Oh Nose!

[bushwacked]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AbwKfeKx9E...layer_embedded#!

 

[DMD]

I liked when he gave it the "coupe de grace"

[evil_gop_liars]

That video would be better if the were drunk on liquor not righteousness.

[detlef]

Got to love being preached to by someone wearing a shirt that says we shouldn't coexist.

[SEC=UGA]

I might have to rethink my stance on what part of the citizenry is able to own firearms...

[detlef]

BTW, I'm not an expert on fire arms but I kind of figured a firing squad could do more damage to a stuffed toy than that. That was, what, 10 bullets?

[SEC=UGA]

BTW, I'm not an expert on fire arms but I kind of figured a firing squad could do more damage to a stuffed toy than that. That was, what, 10 bullets?

 

Rifles through thin plastic means small holes. Through flesh, bone and muscle it has a tendency to expand and disintegrate causing massive trauma and a large exit wound.

 

Shot guns on the other hand, much trauma going in and, if a larger pellet, coming out.

 

ETA: THough, some rifles, by design, are , meant to punch through the victim. Like the .223 round the military uses. They want casualties not dead people in many instances. Takes two people to safely get an injured guy off the field of battle... takes 0 guys to get a dead guy safely off of the field.

Edited December 20, 2010 by SEC=UGA

[detlef]

Rifles through thin plastic means small holes. Through flesh, bone and muscle it has a tendency to expand and disintegrate causing massive trauma and a large exit wound.

 

Shot guns on the other hand, much trauma going in and, if a larger pellet, coming out.

 

ETA: THough, some rifles, by design, are , meant to punch through the victim. Like the .223 round the military uses. They want casualties not dead people in many instances. Takes two people to safely get an injured guy off the field of battle... takes 0 guys to get a dead guy safely off of the field.

First off, why the hell didn't they use a shot gun then?! C'mon Jesus freaks, we want a show!

 

Second part: Very interesting. So, what you're saying is that it's in the best interest of the attacker to just harm the opponent in war, thereby making the enemy waste their healthy men moving injured bodies to safety? Pretty genius, actually.

[SEC=UGA]

First off, why the hell didn't they use a shot gun then?! C'mon Jesus freaks, we want a show!

 

Second part: Very interesting. So, what you're saying is that it's in the best interest of the attacker to just harm the opponent in war, thereby making the enemy waste their healthy men moving injured bodies to safety? Pretty genius, actually.

 

Actually, I'm going to have to retract the "rationale" behind choosing the M-16, that is what I had always heard... evidently it isn't entirely true:

M16 adoption

 

Curtis LeMay viewed a demonstration of the AR-15 in July 1960. In the summer of 1961, General LeMay had been promoted to the position of USAF Chief of Staff, and requested an order of 80,000 AR-15s for the U.S. Air Force.[23] However under the recommendation of General Maxwell D. Taylor, who advised the Commander in Chief that having two different calibers within the military system at the same time would be problematic, President Kennedy turned down the request.[23] However, Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had been created in 1958 in response to the Soviet Sputnik program, embarked on project AGILE in the spring of 1961. AGILE's priority mission was to devise inventive fixes to the communist problem in South Vietnam.[24] In October 1961, William Godel, a senior man at ARPA, sent 10 AR-15s to South Vietnam to let the allies test them. The reception was enthusiastic, and in 1962 another 1,000 AR-15s were sent to South Vietnam.[25] Special Operations units and advisers working with the South Vietnamese troops filed battlefield reports lavishly praising the AR-15 and the stopping effectiveness of the 5.56 mm cartridge, and pressed for its adoption. However, what no one knew, except the men directly using the AR-15s in Vietnam, were the devastating kills[26] made by the new rifle, photographs of which, showing enemy casualties made by the .223 (5.56 mm) bullet remained classified into the 1980s.[26]

 

The damage caused by the .223 (5.56mm) "varmint"[26] bullet was observed and originally believed to be caused by "tumbling" due to the slow 1 in 14 inch rifling twist rate.[27] However, this twist rate only made the bullet less stable in air.[27] Any pointed lead core bullet will turn base over point ("tumble") after penetration in flesh, because the center of gravity is aft of the center of the projectile.[27] The large wounds observed by soldiers in Vietnam were actually caused by projectile fragmentation, which was created by a combination of the projectile's velocity and construction.[27]

 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara now had two conflicting views: the ARPA report favoring the AR-15 and the Pentagon's position on the M14. Even President John F. Kennedy expressed concern, so McNamara ordered Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance to test the M14, the AR-15 and the AK-47. The Army's test report stated only the M14 was suitable for Army use, but Vance wondered about the impartiality of those conducting the tests. He ordered the Army Inspector General to investigate the testing methods used, who reported that the testers showed favor to the M14.

