Tag Archives: commentary

On Squad Automatic Weapons

Posted by

When equipping that base unit of infantry, the squad, with automatic weapons for support fires, there are two schools of thought. These are the magazine-fed ‘automatic rifle’ vs. the belt-fed ‘light machine gun’. In World War 2 terms, this might be seen as the BAR/Bren vs the MG-42. We can see the same question being asked today, with the US Marine Corps using the M27 IAR, and the US Army using the M249. Let’s look at these options.

First, the M249. Made by FN, this is a belt-fed weapon. Unlike the M240, the M249 is chambered for the same 5.56×45 mm round as the squad’s M4s. It is also generally considered to be operable by one man. No assistant gunner required. It has a quick-change barrel to facilitate sustained fire and help deal with heat buildup. It can be operated from 100 or 200 round belts. It weighs 17 lbs empty and 24 lbs loaded with a 200 round belt in a plastic box (sans optics). It has an integral bipod, and is most effective when fired from the prone position with the bipod for stability and support.

Second, the M27. Made by HK, this is a magazine-fed weapon. It is also intended to be operated by one man. While it has a relatively heavy barrel profile, it lacks a quick change barrel. It can only be loaded with standard detachable box magazines. While there are some higher capacity magazines on the market1, the US Marines currently only issue the standard 30 round box magazines. These are the same as what the rest of the squad uses for their M4s, so there’s some commonality there. Weight is 7.9 lbs empty, and a bit less than 9 lbs loaded with a 30 round box magazine (again, sans optics or other accessories).

Note that both weapons fire the same 5.56 mm round. So effective range and lethality are roughly equivalent. Specifics will depend on the skill of the shooter and the round being fired. I will not discuss this further.

It is also true that the M249 has a greater capacity for sustained fire than the M27. Even the M27’s proponents agree there.

A more useful question is “Is the greater suppressive capability of the M249 outweighed by what you give up?” The M27 is less than half the weight of the M249 (even after we add appropriate optics and other accessories to each weapon). The M27 is a more accurate weapon than the M249. The M27 can be used in a stack for room clearing, whereas the M249 cannot due to safety concerns stemming from its open bolt mechanism and the bulk of the weapon. Weight and bulk also means that the M249 gunner is harder pressed to keep up with the other members of his squad.

Let’s also briefly talk ammo weight. The basic load of a SAW gunner is 1,000 rounds, or five 200 round boxes, which comes out to about 35 lbs. It takes thirty four 30 round magazines to get about the same number of rounds,2 and that weighs about 34 pounds. Note that by-the-book loads for the M27 IAR gunners in a USMC squad vary from 16 to 21 magazines (480-630 rounds). Variance due to the weapon being new, and TTPs being worked out. That’s 16-21 lbs of ammo. This neatly side steps the question of weight of the spare barrel assembly for the M249, but I can’t find its weight. Assume several more pounds of weight for the barrel assembly, if it is carried. If it is not carried, then the quick-change barrel feature is not useable, and sustainable rates of fire will be lower. However, they will still be significantly higher than those of the M27.

There’s also a temptation we should avoid when considering infantry tactics. While it is easiest to ponder loadouts one organizational level at a time and build from the smaller levels to the bigger ones, we should remember that the smaller ones don’t fight alone. A squad is not going to be running around the battlefield on its own. Ad hoc room-clearing units can be assembled from the manpower from a few squads in a platoon without difficulty. If flexibility is desired, additional carbines can be stowed aboard the squad’s organic transport.3 We have lots of assault rifles already, which look an awful lot like the automatic rifles in question.

The most important matter, whether the greater sustained fire rate of the M249 means it is a more effective suppression weapon than the M27, is not something I have the means to test. I would question most tests of suppression on the grounds of failing to adequately simulate combat. Setting aside the intangibles, not having a belt-fed weapon in the squad does not have a good historical record for staying power. Let’s review it:

  • In World War 2, the US Army and US Marine Corps both had BARs as their squad-level automatic weapon. They considered a new Automatic Rifle version of the M14, but declined, and switched to the belt-fed M60 (and later the M249).
  • In World War 2, the British Army had the Bren gun, which is also more or less an automatic rifle, being fed from a magazine. The replacement for the Bren Gun was the L7, which is a licensed version of the FN MAG.4
  • In the 1980s, the British attempted to put a new 5.56 mm automatic rifle, the L86, into service to compliment their new 5.56 mm assault rifle. Caliber commonality. They were dissatisfied with the loss of firepower in the squad, and switched to using the FN Minimi as the squad automatic weapon.
  • The Germans had plenty of experience fighting American troops equipped with BARs in World War 2. The German soldiers were armed with the MG42. The American soldiers wanted MG42s instead of their BARs. The German soldiers agreed with them. They did not think the grass was greener on the other side of the fence, and stuck with the MG42 (rechambered for 7.62×51 mm NATO as the MG3).
  • The Russians built a belt-fed 7.62×39 mm machine gun, the RPD, to compliment the AK-47. It lacked a quick-change barrel, and proved to be unsatisfactory. They replaced it with the RPK, an automatic rifle version of the AK-47. They stuck with it through the caliber change to 5.45×39 mm. The Russians are very doctrinally disciplined. Once the Russians hit actual combat in Afghanistan, again the automatic rifle proved unsatisfactory and soldiers exchanged their RPK-74s for belt-fed PKMs (chambered in 7.62x54R mm). This happened again in combat in Chechnya. The belt-fed weapon was favored over the magazine-fed weapon for support purposes, even though it was heavier and bulkier. Russia is moving (albeit slowly, for want of money) towards equipping mechanized forces with PKP machine guns as squad support weapons. In the meantime, the PKM sees lots of service in that role.

