You guys are all on the money, in my opinion anyways.
Poor reaction in combat - which is shooting too many rounds in an ineffective manner - is the result of two factors. The first is a poor understanding of suppression, mistaking volume of fire to be the critical piece (when it's not). The second is a reinforcement of this poor conception through training conditioning with some of our drills and approaches.
There are a series of articles, which I've posted before, in one of the Royal United Services Institute's periodicals by a former Infantry Officer. They are great and, to my knowledge, there isn't much more out there that looks at the problems they seek to address. I strongly encourage everyone to read them (they are all quite short).
The Real Role of Small Arms in Battle
Shock Effect in Dismounted Combat
Manoeuvre and Weapons Effect on the Battlefield
Highlights of the articles are as follows:
1. Combat rarely results in one side being "wiped out" -
defeat is thus, in almost all cases, a psychological condition when one side ceases to fight.
2.
Suppression is the ability of weapons to prevent the enemy from shooting or moving
while the weapons effects are in effect.
Neutralization is the ability of weapons to prevent the enemy from shooting or moving
for some time after a suppressive effect. So, shooting a few rounds that keeps an enemy's head down is "suppressive fire". Having the enemy cry because his buddy's head is a fine pink mist is a "neutralization effect" from suppressive fire.
3.
Shock is a state where the enemy is rendered incapable of fighting due to being numb, lifeless, inactive or irrational behaviour. So, in the above case of a neutralized enemy, he is clearly in a state of shock. So is a guy who is "shell-shocked" from being near the impact of an HE weapon. the important thing to note is that shock is transitory in nature - it can and does usually wear off. If nobody does anything to the guy crying over his dead buddy, he may collect his wits and pop his head back up to shoot at you. He may also run away or simply give up - he is then defeated (as defined in paragraph 1).
4. From the first article, individual accuracy goes out the window when a soldier moves from a static range to a field firing environment - adding "move" to shoot really reduces the ability of a rifle to kill the enemy. This increases exponentially when the enemy starts firing back. This means that individual weapons do little to
suppress and
neutralize, thus giving minimal
shock and minimal contribution to enemy
defeat. If this is true, and the tests seem to suggest it to be so, then these two factors combine to really pop a lot of myths surrounding the battle rifle and its true role on the battlefield - it is likely useful for personal defence and close-in fighting. If this is true, consider the consequences for rifle procurement; note that Storr's analysis points to the uselessness of the C-9 Minimi (which the USMC replaced with the IAR) - it is a machine gun that is employed as a rifle; so it ignores the strengths of a crew-served weapon and its nature as a machine gun makes it a poor individual weapon.
5. The second article makes some interesting assertions about the value of HE. HE is better than bullets at producing shock effects.
6. The third article fits maneuver into all of this - principally to exploit the value of shock. Of note, the author found that the USMC reported that experienced units would rarely expend more than 4 magazines in 8 hour TICs. Maybe the Tacvest guys had it right? ;D
7. From this, a few observations come to mind:
a. Most small arms fire is inaccurate and ineffective. The real suppressors and killers are crew served weapons and HE (read - C6, Mortar, 40mm grenades, 25mm HEI-T)
b. Simply sitting and plicking away rounds at the bad guy is likely to achieve nothing; moving is required to exploit any effects of fire.
c. The PWT-3 "Run-Down" is a stupid test - it encourages soldiers to run and shoot when they clearly are not in a position to suppress, let alone kill, the enemy. "Shooting and moving" is best reserved for the 0-100m fight where the rifle becomes useful. Anything past that is "any necessary, well-aimed fire to support a crew-served weapon."
d. Section Battle Drill 3 is crucial, and there should probably be more communicating and less shooting during it. In most field training I've observed, soldiers will pour down fire despite this drill not being complete. This tendency needs to be eliminated.
e. Training aids like the pop-up targets need a variable to simulate being "suppressed", "neutralized" and "shocked". This will help condition soldiers to realistic enemy reactions to fire. Unfortunately, simulating the effects of enemy suppression, neutralization and shock on our own soldiers is very hard, if not impossible, to do.
f. Finally, we should consider organization of small arms within units. If support weapons are battle winners, we should have more - perhaps at the section level. If the C9 Minimi's machine gun characteristics detract from its employment as a rifle, perhaps we should eliminate it. If the battle rifle is useful from 0-100m and limited from 100-300m, perhaps we should consider something along the lines of an effective short range carbine. If any of this looks shockingly familiar to our old form of organization - perhaps there is a reason for it as it came from fighting Germans.
Anyways, this has little to do with the AWG, so I'll see to a split-off soon.