U.S. Soldier cleans his XM16E1 during the Vietnam War in 1966.

 

Secretary Robert McNamara ordered a halt to M14 production in January 1963, after receiving reports that M14 production was insufficient to meet the needs of the armed forces. Secretary McNamara had long been a proponent of weapons program consolidation among the armed services. At the time, the AR-15 was the only rifle that could fulfill a requirement of a "universal" infantry weapon for issue to all services. McNamara ordered the weapon be adopted unmodified, in its current configuration, for immediate issue to all services, despite receiving reports noting several deficiencies with the M16 as a service rifle, including the lack of a chrome-lined bore and chamber, the 5.56 mm projectile's instability under arctic conditions,[citation needed] and the fact that large quantities of 5.56 mm ammunition required for immediate service were not available.[citation needed] In addition, the Army insisted on the inclusion of a forward assist to help push the bolt into battery in the event that a cartridge failed to seat in the chamber through fouling or corrosion. Colt had argued the rifle was a self-cleaning design, requiring little or no maintenance. Colt, Eugene Stoner, and the U.S. Air Force believed that a forward assist needlessly complicated the rifle, adding about $4.50 to its procurement cost with no real benefit. As a result, the design was split into two variants: the Air Force's M16 without the forward assist, and for the other service branches, the XM16E1 with the forward assist.

 

In November 1963, McNamara approved the Army's order of 85,000 XM16E1s for jungle warfare operations;[28] and to appease General LeMay, the Air Force was granted an order for another 19,000 M16s.[18][29] Meanwhile, the Army carried out another project, the Small Arms Weapons Systems, on general infantry firearm needs in the immediate future. They recommended the immediate adoption of the weapon. Later that year the Air Force officially accepted their first batch as the United States Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16.

 

The Army immediately began to issue the XM16E1 (re-named M16A1 on its adoption) to infantry units but the rifle was initially delivered without adequate cleaning supplies or instructions. When the M16 reached Vietnam with U.S. troops in March 1965, reports of jamming and malfunctions in combat began to surface. Although the M14 featured a chrome-lined barrel and chamber to resist corrosion in combat conditions, neither the bore nor the chamber of the M16/XM16E1 was chrome-lined. Several documented accounts of troops killed by enemy fire with jammed rifles broken-down for cleaning eventually brought a Congressional investigation.[30]

“ We left with 72 men in our platoon and came back with 19, Believe it or not, you know what killed most of us? Our own rifle. Practically every one of our dead was found with his [M16] torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it.

- Marine Corps Rifleman, Vietnam.[30] ”

 

The root cause of the jamming issues turned out to be a problem with the powder for the ammunition. In 1964 when the Army was informed that DuPont could not mass-produce the nitrocellulose-based powder to the specifications demanded by the M16, the Olin Mathieson Company provided a high-performance ball propellant of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. While the Olin WC 846 powder was capable of firing an M16 5.56 mm round at the desired 3,300 ft. per second, it had the unintended consequence of increasing the automatic rate of fire from 850 to 1000 rounds per minute. This would leave behind dirty residue, making the M16 more likely to jam. The problem was resolved by fitting the M16 with a buffer system, slowing the rate of fire back down to 650 to 850 rounds per minute and outfitting all newly produced M16s with a chrome-plated chamber.[31]

 

On February 28, 1967, the XM16E1 was standardized as the M16A1. Major revisions to the design followed. The rifle was given a chrome-lined chamber (and later, the entire bore) to eliminate corrosion and stuck cartridges, and the rifle's recoil mechanism was re-designed to accommodate Army-issued 5.56 mm ammunition. Rifle cleaning tools and powder solvents/lubricants were issued. Intensive training programs in weapons cleaning were instituted, and a comic book style manual was circulated among the troops to demonstrate proper maintenance.[18] The reliability problems of the M16 diminished quickly, although the rifle's reputation continued to suffer.[18]

 

According to a February 1968 Department of Defense report the M16 rifle achieved widespread acceptance by U.S. troops in Vietnam. Only 38 of 2100 individuals queried wanted to replace the M16 with another weapon. Of those 38, 35 wanted the CAR-15 (a shorter version of the M16) instead.[32]

 

