Good article, Larry Vickers has a great statement at the end.
Has anyone seen this new magazine the Army has developed?
2 MOA is sufficient accuracy for a combat weapon. If terminal ballistics is acceptable, a single sourced round should be suitable for both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines. One round, one bureaucracy, the tax payers save money and people on the front line are well served.
Vickers, as always, spot on.
As someone who has not been a member of either branch, it often seems that the Marines have the better idea and execution, but lack the political power to impose it on big Army… while Army comes up with half-baked ideas that fit well within the political procurement process. M855A1 is “green” and super hot and apparently eats M4s for breakfast - not a great overall balance. Mk318 works, without any apparent drawbacks. So yes, standardize on one, but make sure it’s the right one.
Simple: 70gr TSX/70gr GMX as Standard Issue General Purpose Round… Mk262 MOD 1/TMK for SPR… M995 as the need presents itself.
I’m dreaming, I know. Or replace my first choice/choices with the already in-place Mk318 SOST if that would be more procurable.
And yeah, LAV hit the daggumn X-Ring with his analysis.
You mean like MARPAT vs ACU?
yeah…
The problem with the army is due to their size they always **** up the end game when they go army-wide. They take good care of their line units - the infantry divisions knew early on that multicam and M4A1s were the way to go, but still Big Army couldn’t resist keeping ACUs and M4s and M855A1 despite known issues.
The Marine Corps prides itself on making every Marine a rifleman and, while not necessarily true, still creates a mentality throughout the entire Corps Condusive to making decisions on what’s best for a rifleman regardless of cost. The Army is concerned with its logistics and MWR facilities way more than its weaponry. I met soldiers in Iraq with A2s who hadn’t fired their weapons since basic and probably wouldn’t have even been carrying a weapon at all if it weren’t MNF-W (commanded by Marines) policy to do so.
^^^ This is true, as a Marine Airwinger it was clear who we were tasked with supporting. I do feel like both branches could learn a lot from one another, but given the fact that they don’t have the same mission, not sure that they need the same ammo, so long as they can use the same ammo.
As far as Larry Vikers comments, He’s on point. While I was a P.o.g. I was a Rifle Coach (with the 13th MEU) for a short period of time and the range time that most Marines had wasn’t about improving Marines as it was updating qualifications. While the individual was focused on improving his or her score it had more to do with looking good on a fitrep rather than training for combat. This is something that I would have loved to have seen stressed more.
Being a USAF guy, and not a front line combat one at that, I don’t have much of a dog in this fight. But LAV is right on as far as I’m concerned. Like it or not, we are all in the post-sequestration world and that means that the services are going to have to get over themselves in a lot of areas in order to save dollars. Going to common uniforms [again] is one of those items. Standardizing on ammunition is another. It is pointlessly costly to have that many logistics footprints for items that ostensibly do the same thing.
If the day ever comes that we have to square off against a real first world power again, I sincerely hope that we figured out that we needed to spend more money on important things like training and education for our personnel instead of silly vanity camo and different rifle rounds. A pipe-dream, I know.
As an Infantryman I want more rounds, more training and to make every Infantryman a Designated Marksman, but I know even in an all volunteer Army not every Infantry Soldier will put forth the effort. So there is a place for a piece of tech that any Soldier can use that will give him an advantage.
As for who does what the best, in general the Services have drifted from the shared procurement intent of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater–Nichols_Act#Interaction_of_services
Why should the kit of a Marine or Army Infantryman be as different as they currently are? Some of it is bureaucratic inertia, some has be stubbornness, and some may be corruption (I have no proof).
Here’s an example of the USMC taking from the Army:
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-35635.html
Recently I read an article that the Army put in a purchase requirement for a new UAV that was sent out to various contractors, turns out the specs were the same as the Predator. That’s a lot of smart people doing something stupid or was someone securing their future civilian career(I have no proof)?
The problems is M855A1 still has numerous issues that have not been worked out yet.
I don’t see why we cannot have all branches represented and come up with an answer.
As much as the Army would like to “dominate” the discussion on ammo, the problem is the Army doesn’t want to train Marksmanship. Range time and ammo is secondary to meeting all the check the block sensitivity issues, joint discussions on rape and days off.
As a 21 year Veteran of the Army, I found the whole mindset disgusting and negative to rediness.
As a primary trainer for my Platoon and a Master Gunner, I discussed having a Biathalon type even cobining marksmanship and physical fitness shortly before 9/11. Of course the answer was, “It’s much too dangerous, would require too much ammo and after all what would it achieve.”
I pretty much was disgusted with the whole Army mindset by the time I retired.
There are definitely things that the Army and USMC can learn from each other. One thing I really like about the USMC is they drill that combat mindset into every Marine in Boot Camp. The Army has different Basic Training depending on your MOS and from talking with a few POG friends/family of mine, their Basic was far more lenient than Infantry Basic.
There are a lot of Marines in the Army and almost everyone of them said the same thing when it comes to rifle marksmanship. The USMC trains a better rifleman but the Army qual was more realistic. All of them said a mixture of both programs would produce fantastic riflemen.
I got out right as ACU was being implemented so luckily I was subjected to that crap. The Army couldn’t just agree that the Marines hit it out of the park with MARPAT so they spent millions of dollars developing the same thing but with non working colors. My buddies who are still in say that ACU works pretty well when its really dirty though… But it was announced recently that they are starting to field Scorpion so thats good.
It’s yet another of those ‘how did the Army manage to spend more money on something more problematic’ things, and I’d rather have a lack of standardization and the costs imposed by that than set the precedent of NDAA threat used to railroad whatever crap equipment the Army development labs and industry partners can’t be bothered to perform relevant RDT&E verification and validation on goes to every service. M855A1 has potential, but for the cost it would probably be competitive to look at running 70gr TTSX type loads, as once again SOCOM has demonstrated superior effectiveness on, instead of just trying more failed strategies for product development, and somehow managing to incorporate contract malfeasance and intellectual property fails.
Cheaper ammo, and something with the most favorable overlap with existing stocks are the best approach to getting better effectiveness - developing the skillsets to actually put rounds on target is a lot more valuable, but winding up with a higher programmatic cost just because of a marginal gain in ammunition performance is still pretty unhelpful.
People talk about Army and Marines learning from one another when it comes to procurement…well, that’s well and good except they’re both still operating under a procurement system that’s fundamentally broken. I work in it every single day and bottom to top, the incentives are perverse, the documentation requirements overwhelming and largely unnecessary in a lot of respects and the relationship between the suppliers and the PMs incestuous to say the least. Until that system is fixed, you’ll continue to get screwed up procurement decisions…