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Post by Hawkeye on Dec 22, 2014 11:03:11 GMT -5
For the sake of discussion, I wanted to point out something. Before I do, let me preface what I'm about to say. This has nothing to do with the people or training scenario/context in the video. I am just using it as an example.
As prepared/armed citizens, planning for a worst case catastrophic event scenario, we have to pay close attention to how we plan and train. There is a strong tendency to follow military doctrine on things. And while sometimes that is appropriate, other times, its not. One of the things that we are going to have to pay attention to, is ammo management. We simply aren't going to be carrying the same ammo load as a military unit, nor will we have the resupply capability that they have. We also wont have the virtually unlimited stocked supply they do. So ammo management is going to be critical. Notice at the 1:20 point, as far as I can tell, the entire team does a full mag dump, and he does so at the same aiming point/target. Now, you say you may need to lay down suppressive fire in reaction to am ambush. Typically, belt fed weapons are what lay down suppressive fire. In absence of them, you do it with whatever you have. You don't want to just do a mag dump though at a single target/aiming point, and you don't want your whole team doing it, especially at the same time. That's a good way for you to find yourself out of ammo in a hurry. You want to spread your fire over a broader area or at multiple targets (if visible), and at a slower rate of fire.
Notice in the video that they do those same mag dumps at multiple different times. You simply must take into consideration ammo management. Now, that's not to say that you don't ever do it. If the situation calls for it, then do it. But look hard ahead of time at what situations will require that. Don't just constantly practice doing mag dumps in response to an ambush, etc... Under fire, it will be really easy to speed up your rate of fire, but a lot harder to slow it down. Practice going slower now. 1-2 rounds a second is plenty fast (in general) for suppressive fire, especially if you have 2-3 people doing it. Again, the point here is to not get into the habit of doing full 30 round mag dumps in 10 seconds as your default response. If you do, then you are pretty certain to do it for real.
I'm probably not expressing what I want to say properly here, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say.
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Post by hudson5969 on Dec 22, 2014 12:54:35 GMT -5
Pretty sure I get what you are saying.
A great book I read along time ago is "Once a Warrior King". It was about the MAT teams in Vietnam. Guys would go out, I think it was no more than squad strength, and they would set up and live in allied Vietnamese villages in remote areas. They had no chopper or fast-mover support except at the time when they got resupply and team members rotated out. They had to train and lead the indigenous people on raids against the Cong and NVA. They had a 60mm mortar at the camp, one M79 and the rest was just rifles.
Anyway, I remember him talking about one time they were pinned by a bunch of NVA firing quad-50s at them. Any retreat would have been through the meat grinder. Between them and the enemy was an open field about 400m across. They were down to 3-4 magazines each, and there was4 of them and like 12-15 of the local Vietnamese.
What they did was spread out, 20m between in line abreast, and each person, in turn, fired one round every 4 seconds at whatever looked like it was going to fire at them. They made it to the other side of the field behind cover, with 2 magazines left. They charged up the field, putting 2-3 rounds into anything that was not them, and made the NVA retreat. They scrounged the rifles and grenades they could from the dead NVA, destroyed the qua-50s with NVA grenades, and used the scrounged rifles as their primaries on the way back.
So suppressive fire doesn't HAVE to be fast, though there are times I can see doing a mag dump being a pretty good idea like getting out of the kill zone of a close ambush, and often a round going into someone, or right by their head will suppress them as well as spraying hundreds of rounds.
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Post by Diz on Dec 22, 2014 14:30:45 GMT -5
This is probably one of the critical concepts for the civilian rifleman to embrace. All the youtube vids showing Seal teams doing full mag dumps (and 200 rd belt dumps) as they leap frog back in break contact drills, have given folks the impression that this is just "how it's done". Soccom in general has become famous for it's reliance on a tremendous amount of firepower to allow a small team to break contact. And this is all well and good, for them. What needs to be looked at is the viability of this technique in our particular situation. As Mosby pointed out in Vol 1 of "The Reluctant Partisan", learning how to do this with semi-automatic rifles, and limited ammo supply is a key skill set for us to learn.
As was pointed out by Winter and others, when Hawkeye and I did that "break contact" drill in prep for Dedicated Pro's DIRE class, learning to "stagger" your rate of fire is a key skill to keep you from running dry at the same time. If in fact you drill to do a full mag dump, upon contact, at least the team leaders need to be thinking of holding back, so they can provide cover fire while a lot of folks are re-loading. Buddy teams should practice coordinating this among themselves at their level. Maybe one guy goes cyclic first, while his buddy is sustained, then he goes cyclic once his buddy is reloaded. However you do it, some kind of staggered fire, and therefor mag changes, needs to be in place. If you react with a FPF (Final Protective Fire, aka "mad moment") every time you bump into something, you're gonna go dry real quick.
