t have a range with a good rental selection near him. Also, he’s quite fond of hammer fired weapons, because he’s old school like that.

So, let’s get down to it. We’ll look at each pistol, and then do some comparisons.

Walther PPQ
Pros: The best factory trigger on a striker fired pistol. The best. Marginally smaller than the VP9, quite a bit smaller than the P320 full size (this was what I had to rent). Very good ergonomics allowing a nice, high grip. Navy option available, with a cool factory threaded barrel and some extra bits to let you shoot it underwater (not that you care). Ambidextrous slide release.
Cons: Walther has atrocious market penetration. Frankly they have given exactly zero fucks about the American market, so Walther vendors are few and far between. This means that spare parts, accessories, and magazines are the hardest to come by of the three. One upside here is that you won’t get associated with obnoxious Walther fanbois, because there aren’t any fanboys at all, obnoxious or otherwise. Also counting against the PPQ is that it seemed to be somewhat flippy. This is admittedly subjective, but it seemed like it took longer for it to come out of recoil, negating some of the awesomeness of that trigger. More like shooting a .40 S&W, even though this was a 9mm.

HK VP9
Pros: Amazing ergonomics. HK’s grip is one of the best anywhere, with interchangeable side panels and backstraps. Will fit your hand really well; let’s you have a nice high grip. I could gush for hours about the grip. The trigger was very good. I actually prefered it to that of the PPQ and that of the P320 as far as Things I Would Carry. It’s got some take up and a noticeable break, and didn’t feel overly light or heavy. Very smooth. I felt like it had enough take up to feel comfortable carrying and light enough weight (and crisp enough reset) to shoot fast in competition. Again, ambi slide catches. Also, I liked the paddle magazine release, personally. Your mileage may vary.
Cons: The price. HK is the most expensive of the three. Also, you’ll be called an HK fanboy, so be prepared. You suck, and they hate you or something. HK has been really good to LE and Military contractholders. Civilian market, not so much. Their service has gotten way better than it was in the 90s though. You may hate the paddle releases. Accessory availability is meh, spare parts and magazines are available but expensive.

SiG P320
Pros: You may really like the modularity. The trigger lacks that safety blade thing, which is nice. It’s also really short, with very little take up and a very short reset. So it’s really easy to shoot fast, but felt a bit like having a P226 that I hadn’t decocked–I’m not sure if I’d want to carry it like that. Weird. It also feels heavier than the other two. But it’s probably a sweet gamer trigger. SiG has the least shitty aftermarket presence by far of the three, which is big points here. The sights are standard across all their P-series pistols, so those are available now for you. Again, slide release is ambidextrous. And, the P320 gets 17 in the mag, not 15. You might think this is cheating in the comparison, but the mag for the P320 is about the same size as that of the VP9 or the PPQ. And two more bullets is always nice.
Cons: I do not like the modularity. For one thing, every other gun comes with all the stuff you need to monkey around with the grip and figure out which is best for you out of the box. Even HK. With the SiG, you get the medium grip frame, and you have to go buy the others. Good luck finding ones to try in a gun shop before you buy. That’s just cheap and dumb. Further, I have some concerns about the durability of the wee inner module (the actual ‘firearm’, legally speaking). I don’t know how well it will hold up, especially if you’re doing lots of swapping. I probably don’t have anything to worry about here, but there it is. The controls are in their usual SiG place, and seem large. The slide release is super far back, even though there’s no decocker. They really should include the low-profile one so your thumb isn’t hitting it all the time. Once again, some gubbins to buy. Oh, and you’ll be called a SiG fanboy. They’re like HK fanboys, but rarer, because nobody cool uses SiGs anymore. Be sure to get the capitalization right like I’m doing, or expect a flogging.

