News flash folks The Army has decided to review the suit­abil­ity and util­ity of the new ACU cam­ou­flage pat­tern for the fight­ing in Afghanistan (This is old news to the folk in the SF com­mu­nity They were granted an exemp­tion a year ago to wear the old BDUs in place of the ACU in select the­aters) and now theyre going to out­fit two bat­tal­ions with new cam­ou­flage uni­forms. But theres noth­ing in the report that men­tions cor­rect­ing any of the more egre­gious faults with the con­struc­tion of the ACU uni­form itself.

While I was mulling over this tid­bit, I came across an inter­est­ing pho­to­graph. It was a pic­ture of some British sol­diers return­ing from a patrol in Afghanistan. What caught my eye was the num­ber of uni­form vio­la­tions I saw. Folks with their sleeves rolled up, some not wear­ing hel­mets, some with trousers bloused, some not, and the great­est infrac­tion of them all, mixed uni­forms!! Can you believe it!! There were sol­diers, exposed to pub­lic scrutiny and ridicule, appear­ing in uni­form items of dif­fer­ent colors!!

Wow… The irony of it all though is, I know there are folk out there say­ing exactly that, and I think this is where the Army is really going to miss the boat on this whole uni­form redesign thing; the issue isnt so much what color we make the uni­form (though that is impor­tant), but just what exactly makes a com­bat uni­form in the first place, and exactly how impor­tant uni­for­mity (i.e. our fix­a­tion on wear and appear­ance) is in combat.

Firstly, let me say that I real­ize and fully endorse the idea that we need uni­forms. Besides help­ing to tell friend from foe, the Geneva Convention also requires it. Secondly, I think Rumsfeld was right in that you fight with the army (or in this case the uni­form) you have, not the one you want. Thirdly, with that hav­ing been said, I think the Army needs to prac­tice what it preaches regard­ing unit esprit de corps and readi­ness a unit with high esprit de corps, cohe­sion, and morale will mod­ify and per­son­al­ize its equip­ment to meet indi­vid­ual and mis­sion needs, which means tak­ing the uni­form you have and mak­ing it get the job done.

Why did those British sol­diers look the way they did? Because some­one in their food chain used their brain and made some tac­ti­cal deci­sions regard­ing uni­for­mity and mis­sion accom­plish­ment. The British dont have a one color works nowhere uni­form like we do; they have a green one and a tan one. The prob­lem is, they dont oper­ate in an area thats uni­formly green or tan, so in order to bust up their sig­na­ture they mix the tops and bot­toms. Im sure the deci­sion to allow that was made at either the com­pany or bat­tal­ion (i.e. local) level, whereas for us (in the U.S. Army) such deci­sions are usu­ally reserved for TRADOC.

Read the rest of this cri­tique at KitUp!

– Eric Daniel

I Had an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence the other day. My Guard unit went out for a three day jaunt into the wilds of Camp Pendleton to con­duct some dis­mounted recon­nais­sance train­ing. Now, granted, we were tech­ni­cally on base but since were a leg unit, we have to sup­port our­selves; no bar­racks, no latrines, no water sources, etc. We were respon­si­ble for everything. 

With this in mind, when I started to pack my kit, I had to pause for a minute to think about what I was going to do for some form of shel­ter. Thats when it dawned on me that the Army really hasnt advanced past the WWII era can­vas shel­ter half when it comes to indi­vid­ual shel­ters. Yes, they have great and won­der­ful expand­ing and self-​​erecting medium sized tents, which weigh 300 pounds and fit nicely in the back of a 1.25-ton trailer, but theres noth­ing for the individual. 

Now Ive heard all the argu­ments about this before, you cant use a tent in com­bat and you just need to use whats avail­able to you in the field, namely, use brush and trees or dig out a shel­ter being the most often cited ones, but were not talk­ing com­bat here, were talk­ing bivouack­ing in the field. Moreover, on most bases where you con­duct train­ing, chop­ping up the flora or dig­ging in the ground is strictly ver­boten, so those really arent options. The bot­tom line is, if youre going to be out in the field for longer than a cou­ple of days in really crappy weather, itd be nice, tac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tion per­mit­ting of course, to have the abil­ity to get out of the rain. Those gor­tex bivy sacks were issued now are nice for snow or a light driz­zle, but in an out and out down­pour you really cant get into it fast enough to pre­vent the sleep­ing bag from fill­ing with water, and thats assum­ing that you jump in with all your wet clothes on. In those sit­u­a­tions, youre prob­a­bly bet­ter off just putting on your wet weather gear and try­ing to sleep through it.