Again not to bang on these guys, Hawkeye and I did the same thing, but learn from it. Change. Improve.
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Post by Erick on Dec 22, 2014 22:29:15 GMT -5
Good points Hawk! (and Diz/Hudson)
Shameless plug: At MVT they stress Ammo management for the civilian fighter during the lanes.
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Post by Diz on Dec 23, 2014 8:16:03 GMT -5
Yeah and Max is spot on in that regard. That is why Yeager and company would do well to train with him, Mosby, or JC.
This isn't meant to be a dump on Yeager thread, but just look at what he's doing, and look at what Max is doing. Which do you think makes more sense?
Not a shamless plug in my book if it's the truth and adds to the discussion.
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Post by Hawkeye on Dec 23, 2014 13:10:11 GMT -5
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Post by panzer0170 on Dec 23, 2014 14:02:50 GMT -5
Ripple fire works reall well here. If you need to keep your ammo consumption AND EF heads down, firing @ 1-2 rounds a minute in a line works wonders. We used to train to do this when our guys get into dead ground and are advancing: aim is to keep up the appearance of heavy fire whilst not giving them a chance to move or see, but using as little ammo as possible because you're not actually covering much, at that point - your moving guys are in cover (stream bed, say) whilst they move. Now this is a team leader thing, not an individual one, and needs some level of training to pull off well.
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Post by Diz on Dec 25, 2014 14:08:30 GMT -5
Good point Panzer.
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Post by Sierra12 on Mar 10, 2015 23:56:39 GMT -5
We are fighting the tactical meme itself. As many have mentioned, there are countless videos, movies, and even combat Veterans who subscribe to high rates of fire giving the team a perceived overwhelming force through violence of action which shocks the conscious of the enemy. I too feel the high rate of fire tactic has its place, but knowing when to use it is key. Having "tactical patience" and maturity to fire or suppress known or likely enemy positions through ammunition saving rates of fire isn't cool. It doesn't look good on video, sometimes it comes off as slow and lazy to the uninitiated or unaware. One of the hardest concepts to convey is that logistics has a very real influence on tactics especially when your logistical supply chain may be minimal to nonexistent.
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winter
Junior Member
Posts: 479 
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Post by winter on Mar 11, 2015 1:16:15 GMT -5
You suppress the enemy so that you can maneuver. There's no right answer on ammo expenditure, there's only survivors.
If you had to pick between being dead with a full mag or alive with an empty rifle.....
It's a fine line.
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Post by Hawkeye on Mar 11, 2015 7:06:11 GMT -5
Obviously you do what you have to do in a given situation. Goes without saying. But what I'm talking about here is training. What your programming to do automatically, everytime. And as an armed citizen, preparing to defend your home/retreat, I don't think training to do mag dumps at the onset of every single contact is a good idea.
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Post by panzer0170 on Mar 11, 2015 8:36:52 GMT -5
If there is a 'scenario' in which a mag dump is necessary (or that rate of fire, at least, even if it's just 3-5 rounds) from a rifle, it is at pinch points in the firefight. It might be in an ambush (shock of force to break contact) It might be that you've got a large bit of ground to cover and plenty of ammo - get the weight of fire down. It might be that you've got 2 guys on approach to the enemy position and you need to MAKE SURE they don't move. If you've been laying down nice, deliberate aimed fire and you keep it relatively aimed and on target, that stuff is going to hold the EF down.
Either way, the RoF of your OWN guns has a psychological effect, and is a great way to control assaults. If you are winning, and the enemy is pinned, you should be firing as slowly as is EFFECTIVE and still winning. That gives you the most time available to achieve your objective (break ambush, retreat, assault, whatever) with the most directly available firepower available in case the situation changes.
In this, I think Judo is an excellent mindset; You use the minimum of force for the appropriate effect. You don't need maximum effect in everything you do. It's always nice to have a little bit more in the tank. There is no point devastating something you can just stop.
Everyone should train to achieve what they have with the minimal of resources. It's why for me it's important that everything should be trained and ingrained WITHOUT electronics (NVGS, Comms etc) before you start ramping up and using fancy gear. Someone who can use NVGS brilliantly and is great on a radio in a firefight but has never trained it free from toys is a liability waiting to happen.
There is NO excuse NOT to train without gear. There is a pyramid of things, and equipment is what takes you towards the point - but if you don't have a solid base your pyramid is never going to be as big as the other guys, and you'll struggle without the foundations.
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