9 ms·

Ah, an article I can comment on. I was an Infantry officer for 6 years and did all the normal schooling and a deployment. This is a pretty well done article.

by sa46 8y ago

Ah, an article I can comment on. I was an Infantry officer for 6 years and did all the normal schooling and a deployment. This is a pretty well done article. Here's some general ideas to keep in mind. - Most dismounted missions are run from trucks or an established forward operating base, so you don't carry a huge rucksack most of the time because you can just go back to your base. - Like the article states, even a day pack with body armor gets you up to 70lbs quickly. - Ammo is really heavy, it being made of lead and all. 100rds of 7.62mm ammo weighs about 7lb. You want at least 800rds per M240B. - Rucksack weights are sometimes inflated because it's a way to brag. - The Marine infantry officer course requirement for 152lb load is excessive. At that weight, you can only do an admin movement on a road. All the anecdotes I found about combat loads that heavy were for an initial, short infil followed by a stationary mission. I think the article nails the root cause towards heavier protective equipment. Public perception and the news cycle makes the death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflicts. It will be a long time before we get electronic mules in the Infantry. Adopting the mules adds a huge complexity budget to a simple movement. The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment.

taurath 8y ago
> Public perception and the news cycle makes the death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflicts. How does this compare to say Vietnam? It feels to me like the populace is worse divided, it’s disaffected. It seems like the new normal to have some god forsaken outpost where a few dozen soldiers die a year (not to mention thousands of local population - they’re even less of a consideration).
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  The populace is not more divided now. They just don't remember how it used to be. > “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.) https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
- Balero 8y ago
  There has been an order of magnitude less casualties in both Iraq(4,424) and Afghanistan(1,856), than in Vietnam (58,220).
  - skh 8y ago
    I agree with the overall point of your post but one should count contractor deaths. My understanding is that the U.S. military is much more reliant on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Vietnam.
    - pmorici 8y ago
      Even including contractors there was still an order of magnitude more casualties in Vietnam.
      - skh 8y ago
        Do you have numbers on contractor deaths? I’ve not seen them. I’m not disputing that Vietnam involved many times more deaths for Americans. Just stating that one should include contractor deaths since the U.S. military decided to contract out so much of its war effort.
        pmorici 8y ago
        Low hundreds if you only consider American citizens. There is some info on Wikipedia but it hasn’t been updated in a few years. Thing is there were also a lot of contractors in Vietnam just not the Blackwater type that gets a lot of the press in this era.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Yeah but no one in the median journalist’s social circle is dying. The change from a draft to a volunteer army was enormous. No one goes to war against their will anymore. People care much, much less if it’s not their brother, their son, their cousin. And when volunteers come home in a box their family knows they chose to go. Hard to organise a march against war out of people who either have no personal connection to the military or who want to honour the service of the fallen.
  - lbotos 8y ago
    >No one goes to war against their will anymore. <snark> Please tell that to the kids that are enlisting so they can actually afford to go to college in the US. </snark> I know there is a difference between drafting and enlistment, but I know there are a lot of people in the military because it was "the way out" of their situation.
    - nerpderp82 8y ago
      Advantages to having chronic structural income inequality? A not insignificant proportion of the US military is foreign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States_Marine_Corps#Hispanic_immigrants_in_the_Marine_Corps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States...
troels 8y ago
The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment. That sounds like a serious problem?
- sa46 8y ago
  Like many things in a large bureaucracy, the rules and norms are written in the blood and tears of previous generations. It has pros and cons. On the pros, you can usually count on everyone to not lose equipment. For the cons, you spend a huge amount of time dealing with inventories and maintenance. - At most Army schools you will fail if you lose any equipment. Ranger school does a 100% equipment check at the end of every mission and will fail you if any equipment is missing. - One of the more common ways for an officer to get "fired" (moved out of command early with a neutral or negative rating) is to lose property. This is harder than it sounds since even a Rifle company commander you might have a few million dollars of equipment. For mechanized units (tanks), it's much harder.
gadders 8y ago
What's your opinion on soldiers addiing more of a fitness emphasis to strength, rather than just cardiovascular fitness? EG: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/heavier-kit-stronger-soldiers/ https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/heavier-kit-stronger-soldiers/
- Balero 8y ago
  There is a tradeoff in fitness (a person can only train so much). If you want a stronger soldier, then they are gonna be worse in a different way, ie, lose some cardio. A person can only do, and maintain, so much.
  - gadders 8y ago
    True enough, but I wonder whether strength is more relevant now? I.e. they get helicoptered/driven to within 5-10 miles of their mission site with a ton of gear, rather than having to march 30 miles with their gear.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      >rather than having to march 30 miles with their gear. Not all of that is just physical conditioning, there's a sizable mental component to it that helps condition you to less than ideal situations so you don't go "welp, I'm tired, fuck it, I'm sitting down to die" when you're in a bad situation and instead you're like "I got this, I've done worse, this is nothing, just a little farther" as well as equipping you to know what your body is capable of and that the burning in your calves and quads isn't that bad yet and you know you've got to slow down for the next few minutes or that you've still got this much left in your tank and should be able to complete task without any rests. There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries.
      - Balero 8y ago
        "There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries." I'm curious, could you expand on this, or post a link for further reading?
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Yeah, if electronic mules are so great, I would expect to see some actual mules still in service.
- michaelt 8y ago
  According to "FM 3-05.213 (FM 31-27) Special Forces Use of Pack Animals" from 2004 [1] "Today and throughout the operational continuum, SF may find themselves involved in operations in rural or remote environments, such as Operations UPHOLD DEMOCRACY or ENDURING FREEDOM, using pack animals." [1] https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-213.pdf https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-213.pdf
