Tag Archives: militariana

Parvusimperator Opines on the Knight’s Armament LAMG

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Shortly after I last looked at light machine guns and squad automatic weapons, Ian and Karl got some hands-on time with Knight’s Armament’s Light Assault Machine Gun, or LAMG. Let’s take a look at it.

The LAMG is a result of the continued development of Gene Stoner’s Stoner 86 machine gun design. It sports a number of modern improvements, but they’re all in the same spirit of the original, and Gene Stoner’s design principles. It’s number one claim to fame is a shockingly low weight. It’s a belt fed 5.56mm gun, and it weighs 11.4 lbs unloaded (per Knight’s website at the time I write this). Some other, lighter weights have been listed, so you can cut that down more depending on your configuration. That’s a super lightweight gun for a beltfed. For comparison, the M249 weighs 17 lbs unloaded (per FN’s website at the time I wrote this).

Light weight is the first thing that catches the eye on the spec sheet, but it isn’t the only nice new thing on the LAMG. To keep the gun controllable, there’s a low rate of fire, a long receiver, and a constant-recoil system. This should help the receiver life, since the bolt never slams into the back end. The receiver itself is an aluminum extrusion, which simplifies construction and doesn’t require a ton of rivets or welds to assemble.

Since the rate of fire is low, Knight’s Armament decided to not rip off the MG 42 feed mechanism, unlike the vast majority of modern machine gun makers. That mechanism may be combat proven and a popular choice of homework to copy, but it was originally designed to keep up with the MG 42’s extremely high rate of fire. Knowing that the significantly lower rate of fire of their machine gun was a lot easier for a feed system to work with, Knight’s went with a much simpler feed system that uses a significantly shorter cover. Simpler means fewer parts, which is generally preferable from a weight, manufacturing, and reliability standpoint, and it also allows them to mount a reasonably sized sight rail behind the short feed tray cover. This means optics aren’t on a moving tray cover, so they hold zero better. Also, it means worn hinges and latches don’t affect optics and their zero.

Knight’s Armament has also made quite a bit of provision for suppressed use, having both an available suppressor ready to mount on the gun, as well as a barrel assembly with integrated suppressor. I’m a big fan of general issue suppressors for military applications, so this is very nice to see.

Reliability and durability remain outstanding questions. We know what sort of abuse an M249 can take. We know what the design receiver life is. We can also track down some MRBS numbers. I haven’t been able to find anything like that for the LAMG, which is a damn shame. And in the videos Ian and Karl did, they kept insisting that the LAMG “wasn’t intended for sustained fire.” I wish they had actually gone into that, because I don’t know what that means. The barrel profile looks reasonably heavy. There’s a quick-change mechanism for that barrel. And there’s a belt, usually in a 1-200 round box or soft pack, so there’s plenty of bullets. Silly marketing aside, it hasn’t actually gone through the abuse of some troop trials, so while it’s seen a bunch of development time and money, I’d hesitate to call it “mature,” even if it has gone through a number of revisions.

Speaking of ammunition, the LAMG has no provision to feed from rifle magazines, which is a good thing. Those mechanisms never seem to work right. Plus they add weight and complexity all for the off chance that supply might not be able to get the frontline infantry linked 5.56mm in addition to 5.56mm in magazines. Which ignores all the times that they did, or that they supplied link 7.62mm and magazines of 5.56mm in past wars. Or .30-06 and .30 Carbine, and .45 ACP. We can safely skip the mag feed.

So what do we think? Is the LAMG better than the competition for 5.56mm squad automatic weapons? Yes, yes it is. The weight is pretty crazy. There were IAR entrants that weigh more. The LAMG loaded with a 200 round belt weighs about as much as an M249 unloaded, and that’s pretty significant weight savings. I’m a big fan of general-issue suppressors, and the LAMG can be readily configured to run with a suppressor and a suppressor-friendly gas system so the weapon doesn’t wear more or become less reliable over time from the extra pressure. And the constant recoil system makes it super controllable, even when fired from the shoulder. We’re willing to take a chance and deal with having to work out a few bugs to deal with a better machine gun.

