Old Milsurps on Modern Battlefields

[Averageman]

PPSh-41 hanging on the Wall in the manitainance office. Not your bolt gun, but quiet handy in an urban enviroment.
BTW the thing was cut down to a pistol grip and it looked very formidable. Kind of the Middle East version of C/C.

 

[elmerfudd]

I think this idea of a well trained soldier with a vintage bolt action is somewhat silly. If you're using a Mauser or a Mosin Nagant on a modern battlefield it's because you're part of a third rate militia or something similar.

It costs a lot of money to properly train soldiers. No government or organization is going to spend that kind of money and then squander their investment by giving their soldiers completely obsolete weapons, at least not when the weapon in question is a rifle. Big ticket items like ships and planes are different.

I suspect that most well trained soldiers would be extremely reluctant to go into combat with one as well. Nothing screams, "pointless last stand", louder than giving your soldiers a rifle that was obsolete in their grandfathers day.

 

[C-grunt]

When I was in Baghdad in 2003 my squad was ambushed one night while out on patrol. The two guys shot at us with an Enfield and a Smith and Wesson (pretty sure) revolver. They fired and then ran around a corner. Our return fire, which was pretty immediate just shot up their car and a store front behind them.

In my 2005 tour we found several Enfields and Mausers.

One of my friends I work with was a private contractor in the Afgan area for a few years and saw lots of old bolt guns. He also said he saw tons of Enfields in use in Nepal by the government authorities.

 

[Wheeler44]

Rudyard Kipling

Arithmetic on the Frontier




A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --
A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap -- alas! as we are dear.

 

[Wheeler44]

Things haven't changed a lot in the last century....174 grains at 2400 fps.still makes a hole.

Folks with nothing fighting against the biggest and the best...Mr. Kipling knew what he was talking about.....

They can field a company for the price of ammo.....It costs us how much? to put a soldier in the field?

In terrain like A-stan I would prefer an old Enfield to an AR in just about every way that I can imagine....I'd rather have an M-1 or M1a..But I wouldn't snub a Mosin, Mauser or Enfield..

 

[DMK]

It costs a lot of money to properly train soldiers. No government or organization is going to spend that kind of money and then squander their investment by giving their soldiers completely obsolete weapons, at least not when the weapon in question is a rifle. Big ticket items like ships and planes are different.

I suspect that most well trained soldiers would be extremely reluctant to go into combat with one as well. Nothing screams, "pointless last stand", louder than giving your soldiers a rifle that was obsolete in their grandfathers day.

I've thought about this considering all the surplus Warsaw pact Mosin Nagants that have been dumped on the C&R market in the last decade or two. Not just Russia, but Hungary, Poland, and Romania too.

The Commies must have had some kind of plan for them. Why did they keep so many millions in storage all these decades? Even in the 60's and 70's these weapons were hopelessly obsolete against NATO's assault rifles in Europe. The only thing I can think of is they planned to just hand them out to any civilian who could shoot and tell them to kill the 1st capitalist pig that came over the hill or around the corner.

 

[jaimeshawn3]

Wheeler, It costs roughly $1million USD/soldier/year. The per capita GDP is less than $1K per person/yr - and much of that is aid. The government is so corrupt, and skims so much of the aid, the median average is maybe a quarter that. That's why buying friends makes so much sense.

 

[John Parker]

That's why buying friends makes so much sense.

You can't buy an Afghan's loyalty. You can only rent it for a while.~~Afghan proverb.

 

[RP88]

old milsurps work on modern battlefields. It just depends on what you're doing. Guerrilla tactics work with pretty much anything that shoots a modern round.

 

[Joe Demko]

"Works on the modern battlefield" and "first choice on the modern battlefield" aren't the same thing. There is a tendency among guys who are fond of the old milsurps (of whom I am one) to want to pretend that they aren't obsolete for the modern soldier. Yes, an irregular could use one to shoot n' run. He could use an H&R handi-rifle for the same purpose. Yes, snipers use rifles that are, in some cases, highly refined versions of the old Mausers etc.
What irregulars do and what highly specialized troops do (with highly specialized weapons) doesn't really reflect what the modern military wants a rifle to do as part of the combined arms model of warfare. If we really put our minds to it, I'm sure we could probably imagine a situation where a Brown Bess musket would (somehow) be the best possible weapon for a modern soldier to have. That wouldn't mean we should re-arm the US military with smoothbore muzzleloaders.
If by "place on the modern battlefield" we mean somewhere, somebody pressed one into service, then all old weapons have a place. If by "place on the battlefield" we mean "used by the ranks of a modern, well-trained, well-funded military," they do not.

 

[Silvanus]

Found these pictures some time ago and thought you might find the interesting

 

[Mandolin]

And i though rails on an AK was bad! "every time someone puts plastic on a PPsH , God kills a kitten". Still, I'm envious. That looks realy dangerous in an urban area. There's a reason that the Germans and Russians loved the PPsH.

 

[C-grunt]

The PPsH is prety common in Iraq.

I remember when my platoon found one in 05 one of my Sergeants came over to me (being the resident gun nut) and said "we found some sort of crazy Tommy Gun."

 

[murdoc rose]

Id rather have the m1 over the ak a lot easier to sit back and shoot than it is to run up with an ak

 

[sarduy]

just think about it, the ak47 is old and it's still in many armys today... russia, romania, bulgarian, iraq, afgan, cuba, venezuela just to name a few...

 

[cleardiddion]

I remember I was talking to a Lcpl who was in Fallujah.
He said they didn't worry as much about the guy with an AK who would just sprary around a corner blind as they did with one guy who actually knew how to shoot old bolt actions from afar with skill.

Successful?
Depends on it's application I suppose.
I wouldn't say that a modern US element pitted against an insurgent unit equipped with outdated equipment would be in as great danger; but, we're not the only ones out there who know how to shoot.

 

[winchester '97]

I think these old bolt guns would be great if your attacking a convoy or ambushing troops at long range for the same reason a SAW gunner feels inadaquate when his unit comes under fire from a PKM, these guns fire a round better suited to long range combat than the .223 round. However, it is the guys using the old bolt guns that would feel inadaquate in an close range urban combat setting. Like any weapon in a warzone, they have their place.

 

[paintballdude902]

its kinda like vietnam they used a variety of weapons. ive seen pictures of NV's armed with mosins, AKs, sks, m16s, pistols, mausers, french MAS rifles. literally anything they could get

 

[CornCod]

The reasons the Russians/Soviets took so long to get rid of their Mosin-nagants has to do with the fact that in both WWI and WW2 they suffered from terrible shortages of rifles. Heavy production of cheap submachine guns saved the day for them in WW2, but the Czarist Army never really had enough rifles in the Great War. They sent many thousands of unarmed men to the front with instructions to take rifles from the fallen.

 

[RP88]

They sent many thousands of unarmed men to the front with instructions to take rifles from the fallen.

Make sure to differentiate between 'soldier' and 'undesirable'. Despite harsh consequences for anything that could be construed as cowardice, the Soviets did not waste their uniformed soldiers or trained reserves like the opening battle of "Enemy at The Gates" portrays. They did, however, have no problems wasting Cossacks, criminals, deserters, political rivals, uncooperative residents of battlefields, and cowards by using them as ammo-wasters against German tanks and machine guns. A nifty Soviet method of killing two birds with one stone.

 

[CornCod]

They sent many thousands of unarmed men to the front with instructions to take rifles from the fallen.

That was more WWI than WW2. I was perhaps a little unclear.