Infantry Discussion Thread 10: Shovel Edition [NO FWORDS]

[Aqizithiuda]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38210837

Soon.

I thought you liked big hips?

[Allanea]

im nowhere near smart enough to type out one sentence much less write a treatise go away

Okay, written by Questers and Allaena, edited by Puz, and shat on by Ford because [[NO FUN]].

Hating on Mahan is a major theme in my dissertation IRL.

[Theodosiya]

How likely someone would survive a grenade blast if its blow 10m from him and he wore EOD like armor?

[Heirarchia]

Austrasia, being a progressive state, has abolished drill.

The first step is careful screening. All prospective recruits are screened for a history of mental illness, diagnosed or suspected, for anti-social behaviour and for any correlates with either of those even if nothing has been recorded in the past. This is not restricted to personnel characteristics. Familial, social (associating with say known criminals would be a mark against) and even geographic (coming from an area with extensive drug problems for example is a mark against) correlates may be considered.

New recruits are introduced to combat stress through repeated live fire exercises. The live fire is coming at them and they learn to function under fire through the most direct route possible: Practicing under fire. Though no one aims to kill them, it is certainly a possibility if they disregard instructions flagrantly. They are made aware of this and if they choose they may leave at any time; within reason it is not considered a serious mark against them to be unable to handle the stress of a life threatening situation, it is certainly not expected they will all manage the first time through.

I don't even know where to begin with this. The entire purpose of drill, LITERALLY THE REASON FOR ITS EXISTENCE, is for troops to learn to follow orders given precisely and in a timely fashion. And the whole screening process in general, what is that? Just because someone associates with criminals or comes from an area with heavy drug use SHOULD NOT and DOES NOT count against them anywhere else- that's like the US military turning away someone because they are from somewhere like Compton or East LA. It's hard to NOT associate with criminals in hoods like those. The one thing you do have right is the live fire exercises, although those are commonplace in most militaries anyways.

[Gallia-]

The US military turns away people who have tattoos and associate with skinheads, as well as petty felons and drug addicts, IRL.

Ability to follow orders is either innate from birth or culturally conditioned in childhood. It's not something that is spontaneously generated by military training.

Drill is the physical equivalent of busywork TBH. It was functionally useful in the 19th century because soldiers marched in formation. Now, it is retained solely out of intransigence and desire for aesthetic. Most soldiers today are so poorly drilled they wouldn't past muster in the 19th century anyway. Abolishing close order drill makes perfect sense if you take a hardline stance to "train as you fight" rather than aesthetics. Next we'll find out Austrasien allows its soldiers to grow trimmed beards or something and people will complain about gas masks or something.

Galla, being an evil society, uses nothing but battle drills, slide rules, and nomograms in its training. Soldiers are taught the correct way to attack a bunker with the 84mm rifle and hand grenades, depending on whether the platoon is in close or open terrain, and assaulting upwards or on level or sloping ground, for example. There are no other ways because this is the most optimum method of attacking the bunker. Afterwards we will show you how to attack two bunkers when they are covering each other with machine guns.

[Allanea]

The ability to follow orders is not a binary. A person is not either a born super-soldier or a total useless felon. Further, and unrelatedly, US aversion to people who have tattoos or committeed light felonies is not really backed up by any fact - in fact the anti-tattoo prohibitions have been relaxed recently with absolutely zero ill effects. But this isn't the issue.

It's simply not true that a person who has trouble following orders at age 18 cannot be trained to do so - certainly I've witnessed drill instructors do it with people in my training platoon within less than a month.

The real issue is that while close-order drill is essentially pointless, and many militaries have either abolished it or reduced its use to an absolute minimum (Israel is among them), practically everyone replaces it by some kind of training that is meant to improve the - again, non-binary - ability to follow orders. Prohibitions on beards and tattoos and haircut rules all serve the same purpose - same as shining your boots, really - creating fairly arbitrary routines that a person follows. If you can be trained to shine your boots every day, you can be trained to clean the inside of the Mark 57 Anti-Tank Dissipator every day, even when doing so seems pointless [because we didn't shoot the Mark 57 yesterday, sarge].

But the REAL issue with the Austrasien post is that training with real-life live fire and people shooting at you will inevitably end in accidents, even if the soldiers do their best to follow all the instructions. It sounds like a great way to waste millions of dollars in training and compensation.