  - tcpekin 8y ago
    Wow, this document is fascinating.
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      The USMC Small Wars Manual - has some fascinating info on how pre mechanisation troops used hoses mules oxen ect. https://archive.org/details/UsmcSmallWarsManual1940Reprinted1990 https://archive.org/details/UsmcSmallWarsManual1940Reprinted...
    - swish_bob 8y ago
      I love that it includes the line: > Elephants are considered an endangered species and as such should not be used by U.S. military personnel.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >I would expect to see some actual mules still in service. SF have been using horses in places like Afghanistan for the past 2 decades and while DARPA is working on a robotic mule the DoD has brought in consultants to advise them about actual mules. You'd be surprised what the military still does with animals, the Army even still has the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps with 700 something veterinarians for dogs, ceremony horses, working animals etc.
tim333 8y ago
>death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflict I guess the endgame is remote drones and similar with the controllers sitting in a safe building miles away?
rbanffy 8y ago
> Ammo is really heavy Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? One inherent limitation of firearms is that all the energy is released inside the weapon, which has, then, to dissipate the heat and remaining gases and particles. If bullets are self-propelled, a larger part of that output can be released outside the weapon, allowing it to be faster and impart more energy on impact. Unfortunately, it may make following the source of the bullet easier. > avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment. That a combatant needs to worry about paperwork is the cruelest thing I heard in a long time.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? Welcome to 1944. This is exactly why full power rifle cartridges were replaced with intermediate cartridges like 7.62x39 and 5.56x45. Kinetic energy is only loosely associated with effectiveness, terminal ballistics matters just as much if not more. In the real world intermediate calibers kill people dead enough reliably enough that it's a non-issue and marginal decreased effectiveness is outweighed by increased capacity. The overwhelming majority of shots fired will hit nothing useful anyway. Case-less ammo was tried (read up on the H&K G11) for slightly different reasons (weight saving was a goal but not the primary goal) but the cold war ended before it could make it into service.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Maybe a full power cartridge with a smaller/lighter bullet would be just as deadly as an intermediate cartridge with a heavier bullet. If you detonate the charge within the weapon and it produces a delayed detonation of a propulsion charge immediately after it leaves the barrel, it can effectively pack more energy than the equivalent cartridge with a lighter, faster bullet.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >Maybe a full power cartridge with a smaller/lighter bullet would be just as deadly as an intermediate cartridge with a heavier bullet. You are basically describing this[1][2][3] and it's not really that great at anything in particular (especially not military use) and are primarily used by people who want to shoot a trophy buck that's 400yd away. IMO they're kind of the hipster beer of the rifle world. They do little a boring old Bud won't do but they sure put a bigger hole in your wallet. Read up on the history of intermediate cartridges[4] and assault rifles (not "assault weapons", the former is a technical term, the latter is anything but). Earlier intermediate cartridges (were a standard size .30-ish cal bullet on top of a 30-40mm case instead of a 50-70mm case of a traditional full power rifle round. Later intermediate cartridges such as 5.56x45 and 5.45x39 (the Russians stuck a smaller bullet on top of the 7.62x39 cartridge) stick an even smaller bullet on top of an intermediate size case because the smaller bullet going faster does the job just as well with less weight (I'm painting with a really broad brush here). These 2nd gen intermediate cartridges are what I think you're getting at but you're hung up on the rifle cartridge. For simply killing people 0-350yd away you don't need that much bang, it's actually detrimental because it's extra weight and makes the firearm harder to handle. You also need thinking in terms of energy. All the energy in the world is useless if you can't transfer it to the target properly. It doesn't take much energy dissipated in a human torso to immediately incapacitate and kill. Better understanding of the needs of combat troops and nature of engagements and terminal ballistics is what led to the switch from intermediate cartridges starting in the 1940s. Of course you have to remember that everything is still a trade-off in cartridge design and the nature of the engagements you expect still plays a large role in what the "best" tool for the job is and often the difference is only marginal at best. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Winchester_Short_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Winchester_Short_Magnum [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Weatherby_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Weatherby_Magnum [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Winchester_Super_Short_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Winchester_Super_Short_Ma... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_cartridge
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Most infantrymen aren't carrying 7.62 and haven't since 'nam. The 240 is (on paper) crew served so you get to spread that load around several people. I agree with everything else though.
- MRD85 8y ago
  In a firefight, you need that ammo to get to the gun. This means it's not that easily distributed between an entire section. You're also going to need the correct sort of pouch on your armour/webbing to carry it. My experience is most of the time the majority of the gun ammo is carried by the gunner. The gun is also a lot heavier than a standard rifle.
  - yhoiseth 8y ago
    > The gun is also a lot heavier than a standard rifle. Good point. This is a big deal because load carried in your hands or, to a lesser degree, on a shoulder strap is more taxing than load carried on a vest.
  - LanceH 8y ago
    As the M60 gunner on my team (because I wasn't present when they decided who would carry it), I carried a lot more ammo. Weight was shifted, and others picked up batteries and radios that I might have carried otherwise. sa46 addresses it a little bit above that there are different loadouts depending on how you're operating. It wasn't uncommon to move from one place to another with 100 pounds, then drop gear and patrol with a far smaller loadout. Then again, sometimes your vehicle breaks down and you're now "man packable", which means you do need to be ready to carry a lot. This is really one of the sticking points for women in the military. It's nice to imagine that a specific job will always have a vehicle, but it is doctrine to be prepared to step into the role of infantryman.
- sa46 8y ago
  Yep, the lucky grunts in the weapons squad get to lug around the 7.62 ammo. The Army doesn't use the M249 as a crew served weapon (unlike the Marines) so the automatic rifleman on each team usually has 600 rounds of 5.56mm linked ammo to carry around. I'd be curious to see standard ammo load-out by conflict and country.
djyaz1200 8y ago
Thank you for your service to our country.