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Well, it looks as if the Army has again offi­cially opened the can of worms that is the debate revolv­ing around a replace­ment for the M16/​M4.  With this go around how­ever, the Army says all lim­i­ta­tions are off.  They say theyre will­ing to con­sider any cal­iber, any oper­a­tion sys­tem, and any configuration.

Given the Armys track record with stick­ing with the M16/​M4 through thick and thin, as well as the Armys pre­vi­ous posi­tion that it would stick with the M4 until there was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary break­through in small arms tech­nol­ogy (hand held death rays?) Im tak­ing this most recent state­ment with a salt lick, but in as much as they are solic­it­ing ideas, I might as well offer up mine.

On its face, it would seem that there are only three real issues to con­sider; how big (in cal­iber) how many (bul­lets in the mag­a­zine) and how to crank it (what oper­at­ing sys­tem do you go with.)  Once you set­tle on those, putting them together is pack­ag­ing. While there are any num­ber of car­tridges and oper­at­ing sys­tems that offer obvi­ous advan­tages over the M16s fee­ble 5.56mm bul­let and wretched gas car­rier key oper­at­ing sys­tem, if you wanted a truly rev­o­lu­tion­ary replace­ment for the M4, I would put my money on the H&K G11.

For those of you not in the know (not that I am, but I remem­ber when it was devel­oped) the H&K G11 rifle was devel­oped as a replace­ment for the 7.62mm G3 bat­tle rifle in the 1970s.  What the Germans wanted to develop was a weapon with a large ammu­ni­tion capac­ity (50 rounds) low weight (< 10 pounds loaded) flat tra­jec­tory (no sight cor­rec­tions at <300m) and a high degree of accu­racy in 3-​​round burst mode.

To meet the burst accu­racy require­ment there were two ways to go, either fire pro­jec­tiles simul­ta­ne­ously (shot­gun shells or duplex rounds) or fire bul­lets very fast.  The shot­gun shell method was dropped because the bul­lets which would do the job not only gen­er­ated too much recoil to be effec­tive, but their size put them out­side the round capac­ity require­ment, so H&K went with the shoot really, really fast approach.  This is where the G11 comes into its own as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary weapon.

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Jason posted this com­ment a while back on my What is a Combat Handgun? entry.

When I got out I worked per­sonal secu­rity for indi­vid­u­als.  I had to take 3 lev­els of firearms qual­i­fi­ca­tion classes.  Even with my expe­ri­ence sev­eral of my instruc­tors asked me to try the revolver (yes I am going there)

I was skep­ti­cal.  But in their opin­ions (all were sim­i­lar), if I got the **** scared out of me I would be more accu­rate with a revolver.  I went to a gun shop after doing some research and picked up a S&W Model 66.  Stainless steel, .357 Magnum, and adjustable sights.  Night sights too.

I started prac­tic­ing with it every night for about an hour dur­ing my courses and would shoot both types of firearms.  No ques­tion I could get two in the chest and a head shot (had to unlearn that per my instruc­tors, though…) even when worked up (we did push ups, sit ups and ran in place and then went into shoot­ing sce­nar­ios and drills at the sound of a whistle).

In my very few engage­ments I felt 100% bet­ter with the revolver.  Stainless steel doesn’t rust and con­ceals nicely when not in use.  Speed load­ers are excep­tion­ally fast to load when taught the right tech­nique.  And a .357+P hol­low point round will mess the BG up.

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Gerber knives are very sturdy and well-​​made. That hav­ing been said, they have also always been too gim­micky for my taste and most, if not all, have typ­i­cally been con­sid­ered wannabe knives by real pro­fes­sion­als who use knives. There are only two killing knives I’d consider: 

1. The old Army fight­ing knife with a blade that’s just like the issue Colt M-​​16 bay­o­net with­out the rifle hook-​​up. This knife has a sturdy, curved, dag­ger point, and it’s very smooth with a sure-​​grip han­dle in both the old leather rings and the newer rub­ber rings from Ontario Knife. It doesn’t jam between the ribs and is a per­fect ear-​​canal knife. If you are a pro, you’ll know what I mean. 

2. Is the Tanto; although the Tanto is more geared for out­right fight­ing, it’s also a great rib-​​stabbing and cut­ting knife, and also an excel­lent ear-​​canal knife. I prob­a­bly shouldn’t say this, but these knives also cut through bullet-​​proof vests like they were but­ter, as long as they don’t hit the ceramic plate. Even then, if they slide off of it while you are still push­ing on it, they can still do some ter­ri­ble damage. 