In 1948, the Army organized the civilian Operations Research Office, mirroring similar operations research organizations in the United Kingdom. One of their first efforts, Project ALCLAD, studied body armor and the conclusion was that they would need to know more about battlefield injuries in order to make reasonable suggestions.[18] Over 3 million battlefield reports from World War I and World War II were analyzed and over the next few years they released a series of reports on their findings.[18]

 

The conclusion was that most combat takes place at short range. In a highly mobile war, combat teams ran into each other largely by surprise; and the team with the higher firepower tended to win. They also found that the chance of being hit in combat was essentially random; accurate "aiming" made little difference because the targets no longer sat still. The number one predictor of casualties was the total number of bullets fired.[18] Other studies of behavior in battle revealed that many U.S. infantrymen (as many as 2/3) never actually fired their rifles in combat. By contrast, soldiers armed with rapid fire weapons were much more likely to have fired their weapons in battle.[19] These conclusions suggested that infantry should be equipped with a fully-automatic rifle of some sort in order to increase the actual firepower of regular soldiers. It was also clear, however, that such weapons dramatically increased ammunition use and in order for a rifleman to be able to carry enough ammunition for a firefight they would have to carry something much lighter.

 

Existing rifles met none of these criteria. Although it appeared the new 7.62 mm T44 (precursor to the M14) would increase the rate of fire, its heavy 7.62 mm NATO cartridge made carrying significant quantities of ammunition difficult. Moreover, the length and weight of the weapon made it unsuitable for short range combat situations often found in jungle and urban combat or mechanized warfare, where a smaller and lighter weapon could be brought to bear faster.

M16A1

 

These efforts were noticed by Colonel René Studler, U.S. Army Ordnance's Chief of Small Arms Research and Development. Col. Studler asked the Aberdeen Proving Ground to submit a report on the smaller caliber weapons. A team led by Donald Hall, director of program development at Aberdeen, reported that a .22 inch (5.56 mm) round fired at a higher velocity would have performance equal to larger rounds in most combat.[20] With the higher rate of fire possible due to lower recoil it was likely such a weapon would inflict more casualties on the enemy. His team members, notably William C. Davis, Jr. and Gerald A. Gustafson, started development of a series of experimental .22 (5.56 mm) cartridges. In 1955, their request for further funding was denied.

 

A new study, Project SALVO, was set up to try to find a weapon design suited to real-world combat. Running between 1953 and 1957 in two phases, SALVO eventually suggested that a weapon firing four rounds into a 20-inch (508 mm) area would double the hit probability of existing semi-automatic weapons.

 

In the second phase, SALVO II, several experimental weapons concepts were tested. Irwin Barr of AAI Corporation introduced a series of flechette weapons, starting with a shotgun shell containing 32 darts and ending with single-round flechette "rifles". Winchester and Springfield Armory offered multi-barrel weapons, while ORO's own design used two .22, .25 or .27 caliber bullets loaded into a single .308 Winchester or .30-06 cartridge.

Edited December 20, 2010 by SEC=UGA

[Deathpig]

Actually, I'm going to have to retract the "rationale" behind choosing the M-16, that is what I had always heard... evidently it isn't entirely true:

 

Tangent alert!

 

I've actually heard from guys who took sniper training in the military that outside of disabling leadership (read: killing officers), combat sniping is all about legshots because:

 

1) A dead soldier reduces the enemies' fighting force by one man.

2) An arm shot reduces the enemies fighting force by one, possibly two (injured soldier plus maybe someone to help support/move him).

3) A leg shot reduces the enemies fighting force by two, possibly three (injured soldier plus up to two people to help support/move him).

 

Also, the morale hit from a dead soldier fades relatively quickly (and in some cases can be used to galvanize/rile up the enemy). The morale hit from a crippled squadmate that you have to support/defend lasts until you can get the injured man to safety.

 

Anecdotal, I admit, but it's what I've heard.

 

 

And I've heard the benefits of the .223 rounds were tumbling and encumberance (it's a relatively small round, so easier to pack/move equivalent amounts of it) and I honestly forget if there's a benefit to the higher velocity. Ancillary to that, I've heard they wanted the ammunition the West used to be different from that used by the Soviets (5.56 vs. 7.62) so that the Reds couldn't 'resupply' in the field when advancing as easily (and partly why so many other munitions are different in the West; tank shells, artillery shells, etc.). This sounds like an Urban Legend, to me-- just enough there to make you think it could be true, but likely incorrect.

[fingfootball]

Got to love being preached to by someone wearing a shirt that says we shouldn't coexist.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Kinda gives a new meaning to "Love thy neighbor."

[bushwacked]

I thought Palin was going to pop out and announce her run for presidency. Guess it will take another week or 2.