Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[Immoren]

Kokemae infantry regiment

Kokemae infantry regiment is regiment located in southern Immoren responsible for training conscript in infantry duties. Regiment consists of Anjala Infantry Battalion, regimental HQ consisting of operative HQ and Regional Office, Regimental hospital, vehicle depot, maintenance center and material center.
Anjala Infantry Battalion consists of 1st infantry company, 2nd infantry company, anti-tank company, recon company, mortar company, HQ&Supply company and Reserve NCO school.
1st infantry company
1st infantry company trains motorized and mechanized infantry companies. Mechanized infantry companies are meant for regiment's own war mobilization strength while motorized companies are meant for assorted infantry duties outside regiment's own rosters as defined needs of army at large.
2nd infantry company
2nd infantry company trains mountain infantry companies for mountain infantry battalions twice a year. Also once a year company trains mountain recon platoon.
Anti-tank company
Every third year recon company trains mechanized AT-platoon for one of the regiment's battalions, otherwise company trains 2 company sized recon units for various wartime brigade, division and corps level recon units.
Recon company
Every third year recon company trains mechanized recon platoon for one of the regiment's battalions, otherwise company trains 2 company sized recon units for various wartime brigade, division and corps level recon units.
mortar company
Twice a year, mortar company trains company HQ&service platoon, light mortar platoon, heavy mortar platoon and forward observer platoon.
HQ&Supply company
HQ&Supply company trains assorted elements for various Battalion HQ&HQ companies and Supply&service companies.
Reserve NCO school
Reserve NCO school is responsible for training all conscript NCOs of the regiment outside supply&service NCOs of the HQ&Supply company, who are trained outside regiment, in NCO school of the XX Service Regiment.

When horn is blown, regiment is intended to mobilize 3 mechanized infantry battalions and 1 mountain infantry battalion.

[Cisairse]

P(o)K(e)M(on) is effective in close quarters fighting it is unaltered bipod mode without need for secondary weapon for its user. I've witnessed it with me own eyes.
Then again I guess plural of anecdote is not data.

I imagine if this was the case, It would be even more effective in a shortened bullpup mode

[Manokan Republic]

A key problem isn't just weapons but fireteam dynamics. If you are trained to clear rooms with 4 people but only have 3, or have 5, 6 etc. it changes everything. Too many people and you are shooting each other in the back, too few and no-one is guarding you. Ideally you have four or more, but then your fireteams might be too big or not properly designed for other strategies. Asymmetric fireteams have the issue of now not being able to clear rooms with the same training, if you ever went from being a machine gunner to a regular riflemen your entire set of training would have to be redone, all your tactics and strategies essentially change. You want to pick something and stick with it, rather than have 5 different methods for doing the same thing. Furthermore one guy trained to do one thing is now going to have to switch to doing a completely different other thing out of nowhere. The advantage of machine guns at the platoon level is that is their only job, but if they now are expected to do 3 things it changes a lot. You now need to excel at multiple different things. In addition, if you find yourself doing room clearing without a vehicle nearby, you run in to the problem of equipment restrictions.

The teams being interchangeable matters a lot, as you basically all want to be able to do the same thing. Messing with the group dynamic, particularly in how it effects strategies and tactics is always a bad idea. A number of well known mission failures had this issue, such as in the "lone survivor" scenario where navy seals teams used to operating in teams of 8 were cut down to 4, or a botched SAS raid in Iraq used to 15 man teams was cut down to 8, and a number of other situations. If you are trained and equipped for one thing and end up doing another, it can throw off the entire operation. For people that aren't special forces and that can compensate for it with raw skill, it compounds the issue further.

But you should be doing that anyway. I mean, aside from the squad commander who needs to be that one guy and nobody else can really do his job the others should be interchangeable. Like why shouldn't everyone in your squad know how to use the MG or a rifle or clear rooms or whatever? Specializing training on that level is just begging for someone to die or get shot or sick and now your squad is broken.

It's that they become overly specialized in practice, and don't get any field experience if relegated to doing just one thing. You also want the squad broken up in such a way as to where if it does get converted from a machine gun to CQB room clearing team, you don't fundamentally change the squad dynamic. So you want something that can easily transition between the two things. If you clear rooms with 4 men usually but then have squads with fireteams of 5 men in some other scenario, it just throws things out of whack. You want them to be interchangeable, is my point, and you can't just apparate men in to existence or out of existence at will. Hence you need the squad fireteams meant for room clearing to be the same size and general make up as your other squad, given they will be the same people transitioning between jobs. You also want whatever your smallest unit is to be somewhat self sufficient, in case it gets separated from the rest of the unit. The marines fire and maneuver units are a good example of this, and the german infantry squad being little more than light support for a machine gun is an example of them failing to do it.