[Gallia-]

It is backed up by fact. You have to disclose any criminal record to the Army recruiter, or else that is a felony under UCMJ and Federal law. Obviously if you shoplifted a candy bar or something they probably don't really care because who cares about a candy bar. If you have a history of grand theft auto as a juvenile, or battery, or association with hate crime organizations, etc. etc., you're probably not getting in. You're exaggerating the extent the US military excuses these things. Tattoos have long been allowed so long as they are covered by a uniform and are non-offensive. If you have a big swastika on your forearm with "HITLER WAS A SAINT" and "I HATE KIKES" on your shoulder in barbed wire, you aren't getting in. When you say "relaxed", you mean "they let you have tattoos on your forearms now", which are generally covered up by ACUs in the first place!

The screening system is obviously a case-by-case and I'm sure you can thought experiment all day long, but Kyiv's mental screening and association stuff has some precedent and it makes a fair bit of sense just by itself. It's a tad more extensive than what the US military does, but the same kinds of people (drug users, mental illness, psychopaths, etc.) are excluded. The mechanisms are different in the US military and a lot of it is done during the MEPS process where they request your criminal record or perform drug screening with urine tests and kick you out if you fail it, etc.

A person is generally born on a gradient of functional to invalid, and military training has a much higher competence requirement to be successful in than civilian life. People have about eighteen or nineteen something years of causal inertia built up that is pretty good at predicting how they'll react in a stressful environment. Someone who has a strong history of ASBO-type behaviour should not be allowed to join the military. Demeriting people based on their home environment or whatever is perfectly acceptable as a means for screening out incompetence, provided you have sufficient quantities of competent people to replace them with.

There's a difference between cleaning the barracks and close order drill. For one thing, learning how to sweep, mop, iron clothes, and do other menial chore work has extremely practical benefits outside the military, as well as inside. Unlike drill, which has zero actual benefit besides arbitrary aesthetic, something it shares with shining boots and starching clothes.

Boot shining is a dead or dying institution. Not sure why you brought that up, the US Army has been trying to kill boot shining for 30 something years and only just succeeded recently with its new khaki boots. America is free of Boot, Leather, Combat, Black forever, at least outside the Navy and Coast Guard where you still learn how to shine your boots or whatever because they just exist. They will die if those two branches ever adopt rough out boots like the USAF, USMC, and US Army have.

There is nothing arbitrary about cleaning out the barrel of the Mark 57 Anti-Tank Dissipator, except if you do it every day it will probably cause damage to the thing because you have been cleaning it too much, so start cleaning your bathrooms or the barracks from top to bottom. Or do physical training.

It is true that armies replace drill with functional training, but it isn't "clean guns excessively" or "shine boots". Cleaning a gun loads of times can cause damage to it, and shining boots is being resigned to the dustbin of history like close order drill because shining boots has no practical value to soldiers. They will be replaced by more physical training and maybe more cleaning/painting of walls, or something else that builds character while teaching useful life skills that are used in your actual job. Alternatively, training hours are reduced to save money.

Also if you aren't doing live fire training, you aren't training. Besides, people die all the time in training, whether they get shot or run over by tanks or fall out of helicopters, and it's run in a news story for about a week and then everyone forgets about it. Or they don't run a news story, and the parents just get a letter in the mail and have to attend a funeral or whatever. Training deaths have declined over the past few decades, but that likely has very little, if anything, to do with a lack of LFX, and more likely to do with fitness standards.

[Austrasien]

I don't even know where to begin with this. The entire purpose of drill, LITERALLY THE REASON FOR ITS EXISTENCE, is for troops to learn to follow orders given precisely and in a timely fashion. And the whole screening process in general, what is that? Just because someone associates with criminals or comes from an area with heavy drug use SHOULD NOT and DOES NOT count against them anywhere else- that's like the US military turning away someone because they are from somewhere like Compton or East LA. It's hard to NOT associate with criminals in hoods like those. The one thing you do have right is the live fire exercises, although those are commonplace in most militaries anyways.

The idea is they learn to follow orders by following orders successfully. And that is not a tautology.

If the goal of a days lesson is to dig your first foxhole, the soldier watches someone dig one properly then is given a shovel and told to dig their own. At the end of the allotted time an instructor comes by and evaluates their work. If they did it right they get a "good job soldiers". If they did it wrong or didn't finish they are told what they are doing wrong and made to do it again. They will repeat it until they do it right. If they exceed expectations they will be commended even if they deviate from instructions. Success through the correct application of instruction will teach them to be obedient more or less.

