Just wanted to share with you guys about a recent deployment to afghanistan and how what we had held up. our platoon deployed recently to Helmand Afghanistan and my team was specificly in the Now Zad area. About a month in my team encountered an I.E.D while entering a compound to set up a hide.
Well two of our M4’s were destroyed along with one M40 A3. My m4 barrel was bent, rail damaged, but the grip pod survived. Also had my KAC can blown off along with severe damage to the flash hider. The ACOG made it through also with lots of scars but still kicking. My PEQ well who knows where that thing was blown off, not sure if my battalion recovered that or not.
On the M40 the gun was damaged do much that it was a total loss with the exception of the S&B scope. our guys pulled it off and put it on another gun i think a DARPA XM3 or MK11 where they did not really like the NF scope.
so over all the best kit we found in the stan were as follows: ACOG’s, S&B’s, SureFire, GripPods(even though a few instructors here don’t like them), GG&G mounts and sling adapters, Suunto watches, LMT SOPMOD buttstock, VLTOR buttstocks,Garmin GPS and NATO ad SOF tourniquets!
All of this was used by me, by my partner, and by my team. I do not work for or represent any of the companies mentioned before. Just went there and used it with great success. I hope maybe when you guys post asking what kind of solid gear there is this will shed some light on options.
point man lost both legs, radio op had his face blown off, my partner had his right calf blown off and right arm is now unusable, I had a hole through my shoulder, a few in the arm and hand, blast frag up and down my legs.
Luck. Schmidt and Bender or not, a piece of metal going through the housing is going to fuck it up. It just happened that the optic didn’t get hit. It certainly wouldn’t have survived something like this:
(Pic of a weapon that went through an IED blast in my unit back in 04’)
When it comes to explosions, a lot of it is luck and misfortune. Just because two guys get shrapnel in them and you don’t doesn’t mean that you were made from better material–it just means that you were lucky to make it. This goes for all sorts of equipment. Now, do not construe this to me discounting quality gear–I’m not (there is a bigass difference between an S&B and a Tasco!) but when it comes to explosions, all bets are off.
Im with 3/4 for the guy who was asking. As for gear a lot does have to do with where you are at the time of the blast, as for luck well I do not believe in that. I believe in God
oh as for the optic it did get hit but not as bad as the gun. To be honest I think a round scope body tube would survive a blast better than a hollow flat surfaced m4 receiver. I think the shape would help to dissipate or allow the explosive energy to go around kinda like why the v hull on the new trucks we and the brits have take the blast better. It just passes a bit more energy by instead of a direct hit to a flat surface.
When I attended sniper school they showed us a few different scope bodies cut lengthwise and there really is a huge difference is wall thickness from maker to maker. That also has a lot to do with it as i have seen the thin walls of certain brands damaged by DM’s in our battalion on a regular basis from regular grunt use and nothing near the force of an IED blast. So I’m not quite willing to discount construction totally and just call it luck.
I had a Marine sniper in Iraq tell me during the school the instructors took an old Unertl 10x scope, and pounded a tent stake in with it to show how tough they were. They later had that same scope mounted on a school gun, and it shot just fine with no loss of zero.
But yeah shrapnel is no joke, and I know most guys fear IED’s more than anything else. I spent some time in a CSH (SP?) for a non-combat related injury, and felt so bad for the guys in there who got fucked up by blasts. The guy next to me had holes all up and down his legs with some quarter size ones in his knees. Then at Landstuhl the guy I shared a room with got the tip of his pecker blown off…:eek: I was medevac’d out in 04 because I got pneumonia I week before we were going to leave country, and the docs didn’t want me going on the convoy down to Kuwait because the dust would probably aggravate my lungs when they were already full of fluid, and my O2 levels were in the high 80’s to low 90’s. Felt like a puss but nothing I could do about it…That same deployment my unit had an IED go off next to the road, and it blew a rock through one of our guys. Went in the small of his back, and out his stomach. That was when we were riding around in 5 tons, and trucks with no armor at all. You had to do that point your gun out the window or off the side of the 5 ton thing…Glad IED’s were not too prevalent back then because one good one now would have taken out up to 12 people in a single truck.
The guys out there today are dealing with a lot worse than we did. My 2nd time there is when the EFP’s started becoming popular, and I saw the aftermath one of them did when a convoy came to our FOB towing a truck with a KIA soldier still in the drivers seat. Its a cowardly way to fight but damned if those things don’t work.
yeah for a bunch of guys that claim to be all about honor they sure are cowards. The taliban had emplaced an I.E.D. that hit our QRF and killed a marine. well later in the deployment our guys hit a house and found a wind chime made out of shards of bone and a kill card that was his. the people in the house claimed to not be taliban yet that was clearly bullshit! I want to go back I feel like I have unfinished business there!
I lost a good buddy back in January, we were in 1/2 together for 2 deployments to Iraq. He was with 1/6 in Afghanistan and I guess they took contact so he took his squad to clear out a building and when his pointman went into a little courtyard they had it IED’d and it took out him and the pointman. Fuckin cowards…
