A defensive weapon is one that is intended for self defense. An offensive weapon on the other hand is designed to take out targets. The M-16A2 is a semi automatic weapon which can be used to stop the bad guys from taking over your position. A .50cal machine gun or, according to NATO, a 7.62mm round can be used to offensively engage a secured target. It doesn’t seem to make much sense most of the time. The belief is that with a bullet beyond a certain size, a soldier is better able to inflict death and destruction. Whereas with a smaller round, that soldier will only inflict enough casualties to slow or stop the offensive.
from wiki: Though there were high hopes that the XM8 would become the Army’s new standard infantry rifle, the project was cancelled on October 31, 2005.
I don’t think you’re drawing conclusions correctly.
It would be a strange misuse of terms to label the M16 a “defensive weapon” but the AK-47 an “offensive” weapon based on the diameter of the bullets, as they serve the same purpose. Also, 7.62x51 NATO is a lot more powerful than 7.62x39, which is what the AK uses.
In any case, the conclusions you’re trying to draw don’t fit these premises at all. 5.56x45 and 7.62x39 are both intermediate rounds - they serve the same purpose and were designed with the same intent. The doctrine you are trying to apply doesn’t really apply at all to what you’re trying to say. A “defensive”, self defense weapon would be like giving a shorty M4 to a tanker. The design of the rifle, and its use, and not the round it uses, is what makes the distinction.
As far as I know, the Russians intended the 5.45 to replace the 7.62. Therefore, I think they fill the same roll. I don’t think the “offenders” got issued AK-47s and the “defenders” got 74s. The 7.62 X 54R (totally different from the 7.62 X 39), however, is fired from the Dragunov sniper rifle, which, I guess you could call a strictly offensive weapon by design.
The Russians also made RPK machine guns in both 7.62 and 5.45, so I don’t think they draw a distinction between offensive weapons and defensive based on the 2 cartridges.
Or an AKS-74U (Krinkov) to a Russian tanker. Fires the same round as a regular AK-74. Of course, a paratrooper might get the krink too, so that’s another example of “offense” and “defense” getting exactly the same weapon.
Depends on the situation, not the rifle or cartridge.
A lot of people think the 5.56mm is a bit too light to light so Remington has developed a 6.8mm cartridge that can be suitable for the M-16/M4 with of course a replacement barrel and bolt. It is physically only slightly larger than the 5.56mm but has much more kinetic energy.
I think the virtues of the AK are often oversold. It’s reliable because everything in the operating system is twice as big as it needs to be from the gas port to the size of the bolt carrier and this causes felt recoil to be much harsher than it might be otherwise. Ergonomics are also pretty poor with the shooter having to remove his hand from the pistol grip to get to the safety/selector.
As a former member of the Army I have a good bit of personal experience with a wide range of weapons.
The M16A2 is actually quite reliable in sand. I’ve had to use it in combat in desert environments and neither me or anyone under my direct command had any serious issues.
The biggest advantage, to my mind, is that the M16A2 doesn’t have a full-auto capability. That’s why I think the M16A2 is considered more accurate than the AK-74. Full automatic fire is never going to be as accurate as a 3 round burst shot. The United States military is one of the few in the world that doesn’t have, as its standard battle rifle, a fully automatic weapon. It goes in line with our doctrine of having high accuracy for all infantrymen. I can safely say that the average U.S. soldier is a more accurate shot than any other standard infantryman from most any other major military power.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of the M4. If we’re going to start issuing weapons with closer-quarters combat more in mind then I think we should actually start issuing true submachine guns which is what you’ll really want if you’re storming a house or something.
Of all the foreign-made guns I’ve tried out the most enjoyable to shoot was by far the Steyr Aug A1, but I’m not necessarily sure a gun in that line would be a good choice ase a main line service rifle.
The purpose of any weapon in the military that is not labeled “Riot Control” or “Less Lethal” is to KILL. Even the M9 bayonet is an offensive weapon. I don’t know what they’re teaching you in the land of Mental Health, but you’ve certainly got some wrong ideas about warfare. I can’t imagine where you’re getting this information.
You say “According to NATO”? When have they ever labeled certain sized ammunition as “defensive” or “offensive”.
And it does this by killing them.
And it can do more than that. If the enemy is dug into THEIR positions, the M16 can be used to close in on the enemy and KILL them. Nothing defensive about that.
What about the M249. Are you going to claim next that the SAW is defensive simply because it’s 5.56?? I really don’t know where you learned the garbage you’re repeating here, or if maybe you’re just making it up to help make you look ‘not so wrong’ about what you said earlier… I just don’t know. But it’s terribly inaccurate.
Nobody is going to take you word for something around here just because you’re in the Army. You’re going to have to do better than “According to NATO”. Can you cite any NATO document - or any other document besides your post - that considers the M16 a defensive weapon.
Do you really believe that our infantry sits in a position all day and waits for someone to attack them??? Is that how our Army fights? By killing in self-defense?
Wow. That really sucks ass for Hecklar and Koch. That’s for the update.
That’s an interesting point. And now I can think of a purely defensive weapon - the M231 Port Firing Weapon. It’s not really used at all for attacking anything. It’s just for shooting people who are running up on the Bradley from the rear. And 99% of the time, the things aren’t even screwed in.