by sa46 8y ago

taurath 8y ago

> Public perception and the news cycle makes the death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflicts. How does this compare to say Vietnam? It feels to me like the populace is worse divided, it’s disaffected. It seems like the new normal to have some god forsaken outpost where a few dozen soldiers die a year (not to mention thousands of local population - they’re even less of a consideration).

ForHackernews 8y ago
The populace is not more divided now. They just don't remember how it used to be. > “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.) https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
Balero 8y ago
There has been an order of magnitude less casualties in both Iraq(4,424) and Afghanistan(1,856), than in Vietnam (58,220).
- skh 8y ago
  I agree with the overall point of your post but one should count contractor deaths. My understanding is that the U.S. military is much more reliant on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Vietnam.
  - pmorici 8y ago
    Even including contractors there was still an order of magnitude more casualties in Vietnam.
    - skh 8y ago
      Do you have numbers on contractor deaths? I’ve not seen them. I’m not disputing that Vietnam involved many times more deaths for Americans. Just stating that one should include contractor deaths since the U.S. military decided to contract out so much of its war effort.
      - pmorici 8y ago
        Low hundreds if you only consider American citizens. There is some info on Wikipedia but it hasn’t been updated in a few years. Thing is there were also a lot of contractors in Vietnam just not the Blackwater type that gets a lot of the press in this era.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Yeah but no one in the median journalist’s social circle is dying. The change from a draft to a volunteer army was enormous. No one goes to war against their will anymore. People care much, much less if it’s not their brother, their son, their cousin. And when volunteers come home in a box their family knows they chose to go. Hard to organise a march against war out of people who either have no personal connection to the military or who want to honour the service of the fallen.
- lbotos 8y ago
  >No one goes to war against their will anymore. <snark> Please tell that to the kids that are enlisting so they can actually afford to go to college in the US. </snark> I know there is a difference between drafting and enlistment, but I know there are a lot of people in the military because it was "the way out" of their situation.
  - nerpderp82 8y ago
    Advantages to having chronic structural income inequality? A not insignificant proportion of the US military is foreign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States_Marine_Corps#Hispanic_immigrants_in_the_Marine_Corps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States...