TO&E: Austere Companies

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There’s an exercise that exists to get one to challenge one’s own assumptions by imposing a very difficult condition on a problem so one sees what tradeoffs come out. Let’s play with an example. Inspired by the interview with former General der Panzertruppe Hermann Balck, let’s give this sort of problem a try.

The criteria in question is that rifle companies shouldn’t number more than 70-80 men. Let’s firm this up a bit and call it a hard limit of 80 men. Arbitrarily choosing mechanized infantry as our guinea pigs, what would an 80 man mechanized infantry company look like?

Let’s start by thinking about our vehicle. Balck also postulated a 10-tank company, with 3-tanks per platoon. Let’s assume our mechanized infantry company mirrors this structure, which is pretty reasonable. We have a few simple options depending on how we want to operate our IFVs:

  1. Keep a crew of 3 men in the IFVs during mounted and dismounted operations. Have five dismounts in two of the IFVs in the platoon and six dismounts in the third, giving us two eight-man dismount squads. There are, of course, a few other ways to think about this problem, but that’s a pretty standard one.
  2. Have a crew of 3 men in the IFVs during mounted operations and a crew of two men in the IFVs during dismounted operations. Have five other dismounts per IFV, giving us two nine man squads (or three six-man squads if you prefer). Having two crew in the IFV is suboptimal but doable. We could also look into extra automation, but that brings up our next option:
  3. Have a crew of 2 men in the IFVs during mounted and dismounted operations. This gives six dismounts per IFV. Two-man crews might be as effective as three man crews given modern technological aids. Certainly the US Army wants a two-man crew for the OMFV.

My preference is for #3. I’ve read enough good test data to justify the design,1 and we’re going to want plenty of optics on our IFV anyway.

We could also consider variations that would give us two ten-man dismount squads if we preferred, but I’ll stick with those classic US Army nine-man dismount squads, that could also be reconfigured (either ad-hoc or doctrinally) into three six-man squads. That gives each platoon a total manning of 24. We’ll postulate that one of the IFVs is commanded by the platoon leader (a lieutenant), and the platoon sergeant will command another IFV or one of the squads. So we’ll have one officer and 23 enlisted personnel in our platoon.

Three platoons gives me 72 men total. Not bad so far. All we need is a company HQ. CO, XO, First Sergeant are pretty obvious. We’ll also add a supply sergeant, and we’ll stipulate that the HQ has one IFV and probably a truck. So, that’s four men in the HQ, and 76 men altogether. Done.

That was a little less hard than I thought it would be, so let’s look at those squads. As mentioned before, we can use a ‘split squad’ method to give us two 9-man squads in the pattern of the US Army. And, while the US Army has made this work, I’ve never quite been a fan of splitting squads across vehicles. Our other obvious choice is to use each six-man dismount team independently as squads. Let’s unpack that a little.

There are a bunch of ways to work with a six-man squad, but I like having a squad being able to fire and maneuver, and I like symmetrical teams, which gives us a six-man squad comprised of two three-man teams. Which should function like four-man teams, except with less ability to absorb casualties. Or so the theory goes; that was the stated reason for the marines to switch from three to four men per fireteam in the 1940s. Three men in the fireteam does mean that we’re low on riflemen, especially if we add grenadiers. We could make the teams asymmetrical, but that makes the command burden harder, and per Balck, the whole point of this was to make command burden easier.

Looking at the other configuration, two dismount squads of nine men each in a mechanized platoon has been tried before in the US Army and they found it unsatisfactory. Specifically, they didn’t like the lack of infantry, and they revised the platoon in the early 2000s to have three dismount squads of nine men each in the same four Bradley platoon, and there haven’t been much in the way of complaints about that after the Iraq war. Certainly, there are no calls to change it.

And, unlike the 10-tank company that Balck also proposed, no one has put forward a formal organization for an infantry company that’s this small. Likely because it’s pretty bare bones, and when one adds casualties, transfers, absences for leave, training assignments, and the like, the platoon never starts at full strength. It should be noted that, while on paper the US Army’s mechanized infantry platoon consists of 1 officer and 38 men, plus a few attachments, and there are only 36 seats in four Bradleys, veterans in Operation Iraqi Freedom never reported having a problem finding seats for everyone in the platoon.

