04-22-2014, 05:55 AM
There were a lot of different factors that contributed to high Full Auto use in Vietnam:
* One of the most used, let relatively unknown practices was probing and H&I fires, which were SOP with a lot of units at night in Vietnam. At a certain prescribed time, usually just after sunset, the entire perimeter of a unit would go Captain Insano cyclic rate, mag after mag into the surrounding areas, because sappers would start their close-in infiltration right at that time with satchels of explosives destined for key positions within the defensive perimeter. A butt-nekkid Asian male with but a loincloth can slip through some of the most well-manned defensive positions under cover of darkness. Untold millions of rounds of 5.56x45 were expended in this manner in Vietnam. Night Observations Devices were very limited in use and issue at the time, and their widespread adoption in the US Infantry units has changed many things about the way we occupy and defend positions at night.
* Quality of Training. With a significant number of draftees, who had no battle drill training in the units they were incorporated into, arriving as replacements in the ill-advised individual year-long tour units especially, a lot of inexperienced soldiers would just revert to going AUTO as a way to compensate for their lack of training. Units that trained, deployed, and redeployed had much better fire discipline, but AUTO was still used a lot more then.
Some More Recent Points
* We already had guys in my unit in 2003 who went up higher in the maintenance echelons and specifically asked for AUTO Fire Control Groups to be installed in their M4's, which surprised me that they even had the parts. Our biggest complaint dating back to the M16A2 is that worthless Burst mechanism and its ill effects on accurate fire in the SEMI mode.
* In the line, the only appropriate place for AUTO from an M4 is at key leader or experienced junior enlisted men discretion, when a SAW goes down at a critical moment where suppressive fire is needed. Nobody should go into combat with the intent of letting loose with a 30rd mag-fed weapon on AUTO as their primary mode of fire, with the rare exception of a few guys on a recon team in dense terrain.
* I often see "professional" armies in Europe that still do this, but it is a major problem if you are not hitting the enemy, and expending your combat power, while bumping up the demand on the system as a whole to resupply you with more ammunition. Everything about it screams inexperience, unprofessionalism, and a general lack of military discipline outside of the scenarios I explained. Even on our belt-fed weapons, we trained to fire 3-5, or 5-7 rounds bursts at certain intervals to preserve the barrels.
* One of the most used, let relatively unknown practices was probing and H&I fires, which were SOP with a lot of units at night in Vietnam. At a certain prescribed time, usually just after sunset, the entire perimeter of a unit would go Captain Insano cyclic rate, mag after mag into the surrounding areas, because sappers would start their close-in infiltration right at that time with satchels of explosives destined for key positions within the defensive perimeter. A butt-nekkid Asian male with but a loincloth can slip through some of the most well-manned defensive positions under cover of darkness. Untold millions of rounds of 5.56x45 were expended in this manner in Vietnam. Night Observations Devices were very limited in use and issue at the time, and their widespread adoption in the US Infantry units has changed many things about the way we occupy and defend positions at night.
* Quality of Training. With a significant number of draftees, who had no battle drill training in the units they were incorporated into, arriving as replacements in the ill-advised individual year-long tour units especially, a lot of inexperienced soldiers would just revert to going AUTO as a way to compensate for their lack of training. Units that trained, deployed, and redeployed had much better fire discipline, but AUTO was still used a lot more then.
Some More Recent Points
* We already had guys in my unit in 2003 who went up higher in the maintenance echelons and specifically asked for AUTO Fire Control Groups to be installed in their M4's, which surprised me that they even had the parts. Our biggest complaint dating back to the M16A2 is that worthless Burst mechanism and its ill effects on accurate fire in the SEMI mode.
* In the line, the only appropriate place for AUTO from an M4 is at key leader or experienced junior enlisted men discretion, when a SAW goes down at a critical moment where suppressive fire is needed. Nobody should go into combat with the intent of letting loose with a 30rd mag-fed weapon on AUTO as their primary mode of fire, with the rare exception of a few guys on a recon team in dense terrain.
* I often see "professional" armies in Europe that still do this, but it is a major problem if you are not hitting the enemy, and expending your combat power, while bumping up the demand on the system as a whole to resupply you with more ammunition. Everything about it screams inexperience, unprofessionalism, and a general lack of military discipline outside of the scenarios I explained. Even on our belt-fed weapons, we trained to fire 3-5, or 5-7 rounds bursts at certain intervals to preserve the barrels.