your favorite military weapon no longer in service
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Damn those are sexy guns.Assassinator said:The X8 rifle. Damned shame they cancelled that, it looks sexy, really future-ish. Would've loved to see that as the next standard rifle, but nooooo....
I want one, like, now.
Mine would be the humble and deadly Katana.How can you not like that thing?
It was officially switched to the M9 to conform to NATO rules, mostly the only groups who carry 1911's are special ops groups who are allowed to carry whatever the hell they want.Thamous said:Actually, I think some Marine units have yet to phase out the M1911, so it would technically still be in service.Koeryn said:The 1911 was the service pistol from 1911-1990, totally beats out the Enfield for service history.EMFCRACKSHOT said:
even if it's not completely authentic, that's a very nice purchase. Good job on grabbing that one!tsb247 said:I couldn't really afford it at the time. Besides, I had bought a Winchester 1897 trench shotgun a few days prior. Mine is NOT a Norinco, but it is not 100% authentic. It is a Winchester factory rebuild.Koeryn said:
similar to this (although I'm sure you already know what they look like).
As far as I know, it's the only shotgun to have a hook, specifically designed to allow you to fire it one handed around a riot shield. The hook goes around your elbow to support the weapon.Venatio said:
Ya, I have to say that is one heck of a weapon. Dont know about performance nor do I really care.josh1840 said:
Of course not! For one, the 7.62x51mmNATO round you're firing would be very much over-kill for something like a cup of coffee. For two, c'mon why would you waste the coffee? Unless you don't like coffee... But that seems like a little too much effort just to show your dislike, I mean, you'd have to brew it, pour it...TheHitcher said:Yeah, but I'm not gonna use an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas powered semi-automatic weapon to shoot a cup of coffee, am I?Koeryn said:Actually, guns are a lot of fun when you go to a range. Or shoot coffee cans full of Tannerite...TheHitcher said:
Er, shouldn't knock whatcha 'aven't tried.
EDIT: And the XM8 is hideous.
The M1 Garand. Saved my ass countless times in Call of Duty. When I learned that my great-grandpa owned one, I was overjoyed. He actually took me down to the firing range and let me fire a clip.
too bad I'm a lousy shot. What would have been one of the coolest moments in my life was ruined by only three of eight shots hitting the target at all.
by the way, how do you pronounce that? GAR-and or gar-AND?
too bad I'm a lousy shot. What would have been one of the coolest moments in my life was ruined by only three of eight shots hitting the target at all.
by the way, how do you pronounce that? GAR-and or gar-AND?
The M1 line lives on in US service as the M-14. While rare, it is issued from time to time as a designated marksman rifle - that is, a rifle for a soldier meant to provide a sniper's services without going through the trouble to find a sociopath. I mean no disrespect to snipers obviously - I've just never met one that seemed quite right in the head. I suppose you have to be a little off to volunteer for a job that involves waiting around for days for the opportunity to look your opponent in the face before you pull the trigger.Cody211282 said:
I think video games have done a terrible job of explaining precisely why the grenade launcher exists. The reason is simple enough - the grenade is the most brutally effective close combat implement ever invented by mankind. They are small enough that one can carry many of them into battle, yet they have a startingly large radius in which they will render something dead or at least injured and unhappy. They are useful on the offense (either for supression or simply removing entrenched opposition without having to stick your head around a corner to shoot) or on the defense (not as good as a claymore but they can stop a rush, especailly en masse.). Unfortunately, even a well trained and skilled soldier is going to struggle to sling one more than 35 or 40 yards. Artillery in all it's forms is exceptionaly good at delivering steel on target and thanks to it's long proud history of causing death and serious injury it is still considered the king of the battlefield. Unfortunately, thanks to the limitations of the inherent design, these weapons have a miniumum range. Simply put, even a small (say 60 or 80mm) morter cannot fire on a target closer than a few hundred yards.sneakypenguin said:
For ages, this problem existed - too close for the big guns but too far for grenades. So, at some point, an enterprising group of engineers set out to solve the problem of bridging this relatively explosives free gap. Early attempts resulted in the rifle grenade. While functional, the unit was cumbersome and difficult to use. For one, the average rifle was not designed for such a use, and secondly, unless one wanted to have a terrible day they needed to replace their ammunition with blanks in order to utalize a rifle grenade (there's a damn good chance trying to fire a rifle grenade with a live round will cause the grenade to detonate on the weapon). The first truly successful attempt was found in the form of the venerable M79 - which first saw service in vietnam. Like any weapon, it was not without it's flaws. In this case, while the weapon served admirably in the role of "deliver explosives to people you couldn't previously" and there were a wide variety of speciality rounds (buckshot, flare and the like) at the end of the day your grenider had only his grenade launcher and a handgun to his name. At long last, we arrived at the M203 (and the 30mm russian equivalent), which finally seems to have solved the problem. While it is a bit more difficult to reload, the simple fact that one's sidearm has been upgraded from "handgun" to "rifle" means the soldier has tremendous utility on the battlefield and can, at any given moment, act as rifleman or grenadier.