There is a clear trend towards real combat driving the use and purchase of belt-fed weapons at the squad level. The US Marine Corps is bucking the historical trend, which gives me pause. The US Marine Corps tends to favor large, 13-man squads, and doesn’t fight mechanized. This might influence their decision somehow. The US Army, which uses 9 man squads (more similar to other powers at present), and does fight mechanized, has not followed the Corps in switching out M249s for M27s. Given the firepower and limited dismount capacity of the M2 Bradley, this switch would seem attractive for them. Perhaps they don’t agree with the conclusion of the USMC tests which said the M27 was better at suppression.

Without knowing the details, I could not possibly comment on the tests. Offhand, we’d want to make sure we weren’t favoring the M27s in test parameters, or putting new M27s against old, well-used, and worn-out M249s.

Here the Corps and I part ways. I much prefer a belt-fed machine gun or two at the squad level. Given the choice between the M27 and the M249 to support a squad, I’ll take the M249 every time. Belts all the way. Sometimes heavy is best.

1.) Magpul makes a 40 round box and a 60 round drum magazine, and Surefire makes a 60 round and a 100 round quad-stack box magazine. There are a bunch of others, but these come to mind first for being quality. That said, when the M27 was adopted, the USMC did not find any existing 100 round magazines to be reliable. I am unsure of their test protocol or which magazines were tested (or if 40/50/60 round magazines were considered).
2.) This works out to 1,020 rounds, but mais n’enculons pas des mouches.
3.) Admittedly I’m a big fan of mechanized infantry, but is there any army worth talking about that doesn’t provide some form of motorized transport for its infantry units?
4.) The American M240 is also a licensed FN MAG.

Fishbreath Plays: Train Simulator vs. American Truck Simulator

Posted by

If you caught the most recent episode of The Crossbox Podcast, you may recall that I cited these two games as examples of a genre I don’t quite understand. (I’ve come to call it the Podcast Screensaver genre1.) At the same time, I said I kind of understood the appeal of Train Simulator. Namely, driving a train is at least a little unusual. Driving a truck on a highway is a little too similar to my daily commute.

Predictably—inevitably—further experience has made me change my tune.

What makes a good entry in the Podcast Screensaver genre? It needs to take a little attention, but not so much that you can’t follow the thread of the podcast. It should present occasional challenges—if it doesn’t, it ceases to be a game in the Podcast Screensaver genre, and you might as well just watch a screensaver. Ideally, it should be immersive. Most importantly, it should be pleasing to look at.

Let’s go down the list.

Takes a little attention
American Truck Simulator fits the definition more or less perfectly. If you drive a car, you know this. Driving isn’t difficulty, but it does take a constant minimum expenditure of brainpower.

Train Simulator, on the other hand, is a little harder to defend. Driving a train, though it is more exotic than driving a truck, takes basically no attention at all. You have to watch out for signals every mile or two, and if one of them is red, you have to fiddle with some brakes. Things get more complicated if you’re running a steam engine, but not dramatically more complicated.

The distribution of required attention is different, too. A driving game requires a relatively constant amount, whereas a train simulator takes extra thought when you’re coming up to a signal: you have to squint through the window to see the thing, decide whether or not to brake, and then carry out the action of braking to stop where you want to stop. This is not conducive to paying attention to a second thing. (At least, not for me.) The human mind (or my human mind) is much better at handling two constant cognitive loads (such as driving and listening) than it is at handling one constant load and one highly variable load (such as listening and train driving).

Points, then, to the truck simulator.

Presents occasional challenges
It may perhaps be a result of Train Simulator’s demographic2, or perhaps it is a result of the inherent ease of driving trains3, but Train Simulator is easy. Nor is it only easy because trains are easy. Even the scenarios labeled ‘difficult’ (for example, using a tiny British tank engine to haul a rack of passenger cars up a hill, or using an enormous American gas turbine locomotive to haul a bunch of hopper cars up a different hill, and taking a steam locomotive low on water4 to its next stop) are straightforward. I’ve seen some people on forums complain about the difficulty of these precise scenarios, while I—a train neophyte if ever there was one—had no trouble whatsoever.

American Truck Simulator is also not all that difficult, provided you’ve driven a vehicle with a trailer before. That said, there are some places where it is honestly hard, mostly relating to maneuvering trailers in tight spaces, whether they be right-angle corners or narrow loading docks.

Again, points to the truck simulator.

Is immersive
Immersion is, of course, subjective, and I can see how it might go either way. For the particular games I’ve played (American Truck Simulator and Train Simulator with 2016 and 2017 routes), it comes to a coin toss.

I’ve done a little bit of driving in the American Southwest, and ATS gets that right on a reliable basis. Sunrise and sunset are also super-pretty, and the sound design is excellent. That said, Train Simulator’s Sherman Hill route also has things to recommend it, and in fact, the scenario I played there obscures one of Train Simulator’s biggest flaws.

