Sipsey Street Irregulars: Marines Leaders Finally Embrace the M4 Carbine. Also: "More Powerful, Special-Ops Sniper Rifle Unlikely for Marine Snipers."

Friday, July 31, 2015

Marines Leaders Finally Embrace the M4 Carbine. Also: "More Powerful, Special-Ops Sniper Rifle Unlikely for Marine Snipers."

"Change is slow. Marine Corps senior leaders have always had an extreme fondness for anything that can double as a club for beating the enemy to death."

Perhaps. However, there is also this comment which I believe to be on point: "I don't see any disadvantage -- the M-16A4 is a good weapon and in open combat in Afghanistan been proven better than the kiddy M-4 in open area combat." I suppose if you think we will ALWAYS be fighting in cities . . .

Also for the traditionalists: The U.S. Marine Corps is sticking with its Vietnam-era, M40 sniper rifle series, despite complaints from scout snipers who say they need the modern, longer-range weapons used by special-ops snipers. Marine scout snipers are considered to be among the best snipers in the world, but many are frustrated at the limitations of the current M40A5 sniper rifle. The A5 is based on the Remington M700 short-action design that's chambered for 7.62x51mm NATO, like the original M40 Marines used in Vietnam.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: So it's just really a AR!5. ?; July 31, 2015 at 11:26 AM
Anonymous said...: As for the sniper rifle story, I think that the .338 being too expensive is a bullshit excuse because the quality of the sniper means using only one bullet. And as for 7.62 being a good round since Vietnam, you're talking about two different terrains. Afghanistan being arid, wide open country where you can shoot as far as the eye can see is quite different than heavy jungle overgrowth where you can't see a target 25 yds. away in some cases. That happens to be the reason I never purchased anything more powerful than the 7.62. My area is woodland and houses. Sometimes in winter, when everything is dead, you can spot a potential target 800 yds. out, but even in those conditions you can never see beyond that. So what good does the .338 do me? If someone has a good reason for me to have the .338 I'd love to hear it. Maybe I'm missing something. But if I were in Afghanistan I'd love to have it; July 31, 2015 at 11:41 AM
Capitalist Eric said...: Didn't Chris Kyle do most of his kills with a .300 Win-mag?

Still uses the .30 cal bullet but at faster speeds, so flatter trajectory, less windage (than 308W) and good terminal ballistics.

Using a .338 for target interdiction- killing trucks and helicopters- makes sense. But on a 180# man, it seems overkill. IMHO.; August 1, 2015 at 2:08 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Friday, July 31, 2015

Marines Leaders Finally Embrace the M4 Carbine. Also: "More Powerful, Special-Ops Sniper Rifle Unlikely for Marine Snipers."

3 comments:

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