06-14-2013, 02:56 PM
There's a growing consensus in the special operations community that op-rod driven M4's have been a waste of time. There are no noticeable reliability enhancements that have been realized at the training and operational levels within SOCOM, which is one reason why the SCAR-L went away so fast. The only saving grace for the SCAR-H is that it's lightweight, has a manageable recoil impulse for 7.62 NATO, and is relatively accurate for what it is. The fact that it eats SOPMOD suite accessories will be its downfall in the military, while civvies shell out 2-3x what it should cost on the US market.
I still can't over-emphasize the need for quality training, and that will never happen as long as TRADOC is involved with US Army schools and courses, starting with Initial Entry Training, AIT, PLDC, BNCOC, ANCOC, and the SGM's academy, let alone IOBC, ALC, and so forth. If you talk to anyone with a decent level of warrior focus, they will have an earful for you regarding these schools and the institutional idiocy they espouse.
If you hand an organization filled with leaders raised in this system a new toy, it will have almost zero impact on operational capability, because nobody will be competent enough to even conduct a wind-reading and compensation course, and even if the leadership found out that they had soldiers trained in such things, they will be side-lined and kept out of the training. My Sniper training was viewed with little notice in line companies, and in the rare event that I was asked to conduct preliminary marksmanship training limited to zeroing of the weapons on a Battalion range, I was openly ridiculed in front of the soldiers by our Battalion Sergeant Major, who knew jack and squat about connecting with targets.
I consistently qualified Expert (an easy feat in my experience), and would even double-time back and forth between the ammo point to get as much trigger time as possible as an example to my subordinates. We never spent near enough time on basic rifle marksmanship. The only productive range sessions I ever had were Platoon-level with good coaching and identified goals with measurable performance objectives, and those events were extremely rare.
In short, I see this whole subject as a training and logistics-based focus (90% or higher), not a particular design or component focus, as long as the systems are decent.
I still can't over-emphasize the need for quality training, and that will never happen as long as TRADOC is involved with US Army schools and courses, starting with Initial Entry Training, AIT, PLDC, BNCOC, ANCOC, and the SGM's academy, let alone IOBC, ALC, and so forth. If you talk to anyone with a decent level of warrior focus, they will have an earful for you regarding these schools and the institutional idiocy they espouse.
If you hand an organization filled with leaders raised in this system a new toy, it will have almost zero impact on operational capability, because nobody will be competent enough to even conduct a wind-reading and compensation course, and even if the leadership found out that they had soldiers trained in such things, they will be side-lined and kept out of the training. My Sniper training was viewed with little notice in line companies, and in the rare event that I was asked to conduct preliminary marksmanship training limited to zeroing of the weapons on a Battalion range, I was openly ridiculed in front of the soldiers by our Battalion Sergeant Major, who knew jack and squat about connecting with targets.
I consistently qualified Expert (an easy feat in my experience), and would even double-time back and forth between the ammo point to get as much trigger time as possible as an example to my subordinates. We never spent near enough time on basic rifle marksmanship. The only productive range sessions I ever had were Platoon-level with good coaching and identified goals with measurable performance objectives, and those events were extremely rare.
In short, I see this whole subject as a training and logistics-based focus (90% or higher), not a particular design or component focus, as long as the systems are decent.