Is pretty
This, unfortunately, is where Train Simulator falls down a bit. In terms of graphics and audio design, it lags far behind American Truck Simulator5. For a game in the Podcast Screensaver genre, visual and aural beauty are non-negotiable. The whole idea is that, while your brain is mostly focused on listening to something, you have a pleasant background scene to enjoy. If the background scene is ugly, then it all falls apart.

As I mentioned, there are moments where Train Simulator looks and sounds good. I was hauling a load of empty hopper cars up Sherman Hill at sunset. A rainstorm was overhead, but it didn’t reach the horizon, and as the sun went down, it lit the scene in a perfect gloomy orange. The sounds for the turbine locomotive I was driving were also excellent, lovely whirring, a bell which rang as clear as itself, and an air horn in the finest tradition of train air horns. Moment to moment, though, I give this one to the truck simulator.

Conclusions
As scored above, the final tally goes to American Truck Simulator, 3-0, with one tie. I should note that the difference is not quite so vast as I make it seem. For instance, the Unreal Engine 4-based Train Sim World, the next in Dovetail Games’ series, is extremely good-looking, and the sound design is just superb. That would pretty handily tip the balance in the ‘pretty’ and ‘immersive’ categories, and suddenly the score is 2-2.

Or is it? If you’ve looked at American Truck Simulator and Train Simulator on Steam, you’ll have noticed a certain crucial difference: price.

American Truck Simulator has a list price of $20. At press time, it’s on sale for $14. Going by European Truck Simulator 2, we might expect DLC prices in the $10-$20 range. Those DLCs massively expand the road network—ETS2 has DLCs for regions like France and Scandinavia—along with new cargo types, which are at least graphically interesting.

Train Simulator, on the other hand, seems bound and determined to extract as much money from its captive audience as possible. A small route runs $20 or $30, and I mean small. That’s about sixty miles of track, generally without any branches off the main line besides sidings. (Some routes, however, do give you a little more for your money. Sherman Hill has two routes over the hill.) You get one to three locomotives and a few types of rolling stock, and that’s it.

In this genre, repetition is bad. The world ought to be big enough so that by the time you see scenery again, you’ve forgotten what it looks like. If the world is small, it should be cheap to expand. Train Simulator has neither quality. American Truck Simulator has both. Buy the latter.

  1. There are evidently two classes of people unlike me: those who can simply sit and listen to a piece of audio-only content, and those who can multitask effectively enough that they need not focus primarily on a piece of audio-only content. If you’re one of those sorts of people, and you still like transport games, please drop me a line as to why.
  2. Let’s face it. On aggregate, train simulator fans are, well, old.
  3. The only major challenge is learning braking distances. Working out how to keep steam up in a steam locomotive is an additional challenge. Otherwise, it’s a vehicle which travels in one dimension, and navigation is done for you at the switching office.
  4. Well, not so low that you can’t make it if you don’t know how to use the water troughs the scenario tells you to use. Which I didn’t. (Neither knew how nor did use.)
  5. At press time, the next iteration in Dovetail Games’ train sim series, Train Sim World, is in preview-beta. Built on Unreal Engine 4, it appears to be quite a lot prettier, and a lot more sonically pleasing, than Train Simulator 2017, which is built on an eight-year-old engine.

More Conclusions From Gun School

Posted by

Some more not so night-oriented follow ups. For the first part, go here. These are from two separate classes, because I’ve had some busy weekends of late.

Overall, I was really happy with the equipment I had. I had added the Vickers extended mag catch to my Glock 34 and it worked great. I had no problems with mags falling when I didn’t want them to, and it was much quicker to drop the mag. Also, love the Warren fiber optic sights on it. These got some compliments from other students.

I expected that having brought good night gear, and having managed to avoid fondling the IDPA Master Class shooter’s 2011, I would not come home wanting more stuff. As you might have guessed, this was incorrect.

I got some time with some other people’s custom Glocks. One of the instructors had a G19 with the grip professionally reduced and stippled. The finger grooves were removed. I don’t ordinarily find the Glock finger grooves all that objectionable, and I like the standard Gen4 texture, but this customized 19 felt even better. I was really impressed. Guess some Glocks might get sent out. He got his worked on by Fire 4 Effect weapons. This is one of those things that I really had to feel to be convinced of.

The other thing that was around that I wanted to try was a flat-face trigger. The specific trigger in question was the Apex Flat Glock trigger. Again, I never would have thought enough of one to try, even though a bunch of friends like theirs. But getting some time with one makes me want to give one a try. I found it helped with consistent trigger finger placement, and a consistent, correct trigger press.

Last Time at Gun School, I learned firsthand that full size guns shoot easier than subcompacts. The sort of thing that you always knew, but it’s nice to have demonstrated. This time, we had a female student with small hands have trouble getting a good grip around her Glock 19. Her hands were rather small for the gun, and this made shooting from a draw tricky. A good grip reduction, or a pistol with a smaller grip size might have been helpful here. I didn’t get much details on this one, so I can’t comment on what could have helped beyond that.

We had a student change guns on day 2 because he felt like it. Feelings, ugh. Anyway, he changed from an M&P9 without a manual safety to a SiG P226 SAO with a manual safety. Yup, you guessed it, he forgot to disengage it a bunch. I don’t really have much opinion on the manual safety one way or another, but it’s better to be consistent in your training one way or another. If you want to “try” something new, take it to the entire class.