The Ka-​​Bar of Marine fame requires too much brute force to make it work in too many cir­cum­stances, but it might be some­thing I’d con­sider if I was forced to do so. That’s it for killing knives. 

For work­ing knives, there is noth­ing like the bulky and heavy Victorinox Swiss Army Champ. Not Wenger, but specif­i­cally Victorinox. It’s worth many times its weight in gold, if you have ever needed a really great work­ing knife while out in the bush. One of my sons once cut a piece of tool steel with the hack­saw in one of my old Swiss Champs and didn’t dam­age the knife! 

Gerber knives, with all those candy-​​ass ser­ra­tions and gim­micks are more geared for the fire-​​rescue unit than the fight­ing man. I’d like to see any­one stick one into some­one else’s ribs with­out get­ting the ser­ra­tions stuck in between them. Yes, you can do it, if you turn it hor­i­zon­tally going in and com­ing out, but in a fight for life and limb, who the hell knows how they are stick­ing a knife into some­one else? Sideways, upside down, it’s all the same when the chips are down. A real pro­fes­sional, chock-​​full of adren­a­lin, with a knife stuck three inches deep between ribs will still eas­ily kill you with­out a sec­ond thought while you deter­mine how you’ll get your knife back. (To free it, you have to vio­lently pull it up or down to break a rib. By the time you decide to do this, you might be dead. Having tremen­dously injured the other guy is imma­te­r­ial to your being dead.) 

The guy who said that the alu­minum han­dle would be bad for both cold weather and not to be left in the sun was absolutely cor­rect. In very cold weather it will freeze to your hand and hav­ing been in the trop­i­cal sun for any length of time, you wouldn’t be able to hold it in your bare hand. The guy who talked about wrap­ping a han­dle with 550 cord (para­chute cord) was absolutely cor­rect too, except that before you wrap the han­dle, you take out the guts, so the cord lays flat­ter and ties bet­ter over the han­dle. If you want to make it bet­ter, twist the empty cord as you tie it and cre­ate a greater grip­ping sur­face. It’s not about mak­ing it stick to your hand, but about cre­at­ing fric­tion so that under any and all cir­cum­stances, includ­ing blood, gore and slime, you will be able to main­tain a secure grip on your weapon. I gave my wife a Cold Steel Tanto with a 550 cord-​​wrapped han­dle some years ago and she loves it. She says it’s a ‘pretty’ knife, as opposed to my old U.S. Army fight­ing knife, which she says is a ‘noth­ing killer and a pirate knife.’ I love it. My chil­dren all say they’d rather meet me at night in a dark alley than to do the same with their mother. I’m very proud of the way I trained her, espe­cially hav­ing taught her how to over­come female defi­cien­cies in fight­ing men, some­thing a major­ity of women have not been taught, con­se­quently, when the chips are down they lose. It’s a shame. Me

ED The only ref­er­ence to an old, bayonet-​​style fight­ing knife offered by the Ontario Knife Company was the SP3-​​M7 knife (Ive included the pic­ture above) which fea­tures a 6 blade (11 1/​8 over­all.)  I hope this is what you were refer­ring to.  If not, let me know and Ill update this posting.

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Read this arti­cle the other day about the Air Forces $90 mil­lion request for new pis­tols get­ting nixed and instead they were granted $5 mil­lion to study joint com­bat pis­tol needs with the Army. This, in turn, reminded me of a piece Id writ­ten sev­eral years ago on the H&K Mk. 23 Mod 0 SOCOM.

A lot of money was invested in build­ing that state of the art pis­tol, and theres no argu­ing that it is in fact, one hell of a hand­gun; but you dont see too many of them around. Of all the SOF per­son­nel I saw in Iraq, none had any­thing other than the M9 Beretta, and of the sev­eral I spoke to about the .45 SOF pis­tol, none had ever seen one.

To be sure, Im sure there are more SOF folk than there are SOCOM pis­tols, and there might be some sort of SOP regard­ing the use of the SOCOM, but if that were the case, why go through all that trou­ble to make such a superla­tive firearm and either not issue it in greater num­bers, or restrict the use of the ones you do have?
Now, Ive said it before and Ill say it again. I am not a gun guy. As a sol­dier, I use firearms as the tools of my trade. I can take them apart and put them back together, and I know how to trou­bleshoot them when some­thing does not work right.