Finally, I really, really don’t like the modularity. Yes, I’m going to dwell on it because people won’t shut up about it. Look, I don’t live in some communist hell-hole where the number of guns I can own is limited. I live in America. I like guns. I want to buy more guns. That guy behind the counter at my gun store? He wants to sell me more guns. Get with the program, SiG. I’ve never wanted to caliber-convert a 9mm to a .40 or vice versa. 9mm is cheap. .40 is slightly less so, but if I was a .40 guy, I’d want to get used to managing the recoil of the .40, and I’d want my sights to work with the ballistics of .40. Maybe a .22 conversion kit is worth it, if you want a cheap trainer with negligible recoil. But hey, when you’ve bought the new frame, new slide, and new barrel to turn your P320 full size into a compact or your 9mm into a .40, you’ve basically bought a new gun in terms of money spent. So…just buy a new gun, and have more guns. More is better. Duh. If you bought a new gun, you’d have more mags too. Or mags in the new caliber.

Okay, all that out of the way, it’s comparison time!
How do they shoot: Trigger?
PPQ is the best here. That trigger was like nothing at all. Might be almost too light, if we’re talking carry or duty use. Maybe. Hard for me to make that judgement. But it’s great for shooting. It’s like a double action pull with next to no weight. Personally, I rank the VP9 as second since it felt lighter than the P320, and I’ve grown to like some takeup. The P320 pull is heavy and short, which seems an odd combination. I’d like more takeup.

How do they shoot: Accuracy?
VP9 takes top honors here. Maybe this is that HK build quality I keep hearing about. Maybe it’s fitted tighter or there are some match parts or something. P320 comes in second, with a longer sight radius and heavier slide, edging out the PPQ with its great trigger.

How do they shoot: Recoil?
Subjectively, I thought the VP9 was the nicest shooting of the three. It was softer recoiling than the P320, and significantly less flippy than the PPQ. The P320 seems quite heavy for a plastic gun, but the grip is the usual SiG-low. It seemed jumpy, but wasn’t flippy. For purely subjective definitions of ‘jumpy’ and ‘flippy’ of course, since I don’t have a great way to measure recoil. Again, your shooting preferences will dictate your choice. Personally, I like the higher grip of the VP9. You might like the traditional SiG-style grip on the P320, which is a little lower. The PPQ was noticeably harsher and flipper. Not bad, but they’ve managed to make a 9mm feel .40-like in a handgun that isn’t a mousegun. Quite a trick.

How do the Ergonomics Compare?
The VP9 has the best ergos by far with all the side panels. It lets you get the right fit for your hand, even if you shoot better with something asymmetric. The little “cocking tabs” are nice for those with less grip strength. Or just to make you work less at it. The PPQ has a similar sort of shape as the VP9, but has only adjustable backstraps, like most pistols. Still, it fills the hand well and gives you a high grip naturally. The SiG will not let you get as high on it. It fitted my hand reasonably well, but I might have liked to play with the different frame sizes. I prefer a higher grip, or else it would have scored better here. Note also that the SiG only comes with the standard grip-frame module. If you want another size, you’ve gotta go buy it.

Were the guns grippy enough?
No. Nothing was grippy enough. That said, I like guns with barbed grips, or barring that, 20 lpi checkering. Maybe I should have these stippled.

Also, note that all three of these guns only come with two magazines, which is the bare acceptable minimum these days. I would have been much happier if they came with three magazines in the box. Not a dealbreaker, but you should be aware. All of them have crappy magazine prices. No wonderfully cheap Glock or M&P mags here.

Alright, now we come to the main event. Which should you buy? Well, being as this is America, you should buy all three. But that’s not a very helpful answer. Neither is ‘They’re all quite good, you can’t go wrong with any of them.’

Realistically, you should rent all three, and go home with whichever one you shoot best, preferably with some timed/scored drills. This may or may not be possible for you, based on what the ranges near you have available for rent, and how they’re configured.
You should also probably wait a little while and see what my friends Mr. Foxtrot, Mr. Bravo, and Mr. India come up with when they go to choose, since that design will get a big leg up in the aftermarket presence. But that means waiting. Again, rent them and draw your own conclusions.

Of course after all that, you’re still not satisfied. You want to know two things: Which one is best, and is it better than a Glock?

Fine.

Of the three, I’d take the VP9. I shot it best, I like it’s trigger for anything I might choose to do with it (including carry and competition), the ergonomics are great, and it shoots well. Plus, there’s plenty of cachet from being an HK owner. I’m a cool, badass CTU agent. Or…maybe I suck? I don’t know, I lost track of my metaphors in the aura of Teutonic greatness. But, shut up this pistol is great. You wouldn’t understand, you non-HK-owning peon. Go sit with the filth and buy your scum class tickets.

So is it better than my Glock 17? That depends. In terms of what you get out of the box, no contest. HK wins all the way. Better trigger, better ergonomics, better sights. Glock has an extra magazine, but that doesn’t quite make up the difference. The VP9 is the better pistol.

However, who the hell leaves a Glock stock? There’s a ton of aftermarket support for Glocks. Any sights you could possibly imagine, you can get. You can get bigger or smaller controls for the mag release and the slide release to fit your preference. You can get aftermarket triggers and fire control parts to make the trigger into anything you like, from a heavier duty trigger to a tuned competition trigger. You get a lot more sight options from experimenters and small outfits with Glock. Hell, you can build a Glock entirely from parts that aren’t made by Glock. So it’s simply a question of how much you like to tinker. If you want to tinker, get the Glock. It will reward experimentation. If you want to buy a pistol, add the sights of your choice, and be done, get the HK.

But really, this is America. The correct answer is to buy the Glock and the HK.

Daylight time at last

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Parvusimperator gave me an attaboy for writing something so topical as the go tournament posts, so here’s another topical one for you.

We come now to my favorite time of the year: that time when, at long last, we cast off the gloomy shackles of winter and leap forward into the boundless delights of spring and summer.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m in favor of summer time; or rather, I’m in favor of summer time year-round1. For this position I can cite manifold justifications.

First: when it comes to which hours are daylight hours, there is no clear economic benefit either way. Standard time and Daylight time are identical.

Second: switching between Standard and Daylight time results in, by some people’s figures, half a billion dollars of lost productivity. Now we’re getting somewhere: clearly, we shouldn’t switch.

Third: daylight hours are more useful in the evening than in the morning. This is so obvious as to require no explanation, but I’ll go into it a little bit anyway, in case you need convincing.

Nobody likes driving into work when it’s dark out. I understand this. At the same time, in any place where daylight saving time matters, if you wait until it’s light outside to drive to work, you’ll likely be driving home from work when it’s dark. The only time in which you’re truly free to use daylight, if you’re one of the vast majority of people who work during the day, is in the evening, and therefore you should not freely part with your evening daylight.

There are some people who like to run in the mornings, for which daylight is an advantage. Leaving aside that these people, who are looking to run outside when the weather is at its coldest, are clearly madmen (and I say that as a runner), permanent daylight time does not significantly change the calculus. If you wait until the sun comes up to go into work, you’re going to be coming back when the sun’s going down anyway; you don’t lose anything.

Then, of course, we come to summertime: a season defined in large part, for large parts of the world, by long, pleasant evenings. Those evening hours, especially for those of us living in places which see a lot of rain, snow, and cold during the rest of the year, are some of the most precious times of the year. Surrendering that time for four hours of daylight before work is perilously silly, and frankly un-American.

So yeah. I’m ambivalent-to-negative on the whole clock-changing thing, but if we are going to settle on one time, it has to be daylight time. If you want permanent standard time, well, I’m more than ready to argue that we should keep changing the clocks, because daylight time is just straight-up better.

1. I accept that there are places, like Arizona, where an extra hour of daylight in otherwise-usable hours of the summer evenings is a bad idea, but they can just take the opposite position that I’m taking here.

Fish Bowl Decision 2016: the GOP primary so far

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With primary season finally kicking off in earnest, I thought I should give my thoughts on the state of the race for the GOP.