We did some drills with other people’s guns. This was mostly uneventful, except for the one guy who brought an FNX-45. My hands were big enough that I had no problem reaching everything. It’s a double action semiautomatic, so there were two trigger pulls to mess with. I found the double action pull to be long, heavy, and annoying. A strong grip helped me fight through it. The transition to the shorter, lighter single action pull (with much less trigger reach) was the more problematic part, interestingly. Between the lame trigger that I’m not used to and the big .45 rounds through a polymer-framed gun, my times went all to hell with the FNX. Was it usable in “fight with what you find” drills? Sure. Still not my preference, though this is hardly an outstanding example of the type. It might have been a different story with the CZ Shadow that someone brought but didn’t use. In general, one should try to stick with what one knows.

Another student had a PPQ with the longslide and the 5″ barrel. For the drills we were doing with strict, challenging par times and tough accuracy requirements, the PPQ excelled. Coming off of the FNX and going to the PPQ was like a revolution. It made the drills seem easy. The PPQ’s trigger is remarkably tolerant of slackening grip. However, when you bear down on it properly, the “flippiness” that I noticed in my review turns into fast times back into battery.

There were many Glock 17s and an M&P9 with aftermarket triggers. Also very nice. I’m starting to see a pattern here. Jeff Cooper said perhaps the first thing we should ask of a carry gun is that it should be unfair.

My second class had some real crappy weather to it. Day one was about 48 degrees, and rainy, with the temperature dropping and the rain eventually turning to snow around 1430. Day two was about 27 degrees, with light snow all day. The ground didn’t have a chance to freeze overnight, so what was a quagmire on day one turned into the Argonne on day two. I need better water-resistant cold weather gear, better boots, and some shooting gloves. While Grandpa didn’t need no gloves at Bastogne in ’44, I’m sure he would have liked some. One can make do, and I’m proud I did. It is better to be prepared.

Remember the 7th

Posted by

Seventy five years ago today, the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Empire of Japan.

I could say a lot more on the matter, but I am merely an amateur analyst. Instead, listen to the stories of some men who were there, courtesy of C-SPAN.

Stories, Part 1

Stories, Part 2

Perhaps they are the lucky ones to have survived. Perhaps not–they lost a lot of friends that day.

Let’s spare a thought and a prayer for the men who gave their lives that day. And for those who had to wait so long to see their brothers in arms again.

Infantry Protective Kit

Posted by

Editor’s note: Back to the land stuff in time for Thanksgiving (at least here in America). Enjoy the long post to make up for all of the naval stuff

Let’s talk protective stuff for the infantryman. There are a mulitude of threats on the modern battlefield, including bullets and shell fragments, and protection from these threats has been a pretty consistent goal for armor designers. Of course, designing for those two threats is very difficult. Fragments are small and do not deform, and can be stopped by kevlar or similar materials. These materials are relatively soft and flexible, but they are heavier than normal fabrics used for uniforms. Bullets, or more specifically, rifle bullets, are a thornier problem. To stop those, you need ceramic plates and a padded backing. These ceramic plates are rigid (of course) and weigh several pounds apiece, so a stormtrooper-looking ensemble is not very practical. Any body armor also has to work with a soldier’s load bearing rig, which carries his ammunition and other stuff. So let’s start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

First, the helmet. We’ve come a long way since the Adrian helmet of 1915. Our helmet of choice is the American Enhanced Combat Helmet1 We’re going to break this one down by components. Let’s start with the shell. Our helmet shell is made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), and comes in a MICH-type2 cut. To understand what I mean by the MICH cut, we’ll have to step back a bit.

The Adrian helmet was the first modern combat helmet, and was based on the shape of firemen’s helmets used in Paris. When the Germans finally came around to the concept, they looked through medieval helmets to come up with the Stahlhelm design. This was the best shape of all helmet designs in World War I, but nobody wanted to look like the “evil Hun”, so they stuck with their own shapes. It was revisited for PASGT,3 when the US Army was making a new kevlar helmet. The Stahlhelm shape really does protect more. It’s just better than the M1 shape it was replacing. So the PASGT helmet was basically a Stahlhelm in modern kevlar. Cool. Except it’s kind of annoyingly large. When a soldier wearing the Interceptor Vest (early 2000s kit), went prone, the collar on the vest would push the helmet down so the brim went in the wearer’s eyes. Also, if you wanted to wear a headset and a helmet, you were out of luck. So the MICH-cut is a trimmed PASGT-cut, to accommodate larger armor vests and communications headsets.

Okay, so that’s the shape. Why not just get a MICH helmet? Because of that UHMWPE stuff. The ECH is thicker than earlier American composite helmets, but it can stop a 7.62x51mm rifle round at point-blank range. To be clear, the regular M80 ball ammo, not the AP stuff. Still. Seven point six two millimeter. Full. Metal. Jacket. And it’ll stop it. That’s freaking awesome. Plus it’s really resistant to fragments. In testing, the test gun was unable to get the fragments going fast enough to make 50% of them pass through.4 So against basic rifle threats and fragment threats, the ECH has you covered.

