Soldiers carrying AK's in Iraq?

[CWL]

Many Contractors in the Sandbox are issued with AKs.

 

[cold dead hands]

Wow...

One simple question. "Our boys" carring non issue weapons.

Did it occur to anyone that they need to pick up those weapons and deliver them to base so somebody else does not use that weapon for evil purposes?

I tell myself I am so stupid every day......

 

[Hoppy590]

I've heard so many unbelievable things from soldiers that some things I only believe if I see them or know the honesty of the troop (and sometimes, the technical expertise).

i got into a 4 hour arguement with a marine that the M16 and AK 47 do not use the same round. and that they are not functionaly interchangable

 

[TheDisturbed1]

AK Pros:
Larger Projectile
Doesnt cost much in the field
neither does the ammo
neither do mags
doesnt require alot of cleaning

AK Cons:
heavier round, less distance
weighs a ton compared to an M4/M16
has been used God knows how hard...

M4 Pros:
Lighter
sturdy enough to be issued by the U.S. Armed Forces
high firing rate
can be interchanged with another caliber

M4 Cons:
cant really afford to lose it
ammo can easily run out, and you cant get it off the eliminated enemy
requires cleaning regularly
has been known to take excessive amounts of ammo to bring down a fair-sized target
becomes dead weight if something gets busted

haha not the best comparison... but just weighing the options,
soldiers can easily take an AK-47 and use it till its end at the insurgents expense...
and it would be awesome to have as a souvenir

 

[JShirley]

If I were serving, and came across a nice AK, I would try to take it with me as a souvenir

And you'd be committing a Federal felony- not even taking into account UCMJ action for unregistered war trophies.

I'm going to ask that no-one post their intent to commit felonies here. I hope that's clear, in addition to being common sense. AK-47s and AKMs (whick is what you're actually seeing most of the time) are fully automatic weapons. Whether this "should" be the case or not, these weapons are illegal for U.S. citizens to possess without the requisite paperwork from BATF, and these weapons are illegal in some states, even with that paperwork.

No, I'm not talking about carrying in-theater. "Souvenirs" come home.

John

 

[hitman134]

Ammo Avaliability

 

[Cosmoline]

weapons are illegal for U.S. citizens to possess without the requisite paperwork from BATF

US law does not follow you around the world. I could go to Yemen tomorrow and get a fully automatic AK, provided I complied with their laws. Ditto everywhere else. US servicemen have their own rules, but let's not give the BATFE some sort of global jurisdiction.

 

[doubleg]

Maybe he ran out of ammo for his m16?

 

[JShirley]

Read the whole post.

"Souvenirs" come home.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Ammo Avaliability

What about it?

You can buy dang Gatorade and Bicycle playing cards out in boondock little FOBs all over Iraq. It's not like the US military has some tragic shortage of 5.56mm to deal with.

Which would you rather have for ammo: 1) clean, new ammo from some U.S factory, shipped around the world and sitting in tidy stacks in a warehouse 2) a box of loose Albanian surplus sitting in a feed sack in some unemployed Iraqi's closet? As a split-second NY reload, sure, but not as a general practice.


We've had this thread quite a few times, and when we cut out all the speculation and "here's what _I_ would so if I were in Iraq", it usually boils down to the following:

--Some folks who only had M9s picked up AKs, primarily during the initial invasion when we had less gear than we needed
--A small minority of troops are in very independent small units with a CO who lets them get away with carrying confiscated gear. I knew _one_ EOD team where their GySgt let some guys carry a Sterling, a few AKs, and jury-rig a PKC onto a Humvee that had no 240 for the ring-mount. GySgt himself carried a G3K. He was a THR-type gun lunatic.
--Tons, tons of troops have pictures of themselves posing with confiscated gear, or even pretending to be on an op with them. I've posted my way-cool FAMAS pic here, and it's quite likely that someone on some other forum is using it as "evidence" that the FAMAS is a favorite weapon of US Marines.

That's about what we've gotten out of previous threads. The rest of it is just "this one guy said" and other such things. Long, long-running topic...