  1. Yes, I know Chieftain doesn’t like it. He’s entitled to his opinion. I disagree with him based on test data showing it works that goes back to the early 90s. All successful. ↩

Suppressor Vindication

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A couple years ago, I wrote an article talking about how suppressors should be general issue for the modern infantryman. At the time, I thought this idea was good but a little out there, since it was the only one of my force multipliers not adopted by a major military. A little while later, I discovered that someone at the US Marine Corps had a similar idea, and they were putting it to the test.

Now, it appears this testing has produced some results, and these results have been analyzed. The United States Marine Corps has announced that they’ll be issuing suppressors to every infantryman. Check out the full story here, courtesy of Task & Purpose.

I think that’s awesome. Better communication. Hearing protection works better. More effective infantry. Fewer hearing issues for the soldier after he musters out. But you already gathered that. It’s nice to see the Corps coming to the same conclusions.

Let’s talk a little bit about how they plan to implement that in the short term. They’ve got a contract with Knight’s Armament for NT4 suppressors. The NT4 is an older suppressor, with the design dating back to 1998.

This is not a state of the art suppressor, but it’s a known one. It’s in the system already. It’s pretty durable as far as suppressors go. And the mounting is super cheap: the NT4 just requires replacing the crush washer behind a standard A2-type flash hider with a shim kit. So an existing rifle is ready to get quieter for less than $5. And all M27s already have a venting gas block to bleed off excess gas from the suppressor. It’s not the suppressor I would choose if I had to buy a new general issue setup right now, but given the system as it is, the choice is a reasonable one.

It’s great to see this idea get some serious traction. Bravo Zulu, Devil Dogs!

FN HAMR

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When the US Marine Corps put out an RFP for companies to submit automatic rifle candidates, FN responded with a SCAR derivative that had some neat technological tricks. Let’s take a look.

The HAMR-16 (Heat Adaptive Modular Rifle) looks like the SCAR-16 that it was derived from at first glance. Same monolithic upper, same folding/telescoping stock with two-position cheek riser. Same polymer lower with short-throw (90 degrees of total travel) safe/semi-/full-auto selector. Same love-it-or-hate-it reciprocating charging handle.1 The barrel has a notably heavier profile than on a regular SCAR-16, and there is a heatsink protruding from under the handguard.

All of that might be expected to handle the sustained fire requirements of the IAR program. But FN hid an extra trick inside the HAMR. They put in a bimetallic thermocouple on the barrel, just in front of the chamber. As the barrel heats up from use, the thermocouple draws a linkage forward, activating a secondary sear. So when the gun got hot enough, it would automatically convert from closed-bolt to open-bolt operation. After the gun cooled, the thermocouple would push the linkage back, automatically returning the weapon to closed-bolt operation.

I might have suspected such a system to potentially cause problems, but the USMC 60,000 round reliability/endurance test showed otherwise. The goals for the IAR were as follows:

  • Three Units Under Test (UUTs) were provided for each model under evaluation.

  • The UUT shall have a Mean Rounds Between Failure (MRBF) of 900 for Class I and II failure combined (Threshold), 5,000 (Objective). The MRBF for Class III failures shall be 15,000 (Threshold), 20,000 (Objective).

The definitions for failure classes are as follows:

  • Class I failure: A failure that may be immediately corrected by the operator within 10 seconds or less while following prescribed immediate action procedures.
  • Class II failure: A failure that may be corrected by the operator, and that requires more than 10 seconds but not more than 10 minutes to correct (less the TM/OM defined cool down period if a hot barrel condition exists). Only the equipment and tools issued with the weapon may be used to correct the failure.
  • Class III failure: A failure of a severe nature. The failure (1) can be corrected by an operator but requires more than 10 minutes; (2) cannot be corrected by an operator and requires assistance (no time limit); or (3) requires higher level of maintenance or correction by an authorized operator cannot be accomplished because of unavailability of necessary tools, equipment, or parts.

The HAMR-16 met the objective goal of 5,000 mean rounds between class I and II failures, and was the only entrant to do so. It did not experience any class III failures, so MRBF for class III failures could not be computed. It was also the only entrant to not experience any class III failures.

