Tony Williams Wrote:What I've said is that armies clearly regard full-auto as vital, because AFAIK there isn't a single assault rifle in service anywhere which doesn't have it...Yes, and as I've said, that is flawed reasoning. The fact that they teach, practice, and employ semi-auto to the almost complete exclusion of full-auto, shows that full-auto is not considered vital. Notice that even in the "break contact" drill seen at 3:40-6:10 in the video below, the carbines are fired solely in semi-auto mode.
[video=youtube;z4gofdTS6h8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4gofdTS6h8[/video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4gofdTS6h8
Quote:...therefore the performance of weapons in automatic fire needs to be considered.Well, if the weapon is going to have full-auto capability, then I certainly agree that controllability in that mode needs to be considered and evaluated. My question is, if they train and fight using only semi-auto fire, why bother making the individual weapon select-fire? It just adds to the cost and complexity.