The Contenders

  • Trump: The ongoing surprise at his sticking power misses a few facts. Trump’s appeal comes from the center and the disillusioned voter, not a broad part of the conservative base. (See Cruz for a note on that.) The center and the disillusioned are generally the poorly informed, which jives with the sort of person who might support Trump—the sort which doesn’t realize that Trump holds different positions almost daily, or positions that would never actually work. Unfortunately, since most people are poorly informed, Trump’s strategy has been working so far. Fortunately, he gets enough news coverage that even the worst-informed of primary voters is starting to understand that Trump is style, not substance. May win South Carolina, but expect it to be closer than the polls show.
  • Cruz: If I were handicapping, I’d give Cruz about 40%. His ground game is superb, the best of any GOP candidate, which he parlayed into an upset win in Iowa, and a solid third place in New Hampshire, considering he spent about zero dollars. Questions about his values seem misplaced to me: stories about his Iowa operation remark on how he let his volunteers go off-script when canvassing, which fits the conservative ideal of bottom-up organization. Concerns about his likability are overblown. Not every candidate has to be an inspirational orator. Has an outside chance to win South Carolina: most polls show him well behind, but several leaked polls from candidate campaigns in the last few weeks have put him much closer than major polls would indicate.

The Possible Surprises

  • Rubio: The establishment’s golden child is underperforming expectations; his Marco Robot impression in the New Hampshire debate didn’t help anything. Light on substance in the same way that Trump is, without the populist shiny to draw in the jackdaw voters. Has the benefit of money and Washington backing, which will keep him in the race, and maybe even in a few top-3 finishes. The most Obama-like of the Republican candidates in terms of oratory. He’ll eventually peter out, and his supporters will lean Cruz: neither Trump nor Cruz is inspirational in the same way, but Cruz lines up a little better with the thoughtful conservative values Rubio purports to represent.

The Death Watch

  • Jeb!: Why anyone thought another Bush running would work is beyond me. (And I say that as someone who thinks history will be significantly kinder to W than the media of his time were.) He seems a little confused by the lack of support, but name recognition is not the same thing as preference. Jeb!’s deep pockets, and the deep pockets of his supporters, will keep him around long past his use-by date, but he probably won’t climb above 15% in any primary. The SEC primaries, with their proportional delegate awards with a minimum threshold, will probably knock him out of contention altogether.
  • Carson: It grieves me that we see this side of him. One of the first biographies I ever read was a short, middle-school-level take on him. I still think he has an amazing story of faith, a self-reliance informed by that faith, and a climb from obscurity to preeminence in his field. I don’t think he has ‘president’ in him.
  • Kasich: No matter how much a certain set of centrist Republican voters want this to happen, it isn’t happening. He’s burned too many bridges with the base, and seems to be running a general election campaign in the primary. Maddeningly, his record is solidly conservative, and I suspect he wouldn’t be all that bad a choice, but he seems set on running as the Democrat’s preferred Republican primary candidate. Unfortunately for him, most Republican primary voters are Republican, and not buying it.

Issue Kit Thoughts

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Pondering my AR builds, both extant and forthcoming, as well as modern combat trends has given me some ideas on how one ought to kit out an infantry force. A couple of them aren’t very revolutionary, and one is pretty different. We’ll start with the least controversial, and go on towards things that will require a bit more arguing.

Premise 1: Issue body armor all around.
This one’s a pretty easy sell. Frontline troops have been widely issued body armor since (at least) the Vietnam war. That body armor was a flak jacket, which is designed to provide protection from fragmentation weapons. Body armor saves lives, and that protects the investment in soldier training, plus looks better to the civilians at home. The trick with body armor is to balance weight and protection, which will be the focus of another article. It’s important to not forget to include load bearing equipment in the body armor system. The vest should be designed to distribute the weight of the armor already, and PALS webbing (or similar) saves having to deal with yet another wearable. This is not only awkward, but it makes it harder for medics to get to an injured soldier to provide care.

