Under a Gibbous Moon

I would have never guessed it.

I do love how the headline picture is not a bullet proof vest. I hope nobody told him. He looks proud of himself.

Not Body Armor

Body Armor

Hopefully, this clears up any confusion.

Of course, real body armor is heavy and uncomfortable. Even those without ballistic plates. Kevlar does not breathe well which is why they sell anti-odor spray for your Kevlar carriers.

The article blames this fad on Jack Bauer but more than likely it is merely that posers are more afraid than ever that they are going to get shot.

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I would have just put up the picture of the Vin Diesel wannabe but you know how news agencies are about their photographs. Fair Use be damned.

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Apparently, Republican support for Soldiers is only good until they have something else that they want more.

Democrats blocked an attempted Republican filibuster attempt early this morning. The stated Republican goal was to stop the spending bill so that the healthcare bill would be delayed until after Christmas.

I’m blown away by this. Over most of the last decade the Republicans have, at the very least, led the charge to make sure that the military had the money and supplies that they needed. It seems that that was all a sham. They did it only because it was politically expedient and as soon as another cause came along that they cared about more, they were willing to pull the plug as a political maneuver.

And why were they willing to risk Solider’s lives? As Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan) put it:

“I don’t want health care.”

What a bunch of bastards.

I was reading about the whole hikers wandering into Iran story today when I was reminded of something funny that happened during Basic Training.

My company was out on landnav. This essentially involves spending most of the day wandering around in the woods looking for wooden poles with numbers on them.

My squad was wandering around the woods when we ran into another squad from my platoon and they had the most interesting story to tell.

They had been a klick or so from our current position (I don’t recall the direction) when they had come across one of the many access roads that criss cross the woods. There they had run into a couple of sergeants who were quite surprised to see them.

It turns out that they had wandering onto an artillery range.

It’s times like these when knowing how to calculate a back-azimuth comes in handy.

This is a rather fascinating lecture from the Army Heritage Education Center (located at the U.S. Army War College). It makes an interesting case for looking at the Civil Rights Movement as an insurgency.

This view of divorcing the violence from the what we tend to think of as an insurgency shows how effective insurgencies work in breaking the will of those in power and how and examination of those techniques shows ways in which they can be exploited in an effective counter-insurgency in what is now known as fourth generation warfare.

Just a warning, the lecture is about 90 minutes long.

The abstract for the lecture:

Most Americans fail to appreciate that the Civil Rights movement was about the overthrow of an entrenched political order in each of the Southern states, that the segregationists who controlled this order did not hesitate to employ violence (law enforcement, paramilitary, mob) to preserve it, and that for nearly a century the federal government tacitly or overtly supported the segregationist state governments. That the Civil Rights movement employed nonviolent tactics should fool us no more than it did the segregationists, who correctly saw themselves as being at war. Significant change was never going to occur within the political system: it had to be forced. The aim of the segregationists was to keep the federal government on the sidelines. The aim of the Civil Rights movement was to “capture” the federal government-to get it to apply its weight against the Southern states. As to why it matters: a major reason we were slow to grasp the emergence and extent of the insurgency in Iraq is that it didn’t-and doesn’t-look like a classic insurgency. In fact, the official Department of Defense definition of insurgency still reflects a Vietnam era understanding of the term. Looking at the Civil Rights movement as an insurgency is useful because it assists in thinking more comprehensively about the phenomenon of insurgency and assists in a more complete-and therefore more useful-definition of the term.

Hat Tip: Schneier on Security

The British SA80

In a recent Telegraph article, a survey of “more than 50 servicemen” concluded that the 5.56 NATO (5.56 x 45 mm) “tailed off” after 300 meters, this being a problem as half of all Helmand firefights occur at 300 to 900 meters.

The U.S. M16A2

I cannot speak for the British SA80, but for the U.S. M16A2, the maximum effective range is 800 meters. Now maximum range is the farthest distance you can expect to hit someone and actually do some damage. I would also like to point out that 800 meters is about one half mile. At about 300 meters (about .2 mile) a man sized target is approximately the same size as your front sight post.

I will not disagree with the conclusions of the this study in so much as it just shows that the weapon is being deployed improperly. It is being used at distances that it was not designed to be effective at. It’s kinda like buying a pinto and claiming that it doesn’t go fast.

The 7.62 NATO vs. The 5.56 NATO note the size difference

The article calls for a unilateral switch to the 7.62 NATO (7.62 x 51 mm). This would certainly extend the “reach” of the ammunition, but at a significant increase in weight. The author of the article claims that we are outclassed by the Taliban’s use of the AK series which fires a 7.62 caliber bullet, this is correct, but it is 7.62 x 39 mm. The Soviet M43 was based on the German 7.62 Kurz round (Kurz meaing short). The M43 is lighter than the 7.62 NATO and is much less powerful (2,059 ft. lbs vs. 2,472 ft. lbs). This weight

The M43 vs the 5.56 NATO notice its overall size compapred to the 5.56 NATO

disparity is why the military is looking into a more intermediate round such as the 6.8 SPC (6.8 x 43 mm).

Two last points:

It added that Javelin anti-tank missiles, costing £100,000 each, are often fired at lone gunmen.

Once again, I cannot speak for the U.K. but considering the costs that go into your soldiers £100,000 (approximately $164,000) is a bargain if it saves one soldiers life. Even if you discount training costs (which varies from MOS to MOS but can run $50,000+), SGLI pays out $400,000. The there are the medical bills for the wounded. Even a bean counter who wants to put a price on a soldier’s life would see that he is saving money by firing that missle.

Only one in four British, US and German troops has been issued with guns using 7.62mm ammunition.

Once again, 7.62 NATO vs. M43. Being a much heavier round it serves a different purpose, mostly M21 for designated marksmen and the M240 series is a light machine gun and due to its weight (27.6 lbs unloaded) is either mounted or used with it’s integrated tripod.

The 5.56 NATO does have its problems but much of the reporting for this article and the recommendations therein were written by someone who doesn’t understand the problem.

Hat Tip: The Firearm Blog