Why Fewer Choices In Small Arms For Military Today?

[Tony Williams]

The Brits had fought dozens of imperial wars with their professional troops. I don't think the high command had any respect at all for the skills of the soldiers. To them a soldier was simple fodder, of no value at all except to fill out the ranks. They didn't need to know how to shoot because they could just run up and get the bayonet in.

Not true. Rifle shooting was was stressed in the training, for both speed and accuracy. At the start of WW1 the acceptable standard was 15 aimed shots per minute (the best could achieve 30, quite a feat with a bolt-action). When the Germans came across the first British units, their rifle fire was so ferocious that they thought they were massively equipped with machine guns.

As the small professional army was killed off in WW1 and replaced by the vast multitude of conscripts, the standard dropped a lot, of course.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Rifle shooting was was stressed in the training, for both speed and accuracy. At the start of WW1 the acceptable standard was 15 aimed shots per minute (the best could achieve 30, quite a feat with a bolt-action). When the Germans came across the first British units, their rifle fire was so ferocious that they thought they were massively equipped with machine guns.

The small professional British Army was highly trained -- a legacy of the nose-rubbing they got in the Boer War.

Ultimately, though, that worked against the British -- men brought up in a highly-trained professional army looked down on volunteers, and couldn't believe they could be trained to carry out sophisticated tactics.

I have a book written by an American who served in the British Army in WWI. He was wounded, losing an arm in a patrol action the day before the start of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

What shocked me was the men of his patrol were unarmed! They carried clubs and barbed wire "comealongs" to bring back prisoners, but no firearms. Surely if high-ranking officers had served in the trenches, they would have seen the folly of that!

 

[Cosmoline]

Not true. Rifle shooting was was stressed in the training, for both speed and accuracy.

You're talking about the professional army of 1914. I was talking about the volunteers who replaced this small corps. The army of later years, AKA "Kitchener's Army" These were shopkeepers, laborers and other civilians who were famously marched to the front with virtually no training. The high command put little value on marksmanship and had little respect for the value of skilled soldiers. To them they were all working class fodder. Battlefield archaeologists have found SMLE's with jams from improper use. IIRC it was from the 1917 battle of Ypres

 

[telomerase]

Today's infantry has lots of variety

Davy Crockett.

Armbrust.

FOG.

WASP.

WASP is the wave of the future; personal dragonfly-sized guided missiles, probably with poison stings.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Even with the help of the spotter gun and rifled barrel, both of the Davy Crockett launcher designs were somewhat sloppy in their accuracy, so the detonation was likely to be several hundred feet from the target.

I remember a day on the East Range at Fort Sill when the wind was so bad we couldn't keep the 37mm spotter round within safety limits. We had three practice HE warheads allocated for training and couldn't shoot them for that reason.

 

[telomerase]

I remember a day on the East Range at Fort Sill when the wind was so bad we couldn't keep the 37mm spotter round within safety limits. We had three practice HE warheads allocated for training and couldn't shoot them for that reason.

Ha! I wasn't really referring to the Crockett specifically, just that infantry nukes have been in production since the 1960s. A modern version would probably use a rocket or turbofan instead of the (somewhat noisy and short-ranged) recoilless...

...although if you just HAD to use a gun, the Davis Gun principle could be used to reduce the backblast. The Armbrust takes this to the extreme by retaining all the propellant gases, but even just using the salt-water or plastic-chip counterweight idea will cut the backblast down.

Anyway, civilization isn't faltering for lack of weapon technology... the deficit is in Paine's "common sense".

 

[Vern Humphrey]

You had to actually shoot the Crockett -- it was sort of a close-your-eyes-and-push-the-knob affair -- with no guarentee you'd survive to open them. The Artillery, also at Sill, had their own blessing, the Lacrosse. This was a missile with a two-part hypergolic fuel system. One part was in a rubber bladder, which was inserted in the main fuel tank. The main fuel would eat through the bladder, and when the two fuels mixed, off she went.

It was really fun to watch the crew insert the bladder, come running back to the bunker and sit there wondering when and if it was going to go,