Are silenced weapons the rule when SEALs are on a mission?

Factual Questions
1

The reason I ask is found in this picture. I know next to nothing about firearms, but even to my naive eye it looks as if all the SEALs in the photo are carrying silenced weapons.

If I’m wrong, please tell me (and also please tell me then what is on the end of the barrels). If I’m correct, I’m curious to know if the use of silencers is standard on all covert SEAL operations.

BTW, the picture is taken from the website of Navy SEAL Lt. Mike Murphy who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his tremendous heroism in Afghanistan (Murphy is at the far right). His story, and that of Marcus Luttrell, is detailed in the book Lone Survivor.

2

Sure looks like it. The only suppressors I had seen in real life were thicker, but a quick search says those look like state of the art work.

At a minimum it would make the close communications that a SEAL team needs much easier.

3

Most Snake-Eaters typically try to Sneak-‘n’-Peek their way to and through an objective. Being small teams operating independently, stealth is a valuable survival tool.

While I’d cover my WAG with the disclaimer, “I ain’t a Snake Eater; never was, never will be,” it stands to reason.

4

Link. Pics purporting to be SEAL Team 8 training in Kuwait. They aren’t using silenced weapons.

5

I have my doubts, Ravenman. I never knowingly met any Snake Eaters in my time in Army green, but I did meet some of the peripheral support types (mostly Helo pilots, as well as a few Rangers that had supported SpecOps).

According to them, most Snake Eaters are avidly photo- and publicity-averse.

Kind of like Fight Club. So any yahoo in the local bar bragging about being SpecOps, probably isn’t.

These guys often operate behind enemy lines, intermingling with indig civvies, and having their mugs plastered all over a website is not conducive to covert ops.

True Story: I may have briefly met a real live Snake Eater while in Khobar Towers in '91. A buncha Wind Dummies were doing the “We’re Number 1! HUA! HUA! HUA!” routine, bragging to anyone who would listen about how they were the first to enter Iraq.

I finally got sick of listening to their gas-passing and told them that no, they weren’t the first. 1st Cav was the first conventional unit to enter Iraq, weeks before the ground war kicked off. But loonnngggg before the air war even commenced, Snake Eaters were crossing into Iraq, taking pictures, getting solid grids on key targets, OBA, (Order-of-Battle Assessment), etc.

When the air war did kick off, there were Snake Eaters in-country, calling in air strikes, aiming laser designators, and performing BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment).

The Wind Dummies got all huffy, and came as close to telling me to go fuck myself as military decorum allows before leaving to tell their bullshit somewhere else.

At the end of the table, chowing on some really crappy Anthony’s Pizza like it was the best thing on Earth, was a quiet, tall, lanky fellow in Army BDUs. No name tag, no “U.S. Army,” no rank insignia. When he got up to leave, he passed behind me and very quietly said, “Thanks.”

6

I have had a similar experience with a Delta operator, ExTank. You’d never known from looking at him… except maybe you would.

7

IANA expert in these matters.

But those devices appear to me to be too small to function as a sound suppressor for that caliber of a weapon. I’m thinking those are flash suppressors.

I’m sure someone will be along shortly with direct experience to clear up the matter of the guns any way.

8

The photo came off the U.S. Navy website.

http://www.navy.mil/search/photolist.asp

search 050628-N-0000X-001

9

i dont belive its a rule but there is not reason not to use them. they probably dont use them on every mission though. and also it depends on what kind of weapon they are carrying with them

10

Yeah, it’s possible, but heck – the OP and runner pat posted photos of SEALs. But I would concur that the folks formerly known as SEAL Team Six probably doesn’t pose for photos, no clue on the other teams.

In any case, I should have said in my previous post that the Special Operations community is investing in a new set of weapons known as SCAR, or the SOF Combat (or Capable) Assault Rifle. Being a weapon bought only for the special operations community, if silencers were standard, one would assume the rifles would have them, but they don’t. Pic.

I should emphasize that I know nothing of their tactics, only that SOCOM is buying a lot of these weapons. I do know that there’s a difference between covert and clandestine missions, but have no clue what that means in terms of weapons.