For comparison, the winning HK entry that would become the M27 IAR had an MRBF for class I and II failures of 1,622, and a MRBF for class III failures of 20,000.

The HK entry was estimated to have a significantly longer barrel life than the HAMR. It was also somewhat lighter, with the HAMR weighing in a bit over ten pounds (unloaded and sans grip pod it’s usually shown with), and the M27 weighing a bit under eight pounds (unloaded and sans accessories). I might also expect the HAMR to be a bit more expensive than the M27.

I would have rated the HAMR better at being an automatic rifle, and the M27 better at being a backdoor carbine improvement, for what that’s worth.

As for my opinion of the project, I think it’s a very cool design with some well thought out innovations. However, I’m not a big fan of the automatic rifle concept, so I’d pass. It might be interesting to see what the thermocouple/sear setup does in a more standard SCAR design as far as reducing cook offs goes.

  1. Lots of people hate it, but SOCOM did request it in the original design. For what that’s worth. ↩

ADATS Revisited

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I discussed the ADATS system before. At the time, I equivocated on it, mostly for want of more information. But now, thanks to discovering some more data, I have that information. Time to give this program the up or down resurrection vote it deserves. But first, some more on the system.

To recap, ADATS is a SAM/ATGM with a speed of Mach 3, laser beam riding guidance and a big shaped charge/fragmentation warhead. Range is about 10 km. The turret for it holds eight missiles, has a 3D air search radar with a 25 km range as well as day and thermal imagers for target engagement. The Canadians mounted ADATS on the ubiquitous M113; the Americans planned to mount it on an M3A1 Bradley hull.

The US Army planned for ADATS to fit in between modernized HAWK missiles and Avenger Stinger systems. So in terms of tiers, from most coverage to least coverage, you’d have Patriot, Hawk, ADATS, Stinger/Avenger. ADATS batteries would have eight vehicles a piece. They would also be capable of sharing information with other ADATS vehicles or receiving targeting information from other air defense assets via a datalink.

The ADATS itself, although promoted by Canada, wasn’t chosen in a vacuum. In 1987, the US Army evaluated four different western short-range air defense systems: ADATS; a Crotale derivative called Liberty; Roland 3 mounted on an MLRS chassis, known under the name ‘Paladin’; and (Tracked) Rapier. This was a shoot-off: competitors had to acquire targets and fire multiple missiles in cluttered/degraded environments. ADATS won the evaluation. The US Army liked its performance and the laser beam riding guidance, which was very resistant to jamming. The extensive provision for passive operation of the ADATS was also seen as a positive, as this made it much harder to engage as part of a SEAD mission.

There was also an ADATS variant trialed that added a 25 mm M242 autocannon to the turret. It had a ready supply of 600 rounds. Missile capacity on the gun-equipped ADATS was unchanged.

Previously, I mentioned that early tests showed some question as to the reliability of the system. This was resolved during the development cycle. In 1,014 hours at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, two Martin Marietta ADATS fire units averaged more than 92 hours between mission-related hardware failures, exceeding by 70 percent the 54-hour test requirements.

Okay, now let’s get to our verdict. I really like this system. I like the jam resistance. I like the missile speed. I also kinda like the dual-purpose warhead, which would be more broadly useful, even in a low-intensity conflict. There’d be some question of not running out of them before planes, but that’s the sort of thing one can mitigate with good doctrine.

Verdict: Funding Approved by Borgundy Army Ordnance Board

M1 CATTB Revisited

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A couple years ago, I wrote on the very cool experimental M1 CATTB. Having found some more information on the vehicle, I decided to revisit it.

We’ve talked a little about the new gun, engine, and turret already. Let’s look at the autoloader. The autoloader was the same chain-style autoloader found on Leclerc and K2, and it held 17 rounds of either 120 mm or 140 mm ammunition. 140 mm ammunition was two-piece, and was stored in its ready to fire configuration in the bustle, which accounts for a lot of its length. The new powerpack opened up more room at the rear of the hull, and this was used for reserve ammo stowage. The reserve stowage could hold 22 140 mm rounds separated into the two pieces, or 33 120 mm rounds. There was also a mechanical ammunition transfer system to refill the ready magazine from the reserve stowage.