Premise 2: Every longarm should have an optic
Once again, this one’s pretty simple. Optics are way better than iron sights. The trick has always been getting them rugged enough and cheap enough to issue generally, and we’ve been nailing that since the 90s (maybe earlier). With modular picatinny rail mounts, we needn’t specify which optic to the weapon designer. There are a lot of options here, and we’ll have a future article devoted to the choice. In brief though, there’s the red dot optic, the low-magnification, fixed-power scope, and the low magnification, variable-power scope. Magnification gives the ability to identify targets at range if they’re hiding (maybe insurgents in a crowd, or maybe soldiers in the brush), but the dot is simpler and faster to use. A well designed low power variable scope gives the best of both worlds, but the variable power adds weight and complexity, and they’re not as rugged.

Premise 3: Pistols suck. Therefore, issue carbines
This one’s pretty easy to argue. Happily, it also hurts the feelings of idiots. But a carbine is a much more lethal weapon than a pistol. It shoots a more powerful round, holds more ammo, and is easier to shoot well. Carbines rock. Issuing carbines generally to officers has the fringe benefit of making them stand out less in a sniper’s scope. Pistols are historically a badge of authority. Or, a ‘Shoot Me’ indicator, depending on which side of the scope you are. So there’s a benefit there. The issue, of course, is that carbines are bigger and heavier than pistols. In a highly mechanized force though, this isn’t a huge problem since one’s base vehicle can carry that carbine backup weapon. Even light infantry type forces can go this route: the US Marines issue M4s to just about everybody. Even officers as high as Lieutenant Colonel get M4s. We should follow suit. About the only role I can think of that can’t is fighter pilots. Maybe if I break the weapon down I can get it into a survival kit.

Premise 4: Every carbine, rifle, and man-portable machine gun should have a suppressor
Okay, here’s the one that’s a little out there, mostly because I no longer have a real world force to lean on. SOCOM does this, but they’re all special forces guys. So why would we do it generally? Like optics in the 90s, we’ve got suppressors that are mature enough to minimize the disadvantages. Modern suppressors are reasonably lightweight and quite durable. The Surefire SOCOM RC2 (5.56) suppressors, for example, weigh just over a pound and the Surefire SOCOM-556MG suppressors weigh just under a pound and a half. Great! But, as well-educated firearms enthusiasts, we know that suppressors don’t actually silence firearms like you see in lame action movies. That’s fine. We actually get many benefits from the suppressor anyway, even if it can’t turn a bunch of grunts into ninjas.

The first and most obvious benefit is that a suppressed gun is easier on one’s hearing. This is most noticeable indoors, and is why so many special forces and SWAT guys run suppressors. The suppressor might be thought of as taking the edge off of a gunshot, and this is great if you train a lot indoors, or find yourself indoors. It takes the edge off outside too, which is helpful when you and your buddies are engaging some enemy scumbags. Suppressors also eliminate flash. This brings two more advantages: first, this helps mask a soldier’s position. There’s no big obvious flash to pinpoint his position. Second, in a low-light setting where a soldier might be using night vision equipment, a suppressor prevents flash from washing out the light amplification systems in the goggles. Finally, that ‘taking the edge off’ of the report of weapons also helps obscure the soldier and make his position less obvious in a quick engagement or ambush. It’s not about completely eliminating sound, it’s just about managing it and making it harder to track.

There we go. Four ways to maximize the effectiveness of soldiers. And one of them is even pretty aggressive and forward-looking.

Edit to add: Since it’s come up a few times in the comments, and I’d hate to leave conclusions there to fester, let’s talk prices and make some comparisons. Currently, SOCOM has tested and approved Surefire suppressors for deployment in the field. The MSRP of one of these models is $1,375.00. Let’s look at the MSRP of some other pieces of equipment commonly issued. The USMC’s standard issue optic has been the Trijicon ACOG. The current model of choice is the TA31RCO-A4CP which has an MSRP of $1,724.00. Aimpoint doesn’t list MSRPs on their website, but their Comp M4, used by the US Army, the Norwegian Army, and a whole bunch of others, seems to have an MSRP of about $850.00 or so. Oh, and while not being sold to civilians, the price of one of the super awesome GPNVG-18 Panoramic Night Vision goggle sets used in the Bin Laden raid is about $65,000.00. All prices given in US Dollars and are current to the best of my knowledge as of April 10, 2018.