For a soldier to follow orders because they are orders from a superior is not considered a desirable state of affairs. Soldiers should obey because they are good orders, they dig foxholes that way because it saves their life, not because the man with a funny hat likes holes that way. A major part of soldiers classroom instruction, and after their training is complete the briefings they will receive, is for this reason aimed at connecting the small things soldiers do with the results they expect to achieve. Even the bakers because soldiers gotta eat to win wars.

If a soldier has had the importance of cleaning their weapon explained to them; if they have been instructed in the proper maintenance procedure; if they have had opportunities to clean their weapon; if they have had their mistakes spotted and corrected, and they are still failing to maintain their weapon properly. Or dig their foxhole properly. Or wear their helmet. Or whatever. Then they will be told it is time for them to consider a different career path. Soldiers are expected to WANT to be there, a recruit who shows dedication but falls short can be given extra support and some leniency, but a recruit who shows no desire to adapt themselves to military life and must be prodded to do anything will be dumped. The Austrasian military has no particular interest in "reforming" recruits.

Basically Austrasia has adopted the highly radical ideology of training soldiers the way you train workers in modern private enterprises. A lot more learning by example and a lot less learning by threat of PT. And if you can't cut it you lose your job.

Screening serves a number of purposes. Its partly economical, to remove potentially problematic recruits before they are in uniform and causing trouble. But fundamentally it's about making the military as internally homogeneous and spy free (and not just foreign spies) as possible. It's kind of like a snobby country club, only people who fit in perfectly are allowed in, but once you are in it's very chummy but with lots of live fire exercises and explosions and soccer tournaments. That some potentially useful recruits might get left out by screening is not really the military's concern unless there is a general manpower shortage, if recruitment is well below targets for an extended period then the standards might be opened up for a few years to shore up manpower. But its a slow moving process.

But the REAL issue with the Austrasien post is that training with real-life live fire and people shooting at you will inevitably end in accidents, even if the soldiers do their best to follow all the instructions. It sounds like a great way to waste millions of dollars in training and compensation.

Thank god this is ns and deficits can be wiped away by changing a number.

[Gallia-]

Krieg AG.

Military service in Galla is a requirement.

You will be bent to the will of the gestalt or broken trying.

The human hive will condition itself through means of corporatism to defeat the twin evils of fascistic despotism and radical Marxism with exponentially increased tank and armoured carrier production. Mass, the cuddliest, fattest, and most important of principles, will carry Gallan ant-bee-dove-lizard-men to victory. All who resist will receive Jagarstovel, Lader, Svart, Knivbajonett, m/7, and Gevar, Kaliber .223, m/16 to the thorax/abdomen/face.

[Allanea]

is backed up by fact. You have to disclose any criminal record to the Army recruiter, or else that is a felony under UCMJ and Federal law.

You are missing my point if you think I said anywhere you do not have to do so. However the benefit of a hard and fast rule that says NO FELONS CAN GET INTO THE SERVICE is somewhat dubious.

Tattoos have long been allowed so long as they are covered by a uniform and are non-offensive

Actually, there has been a short-lived policy limiting them. It was struck because troops hated it and it was pointless:

https://www.armytimes.com/story/militar ... /25576197/

Also if you aren't doing live fire training, you aren't training

The issue is not live-fire training, but the sort of live-fire training where troops are actually being directly shot at.

People do live fire training where they fire live rounds from their tank guns. People don't do live fire training whenre they fire live AP rounds at each other tanks, or 'vaguely in the direction of' each other's tanks.

The main reason accidents (both in military training and in civilian shooting sports) have been declining over the years is our better understanding of safety procedures.

There is a very simple reason we demand OMG IRON DISCIPLINE:

Because the common soldier does not possess the knowledge, information, education, nor position to fully understand the value of a given order. He might know why to clean the gun, but he is unable to know why he is holding down this or that position (and sometimes it would actually be detrimental if he did). For this reason the ability to carry out orders even if they don't seem to make sense is valuable if not taken to an extreme.

[Gallia-]

Face, neck and hand tattoos, however, remain against regulation, with the exception of one ring tattoo per hand. Racist, derogatory and sexist tattoos are also outlawed.

Infantry do live fire training where they crawl underneath machine guns. Sometimes they get shot by those machine guns. Since infantry deaths are the most common training related death, why would we be talking about tankmen? Tankers just get run over by their mounts, I guess? Probably happens more often to infantry though, still.