What I cant do is quote chap­ter and verse on muz­zle energy, knock­down power, stop­ping power, fit, feel, or func­tion­al­ity of any par­tic­u­lar firearm or bul­let. This hav­ing been said, how­ever, I think, even given my own lim­ited gun knowl­edge, I could come up with a replace­ment for the M9 for less than $5 mil­lion dol­lars.
Take my expe­ri­ence with the M1911A1 .45 pis­tol and the M9 Beretta. The thing I liked best about the M1911A1 was the fact that it was made out of forged steel; You could drop it, kick it, crawl on it, you could do any­thing to it short of melt it, and you wouldnt affect its reli­a­bil­ity. Moreover, prop­erly blued or park­er­ized, the M1911A1 was very for­giv­ing of the elements.

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To me, knives are tools.

They are to be used and abused, to accom­plish the mis­sion or die trying.

Ive been through sev­eral multi-​​tools (on aver­age I break one a year) and pocket knives come and go (they get loaned out, lost, or break) but the one knife I have always had unwa­ver­ing faith in (up until the time I had to quit using it) was the Ka-​​Bar USMC fight­ing knife.

As I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, a good util­ity knife is indis­pens­able in the field. Pocketknives like the Buck 110 are great for light work, but some­times you need some­thing with lever­age. Whether it was cut­ting open MRE cases or pry­ing the wire off of crated ammu­ni­tion, my Ka Bar took it all in stride. In a per­fect world a bay­o­net would have done just as well for most things, had I been able to draw one from the arms room when we went to the field, but sadly this was not the case, which made the Ka-​​Bar all the more valuable.

Moreover, the Ka Bars design alone made it supe­rior to the bay­o­net. The all-​​leather grip worked won­der­fully wet or dry, hot or cold. The blade was thick enough that you could pry with either the point or the flat with­out undue fear of it snap­ping, and the big steel end­cap, com­bined with the knifes own mass, made for a fair field expe­di­ent hammer.

It didnt bother me in the least that I was in the Army and I was using a Marine Corps knife. That Ka-​​Bar was a tool, and one I deemed best avail­able to do the jobs I needed doing. I rea­soned that since the Marine Corps used the same rifles, ammu­ni­tion, artillery and armor that the Army did, it was per­fectly accept­able to use their knife.

Silly me. Eventually, some­one vastly more knowl­edge­able in trans-​​service eti­quette than I explained to me the mag­ni­tude of the mil­i­tary faux pas I was com­mit­ting. No, it sim­ply would not do to be caught out of doors with such an icon of Marine Corps tra­di­tion promi­nently dis­played on my LBE. As a Soldier and an NCO, I should have known bet­ter. Need to bust open those crates of MG ammu­ni­tion? No prob­lem smash them on the ground or kick them, or use a stick (a good NCO always car­ries a good stick with them for just such a situation.)

The bot­tom line was that Ka-​​Bar was a Marine Corps thing and it sim­ply had to go. No amount of plead­ing, rea­son­ing, or ratio­nal­iz­ing could resolve the sit­u­a­tion. I just had to learn to do with­out.
Of course, ten years later Im back to car­ry­ing a non-​​issue fight­ing knife, but now its made in Nepal, not Olean, N.Y. so I guess that makes it ok…

– Eric Daniel

In 1990 I was issued an M1911A1 .45 cal­iber pis­tol that had been man­u­fac­tured by Remington Rand dur­ing WWII.  Though a stout and reli­able firearm, my Colt had one limitation.  

Its accu­racy. 

To put it mildly, I was sur­prised the bul­lets ever hit the ground.  At 25m I had a shot group of around 2 feet.  

Now, I was (and still am) by no means an expert on firearms, and sto­ries abound regard­ing the inac­cu­racy issues of the M1911A1, but the one thing I did know was the .45 was, and still is, used exten­sively in pis­tol com­pe­ti­tions, so I knew the weapon design was not the issue, nor was the ammu­ni­tion, but I was at a loss as to why I lit­er­ally couldnt hit the tar­get right in front of me.

This went on for a year or so until we got a new Platoon Leader in our com­pany who also hap­pened to be some­thing of a shade-​​tree gun­smith and a Colt col­lec­tor.  What he said was, no the weapons arent bad, and the ammu­ni­tion, while not match grade, wasnt the cause, but rather, the Armys level of tol­er­ance in key com­po­nents.  Bottom line, all my trou­bles cen­tered on the bar­rel and bar­rel bush­ing.  Upon fur­ther inspec­tion it was noted that when fully seated (slide all the way for­ward) my bar­rel was still capa­ble of move­ment, a LOT of move­ment, as was explained to me, which obvi­ously was hav­ing an effect on my accu­racy.  Unfortunately, as the LT explained, that slop was still within Army tol­er­ance, so tech­ni­cally there was noth­ing to be done.