Internally, the ECH has pads and a four-point H-back strap to hold it on your head, like a bicycle helmet. This is more comfortable than a chinstrap and won’t fall over and hit you in the face if you bend over. So medics will keep their helmets on. Again, this design bit was cribbed from the earlier MICH helmet. A nape pad can be fitted to the ‘crossstrap’ of the H for some added comfort and fragment protection for the base of the neck. The pads are the Team Wendy Epic Air pad kit using their Zorbium foam. It’s a three-piece pad setup that comes in a few different sizes for comfort and providing adequate standoff between the helmet and the head. The Epic Air pads come with air channels to help with cooling.

There are a few other accessories of note. There’s a bracket on the front of the helmet to mount night vision equipment. Fabric helmet covers in standard Borgundian camouflage5 patterns are available, and come with velcro to mount IR recognition patches if desired. A counterweight can be fitted to the back of the helmet to offset the weight of night vision equipment.

Perfect. So that’s the head taken care of. On to the torso. Right now, inspired by foot operations in Afghanistan and a general desire to emulate SOCOM6, plate carriers are all the rage. Simply put, a plate carrier carries hard armor plates (duh) to protect your vital areas from getting perforated from rifle fire. This means front, back, and sometimes side plate pockets of your choice. The alternative is an armor carrier, which has some amount of soft armor (e.g. kevlar) to protect most of the torso from artillery fragments in addition to plate pockets. This is a pretty simple amount-of-protection v. weight tradeoff. What’s your expected threat? In Afghanistan, you’re walking a lot, so weight really sucks. Most of the threats are dudes with rifles. So you want rifle protection, screw the rest. In Iraq, you ride around in vehicles, and IEDs (and their friends high velocity fragments) are a big threat. Plus dudes with rifles. So you want plates and soft armor.

We’ve spilt a lot of virtual ink on IFVs. We’re pretty clearly a heavily mechanized force. And our expected operating theater is good old Europe in a conventional throwdown. I’m old school like that.7 We can expect plenty of artillery threats in addition to dudes with rifles. So armor carriers it is! They won’t provide immunity from shell fragments, but they do a great job of saving lives.

Previous drafts of this post had a highly optimized choice to shave off the last few ounces, but I’ve since reconsidered. This is general issue. So it needs to be relatively simple and reasonably priced and available in bulk right now. It needs to be reasonably modular, in that we might want to add components to get extra fragmentation protection or to upgrade to deal with the latest armor piercing rounds. We’d like a quick-release system in case someone falls in a river or to help medics get the armor out of the way in a hurry. And it needs to feature PALS webbing or some equivalent integral way of easily adding pouches for stuff. We’re not throwing load bearing equipment over the armor carrier.

Which brings us to our (somewhat boring) choice: the Gen 3 Improved Outer Tactical Vest. Lame name. It’s American. You’re shocked, I’m sure. It checks all of the boxes, and provides support for plenty of modular add-ons if desired. Plus, SAPI-pattern plates are the best shaped/constructed of the current ceramic plate options. At least for mass production. Again, we could find some improvements with respect to weight if we didn’t mind going with a smaller company, but then there would be production line questions. The IOTV G3 is made by BAE. No worries there.

Okay. So that’s armor carrier. Comes ready for SAPI-cut plates. It also comes with soft armor rated to stop things like fragments and 9 mm pistol bullets. So all we need now are plates. This is probably the easiest choice there is. There’s no good reason to go with ESAPI plates. They’re rated to stop the vast majority of AP rounds in 5.56 mm, 5.45 mm, and 7.62 mm (-x39 mm, -x51 mm, and -x54 mm) calibers. No sense making armor easy to defeat by switching from FMJ to AP issue rounds. In general, we’d expect front and rear plates only (i.e. no side plates) to be sufficient for most operational environments. Side plates may be distributed as needed like the other add-on components to the base IOTV unit.

1.) There’s also an Australian helmet called the Enhanced Combat Helmet. Ugh, naming. Anyway, ours is the American one, not the Aussie one. Sorry, Oz, the Yanks did this better.
2.) Modular Integrated Communications Helmet. Maybe it’s not for combat?
3.) Personal Armor System for Ground Troops. 80s vintage stuff.
4.) This measurement is much more statistically repeatable than trying to figure out at what velocity nothing will get through.
5.) There will be another article on these.
6.) Admittedly, they’re pretty cool guys.
7.) Judging by recent events in the Donbass, I’m also avant-garde like that.

Testing Parvusimperator’s Ideas

Posted by

Stumbled upon a couple news articles today, courtesy of Military.com. Both concern the USMC and their experimental units playing around with things I called.

The first, and probably least surprising, is that there’s a testing battalion experimenting with the M27 (HK 416) as a general-issue rifle. Compared to the standard M4 that the Corps has finally switched to, the M27 has a free-float barrel, a safe/semi/auto trigger group instead of safe/semi/burst, and the HK short-stroke gas-piston system. A well-designed piston system is a lot easier to regulate than the conventional direct impingement system on an AR (this will be important in a moment). There are definite gains to be made (though you could get a lot of the same stuff by changing out a few parts on the M4, but the M27 has the advantage of being in the procurement stream. It has the disadvantage of costing more, of course. They do really like the M27. As do I, as it was my choice for Borgundy’s military carbine. It was also the choice of the French.

