Coal Dragger
member
Now you have gone and hurt my feelings.
I was a Anti Armor Section Leader in the Sandbox. I took out a BMP at 800 meters with a Dragon, in combat. The crew of that BMP had no complaints about the effectiveness of the Dragon.
Lets remember that the environment is different in most wars. Vietnam didn't have brick and mud wall huts. Most of the fighting was not done in the city's, and the 7.62x51 did a much better job of going through things.
The sandbox was different. Armored vehicles, brick walls and mud walls, thank God for rockets and missiles.
Each weapon has had it's moment it time where it was the best, or ran with the big dogs, Well, there were a few that did suck in their time, but no one really talks about them.
But lets get real. We're not talking about what gun, or caliber is better for combat. We're talking about a rifle that will most likely see a lot of range time and some hunting.
Hell, If I only bought guns for combat, I wouldn't have so many.
The Dragon missile was horribly unreliable by the time I was in. We shot up almost all of them as 0351’s in the early 2000’s as the Javelin was coming online. I’d say we experienced close to a 40% failure rate on the missile, mainly having to do with the little solid fuel rocket charges on the sides of the round that kept it bounding down range. Most commonly they never fired off, so you got initial launch and then a Dragon round plopped in the dirt 75-100 yards away. Then EOD got to deal with it and your range was shut down until then.
Not a confidence inspiring weapon at all. I’m not sure what kind of maintenance needed to be performed on those missiles to make them work, but it clearly wasn’t being done. Probably a result of the Clinton era .mil budget being what it was.