There's no "better understanding" of safety procedures. That is edging dangerously close to implying that safety procedures are some universal constant. Safety procedures are just more stringent. The US Army discovered that you can train infantrymen reasonably well without firing machine guns a foot above their heads, so they started putting the machine guns inside ten meter tall towers on fixed mounts, for example. That happened sometime in the 1990s I think.

What you call "OMG IRON DISCIPLINE" is what normal people call basic training I guess. Does Israel not have an equivalent of the Night Infiltration Course or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFTdUfmzEEU

[The Akasha Colony]

So before I forget about it completely, in regards to FUTUR infantry rifles again, I'm trying to work toward a conclusion.

The preferred specifications are:

• Some kind of intermediate caliber, yet unspecified. Expected to be paired with a ~7.5 mm full-power round
• MV of 900+ m/s
• Hyperburst-capable, 2 or 3 rounds (3 rounds preferred)
• Recoil abatement system for automatic firing
• Ideally the ability to use magazines larger than 30 rounds as standard without being cumbersome
• Significant decrease in weight per cartridge over both previous rounds and conventional brass-cased rounds of the same caliber
• Volume reduction per cartridge to the extent possible

There are other paper requirements (weight, OAL length, barrel length, etc.) but they aren't very important for selecting the basic concept and operating principle so they've been ignored.

Given these requirements, the current frontrunners if anyone would like to provide their opinion are:

• G11 clone - More or less a copy of the G11 with ergonomic improvements. This is the closest "off-the-shelf" design to my preferred requirements, as it is light, compact, has a hyperburst feature with recoil delay, a generous magazine capacity, and uses lightweight, compact ammunition with a good muzzle velocity. The downsides are ergonomics in regards to reloading and ammunition storage and more technical problems with the long-term durability of the ammunition and possibly with heat dissipation from firing.
• G11 clone w/PCTA - As stated before I have no idea if this would work (I expect not due to the need for an extraction cycle) but it exists as a concept because it would be a "minimum change" way to solve the ammunition problem while retaining the G11's features. Depending on the caliber, this may preclude the G11's original storage for ready magazines above the weapon if the cased rounds are too wide to allow three-abreast magazine placement.
• Steyr ACR w/PCTA - This is more or less the weapon currently being used, but in a larger 7 mm GPC. The revised version would use a smaller intermediate caliber. This would probably mean limiting magazine size to ~30 rounds as they would have to be stored horizontally, limiting practical magazine length. There seem to be some conflicting statements as to whether or not the Steyr ACR had a true hyperburst feature. The oft-circulated video on the ACR program cites a 1,200 rpm rate of fire in burst mode while Wikipedia cites a dead Tony Williams page claiming 2,200 rpm. Ideally, the weapon could be made to have a conventional fully automatic mode as well.

None of them AFAIK would meet the requirement for the recoil abatement system for fully automatic fire, but it's something I'm willing to give up if it proves too complex to be workable. The resulting round and weapon would also be fielded in an IAR variant, or possibly a lightweight LMG configuration a la LMG11 if it is possible to reduce weight significantly enough to provide IAR-like levels of mobility.

This is mostly for basic conceptual stuff since the exact specifications will take shape with more input (ideally). And it isn't limited to these specific options, these are just the ones I happen to either know or have heard of that come the closest to meeting the requirements put forth. If anyone has any other suggestions, those would be welcome as well. As you can see, these have been dredged from some rather old concepts so if there's anything newer that comes close, I'd be interested at least for consideration.

[Gallia-]

i already did G11 PCTA with frisia stop stealing my ideas

[Austrasien]

Realistically you'd need to supplement live fire training with other less expensive activities. Like soccer and computer games. Or digging and carpentry.

As for compensation in the event of death when a soldier enlists they also join the soldiers union for their unit (typically division), which among other things takes out life insurance policies for them funded partly through union dues every soldier pays and partly by state subsidies. If they die during training the insurance pays out. Most of the major insurance companies in Austrasia have plans tailored for soldiers and since training happens a lot it should be possible to make detailed actuarial predictions about military mortality. Aside from this the military cannot be (as an institution) held liable for a soldiers injury or death if it occurs in the course of their normal duties.