That’s not super surprising though. What is more surprising to me is that they’ve also got a battalion experimenting with suppressors on everything. Carbines, machine guns, everything. Yes, even the Ma Deuces. Hey, that sounds familiar. It makes command and control easier, to no one’s surprise.1 It also took away the noise that provides an illusion of effectiveness. This fascinates me. Noise means “good enough”. Take a lot of that away, and you have to concentrate on what your shooting is actually doing. Huh. Plus, it’s easier to concentrate with all that racket gone. I’m very proud to say you saw that idea here first.

1.) Ever had a date in a loud restaurant? It sucks. You want a place that’s quiet. Same thing here. It really helps if your soldiers can hear you tell them things.

F125 Class Frigate

Posted by

Historically, Germany has made some well designed ships in insufficient numbers. Bismarck and Tirpitz were both well designed and well regarded. Bismarck was formidable enough that the Royal Navy issued orders to avoid one-on-one engagements with her.

In general, modern German Frigates1 are high capability ships. I’m quite fond of the Sachsen class, which are excellent ships with a fine SAM suite. Unsurprisingly given the feature set and the small production run, they’re quite expensive. They may or may not be the right choice for you depending on your budget, priorities, and the other ships in your Navy.

But all things must come to an end. And the long chain of well-designed German ships came to an end with the F125 class.

I do not understand the F125 class at all. They’re the biggest “Frigates” in the world, with a displacement of 7,200 tonnes. They are also massively expensive. I am not opposed to large frigates or expensive ships. But I want something for my money. The FREMMs that Fishbreath is fond of and the Sachsens I alluded to earlier are both high capability ships. They’re suitable for any standard mission you might expect from a modern maid-of-all-work from air defense to antisubmarine warfare to land attack to antiship work. The F125s aren’t.

Looking at the F125, it is clear something is missing. And that something is the VLS. The VLS is where you put your surface to air missiles. And, if you’re smart like the Germans, you’ve got a VLS like the Mark 41 that can also take cruise missiles. So the VLS gives your ship the ability to defend itself from incoming antiship missiles and to strike targets over 1,000 miles away. Without it, the F125 is like a clawless, toothless tiger.

The F125 does have the RIM-116 point defense missile system. This is presently the best CIWS in the world. But it is no substitute for proper SAM capability. The CIWS is only able to protect against a small scale attack. It is not capable of contributing to the anti-air umbrella of a task force or providing protection to nearby ships. This might be fine for a small corvette or patrol craft, but the F125 is expensive and important. To put it plainly, the F125 will require escorts, like an aircraft carrier does.

Of course, an aircraft carrier carries aircraft. There’s a reason it has no space for missiles. But the F125 isn’t an aircraft carrier. There are no squadrons of Sea Typhoons ready to scramble from a flight deck. The F125 has one 127mm gun, some smaller remotely operated guns, four RHIBs, a submarine ROV and a pair of helicopters. It has a mere eight Harpoon launchers, and a small crew of only 110. I don’t know what happened to the space. I wish I could tell you.

Such a simple ship should be cheap, but it isn’t. In the tradition of other recent German projects, every gold-plated technological innovation has been thrown at it. The radars are split between the two superstructure islands. Command and control has been split as well. Plus, the ships have plenty of fancy modern stealth shaping. All wasted on a useless hull.

The F125 is optimized for the not very difficult mission of antipiracy hunts off the Horn of Africa. What a spectacular waste of Reichsmarks er, Euros.

1.) Fishbreath would probably quibble about the use of the term Frigate here. Most German frigates follow the European standard of being a destroyer in all but name.

Lessons from Night Gun School

Posted by

One of the components of the class I attended last weekend was a dusk/night portion. We engaged targets in transitional light and darkness. I brought with me my trusty Glock 34, which has a fiber optic front sight and plain black rear (i.e. no tritium whatsoever), a Surefire X300U with DG Switch(and a second without), and a Surefire E2D Defender Ultra flashlight. I got some reps in with everything, and I can now draw some conclusions.

Note that these are conclusions from the perspective of a civilian concealed carrier. NOT a special forces type guy or a SWAT guy or a policeman. So I’m not usually engaged in hunting bad guys. This will impact a bunch of conclusions.

First, sights. Or, were fiber optic sights a handicap? I shot in both transitional and nonexistent light. I found that if there was enough light to see the target, there was enough light to use the sights I had. I had no problems in transitional light. Any less light, and you have to use some kind of light of your own, which will wash out whatever sights you’ve brought. So my fiber optics were no problem when it got really dark either. Win. Because they’re cheaper and more pleasant to work with in the daytime. I’m not going to optimize for transitional light.

See, while lots of crime happens at night, it happens in well lit areas. Because criminals need some light to figure out that you’re worth the trouble. They need to see you, size you up, and then make their move. That needs light.

Okay, that’s the carry problem taken care of. Let’s look at techniques that might be used in the case of home invasion, or other night work. First, the independent flashlight. We worked a number of techniques, including the Harries, the FBI, the temple index, the neck index, and the Kyle Lamb technique. Let’s break them down.

I really liked Harries. Despite not being a Weaver stance shooter, I found it was pretty intuitive and easy to use. It was the most stable of the flashlight techniques for me.

The FBI technique worked great for searching. Not so much for shooting in most cases. It’s just awkward, and hard to keep everything pointed where you want it. But it’s easy to transition to the temple index…

The temple index was another excellent technique. It was less stable than the Harries, but it was a lot easier to get the light pointed in the right direction. It worked well for me for shooting. And again, really easy to transition to the FBI technique for searching. Switching between the two worked really well for most purposes. Though it does make you shoot strong hand only.

