Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Using the rifle suited to the previous war? Message-ID: <1991Jan7.051036.8186@cbnews.att.com> Date: 7 Jan 91 05:10:36 GMT References: <1991Jan4.010534.16506@cbnews.att.com> <1991Jan5.021709.27698@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 43 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: cga66@ihlpy.att.com (Patrick V Kauffold) >I remember from the M14/M16 argument during the mid-60's that the >mean battle range in Europe was 500 yards... Sure about that? The numbers I have heard for *infantry* combat are an order of magnitude shorter, although my references aren't handy. The results for actual combat heavily favored the short-range M-16 over the rarely-used long-range capability of the M-14. Consider some numbers. Even a high-velocity rifle like the M-16 pushes the bullet out at only about 1000m/s. Ignoring air drag, that means it takes half a second to cover 500m. A man walking at a comfortable pace covers several times his body width in that time. An infantryman in combat, moving irregularly at high speed and exploiting cover, will be almost impossible to hit with an aimed shot at such distances... even if he and his buddies are not shooting back. >I believe that most of the other NATO armies have stayed with >the 7.62 mm rifles. They stayed with 7.62 for a while, since the US switched to 5.56 without consulting them after a concerted campaign to standardize on 7.62, but most of them have followed the US's lead now. >The advantages for the M14 in the desert would be... >... (b) more reliable in sand/dirt ... As (alas) a purely historical/technological note, Stoner's original AR-15, firing its original ammunition, was conspicuously *more* reliable than the M-14 in Army adverse-conditions testing. The same is not true, alas, of the M-16, thanks to the Army's "improvements" in the powder composition. >Disadvantages are ... (c) lower automatic rate of fire. Nobody short of Schwarzenegger can control a 7.62 rifle in automatic fire, which is why almost all 7.62 rifles actually issued to NATO troops were semiauto-only. -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry