Category: Military

Fixing The Civil Service

Military, The Gun Thing

The title isn’t what you think.

The “civil service” is the nickname British Army soldiers gave to the hapless SA-80 bullpup rifle — it doesn’t work and you can’t fire it — during Gulf War One.  So bad was the thing that a booming black market for captured Iraqi AK-47s was created because so many of the SA-80s were “lost” during that campaign.

However, after many failed attempts to fix the poxy rifle, it appears that the Brits have finally got the thing right (other than the fact that they had to get the Germans to do the job for them, of course:  that whirring sound you hear is of British WWI and WWII field marshals spinning in their graves).

Apparently the SA (now called the SA-80A3) really has been fixed this time, and the Brits plan on fielding it for at least a half-dozen more years.  Of course, it still shoots the silly poodleshooter 5.56mm NATO (.223 Rem) cartridge, which the U.S. Army will soon be phasing out because it’s ineffective in any scenario outside an urban one [links to about 5,000 earlier Kim Rants on the topic omitted for reasons of brevity].

Which means the Brits will have to play catch-up, again.

Exclusive

Men & Women, Military

I wonder if women ever stopped to think why stuff like this used to happen (before such signwriters started getting carted off to feminist-think reeducation camps, that is):

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because we boys had a great time together.  We got up to mischief, fought each other (physically and verbally), played dangerous games and (at the early puberty stage) talked about sex.

Let a damn girl into that idyllic scenario, and all that cool stuff ended, because the girls didn’t want to do any of it — and worse, if we went ahead and did it all anyway, they’d run and tattle to the grownups.

So rough boys’ games turned into gentler, girl-oriented games (which no boy wanted to play), fights weren’t allowed and mischief or dangerous games were prevented by the dreaded words, “I’ll TELL!”

Girls were (and are) a royal pain in the ass.  Hence the signs.

Now take childhood exclusion and apply it to adult life — oh, say, to the Army.  What could possibly go wrong?

What red blooded American male would want to serve in a US military of drag queens, cadets in red high heels, Mommy Rangers, lactating chicks in the field and waddling battalion commanders?
There’s a known fact that the feminist crowd would like to keep buried, like those Green Cards for those Ranger tabbed ladies that Benning hides so well – any industry women take over, men leave… in droves.
The future of the US military is a broken force, a devastated force, if anything is left at all on some distant battlefield.

But hey… who cares, as long as Teh Womyns feel better about themselves?

I used to be fairly agnostic about women who served in the military, provided that they were kept away from combat.  Well, they were allowed to join the armed forces, and because being non-combatants (cooks, drivers, clerks etc.) was demeaning, and patriarchal, and all that proto-feminist twaddle, of course they had to be allowed to do things like try to graduate from Ranger School — and because they always failed, the natural outcome was to lower the standards so that women could eventually pass and feel better about themselves.  Never mind that guys would look at this, say, “That’s not a challenge,” and leave.

Now I have a simple solution:  toss them all out.  Everywhere.  From the combat units, air force squadrons, clerical jobs and most especially, the Navy.  Make the armed forces a man’s world again.  Morale will skyrocket, G.I. pregnancies (and the concomitant costs) will become a thing of the past, fitness and duty standards can be raised to the skies, and our armed forces will become the envy of the world, just like they were during WWII.  My prediction:  men will flock to enlist in the armed forces for the same reason that “No Girls Allowed!” clubs always had a long waiting list of boys from the neighborhood.

And gawd forbid that I breathe these forbidden words:  the United States will then field a ferocious bunch of kick-ass fire-breathers who will cause would-be enemies to shelve their plans of aggression and run back to their Momma.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.  And admittedly, while men often screw up the pacem business, nobody can fuck up a good bellum like a woman.  ‘Twas ever thus.

Equal Treatment

Military

I have this opinion that if women are to be treated exactly the same as men, then when they fuck up bigly, their names should be reported in the news rather than covered up.

Or else, in the above case, we’d all think that the Navy is afraid that the ongoing feminization of their force may be compromised.  But perhaps I’m being too cynical.