The neck index is stupid. It illuminates the rear sight too much. The temple index does a better job of highlighting the front sight, which is the one you should be paying attention to.

I did not like the Kyle Lamb technique. This one was super awkward and needed lots of awkward push-pull mechanics. Maybe it would have worked better for a Weaver shooter, but this was significantly trickier than the Harries. And I ain’t a Weaver guy. Pass.

I also brought weaponlights. These are not good for searching, since that requires pointing your weapon at things. But they are great for target identification. Confirming that your target is a hostile and not the cat or your daughter or some shit is what weapon lights excel at. Way easier to engage targets with a weaponlight on your pistol. You have your natural grip. The light is automatically aligned with the barrel. And with a DG switch, a firm shooting grip means the light is on. Relax a little, it goes off. Easy.

Also note that if you come to a door (we did drills with a door), you can easily free a hand to open the door and then reestablish the master firing grip. Makes that problem a lot easier.

The experience of me and the other students reinforced the importance of simple switchology. We didn’t have time pressure or other stress, but people still didn’t get their flashlights to do what they wanted. This is part of the brilliance of the X300U/DG switch combo. You don’t have to think too much. It’s got two settings. On. Off. Press if you want on. Don’t press if you don’t. It’s great. Technically it’s a ‘momentary on’ switch, but I found that gripping correctly meant it was on until I relaxed.

By the end of class, everyone who had a weaponlight but no DG switch had ordered one.

The E2D is a really good handheld. It’s got a low setting and a high setting in addition to off. Default is high, which is what I want. To get to low, you have to double tap the button. So you have to want low to get low. This is useful for small tasks right in front of you like reloading mags. I had no instances of getting the wrong input. Also, the button can be pressed for momentary on or clicked to stay on. Again, this is useful.

Students with poorly thought out flashlights seriously considered flinging their lights over the nearest berm. Lots of problems were had with getting low when you wanted high or vice versa. I also learned strobes suck. I don’t see the point of a strobing flashlight. 500 lumens to the face is just as disorienting, and the strobe is more likely to piss off the user. Any kind of complicated fancy switch mechanism could be counted upon to suck and be gotten wrong. And this was not a stressful environment.

In terms of gear, I came well prepared to do night work, so I didn’t have any gear takeaways from this portion of class. Again, note that it’s very not necessary to have a weaponlight on your carry gun, for the same reasons that tritium isn’t needed. In terms of holster selection, our instructors really like Dark Star Gear and C&G holsters. Both make great kydex holsters. They, and most other good kydex holstermakers, have plenty of options for holsters that will carry a weaponlight.

As for light brands, Surefire. Surefire Surefire Surefire. The other consistent recommendation for something cheaper was Streamlight.

On the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carrier

Posted by

Of the two of us, Fishbreath is by far the naval expert. But even though I’m an old Army hand, I still know a thing or two about navies. Especially the navy of my native America.

The United States Navy is the most formidable in the world, bar none. Full stop. We’re going to talk about carriers today, and they do that better than anyone. The US Navy is also the world’s second most powerful air force. At least, if we’re going by capability and not just “Things That Call Themselves an Air Force”. The US Navy operates the mighty Gerald R. Ford and Nimitz class supercarriers. These are the benchmark for distant power projection. They are unmatched in both capability and cost.

But we know that those are awesome. Let’s take a moment to talk about other people’s carriers. Specifically, the new British flattops, the Queen Elizabeths.

Decatur’s ghost, they’re bloody awful.

The Queen Elizabeths displace 65,000 tons full load and have a maximum air wing of 40 planes. For comparison, this is the same max capacity as the French Charles de Gaulle, and a bit less than half that of Nimitz or Gerald R. Ford (which max out at 90 aircraft). But the Queen Elizabeths are half again as heavy as de Gaulle, and more than half the weight of Nimitz. Tonnage is a decent low-order proxy for ship cost, so we can see that the Royal Navy has bought more ship without getting more capability for their trouble.

It also amuses me that the Royal Navy only plans to equip their new carriers with an air wing of twenty four planes. What is the point of all that ship for 24 planes? Yes, I know 24 planes are cheaper than 40, but then why make a 65,000 ton ship? You could fit 24 planes in a ship of less than half the displacement, which would be a lot cheaper. And no, you can’t just add planes. All of your strike planning and aviation handling skills are going to be based around the nominal air wing, since that’s what they usually have to work with. Siiiigh.

But it gets worse. Far, far worse. The Queen Elizabeths straight-deck ships, with neither catapults nor arresting gear. Both angled decks and arresting cables were British innovations. Nelson is weeping right now. And probably spinning in his grave. At least you can power London that way.

Of course, in addition to spitting in the face of tradition1, this means the Royal Navy has lost quite a bit of capability. The angled flight deck allows for simultaneous takeoff and landing operations. Previous straight-deck carriers had a wire net to catch planes that missed the arrestor wires, and if a plane missed the net on a botched landing, they’d hit their comrades’ aircraft in the deck park forward. Yay fire. There wasn’t enough room to do takeoffs in front of the net. During takeoff operations, the deck park would be aft, containing planes waiting to take off. No landings here for obvious reasons.