Consider yourself lucky. The squad level weapon of the British army not only jammed (although this has been rectified I’m reliably informed) but was only capable of magazine feed! Can we lay down some suppressing fire? Yeah, sure, once we get these mags filled…
We used to have section level GPMGs but this was phased out when SA-80/LSW arrived. I think some were brought back as the dearth of firepower was causing much concern. There was talk of introducing the Minimi as the section level heavier weapon, but I don’t know if this is the case operationally.
I like the M-16, but if the military wants something lighter, faster, and needing less cleaning, so be it.
However, pardon the hijack, but I’d like to make note of this little gem that I found in the OP’s Wikipedia XM8 link. It features our wise and venerable Secretary of Defense imparting his pearls of wisdom:
Depends on the people, and it depends on the battle environment.
The guys on the ground in Afghanistan seem to want the M-14 back. Apparently the 7.62 is a superior round. This applies to open battlefields, where range, accuracy and killing power count more.
The XM8 is part of an experimental modular program.
The next big jump in munitions will include things like a variable munition slaved to a self-propelled round deployed as a caseless round.
In urban/CQB envirornments, you might want to go smaller and faster. The extreme version of this is the P-90, which uses a 5.7mm supersonic round with short range but high penetration.
The problem is in insisting on one weapon for everybody. The fucked-up idea of a universal weapon package started with MacNamara and his little Vietnam Era friends. The concept was about forced efficiency/economies of scale. Great idea for Ford Inc., but a lousy idea for a working combat organization.
Do those smart-fuse airburst things actually work then? Has anyone here had a go? It sounds like you sight your enemy’s cover, program (automatically) the smart fuse to burst a few feet further than this, aim at the gap next to the cover, and thus make instant evil-doer/invasion-repeller bolognaise. However, the airburst must counteract all of that forward momentum and then some in order to effectively ‘fire’ at the enemy from behind. Is this why the airburst part has been dropped due to poor lethality?
I believe there’s a misunderstanding concering the size of the round. The size won’t matter when the bullet hits a person. In fact, the instable 5.56 causes more damage than the “superior” 7.62, since it tumbles through the body. Also with its higher speed it might very well be more accurate. However, the “lightweight” 5.56 might begin to tumble and/or change direction before it reaches the target, by hitting insignificant obstacles like a twig. This is one of the reasons the 7.62 stays as machine gun ammo, even though the 5.56 does the job of killing just as good, if not better.
At least that’s what my CO told us, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He could be wrong though, and frankly, I don’t care which.
The liabilities of the M-16 series tend to be overstated, as do the strengths of the AK series. Let’s address the principal criticism of the M-16: perceived lack of reliability.
As originally developed by Eugene Stoner et. al. at Armalite, the AR-15/M-16 was a notably accurate, effective, and reliable rifle. This as a result of the Defense Dept. test issuing 1000 rifles in Vietnam as a part of project AGILE. Performance was, in fact, so good that the rifle was greenlighted for general issue to replace the M-14 which was expensive and had significant problems of its own. Soon after general issue, the M-16 developed such a poor reputation for reliability that it led to a congressional investigation. The reliability problems were traced to three sources:
Lack of proper (or in fact any) cleaning kits or instruction in care of the rifle.
The general issue rifle was not being manufactured by Colt to the same high standards as the Armalite- manufactured test rifles.
3.Perhaps most importantly, the rifle had been designed to use ammunition loaded with IMR powder. In order to save a few bucks, the Defense Dept. had recycled WWII-era ball powder and issued ammunition loaded with same. This powder led to vastly increased fouling, higher cyclic rate, and higher pressures. IOW, it made the gun dirty, cycled the action faster than all the springs had been designed to handle, and beat up the gun causing increased/accelerated parts wear.
Steps were taken immediately to rectify those problems.
Due to the recent festivities in Mesopotamia, the M-16 series has been criticiized for being sand-sensitive. The Jessica Lynch debacle is frequently cited as an example. What frequently goes unmentioned is that all the weapons in Lynch’s unit malfunctioned, including the sacred M-2 .50 cal. The problem in that unit was lack of PM, not poor weapon design. Consider that during WWII, the volcanic sand/dust encountered in the South Pacific played havoc with M1, Thompson SMG, and BAR unless they received adequate PM. In Korea, those same weapons froze and became useless without adequate and proper cold-weather PM. Yet nobody trumpets the unreliability of those weapons. The M-16-series is still suffering from a bad reputation dating the early problems in Vietnam. Is the M-16 the most reliable rifle in the world? I don’t know, I haven’t tried all the others. I do know this: In Defense Dept. tests, the M-16 is used as a control and typically outperforms newer designs. In the 80’s/90’s the series of tests that led to the adoption of SS109-type ammo also, surprisingly, showed that the M-16 was more reliable than the various 5.56 mm rifles fielded by our NATO allies. Bottom line: the M-16 is reliable enough.
As for the flawless reliability of the AK series, it is IMPO, an accumulation of 2nd and 3rd hand personal anecdotes. Has anybody here ever actually seen an after-action report on the AK? This is an international board, there must be somebody here who was part of an army that issues the AK and can describe mandated PM procedures? Whether somebody’s personally owned semi-auto AK functions well at the shooting range isn’t germane; nor is a personally owned AR-15. I also question whether the newer reciprocating-barrel rifle the Russians are fooling with shares the “legendary” AK reliability. IIRC, though it is shaped vaguely like an AK, it is entirely different internally.
In the end, the M-16 is acceptably reliable, more accurate than it needs to be, and is well-tested. Given the expense of replacing and retraining, I don’t see the point of replacing it with something that basically does the exact same thing i.e launch a conventional 5.56 mm projectile.