troels 8y ago

The Army decided some years ago to give every Company (~140 people) a Raven drone for recon. However, it's a huge deal if it gets lost (if the GPS guidance were to suddenly fail), so no one ever uses them to avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment. That sounds like a serious problem?

sa46 8y ago
Like many things in a large bureaucracy, the rules and norms are written in the blood and tears of previous generations. It has pros and cons. On the pros, you can usually count on everyone to not lose equipment. For the cons, you spend a huge amount of time dealing with inventories and maintenance. - At most Army schools you will fail if you lose any equipment. Ranger school does a 100% equipment check at the end of every mission and will fail you if any equipment is missing. - One of the more common ways for an officer to get "fired" (moved out of command early with a neutral or negative rating) is to lose property. This is harder than it sounds since even a Rifle company commander you might have a few million dollars of equipment. For mechanized units (tanks), it's much harder.

gadders 8y ago

What's your opinion on soldiers addiing more of a fitness emphasis to strength, rather than just cardiovascular fitness? EG: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/heavier-kit-stronger-soldiers/ https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/heavier-kit-stronger-soldiers/

Balero 8y ago
There is a tradeoff in fitness (a person can only train so much). If you want a stronger soldier, then they are gonna be worse in a different way, ie, lose some cardio. A person can only do, and maintain, so much.
- gadders 8y ago
  True enough, but I wonder whether strength is more relevant now? I.e. they get helicoptered/driven to within 5-10 miles of their mission site with a ton of gear, rather than having to march 30 miles with their gear.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >rather than having to march 30 miles with their gear. Not all of that is just physical conditioning, there's a sizable mental component to it that helps condition you to less than ideal situations so you don't go "welp, I'm tired, fuck it, I'm sitting down to die" when you're in a bad situation and instead you're like "I got this, I've done worse, this is nothing, just a little farther" as well as equipping you to know what your body is capable of and that the burning in your calves and quads isn't that bad yet and you know you've got to slow down for the next few minutes or that you've still got this much left in your tank and should be able to complete task without any rests. There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries.
    - Balero 8y ago
      "There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries." I'm curious, could you expand on this, or post a link for further reading?

erikpukinskis 8y ago

Yeah, if electronic mules are so great, I would expect to see some actual mules still in service.

michaelt 8y ago
According to "FM 3-05.213 (FM 31-27) Special Forces Use of Pack Animals" from 2004 [1] "Today and throughout the operational continuum, SF may find themselves involved in operations in rural or remote environments, such as Operations UPHOLD DEMOCRACY or ENDURING FREEDOM, using pack animals." [1] https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-213.pdf https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-213.pdf
- tcpekin 8y ago
  Wow, this document is fascinating.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    The USMC Small Wars Manual - has some fascinating info on how pre mechanisation troops used hoses mules oxen ect. https://archive.org/details/UsmcSmallWarsManual1940Reprinted1990 https://archive.org/details/UsmcSmallWarsManual1940Reprinted...
  - swish_bob 8y ago
    I love that it includes the line: > Elephants are considered an endangered species and as such should not be used by U.S. military personnel.
ryanmercer 8y ago
>I would expect to see some actual mules still in service. SF have been using horses in places like Afghanistan for the past 2 decades and while DARPA is working on a robotic mule the DoD has brought in consultants to advise them about actual mules. You'd be surprised what the military still does with animals, the Army even still has the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps with 700 something veterinarians for dogs, ceremony horses, working animals etc.

tim333 8y ago

>death of American service member a bigger deal than in past conflict I guess the endgame is remote drones and similar with the controllers sitting in a safe building miles away?