[Allanea]

Infantry do live fire training where they crawl underneath machine guns. Sometimes they get shot by those machine guns. Since infantry deaths are the most common training related death, why would we be talking about tankmen? Tankers just get run over by their mounts, I guess? Probably happens more often to infantry though, still.

There's no "better understanding" of safety procedures. That is edging dangerously close to implying that safety procedures are some universal constant. Safety procedures are just more stringent. The US Army discovered that you can train infantrymen reasonably well without firing machine guns a foot above their heads, so they started putting the machine guns inside ten meter tall towers on fixed mounts, for example. That happened sometime in the 1990s I think.

What the Austrasien post referred to is not, I think, 'firing machineguns over your head from a fixed mount', but something more dangerous is brutal. But perhaps he will clarify?

[Gallia-]

Infantry do live fire training where they crawl underneath machine guns. Sometimes they get shot by those machine guns. Since infantry deaths are the most common training related death, why would we be talking about tankmen? Tankers just get run over by their mounts, I guess? Probably happens more often to infantry though, still.

There's no "better understanding" of safety procedures. That is edging dangerously close to implying that safety procedures are some universal constant. Safety procedures are just more stringent. The US Army discovered that you can train infantrymen reasonably well without firing machine guns a foot above their heads, so they started putting the machine guns inside ten meter tall towers on fixed mounts, for example. That happened sometime in the 1990s I think.

What the Austrasien post referred to is not, I think, 'firing machineguns over your head from a fixed mount', but something more dangerous is brutal. But perhaps he will clarify?

I'm pretty sure Viky means stuff like this: http://www.alu.army.mil/alog/issues/JulAug04/korea.html There's also stuff like convoy LFX, where you drive around in trucks and shoot at houses or whatever with Mk19s and M4/M16s from the back of FMTVs, or get out and attack the houses with your gats: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... Kuwait.jpg

The most common form of LFX is probably using MILES gear I guess, since they tend to intertwine.

Realistically you'd need to supplement live fire training with other less expensive activities. Like soccer and computer games. Or digging and carpentry.

As for compensation in the event of death when a soldier enlists they also join the soldiers union for their unit (typically division), which among other things takes out life insurance policies for them funded partly through union dues every soldier pays and partly by state subsidies. If they die during training the insurance pays out. Most of the major insurance companies in Austrasia have plans tailored for soldiers and since training happens a lot it should be possible to make detailed actuarial predictions about military mortality. Aside from this the military cannot be (as an institution) held liable for a soldiers injury or death if it occurs in the course of their normal duties.

Absolutely drips with parasitism.

Roma Novus.

I am pro carpentry and sperglording.

ArmA is the best training simulator.

Virtual memory errors are the biggest killer of men since trigonometry and the smokeless cartridge.

[Fordorsia]

So much sperg I'll never read

[Puzikas]

TL;DR:

Put on your PT belt or I'll PT you so hard your grand children will be born doing mountian climbers.

[Fordorsia]

born doing mountian climbers.

Mountain climbers have nice firm asses so I can't blame them

[Purpelia]

You all are, or at least should be familiar with my supercharged 7.5x25mm round with it's spitzer bullet and high MV that basically almost makes it an intermediary except really not. Still, can't go wrong with a spitzer firing supercharged SMG. And that is my question for today.

I have been looking at the old pre-WW2 concepts such as using SMGs as mini LMGs and I want to know if a submachine gun with a longer barrel and a big drum magazine firing this round would be effective as one. Basically the idea here is that these things take a similar role to the DP or BAR (I would issue 2 per squad). The period in question is WW2.

[Crookfur]

Truvelo long known amongst the IDF/ye olde NSD crowd for big ass rifles have now come up with a super chibi 20mm rifle:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016 ... iel-rifle/

[Fordorsia]

Truvelo long known amongst the IDF/ye olde NSD crowd for big ass rifles have now come up with a super chibi 20mm rifle:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016 ... iel-rifle/

y

[Laritaia]

Truvelo long known amongst the IDF/ye olde NSD crowd for big ass rifles have now come up with a super chibi 20mm rifle:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016 ... iel-rifle/

y

it's basically a bolt action PAW Neopup

[Puzikas]

Truvelo long known amongst the IDF/ye olde NSD crowd for big ass rifles have now come up with a super chibi 20mm rifle:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016 ... iel-rifle/

What language is this

[Nirvash Type TheEND]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38210837

Soon.

I thought you liked big hips?

Oh no, believe me, I do. But big hips tend to betray the soldier.

womyn stronk