The new powerpack was the AIPS, and it had a total1 volume of 4.81 m3. This is a savings of about 3.5 m3 of space, which was used for the ammunition stowage mentioned above. The engine itself displaced 1,682 cubic inches, with an oil cooling system. It used a special oil to handle higher temperatures better. A key advantage of the oil-only cooling system was that it was much more compact than a water cooling system and used less power to run the cooling fans, needing only 120 HP for the cooling fans instead of 240 like most other 1,500 HP diesels of the time.

CATTB also featured a brand new track. The old track had two 9-inch wide track shoes mounted side-by-side, spanning the width of the track pins. Track guides (which travel between the roadwheel pairs) were bolted between the shoes. The new track for the CATTB had a single 25-inch wide shoe to span the pins and integrated the track guide with the shoe. This was intended to uniformly distribute pin loading and increase track life. The goal was 5,000-6,000 miles of track life, more than double that of the older tracks, which was approximately 2,500 miles.

CATTB replaced the torsion bar suspension of the M1 with an in-arm hydropneumatic suspension system. There were two designs that were being tested. Switching to a hydropneumatic suspension saved about 1,700 pounds in the vehicle, and frees up several inches of space in the hull, to lower the vehicle silhouette or to add extra belly protection. Being a test bed, neither option was selected on the CATTB.

In my previous article, I commented on the very large number of smoke grenade dischargers on the CATTB. These were for an early soft-kill active protection system. The sensors cueing it were a radar warning receiver and a laser warning receiver. It could automatically fire smoke to obscure the tank, or automatically slew the gun to face the threat. I’d be concerned about its effectiveness without additional IR or radar-based missile approach warning systems.

CATTB was also projected to test the Multi-sensor Target Acquisition System (MTAS). This added a low-power millimeter-wave radar to the tank, with a field of view of 180° in azimuth and 7.5° in elevation. Range was projected to be about 5 km.

Since this is a test bed, it’s not intended to enter mass production, so I won’t evaluate it as such. But I will review the new features:

  • I think the turret design is a pretty good one and it looks cool. If you’re going for a manned turret and aren’t trying to reduce the profile like Leclerc, I think it’s a solid design. But I’d prefer an unmanned turret like TTB/T-14.
  • Provided you’re ok with the two-man turret, the autoloader is solid. The really nice feature is the auto-resupply from reserve stowage to the ready stowage of the autoloader. And 39 rounds of 140 mm is a pretty good capacity. 50 rounds of 120mm is also a good loadout.
  • I’m kind of skeptical of the engine, since this hasn’t been tried anywhere else to my knowledge. There’s probably an SAE paper somewhere behind a paywall that would tell me why. Anyway, I’m also skeptical of the idea of needing ‘special oil’ for my tanks. Plus, there are some other smallish, proven 1,500 HP diesels available these days.
  • New track seems better than the old track. More life and fewer parts. Sold.
  • Hydropneumatic suspension is better than torsion bar suspension. More room in the floor for mine protection or more room for systems or less hull height is a really good thing. Active hydropneumatic even allows you to get a bit more elevation/depression out of your gun, which can help make the turret roof lower.
  • I love active protection systems, but this seems a bit early yet. It probably would have been worked out with more testing, but I’d like more ways to cue the system. Also, I strongly prefer having hard-kill capability. At the time, it’d be worth the work, but now there are a ton of off-the-shelf systems that just work. And are hard-kill to boot.
  • Radar tracking/targeting is a cool supplement to thermals. And if you set it up right, you can use it for missile approach warning too. I’d just want a way to switch it off sometimes.
  1. Engine, transmission, cooling system, final drives, power generators, batteries and fuel for one battlefield day ↩

Fishbreath Plays: Armored Brigade Review

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As the annual treachery of daylight saving’s close casts its pall over Many Words HQ here in Western Pennsylvania, we turn our attention to another hilly part of the world of somewhat greater interest to wargamers and the broader defense affairs community: the Fulda Gap.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is my current recommendation for the definitive Cold War armored combat command experience. Can Armored Brigade unseat it? Read on to find out!