rbanffy 8y ago

> Ammo is really heavy Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? One inherent limitation of firearms is that all the energy is released inside the weapon, which has, then, to dissipate the heat and remaining gases and particles. If bullets are self-propelled, a larger part of that output can be released outside the weapon, allowing it to be faster and impart more energy on impact. Unfortunately, it may make following the source of the bullet easier. > avoid the fallout associated with losing Army equipment. That a combatant needs to worry about paperwork is the cruelest thing I heard in a long time.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Wouldn't it be possible to carry the same amount of kinetic energy with lighter ammunition? Welcome to 1944. This is exactly why full power rifle cartridges were replaced with intermediate cartridges like 7.62x39 and 5.56x45. Kinetic energy is only loosely associated with effectiveness, terminal ballistics matters just as much if not more. In the real world intermediate calibers kill people dead enough reliably enough that it's a non-issue and marginal decreased effectiveness is outweighed by increased capacity. The overwhelming majority of shots fired will hit nothing useful anyway. Case-less ammo was tried (read up on the H&K G11) for slightly different reasons (weight saving was a goal but not the primary goal) but the cold war ended before it could make it into service.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  Maybe a full power cartridge with a smaller/lighter bullet would be just as deadly as an intermediate cartridge with a heavier bullet. If you detonate the charge within the weapon and it produces a delayed detonation of a propulsion charge immediately after it leaves the barrel, it can effectively pack more energy than the equivalent cartridge with a lighter, faster bullet.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Maybe a full power cartridge with a smaller/lighter bullet would be just as deadly as an intermediate cartridge with a heavier bullet. You are basically describing this[1][2][3] and it's not really that great at anything in particular (especially not military use) and are primarily used by people who want to shoot a trophy buck that's 400yd away. IMO they're kind of the hipster beer of the rifle world. They do little a boring old Bud won't do but they sure put a bigger hole in your wallet. Read up on the history of intermediate cartridges[4] and assault rifles (not "assault weapons", the former is a technical term, the latter is anything but). Earlier intermediate cartridges (were a standard size .30-ish cal bullet on top of a 30-40mm case instead of a 50-70mm case of a traditional full power rifle round. Later intermediate cartridges such as 5.56x45 and 5.45x39 (the Russians stuck a smaller bullet on top of the 7.62x39 cartridge) stick an even smaller bullet on top of an intermediate size case because the smaller bullet going faster does the job just as well with less weight (I'm painting with a really broad brush here). These 2nd gen intermediate cartridges are what I think you're getting at but you're hung up on the rifle cartridge. For simply killing people 0-350yd away you don't need that much bang, it's actually detrimental because it's extra weight and makes the firearm harder to handle. You also need thinking in terms of energy. All the energy in the world is useless if you can't transfer it to the target properly. It doesn't take much energy dissipated in a human torso to immediately incapacitate and kill. Better understanding of the needs of combat troops and nature of engagements and terminal ballistics is what led to the switch from intermediate cartridges starting in the 1940s. Of course you have to remember that everything is still a trade-off in cartridge design and the nature of the engagements you expect still plays a large role in what the "best" tool for the job is and often the difference is only marginal at best. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Winchester_Short_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Winchester_Short_Magnum [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Weatherby_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.270_Weatherby_Magnum [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Winchester_Super_Short_Magnum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Winchester_Super_Short_Ma... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_cartridge

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

Most infantrymen aren't carrying 7.62 and haven't since 'nam. The 240 is (on paper) crew served so you get to spread that load around several people. I agree with everything else though.

MRD85 8y ago
In a firefight, you need that ammo to get to the gun. This means it's not that easily distributed between an entire section. You're also going to need the correct sort of pouch on your armour/webbing to carry it. My experience is most of the time the majority of the gun ammo is carried by the gunner. The gun is also a lot heavier than a standard rifle.
- yhoiseth 8y ago
  > The gun is also a lot heavier than a standard rifle. Good point. This is a big deal because load carried in your hands or, to a lesser degree, on a shoulder strap is more taxing than load carried on a vest.
- LanceH 8y ago
  As the M60 gunner on my team (because I wasn't present when they decided who would carry it), I carried a lot more ammo. Weight was shifted, and others picked up batteries and radios that I might have carried otherwise. sa46 addresses it a little bit above that there are different loadouts depending on how you're operating. It wasn't uncommon to move from one place to another with 100 pounds, then drop gear and patrol with a far smaller loadout. Then again, sometimes your vehicle breaks down and you're now "man packable", which means you do need to be ready to carry a lot. This is really one of the sticking points for women in the military. It's nice to imagine that a specific job will always have a vehicle, but it is doctrine to be prepared to step into the role of infantryman.
sa46 8y ago
Yep, the lucky grunts in the weapons squad get to lug around the 7.62 ammo. The Army doesn't use the M249 as a crew served weapon (unlike the Marines) so the automatic rifleman on each team usually has 600 rounds of 5.56mm linked ammo to carry around. I'd be curious to see standard ammo load-out by conflict and country.

djyaz1200 8y ago

Thank you for your service to our country.