Well, the next day what should appear but a Brownells cat­a­logue, list­ing all the parts I would need to fix my .45.  I pur­chased a bar­rel, bar­rel bush­ing, bar­rel link and pin (as well as a plas­tic dead­fall ham­mer and some lap­ping com­pound to fit the bar­rel and bush­ing to the slide) and then spent the next field prob­lem ham­mer­ing the slide back and forth the fit them.

The results, how­ever, were imme­di­ate and sat­is­fy­ing.  My shot groups had col­lapsed to about 5 (good I thought, con­sid­er­ing I was still shoot­ing a stock slide and receiver.) The Lt., on the other hand, was shoot­ing VERY good groups, but then hed gone the extra step to get a com­plete fit­ted slide assem­bly, to include adjustable rear sight; after qual­i­fy­ing hed just remove his slide, re-​​attach the Army issue one, and turn the .45 back into the arms room (which would explain why folk who checked his .45 out to qual­ify with didnt do so well.)

Anyway, that small invest­ment on my part not only dis­pelled all those accu­racy issues sur­round­ing the .45, but also improved the qual­ity of my shooting.

– Eric Daniel

In the realm of com­bat shoot­ing the stan­dard rule of thumb is, he who hits first wins. Consequentially, for the last cou­ple of hun­dred years, the focus in firearms train­ing has been sight align­ment — the faster you can align the front and rear sights on your tar­get, the faster you can put lethal fire on your target.

Unfortunately, until recently, dark­ness pre­sented a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge to this the­ory. If its too dark to see your sights, you can pretty well guar­an­tee that you arent going to be able to align them very well and your accu­racy is going to suf­fer. While there are a num­ber of ways to over­come this con­di­tion (illu­mi­nate the bat­tle­field with flares, illu­mi­nate your sights with tri­tium or sim­i­lar mate­r­ial, or illu­mi­nate your fire by using trac­ers) none has been uni­ver­sally effective.

Electro-​​optical reflex sights have changed all of that. These sights are bat­tery pow­ered, non-​​magnified, sin­gle sight optics that not only allow the shooter to rapidly acquire a good sight pic­ture and align­ment in all con­di­tions (day or night) but also pro­vide the shooter with bet­ter sit­u­a­tional aware­ness since they need not be totally focused on align­ing their sights, but rather need only put the dot on the tar­get, literally.

The first of these sights was the Aimpoint M2 which the Army des­ig­nated the M68 CCO (close com­bat optic.) It was dri­ven by a watch-​​type bat­tery and had a sin­gle on/​off rheo­stat on the side to adjust ret­i­cle brightness.

While the sight did per­form as adver­tised, I had issues with it. First, the on/​off knob was easy to acci­den­tally bump, which could either cause your sight to turn off or go to max power, which not only reduced your bat­tery life, but also pro­duced a vis­i­ble red glow out of the back of the sight. Furthermore, the aim­ing dot was vis­i­ble, at high power, through the front of the sight, which could reveal your loca­tion to an NVG equipped enemy (I am told this has been addressed though I cant con­firm it.)

The sight I liked, and what in addi­tion to the ACOG seems to be the one being cur­rently issued, is the EOTech model 550. The 550 is a non-​​magnified EO sight which dis­plays a 1MOA (minute of angle) dot in the cen­ter of a 65MOA cir­cle. Reticle bright­ness is reg­u­lated by up/​down but­tons on the back of the sight, and the newer ver­sions are equipped with a NVG direct but­ton that auto­mat­i­cally dims the ret­i­cle for use with night vision devices. The 550 is pow­ered by a pair of stan­dard AA bat­ter­ies, has a ret­i­cle life of 1100 hours, and is water­proof to 1 ATM (33 feet).

What I liked about the 550 over the M68 was the bat­tery choice (AAs are much eas­ier to get) the fact that there is no for­ward pro­jec­tion of the beam, even on max power, and that there was more pos­i­tive con­trol of the ret­i­cle bright­ness. The 550 is also mil-​​std 1913 rail com­pat­able and works well with weapon mounted NVGs such as the AN/​PVS-​​10.

While Im sure that there are cer­tainly more mod­ern CCOs out there with many more bells and whis­tles, the 550 does every­thing I need it to and it didnt cost an arm and a leg.

(See much more “beyond stan­dard issue” advice and tricks over at Kit Up!)

– Eric Daniel