Continue reading →

On the OMFV

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We’ve had some recent news on the OMFV program, with Rheinmetall being disqualified for not showing up for the Engineering & Manufacturing Design (EMD) phase, so let’s dig in.

First, let’s laugh a bit at the “competition” now with a single entrant. Even though, technically, someone else could enter a bid in 2023. If the program stays around that long. Those competitors wouldn’t get US Army funding and feedback from the EMD portion of the program, so they’d be at a significant financial disadvantage.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten our snark out of the way, let’s get serious. Yet again, we’re trying to replace the Bradley. What are the problems with the Bradley? So far, I’ve found the following three commonly cited (in no particular order):

1) Insufficient protection against current and near future threats, even with existing up-armor kits installed.
2) Insufficient power capacity for all current systems, let alone future upgrades.
3) Insufficient dismount capacity.

That said, OMFV only seems to worry about (1) and (2), since it does not require entrants to carry a full, nine-man dismount squad. And the one entrant from General Dynamics (which I believe is called Griffin IV), has capacity for the minimum required dismounts only. I think we’re still waiting on the DTIC or RAND corp. study on “Why Six Dismounts is Sufficient”, after they so kindly wrote a bit on why it’s so important for the GCV to carry nine dismounts.1

Anyway, the current requirements are tough enough. The following three are probably going to be extremely tough to meet:

  • Entrants must provide excellent protection (details are sparse, but presumably superior to that of the Bradley)
  • Entrants must have a 20% growth capacity
  • Two (2) entrants must be transportable in a C-17

I’m not entirely sure that this is doable. BAE didn’t think so, which is why they didn’t bother to enter anything into this phase. But GDLS seems to think they can do it.

I would have liked to have seen the Puma entered into the EMD to compete with the Griffin, but since its made by a collaboration between Rheinmetall and KMW, there’s little reason for Rheinmetall to enter it when they had their (now disqualified) KF41.

Of course, Puma was a GCV alternative that the GAO looked at, and was recommended over developing the higher-risk GCV prototype vehicles, despite holding fewer dismounts. Two can fit in a C-17 in the stripped-down configuration that is used to get it into an A400m. And the protection is pretty fantastic.

Obvious problems include that it’s very expensive, I have no idea how much growth capacity is in the design right now, the turret would have to be redone to carry the US-Army preferred 50mm XM913 autocannon, it’s expensive, there’s no provision at present for a hard-kill active protection system, the coax gun is still 5.56mm, the MELLS ATGM launcher isn’t done and did I mention it’s expensive? At a minimum, competitors are required to demonstrate an upgrade path to the 50mm gun. Oh, and the US Army would have to be okay with having to transport and install the rest of the armor before they used their air-transported Pumas.

As it is, we’ll see how the program goes. I’m not going to hold my breath.

  1. You may find the Rand GCV paper to be a good read. ↩

MGL Thinking

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Let’s spend a little bit of time thinking about multishot grenade launchers (MGLs) Specifically, I’m thinking about the Milkor M32A1 that SOCOM and the USMC bought recently. I’m on record as liking them, and I stand by that, but I haven’t been able to slot them in anywhere. Let’s fix that.

It’s pretty typical for a fire team to have one grenadier and squads to have one or two. These grenadiers have an M320 or M203 or similar launcher, which may be attached to their carbine or carried in a standalone configuration. I prefer the standalone configuration, since it generally gives a more effective grenade launcher, and reinforces the concept that the grenade launcher should be the primary weapon for the grenadier. It’s also easier to get good sights on the grenade launcher. So let’s try the simple thing. What if we replace the standalone one-shot grenade launcher with the M32A1?

There are some obvious gains we can see immediately. We gain up to five follow-up shots, which make it a lot easier to quickly correct for aim or put more fire on the target. There’s also a well-designed stock, a launcher design that can comfortably handle medium velocity (40x53mm) grenades, a spin drift compensating optical sight, and plenty of picatinny rails for night-fighting accessories and the like. The obvious downside is, of course, weight. The M32A1, equipped with M2A1 sight, weighs 15.8 lbs.

Let’s start playing with some weight numbers. First, we need some sort of benchmark. We’ll look at a current squad member with another weighty weapon: the SAW gunner. An M249 SAW weighs 17 lbs unloaded. The gunner’s basic load of ammo is 1,000 rounds, carried in five 200-round belts. For simplicity, I’ll assume these are all carried in the standard plastic boxes. Each boxed belt weighs about 7 lbs, so the basic load is 35 lbs. Add in the usual sight, the much-maligned Elcan M1451 (1.5 lbs) and we get an all-up weight of 53.5 lbs. That’s pretty heavy, and we almost certainly shouldn’t go heavier than that for our grenadier load.

Some digging around the internet puts the grenadier’s basic load of grenades at 36. Low velocity grenades weigh about half a pound a piece, so that’s 18 lbs of grenade ammo. If we want to carry all medium velocity grenades, which weigh about three quarters of a pound, our ammo load goes up to 27 lbs. Medium velocity grenades have a number of advantages over low velocity grenades. The higher velocity doubles the maximum range from 400 meters to 800 meters. Medium velocity grenades also have a significantly larger maximum point-blank range (i.e. the largest range at which you don’t need to adjust your aim to account for grenade drop). Furthermore, medium velocity grenades have a noticeably larger warhead.

We’re not done though. While the grenadier’s primary weapon is (now) his trusty M32A1 multishot grenade launcher, he needs a secondary weapon. Something for close encounters.2 The old-school traditionalists might call out a pistol, and pistols are pretty compact and lightweight. But they’re also generally not very effective in combat. They’re harder to score hits with and they don’t have as much terminal effect as a carbine. Plus, few soldiers have the practice on one to make it work for them. Can we make the loadout work with a carbine as secondary?

While a basic load for a rifleman is seven magazines, we can reduce this to, say, three or four magazines because the carbine is a backup weapon for the grenadier. An M4A1, Aimpoint Comp M5 red dot sight, and ATPIAL for night fighting comes out to about 7.2 lbs. Three mags come out to 3.2 lbs, four come to 4.3 lbs. So total weight for the carbine secondary is 10.4 lbs with three mags, and 11.5 lbs with four mags.

Just for the record, a Glock 19 Gen5 MOS with Deltapoint Pro and four mags comes to 3.3 lbs or so.

If I go with three mags for the carbine, I can squeeze in under my SAW Gunner weight threshold, even with 36 medium velocity grenades. I’m a bit over with four carbine magazines, and of course going with the pistol option leaves me a reasonable margin. I still prefer the carbine as a secondary weapon because of its greater utility, and because carbine marksmanship is a lot less perishable than pistol marksmanship. Overall though, this seems like a plausible grenadier loadout, and I like it much better than the alternative.

  1. This is very much NOT the sight I would put on my squad LMGs, but this is a standard choice for US Army MG sights, so it’s what we’ll go with here. Remember, we’re only trying to get a ballpark heavy load. ↩
  2. Read that in a Michael Biehn voice. ↩

Pegasus-class Fast Attack Hydrofoil

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Back in the 70s, the US Navy was serious about a hi-lo mix of surface combatants. The Lo end was going to be filled by the Pegasus-class. These were intended for use in the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, basically a small, near-shore counter to Soviet fast attack craft.

Enter the Pegasus-class. These were small (about 250 ton) hydrofoils. Being hydrofoils, they have wings on struts that lift the hull out of the water at speed, significantly reducing drag. As a result, the Pegasuses could make over 48 knots in calm seas, and over 40 knots in rough seas. Power was an LM2500 gas turbine when foilborne, and a pair of diesels when hullborne. This was fantastic in the 1970s, and is still impressive today.

Armament consisted of the ubiquitous 76mm Oto Melara gun, plus two quad harpoon launchers in the US Navy versions. The proposed versions for the German Navy had a pair of quad Exocet launchers.

Changing priorities saw Italy cancel their order, the US Navy drastically reduce their order, and then the Germans cancel their order. The remaining Pegasuses had a happy and successful life in coastal jobs, including running down drug smugglers.

So what do we think? Speed is fun. I think the concept has merit in the fast attack space, but it would be a pain to deploy without good forward basing. There was also a mothership proposed to assist in deployments but that was also cancelled. Overall though, while tricky to deploy for the US Navy, they’ve got a lot of merit for allies looking for relatively low cost punch.