[Manokan Republic]

P(o)K(e)M(on) is effective in close quarters fighting it is unaltered bipod mode without need for secondary weapon for its user. I've witnessed it with me own eyes.
Then again I guess plural of anecdote is not data.

The PKM is viable for room clearing like the M249, but it is not good at it. It certainly is a lot better than say, a browning .30-06 or MG42 though.

[Cisairse]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

[Dayganistan]

P(o)K(e)M(on) is effective in close quarters fighting it is unaltered bipod mode without need for secondary weapon for its user. I've witnessed it with me own eyes.
Then again I guess plural of anecdote is not data.

I imagine if this was the case, It would be even more effective in a shortened bullpup mode

There's other options for shortening and lightening the PKM series though. The Polish UKM-2013 comes to mind as a preferable alternative to the bullpup PKP.

[Immoren]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

I guess it can work.
I was going to comment I had used even older updated rifle in service, but I realize there's probably difference in Gewehr 43 and Mosin-Nagant in that regard.
And T-KIV85 shares little with M-N at this point I guess.

---

Clearly best solution for "room clearing with asymmetric squad" is not to break squad.

[Dayganistan]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

It could work but if you're dead set on a 8mm Mauser DMR the Zastava M76 exists.

[Cisairse]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

It could work but if you're dead set on a 8mm Mauser DMR the Zastava M76 exists.

woah

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

Alternatively you create your own half-handwaved monstrosity.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

already been done

[Cisairse]

Updated Gewehr 43 as a DMR, bad or good idea

already been done

I thought the SCAR was an AR-18 derivative

Like it's rotating bolt not flapper locked

[Dayganistan]

I thought the SCAR was an AR-18 derivative

Like it's rotating bolt not flapper locked

I think the reference is more to the gas system. They're both short stroke piston systems.

[Taihei Tengoku]

It has the G43's piston, the other parts have been updated to make them better.

[Manokan Republic]

It could work but if you're dead set on a 8mm Mauser DMR the Zastava M76 exists.

woah

I was about to mention this lol, there's a handful of gun still in 8mm.

[Purpelia]

It's that they become overly specialized in practice, and don't get any field experience if relegated to doing just one thing. You also want the squad broken up in such a way as to where if it does get converted from a machine gun to CQB room clearing team, you don't fundamentally change the squad dynamic. So you want something that can easily transition between the two things. If you clear rooms with 4 men usually but then have squads with fireteams of 5 men in some other scenario, it just throws things out of whack. You want them to be interchangeable, is my point, and you can't just apparate men in to existence or out of existence at will. Hence you need the squad fireteams meant for room clearing to be the same size and general make up as your other squad, given they will be the same people transitioning between jobs. You also want whatever your smallest unit is to be somewhat self sufficient, in case it gets separated from the rest of the unit. The marines fire and maneuver units are a good example of this, and the german infantry squad being little more than light support for a machine gun is an example of them failing to do it.

Thing is, I don't really see why you would desperately need to convert anything. Aside from maybe having more hand grenades than usual a modern squad hardly needs to change anything about its weaponry to fight room to room or trench to trench or field to field.

You keep talking about Germans and WW2 but you forget one thing. The average German squad in WW2 consisted of 1 machinegun and 11 bolt action rifles. And bolt action rifles suck at close in fighting. By contrast modern soldiers use rapid firing low recoil handy assault rifles that combine the long range effectiveness of a rifle with the handiness and close in murdering capacity of a submachinegun. If the average German WW2 squad had consisted of 1 MG and 11 STG44's or even MP40's they would have had zero problems.

So worse case scenario you have some insane unwieldy MMG that just can't be brought indoors and you have to settle for 11 guys with grenades and assault rifles absolutely destroying everything inside.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Do men who willingly accept cuckoldry make bad infantrymen?
Do they make bad officers?

[Purpelia]

Do men who willingly accept cuckoldry make bad infantrymen?
Do they make bad officers?

Do people who ask too many ultra specific questions that seem to come from a random word generator annoy those around them?