11

Covert is Sneak and Peak; clandestine is on the Q.T. SpecOps by definition is always on the Q.T.

As far as weapons go, I’m not enough of an expert to state that a threaded flash suppressor (seen in the pics you linked) can be unscrewed, and a silencer (or, more accurately, a supressor) screwed on in its place.

But I’m guessing that they might

12

Looking at the OP’s photo, all except the centre guy have short tubes. I think they are suppressors, just not real quiet, but enough to reduce the distance the gunshot carries, plus dust kicked up by the muzzle blast if they’re lying down. They’re probably still using normal 5.56mm ammo, so there still will be the “crack” downrange. The centre guy has a lot longer tube, I wonder if he’s a sniper and so needs to be real quiet. His mag looks bigger, so 7.62mm? Maybe loaded down to subsonic?

Have a look here, a local company and click on catalogue. Check out the suppressor’s lengths, the shortest 5.56mm ones are 250mm. Personally, I’m keen on one for the 12 ga. Just got to figure out why I want a quiet 12ga. :stuck_out_tongue: Have a look at the Whisper page too.

13

IANA either, but doesn’t silencer affect the… uh, performance of the weapon…? That is, the bullet leaves the weapon at a lesser speed than it would without…?

14

I believe that’s only the case if you use subsonic ammo to eliminate the crack sound of the bullet travelling faster than sound.

To reduce the bang sound, a silencer simply prevents the rapid escape and expansion of gases and, to my knowledge, doesn’t affect bullet speed.

15

Ok, thanks.

16

Modern suppressors, like those made by SureFire are quite compact, especially in comparison to older cans. (The article is full of rah-rah stuff about how great their silencers are, but from what I’ve read they’re not exaggerating much.)

Understand that for a battlefield rifle or carbine, the purpose of the suppressor isn’t to make the gun silent, which is impossible outside of Hollywood movies; the real purpose is twofold: to reduce muzzle flash for the operator, and to muffle the sound so that the operator’s hearing isn’t compromised and to make it more difficult to someone else to locate the shooter by sound. Some pistol/submachine gun silencers can make the weapon very, very quiet–barely louder than a cough, so that the mechanism of the gun can be heard–but these will typically use a subsonic round like a 149 grain 9mm.

Stranger

17

There are a couple of arms which are silenced so effectively that about the only noise they make is a barely audible “Pfuft”, and, for the firer, the click of the firing pin hitting the primer- the De Lisle Commando Carbine is one of them. The Nagant M1895 is another, and was used by the NKVD during WWII. It also has the distinction of being the only revolver that can be effectively silenced.

As Stranger says, it’s almost impossible to effectively silence a fullbore centrefire rifle. It is possible to silence a handgun, but with varying degrees of effectiveness, largely due to gas escape when the action opens (in a semi-auto) or between the cylinder and firing cone (in a revolver).

18

I’d say, "Drop your pants and prove it, but instead I’ll just believe you. :eek:

As I recall (too lazy to look it up), the FBI puts the ratio of fake special ops of all branches to real ones who were ever on the payroll at 200:1.

Martini Enfield, the gas seal on those Nagants was good enough to silence them? Cool!

19

Wakinyan

If you take a look at this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=430310&highlight=silencer

where we discussed silencers it would answer some of your questions. I certainly learned some surprising things. It seems that some of the more modern silencers actually improve accuracy and muzzle velocity as well as silencing the weapon. There are also a couple of fascinating youtube clips where you can barely hear the weapon at all.

Regards

Testy

20

Indeed it was. True, the 7.62x38R round was subsonic anyway, but the gas seal on the Nagant revolver is indeed good enough to enable a silencer to be used. The projectile is actually seated below the rim of the case, and as the round is fired, the case (in conjunction with the revolver’s unusual cylinder mechanism) creates a very effective gas seal between the cylinder and the firing cone. There’s a silenced Nagant M1895 in the CIA Museum, IIRC. The problem with them is that the silencer meant the ejection rod had to be removed, making the removal of fired cases somewhat problematic in the field…