Old-School Service Rifles: Mauser Kar 98k

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While I’m primarily an AR guy, and think that’s the best overall choice right now for the vast majority of rifle-y things that a guy might do, I’m also fond of old service rifles. They tell stories. Today we’re going to look at my oldest, a Mauser Karabiner 98k.

The Karabiner 98k, or Kar 98k, was a development of the Gewehr 98, by way of the Karabiner 98b. The Kar 98b wasn’t really a carbine at all, just a G 98 with better sights. It was still a long-barreled rifle. But after World War I, the Germans finally got to figuring that maybe they should standardize on one, shortish carbine for everyone who needed a rifle, rather than worry about infantry rifles and cavalry carbines. So, in 1934, they made what was to be the last in the long line of Mauser 98 designs, the Kar 98 kurz.1 In addition to the obviously shorter length, it also has a turned-down bolt handle, which makes mounting optics easier.

The Kar 98k has that wonderful, controlled-feed action that Mauser is famous for, and that so many have copied. It holds five rounds of 7.97x57mm ammunition, and proved to be a reliable and accurate weapon. It was the standard service rifle for the Wehrmacht Heer during the Second World War, and also saw use by the Soviets and many smaller powers after the war. It was also widely copied.

Let’s look at mine. It was made in 1938 in Suhl by J.P. Sauer und Sohn. Due to the time period of manufacture being before production had ramped up, Sauer was using some older parts. For this reason, the receiver bears both Weimar Waffenamnt proof marks and Third Reich Waffenamnt proof marks, which is kinda cool. Based on the age, we can conclude that this rifle saw plenty of service. Several parts are marked by an electropen with a different serial number than what is stamped on the gun. From this, we can conclude that this rifle was on the Eastern Front, was captured by the Soviets, and spent time reissued and in their arsenals. It has an X marking on the receiver that indicates it was eventually mustered out of Red Army service, and it eventually made its way to America and then to me.

Conditionwise, the rifle is in solid, but not excellent condition. The soviet arsenals have mixed up a few of the smaller parts, and they do not have matching serials with the rest of the gun. I’m happier that way, because it means the price is lower. The wood and finish show some wear, but are generally in good condition, and the bore doesn’t show too much wear either. There isn’t any pitting, and the grooves aren’t too worn out. When I got it, I was missing a few incidentals, which I decided to pick up. I got a surplus, beat-up looking sword bayonet of the appropriate late-thirties era, with oversized 9.75 inch blade, a cleaning rod, and a new-production sling.

For all its age, my Mauser shoots really well. The action is smooth, and the trigger is pretty good for a service rifle. It’s more or less two stage, and is somewhat heavy, but not gritty or creepy. The sights are ok. If you take your time and line them up right, the rifle is very accurate. They’re a simple notch and wedge-shaped post though, so these aren’t altogether fast or precise. Hardly my choice, but I didn’t design this. As is fitting and proper, the sight has range markings out to a hopelessly-optimistic two kilometers. I haven’t tried to hit anything at this range.

Recoil isn’t terrible. It’s certainly not a .22, but it’s not abusive the way a Mosin is. When I’ve brought it out for friends, I’ve gotten neither complaints nor habitual flinches, which is a good endorsement. The bolt isn’t as fast as a Lee Enfield, but it has never given me trouble.

My Mauser is a really nifty piece of history. It’s nearly eighty years old, but it still looks and shoots great. It’s a real treat to have and to run some rounds through.

If only it could talk.

1.) Short. Because it’s actually a carbine-length carbine as opposed to a longer, rifle-length carbine.