[Immoren]

[Manokan Republic]

It's that they become overly specialized in practice, and don't get any field experience if relegated to doing just one thing. You also want the squad broken up in such a way as to where if it does get converted from a machine gun to CQB room clearing team, you don't fundamentally change the squad dynamic. So you want something that can easily transition between the two things. If you clear rooms with 4 men usually but then have squads with fireteams of 5 men in some other scenario, it just throws things out of whack. You want them to be interchangeable, is my point, and you can't just apparate men in to existence or out of existence at will. Hence you need the squad fireteams meant for room clearing to be the same size and general make up as your other squad, given they will be the same people transitioning between jobs. You also want whatever your smallest unit is to be somewhat self sufficient, in case it gets separated from the rest of the unit. The marines fire and maneuver units are a good example of this, and the german infantry squad being little more than light support for a machine gun is an example of them failing to do it.

Thing is, I don't really see why you would desperately need to convert anything. Aside from maybe having more hand grenades than usual a modern squad hardly needs to change anything about its weaponry to fight room to room or trench to trench or field to field.

You keep talking about Germans and WW2 but you forget one thing. The average German squad in WW2 consisted of 1 machinegun and 11 bolt action rifles. And bolt action rifles suck at close in fighting. By contrast modern soldiers use rapid firing low recoil handy assault rifles that combine the long range effectiveness of a rifle with the handiness and close in murdering capacity of a submachinegun. If the average German WW2 squad had consisted of 1 MG and 11 STG44's or even MP40's they would have had zero problems.

So worse case scenario you have some insane unwieldy MMG that just can't be brought indoors and you have to settle for 11 guys with grenades and assault rifles absolutely destroying everything inside.

The squad set up in question I was referring to was a heavy machine gun squad, with one heavy machine gun to form the base of fire and then the rest of the squad in the fireteams, so specifically, it's similiar to the germans in that, it's based around the german squad which revolved around a single heavy machine gun. He even wants to use the 8mm mauser, to give you an idea of how similiar his squad set up is to the germans.

Also it was 10 men, a 3-man machine gun team with a submachine gun and one guy with a pistol usually, and then 7 riflemen with bolt action who basically did little more than carry ammunition for the main machine gun. Their typical load-out was 45 rounds for their bolt action and 150-300 for the machine gun, although you could take 8mm rounds out of the belt link and put it in to the bolt action. It wasn't that great of a squad, but even a greatly improved squad will have issues using a main machine gun for room clearing, especially if it's so asymmetric. Modern squads typically don't have a problem with room clearing, and are set up to do it, but that's not what we're talking about.

[Cisairse]

(Image)

This is an obvious failure, the shooter missed one of the enemies completely

[Manokan Republic]

I mean, if the rooms are cleared, why can we still see through them?

I think this is a serious misnomer, unless they mean putting so many holes in it it's clear now.

[Manokan Republic]

P(o)K(e)M(on) is effective in close quarters fighting it is unaltered bipod mode without need for secondary weapon for its user. I've witnessed it with me own eyes.
Then again I guess plural of anecdote is not data.

I imagine if this was the case, It would be even more effective in a shortened bullpup mode

Yeah, a shortened bullpup PKM sounds like a good weapon of choice, and it's widely enough used and easily convertible enough to other calibers to make it a solid choice. The 8mm uses very similiar belt links as the 7.62mm NATO which copied the belt links and feed tray in the M60 and M240, so it should be convertible to 8mm without much issue as it was easily converted to the 7.62mm NATO. Now you can reasonably clear rooms with it or the back-up carbine. Seems legit to me

[Cisairse]

I imagine if this was the case, It would be even more effective in a shortened bullpup mode

Yeah, a shortened bullpup PKM sounds like a good weapon of choice, and it's widely enough used and easily convertible enough to other calibers to make it a solid choice. The 8mm uses very similiar belt links as the 7.62mm NATO which copied the belt links and feed tray in the M60 and M240, so it should be convertible to 8mm without much issue as it was easily converted to the 7.62mm NATO. Now you can reasonably clear rooms with it or the back-up carbine. Seems legit to me

Neat, problem solved

[Purpelia]

I imagine if this was the case, It would be even more effective in a shortened bullpup mode

Yeah, a shortened bullpup PKM sounds like a good weapon of choice, and it's widely enough used and easily convertible enough to other calibers to make it a solid choice. The 8mm uses very similiar belt links as the 7.62mm NATO which copied the belt links and feed tray in the M60 and M240, so it should be convertible to 8mm without much issue as it was easily converted to the 7.62mm NATO. Now you can reasonably clear rooms with it or the back-up carbine. Seems legit to me

A bullpup machinegun sounds like a nightmare to reload. I mean, can you imagine having to fiddle with a belt feed on a gun where the belt has to drape over your arm on one side and fall close to your chest on the other?

Seriously, just clear rooms the normal way by throwing hand grenades through each door after shooting the whole building up from the outside with your IFV.