From what looks like bona fide footage of the recent Haifa Street crackdown known as Operation Tomahawk, several US Stryker Brigade soldiers appear to be firing AK-47s at presumed insurgents. Isn’t this action specifically against US Military policy? And since this footage seems to have been released by Pentagon news/propaganda sources, if firing an AK-47 in combat is against US ROE, doesn’t this video send the wrong message to US troops?
Further, in terms of post-firefight investigations, wouldn’t a wound from an AK-47 point to insurgent activity, thereby fuzzing the numbers of Coalition-induced casualties?
The AK’s popular because it’s virtually jam-proof, a major plus in a sandy environment. This is common knowledge and I can easily imagine American GIs taking them off dead insurgents and using them. That this is somehow demoralizing or leads to inaccurate post-battle casualty counts is something I find rather dubious.
Perhaps Sgt Schwartz will come along soon and clear things up, but I don’t think the use of an AK-47 is against regulations. There’s even a US Army owner’s manual for the AK-47.
I belive members of some units are allowed to choose thier own weapons.
They could even be AK-74’s, which uses a 5.45 x 39 mm cartridge.
As for coalition-induced insurgent casualties, don’t the Iraq security forces use AK-47’s?
A friend of mine was in the marines in the first gulf war. According to him, US soldiers would sometimes pick up AK47’s and would use them until either they ran out of ammo or they got caught by their superiors and were forced to hand the weapon over. The way my friend described it, it didn’t sound like the soldiers got anything more than a minor verbal warning if they used the AK. The AK47 was also seen as “exotic” and the soldiers would often try to smuggle them back to the US as souvenirs.
There is a belief among some soldiers that the AK47 is a better weapon. It fires a larger round, which means that it can punch through something that will stop the round from an M-16, which is very useful when your enemy likes to hide behind things like buildings. The AK is a much more rugged weapon. It can get a lot dirtier than an M-16 and still fire. The M-16 by comparison is much more delicate and will jam if it gets dirty.
To be fair, the reason the M-16 jams much more easily is because it’s a more accurate weapon. It’s much more accurate because it uses very precisely machined parts. The AK47 is intentionally manufactured to very sloppy tolerances. This makes the AK much more tolerant of dirt (and cheaper to manufacture), but it also means the AK is much less accurate. You want to spray a bunch of bullets at your enemy? Use an AK. You want to pick an insurgant off the roof with one shot? Use an M-16.
The policy over there may have changed to allow soldiers to use the AK47, but even in the first gulf war when the policy was to use your own weapons not your enemy’s, there were US soldiers using AK47 on occasion.
As for the AK skewing the kill numbers, once someone is shot, unless you go to a great deal of forensic trouble you aren’t going to be able to tell if they were killed by an AK47 or an M-16. A dead guy with a hole in his head is just a dead guy with a hole in his head. How are you going to tell at a quick glance if that hole was made by an M-16 or an AK47?
Nitpick: technically speaking, the reliability of both weapons has essentially nothing to do with the geometric tolerances to which they were built, and everything to do with how tolerant the design of the mechanism is to contamination. The AK-47 and derivatives were loose fitting, to be certain, but the AR-15/M-16 is jam-prone when not kept clean due to the direct gas system. Other companies, notable Heckler & Koch with the HK-416, have taken the design and made it quite reliable.
Conversely, the open clearances of the AK-type design do not make for inherent inaccuracy, as demonstrated by adaptations of this design by other manufacturers, most prominently in the IMI Galil and Sig 550 rifles, provided that the mechanism is design such that clearances to not harm the accuracy. The AK uses the 7.62 × 39 mm, which does have about 40% more muzzle energy but is slower, heavier, and has less sectional density than the 5.56 × 45 mm NATO, giving it both less penetration and accuracy. (The Soviets later went to the 5.45×39 mm round in the AK-74 for frontline troops, though still issuing and producing the larger chambering through the Collapse.)
With spare exceptions for infiltration and SpecOps units, issuing or permitting non-standard weaponry is prohibited, and has been since before WWII. Out on the battlefield, however, local authority tends to turn a blind eye to such activities, particularly if (as with the M16) the standard issue weapons to not behave as advertised. And as someone has already noted, the Iraqi forces are armed with largely former East Bloc weapons as existing stockpiles and finances allow. Ditto with many of our nominal allies in Eastern and Central Europe, where MiG-29s can be seen in exercises with F/A-18s, and should the United States engage upon animosity with Iran, we may be facing F-4s and F-14s, if they still have any of them flying. What a weird world we live in.
I agree with Bear Nenno. It looks to me like the AKs are being fired by Iraqi military working with US Soldiers. They’re wearing different uniforms, unit patches and I don’t know for sure that they’re speaking english, although they might be saying something like “Shot! Shot!” I’m not sure.
I must not’ve been looking very closely; I was sure at the very least that third guy was US. I was also under the mistaken impression our Iraqi cohorts were issued M-16s. Thanks, Bear.
Do you know where I can get the full-length video?
Theis is complete guesswork, but if I was a US soldier patrolling the mean streets of Baghdad with a group of Iraqis armed with AK-47s, I’d probably go to some lengths to mix in. Being the odd man out in a scenario like that would be akin to carrying a sign saying “Shoot me first!”
US soldiers carrying AKs doesn’t really seem that novel. It was done in Vietnam. Every picture of a special forces guy in Afghanistan has him carrying an AK. Why not in Iraq.
They could be mercenaries. There are hired mercenaries/security contractors (approx 48,000) there from the U.S., UK, S. Africa, Bosnia, Chile, Colombia to name a few places. Until very recently they weren’t under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
A friend of mine who was in Iraq at the begining (he helped run security at Baghdad Airport, which he said was weird because he was essentially an army truck driver) said that when they first got there it was much stricter about arms. Guys couldn’t carry anything that wasn’t standard issue…except for knives. He said alot of his men carried a shit load of knives, ‘just cuz’. He said it started to become more lax by the time he left.
Mercenaries? Employed by whom? Isn’t a mercenary a soldier for hire, engaging in combat operations for and under the authority of a foreign government?
Security contractors, on the other hand, are civilians employed by private companies to provide security for principles or sites, all over the world. Are these civilians so special that an exception has been made for their conduct to fall under the jurisdiction of the UCMJ?
Security contractors are not mercenaries. I know most people don’t care, but it bugs me.
how does this work when you need to reload?
AK 47 rifles use 7 mm bullets. The Army’s standard M-16 uses 5.56 mm.
Does the US Army supply individual soldiers with clips of ammo that can only be used in the enemy’s rifles?