In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
M16 verses AK: an assessment from Jane?s Infantry Weapons (12/20/2001)
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
M16 versus AK: an assessment from Jane's Infantry WeaponsBy Terry Gander, Editor, Jane's Infantry WeaponsWith the first few hundred of what may become a force of around 2,000 US Marines having flown in to an airport near Kandahar - now the last key Taliban stronghold following the fall of Kunduz over the weekend - it seems as though the closing phase of the Afghan ground campaign may be at hand. As these ground operations develop, they will inevitably once again emphasise many age-old factors regarding infantry combat. As always, the infantry will have to carry their own personal and immediate fire support weapons with them and, once on the ground, the old lessons of firepower will be re-emphasised. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda forces and their veteran foreign allies will never have forgotten how the mujahideen and their predecessors were able to safely hold out in the mountains where invading armies could reach them only with difficulty and at the cost of many casualties. Their Coalition opponents will have at their disposal all the many advantages that modern technology and communications can bestow, but those advantages will have to be purchased by establishing considerable supply facilities for everything from batteries to helicopter fuel. By contrast, the Taliban and their allies have repeatedly demonstrated how they can live off the land and under the harshest conditions, seemingly with few demands other than ammunition. The campaign will no doubt be long, arduous and unpleasant, as campaigns in Afghanistan have always been.Where clashes do occur between the US Marines and their Taliban/Al-Qaeda adversaries, they will once again mainly involve the design products of Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov. Despite their relatively short effective combat ranges of a maximum 400m or so, the M16 and AK-47/AKM will produce the bulk of the infantry's firepower as efficiently as they always have done. Yet in the mountains and the sparse open terrain that covers much of Afghanistan, extended effective ranges are almost certain to be demonstrated as more important than sheer volume of fire. Practical selected marksman rifles will no doubt come to dominate proceedings and anti-mat?riel rifles will come into their own. Rifle calibre machine guns such as the Russian 7.62mm PK series will be invaluable, especially when compared to their 5.56 and 5.45mm calibre equivalents under local conditions. By the time the next Jane's Infantry Weapons Foreword is published the veracity of these forecasts can be reassessed, but in the meantime the realisation that a full-blown war is in progress creates all the uncertainties (and inevitable surprises) that wars always produce.In truth, the current War against Terrorism has already been in progress for a very long time, although societies have tended not to appreciate the unwelcome fact. The ability of relatively small groups or individuals with some form of political or religious message to impose by force has been around for almost as long as organised societies have been established. It is due to all the many advantages of modern communications and weapon power that their chosen activities have recently become much more dangerous to the way we live. It will be a long struggle and a costly one, but now that Terrorism has declared open war on organised societies that do not agree with their opinions, the War against Terrorism has to become an accepted fact of life. It is also a fact of life that much of the actual combat to come will involve infantry weapons - not the complex weapon systems upon which so many financial and development resources were lavished to allow the old Cold War to be conducted. The contents of this Yearbook are thus worthy of study, for it is with these weapons that the War against Terrorism will be fought. 608 of 1968 words derived from the Foreword to Jane's Infantry Weapons 2002-2003 http://www.janes.com/regional_news/asia_pacific/news/jiw/jiw011126_1_n.shtml
Comments
"...hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil his prisoners in oil- if you take any- and torture his women and children. Then people will keep clear of you..." -Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, speaking at the Hague Peace Conference in 1899.
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
Ignis Natura Renovatur Integram