Of course, there have been attempts to improve the permormance. Higher muzzle velocity and better rifling can result in an easier shot, but in doing so one loses out on a great deal of other utility (for example, one cannot launch flares effectively out of a weapon with a muzzle velocity in the thousands of FPS - the flare would end up too high to be useful for illumination). Just as important, the indirect nature of the weapon is as much a boon as a curse - afterall, one can often lob the round over an intervening obstacle - something you can't do with a higher velocity round.
Reducing the round's size for any reason is an exercise in futility - at the end of the day you still rely on weight in explosive to do the job. At 40mm HEDP you have a lethal radius of but 3 meters (down from 5 for the M67 grenade). A 25mm round, even well designed will at best have a lethal radius of a meter or so - quite a step back. Weight of the weapon becomes important as well. At just over 8 lbs loaded, the M-16 is considered "light" compared to weapons of it's era yet even this weapon can rapidly become a burden. Once a weapon exceeds around 10lbs, your average person's accuracy will suffer in most common scenarios (shooting while standing, shooting while kneeling, shooting while prone without support). Once a weapon becmoes heavy enough, fatigue alone will introduce problems to the shooting equation.
Of course, all of these problems may be overcome with clever engineering at some point. The real trouble lies in the simple fact that, even as lethality increase, personal armor becomes more prevelant (and protective). Offensive technology has long outpaced defensive tech, but when you start looking at taking something very small and light (say a grenade fragment) and try and kill someone, even small amounts of protection start to make a huge difference. The flack jacket for example is nothing more than many layers of heavy ballistic nylon and will stop neither bullet nor a knife. Yet, it does an admirable job of slowing or stopping grenade fragments enough that they do not produce life threatnening injuries to the torso. Now, major nations equip their combat forces with legitimate body armor. In the case of the US military, the vest itself provides protection from common handgun rounds and the addition of the SAPI (small arms protective inserts) plates mean it does a fair job of stopping rifle rounds as well. With all components in place (neck/goin/throat protector, shoulder protector) a soldier becomes fantastically well protected against fragments to the vitals.
Of course, this is not always a boon - soldiers survive horrific injuries that previously would have left them dead on the battlefield thanks to the armor, but it often comes at the price of one or more limbs.
My favorite would be the B-2 bomber. Those planes are the best long range bombers ever made. I was in Boston MA for the fourth of July celebration in 2000, and the flyover that year was a B-2. The thing that I remember the most was how silent it was, you would expect a plane that big to be loud, but even when it flew over it sounded more like an airliner at cruising altitude.
Hehe, well if it takes a bullet like that to prove a point (although that contradicts my last post) so be it.Koeryn said:Of course not! For one, the 7.62x51mmNATO round you're firing would be very much over-kill for something like a cup of coffee. For two, c'mon why would you waste the coffee? Unless you don't like coffee... But that seems like a little too much effort just to show your dislike, I mean, you'd have to brew it, pour it...TheHitcher said:Yeah, but I'm not gonna use an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas powered semi-automatic weapon to shoot a cup of coffee, am I?Koeryn said:Actually, guns are a lot of fun when you go to a range. Or shoot coffee cans full of Tannerite...TheHitcher said:
Er, shouldn't knock whatcha 'aven't tried.
EDIT: And the XM8 is hideous.
Indeed I dislike coffee, but of course I wouldn't shoot my own cup of coffee!
I'd shoot someone elses! And with a bullet like that...well let's just say it'd be a bloody mess
Yeah! A guy came in just as I was filling out my Form 4473 looking for that shotgun. He was a cowboy shooter, and he offered to buy it from me. I had to tell him I wasn't selling because it was for a collection. He was disappointed, but he understood.Koeryn said:
Exactly! =D *highfives*TheHitcher said:Hehe, well if it takes a bullet like that to prove a point (although that contradicts my last post) so be it.Koeryn said:Of course not! For one, the 7.62x51mmNATO round you're firing would be very much over-kill for something like a cup of coffee. For two, c'mon why would you waste the coffee? Unless you don't like coffee... But that seems like a little too much effort just to show your dislike, I mean, you'd have to brew it, pour it...TheHitcher said:Yeah, but I'm not gonna use an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas powered semi-automatic weapon to shoot a cup of coffee, am I?Koeryn said:Actually, guns are a lot of fun when you go to a range. Or shoot coffee cans full of Tannerite...TheHitcher said:
Er, shouldn't knock whatcha 'aven't tried.
EDIT: And the XM8 is hideous.
Indeed I dislike coffee, but of course I wouldn't shoot my own cup of coffee!
I'd shoot someone elses! And with a bullet like that...well let's just say it'd be a bloody mess
can't remember the name of it but it was a skunk works proposition for a total annihilation device in the cold war, meant to fly so fast through the atmosphere at high altitude, that the titaniumn skin alloy would glow red in the night sky, as it ejected its payload of in excess of 20 nuclear bombs from its back as it flew over major soviet population centres guided by some form of sat nav/ gps/ visual star reading aid. An un-manned aerial drone of ultimate doom. Project was canned after military big wigs chickened out guessing that the russians may be forced to act preemptivley before system was deployed to act as threat. Just gotta love cold war insanity.