This Won’t Be Good

Military

So this little snippet arrived in my Inbox a while ago, sent on by Loyal Reader Max H., who asks, “Waddya think?”

Oh FFS.

The US Army’s PEO Soldier – Project Manager Soldier Weapons has issued an Request for Information (RFI) to obtain industry feedback on possible submissions to Sub Compact Weapons (SCW) evaluations. The specification details offered by the Project Manager Soldier Weapons (PMSW) are scant and extremely broad. Describing potential SCWs as being select fire weapons, chambered in 9x19mm and having MIL-STD 1913 rail (Picatinny Rail) space.
The RFI, published 2 May, makes no mention of physical dimensions such as size or weight and instead seeks to cast as wide a net as possible for potential submissions. It does, however, call for suppressors, spares and slings for the weapon (not holsters). Potential future SCW submissions will have to chamber ‘9×19 mm military grade’ ammunition – meaning both M882 ball and the new XM1153 Special Purpose 9mm Round from Winchester.
The RFI gives interested parties until the 18 May to submit their responses. It remains to be seen what purpose the SCW would serve and to whom it might be issued. If earlier Army references to a Sub Compact Weapon system are to be believed the new weapon is likely destined for rear echelon troops – in the traditional PDW / submachine gun role.

It starts when the new acronym SCW (Sub Compact Weapon) is used instead of the universally-known SMG (Sub-Machine Gun). (When did the .dotmil start this fucking bullshit? Never mind, I know the answer.)

People, this is not difficult. You take a simple, basic and easy-to-produce concept like the venerable M3 Grease Gun, add the doodads the Army wants, and away you go. Most of the serious firearms manufacturers like SIG, CZ or IMI could do this in their spare time, like over a couple weekends.

Why use the Grease Gun concept as the platform? Because it fucking works, as countless dead Nazis, Japs or Commies would tell you, if they could. With modern steel and production CNC machining, you could have a prototype put together in two weeks, and after a couple months of testing, into full production.

Which is kinda what the .dotmil did with the M3 (minus the CNC) back in the Big One, and it served until the 1990s when the .dotmil ditched it because OMG it wasn’t cool enough anymore. (That’s not the official reason, of course, but it’s the real one.)

Simplicity is just not gonna happen here, of course. What will emerge is some massively over-priced, over-engineered and over-complicated abortion which will be too heavy and too unreliable, because the current loose parameters of the RFI are going to be tightened and tightened until they cry for mercy, and the REMFs are going to get something which they’ll ditch in favor of their handguns at the first opportunity. Something like the HK MP7:

…which begs the question, “Why not just use the MP7?” (It sure as hell is ugly enough.) Of course, that would be just too simple. The .dotmil hates simple, which is why they got rid of the perfectly-capable M3 Grease Gun.

Also, the .dotmil would never adopt a foreign-made SMG with a simple operating mechanism — such as the MP7 or Kalashnikov’s KR-9 SBR (short-barreled rifle) — because OMG Russia, even though Kalashnikov USA is the same type pf corporation as Beretta USA (which supplied the .dotmil with the M-9 pistol, lest we forget).

And the KR-9’s operating system is simple — again that damning word — when we all know that the Pentagon will only consider whizzbang-gee-whizz-complicated guns because that’s how they’ve operated since WWII.

Never mind that everything the Pentagon wants is right there in that photograph, and ready to ship for testing tomorrow. But that would be too easy. Let’s rather take five years to reach a decision and end up with something that doesn’t work well, costs too much and will be in production only after a further five years. (The cost of the KR-9, in the quantities that the Pentagon would order, would be about $395 per piece. Unthinkable.)

And I haven’t even broached  the touchy subject of the .dotmil wanting to use the under-powered and pointless 9x19mm cartridge…

Bah.

Just so we’re all clear on the concept: I’ve fired some of the “modern” SMGs myself, notably the Uzi, Skorpion, the MP5 and yes, the Grease Gun. Of all, the little Skorpion was the easiest to manage and the most reliable, probably because of its dinky lil’ cartridge. But neither the simpler Uzi or Skorpion designs will ever be used because old and made by furriners. Also, they just don’t look ugly modern enough for today’s Army.