Not putting in any kind of catapult or arresting gear causes other problems. Charles de Gaulle is equipped with arrestor gear, catapults, and an angled flight deck, like the bigger Nimitzes and Fords. So the French can cross train with the US Navy. You can borrow notes from the people who have been practicing naval aviation since the 1920s without a break. If the Marine Nationale and the US Navy are doing exercises together, they can take off and land on each other’s ships and share best practices. For the French, this is a great way to build their skills without having to reinvent the wheel. Unlike China or Russia, the French are America’s oldest friends. Do what les Americains do. At least to start. It’s also nice to have an ally’s ships as an optional ship to divert to.

All of that requires that you have the toys to play. The Royal Navy isn’t in the CATOBAR club. So they can’t play well with those who are. They’re also stuck with reduced payload and range, since they’re going to be using STOVL aircraft. Those takeoffs are hard on fuel and put limits on how much you can haul. It was true for the Harrier, it will be true for the F-35B. Shorter range and lower payload than a CATOBAR equivalent. And the F-35C is really nice, with a bigger wing and more fuel stowage capacity than even the basic F-35A. The F-35B loses some tank space to accommodate the lift fan, so it has the shortest legs of the bunch, and that’s before you try to do zippy short takeoffs or leave fuel for a vertical landing.

The more you look, the more isn’t good. The Queen Elizabeths lack any kind of missile armament. I don’t like the notion of turning aircraft carriers into cruisers, but short range missiles like the RIM-162 Enhanced Sea Sparrow (ESSM) or the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile are both a lot more effective than the venerable Phalanx. That’s going to put more pressure on all of those Daring-class destroyers that the Royal Navy didn’t buy. The US Navy has a much more formidable surface escort fleet, and it still put both Phalanx and ESSM on the Nimitzes and put ESSM, RIM-116, and Phalanx on the Gerald Fords.

I don’t like the conventional power plant either. You’re not really going to save all that much for a couple sizeable ships. And you gain quite a bit of range and staying power. Which is super helpful, because politicians love to commit carriers to wave the flag and blow stuff up.

To be honest, it’s hard for me to imagine worse ships. They make excellent white elephants. Something more like Charles de Gaulle or Cavour if a smaller air wing was desired would be a far better buy. But instead the Royal Navy built something bloated and af

1.) Spitting in the face of tradition is punishable by hanging from the yardarm.

Sunrise, November 9

Posted by

Well, here we are. It’s November 9. In a few months, Donald Trump will be our president. I prefer him over Hillary, but it’s hard for me to say I’m happy with the outcome. There are no good choices between a brutish egotist and a corrupt kleptocrat.

So, in the spirit of united disappointment (though I grant yours is likely greater than mine), I offer this olive branch. We have a president none of us1 is all that happy with. I have little doubt you’re ready to stand in opposition to him. So am I, when he steps out of line. Let’s stand together.

Let’s also talk about why this happened. If you’re reading this and you’re disappointed, I suspect you’re going to go with ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’. This is not true, and it’s unfair to your fellow Americans. A month or two ago, I posted an excellent article on Trumpism from, of all places, Cracked. It gets at the crux of the thing: rural voters perceive that educated urban liberals hate their values. Said rural voters have been content to let it pass, but after a decade or two of the capital’s trouble finding them, they’ve had enough. Now they’ve thrown a brick through the window saying so. Frankly, I think they were right to do so. The documented malfeasance of the media—this year more than ever the Democrats’ palace guard—and the stink in Washington are brickworthy things2. I would have chosen a different brick, but educated suburban conservatives didn’t get to pick the nominee this time3.

I’ve seen murmurings about pushing that ridiculous national popular vote plan. I’d urge against that. The brick came through your window because the rural voter feels like the urban population centers have too much say over the way the nation goes. The Electoral College is designed specifically to give said rural voter a voice. Be careful taking away the ballot box: the next one in line is the ammo box. On that note, I do find myself a little unsettled. If nothing else, this election has cast into sharp relief the gulf between the country and the city. More than any time since about 1860, people on both sides of the aisle feel like they’re living in two separate Americas4. I hope the similarity ends there.

In fact, I believe the similarity ends there, at least for now. We aren’t doomed. America is stronger than that. I believe in the resilience of our system of government and the vigilance of the opposition, both Republican and Democrat, to Trump’s presidency. Let the next four years be a time of renewal of the checks and balances over which the last few executives have run roughshod, a time of returning power to the states and liberty to the people, where power and liberty ultimately belong, and a time to once again become a government of laws, and not a government of men. That’s where I am. I hope you can find your way there too.

1. Except, I believe, parvusimperator.
2. I really doubt any media people are reading this, but if you are and your name is not Jake Tapper, be more like Jake Tapper. That’s all we ask. I don’t care if you have political beliefs so long as you aren’t obviously a partisan on the job.
3. And it isn’t like we have a good record at picking candidates anyway.
4. British political scientist Rob Ford expressed the following sentiment after the Brexit vote: do you feel like you’re a stranger in your own country? That’s the way people voting for (Brexit/Trump) have felt for years.

An earlier version of this article attributed the Cracked article to Buzzfeed, despite the fact that I failed multiple times to find it on Buzzfeed via Google searches, and eventually copied the link from an old Facebook post while thinking, “Well, I guess Google must be wrong.” The error in the article has been corrected.