A Rifleman's War

Great article, it always does come down to boots on the ground and how effective one is with their rifle. 400,000.00 buys alot of rounds and that training will save lives. The other thing is, shooting 500-700 meters here in New England is a hell of alot different than shooting that same distance over in the 'Stan, wind, humidity and angles we don't have here, so, as stated in the article, true marksmanship takes years, never mind 58 rounds.
 
The real problem, most likely, is that our men can't shoot until they get 400 clearances. By that time the rats have scurried away!

As far as being able to hit a target at 500 meters, with open sites, a human sized target at five hundred meters is going to be roughly half the size of the front site post and that is standing still with full frontal profile.

Those targets rarely present themselves to shooters outside a range.

Aside from that, I’m trying to imagine the accuracy of an AK-47 at 500+ meters...do the bad guys ever hit anything?

I suspect the ranges also depend on what part of Afghanistan you are in, but 500+ meters is a LONNGGG way for an Afghan to try shooting.

I say drop a BIG BOMB and quit using small arms.

This war should have been over a long time ago.
 
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i think the probelm is they like to attack from a distance with heavy weapons i saw a documentary that filmed insurgents attacking a convoy and the way they set up the ambush and used their radio comunications was pretty crafty.

they had like an old bofors gun or something it was some kind of huge thing that they were useing cranks to aim camoflauged in a hillside while men down below were distracting the convoy and they were free to just open up on the exposed vehicles.
 
As for training of the troops, it all boils down to economy. Don't forget a short while back the shortage of ammo the Army and perhaps other military branches suffered.

Not much has changed since I went through basic and then flight school. Because of the need, many of us received only partial instrument training in flight school giving us a "tactical" instrument rating versus a full instrument rating. The result of all that was many deaths and accidents during Vietnam that the Army wrote off as "combat losses". We were done no favors for this lack of complete training as I suspect today's Army members are being shortchanged in their training. Quantity versus quality.
 
58 rounds?

That's worse than USAF Air Base Ground Defense School and we were nothing more than glorified security guards. To send guys over to Afghanistan with that little trigger time is criminal.
 
Captain McBride also noted that he was shooting rifles in earnest by the age of 12 and shot them with regularity all of his life but it wasn’t until he was in his thirties that he would dare call himself a rifleman as he felt he had not yet attained sufficient knowledge and ability – 18 years of nearly weekly practice before he would dare claim to be a rifleman.
He should have gone to an Appleseed instead

[devil]
 
He should have gone to an Appleseed instead

[devil]

He set a higher standard than we do these days. At the moment, unfortunately few rifle owners can meet even the relatively lenient standard of the AQT, much less do so with a rack grade rifle and no sighter groups.
 
I'm not going to rag on the article too much, but what he is talking about is pre-deployment training. Infantrymen in OSUT shoot 370 rounds in Basic Rifle Marksmanship and then another 360 rounds in Advanced Rifle Marksmanship. Non Infantry shoot less ~ 500 rounds in Basic.

The 58 rounds is what experienced Soldiers get during their mobilization. Not nearly enough especially when the current marksmanship qualification course is such a disaster.

B

Link to Army Times Article on BRM & ARM for Soldiers
 
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