Is full auto necessary?

Ignore old post. I read the OP last night, came on today, and STILL "posted without reading"

--IMO:

I think full auto or a burst has a place in combat. I would imagine it would help you hit a moving target, or one thats popping back and forth. Three dice in the game instead of one.

This is kind of how i feel about things like 5.56 and 5.7, they are multiple hit scenarios, and their effectiveness is based on landing 2-3, or in the case of the 5.7, 10-15 hits.

Im sure people will disagree with that, im not saying either isnt deadly. Im just saying small fast bullets go hand in hand with automatic fire, and currently the armed forces like both.

Give 'em semi auto SCAR's in 7.62 I say!
 
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Bad choice of words. I was asking in so many words if it was a useful option to have on a basic infantry rifle, if there is still such a thing.

I don't know about oatmeal but I could probably subsist on a diet of beans for a long time. That's what I grew up eating.
 
We have, (hopefully) learned a greast deal from our past mistakes, or, if we haven't, we aren't hearing as much about current mistakes as what we find when we study the past. Perhaps in a decade or so we will hear about where we are screwing up nowdays.

The Guadalcanal campaign is a classic example of how we can literally leave our boys in the lurch, and they can still win.

While the Marines were able to land without opposition on Guadalcanal, Fletcher bugged out with the carriers much earlier than the plan called for. Without the security of air cover, the transports left well before the unloading was finished. AND, to top it off, the transports had not been properly "combat loaded" to begin with. In other words, what was unloaded was what was there to be unloaded, not necessarily what the Marines needed most, first.

Food was short, and so was ammo. Jap supplies were eaten, (and to this day I know 'Canal vets who will NOT eat rice!) but ammo, well, all there was was all there was. Marines with Springfields were given 40rnds, and told this was to last them 2 weeks in combat! And not all got that much. The Marines took a beating, and so did the Navy. But we did prevail. Guadalcanal serves as a textbook example of how not to do it. Even though we did win, we were determined never to repeat those mistakes. And we haven't. We've made others, some just as costly, but we have learned from them.

We learned a lot about fire discipline, when it is important, and when it is vital. Today, with a fully professional military, and each troop carrying a full auto rifle (more or less), our world class logistics & supply system, our guys seldom get in a situation where they run short of ammo. Batteries,now, that seems to be our new Achilles heel....
 
I personally do not think there is a place for FA on an basic infantry rifle. I can't even wrap my mind around 3 shot burst. (Of course I've never been shot at so could change my mind if I were military). I can see a need for a squad automatic weapon. That would seem like a good idea.

How big is a squad? It's one SAW per ?? soldiers?
Does a LMG fill the same role as a SAW?
 
In regards to U.S. Soldiers being more lightly loaded in WWII; one should also consider the massive amounts of artillery, armor, and air support available to them for most of the war. It was nothing for a unit to come under fire, go to ground, and call in various forms of death from above. Which is great if your in the plains of Europe and the only other people around are wearing different uniforms than you, but kinda self-defeating if your walking through downtown Mosul.
 
The ability to select for full auto or burst fire is absolutely something that is useful and needed. There are multiple scenarios where a burst or a string of fire is just what the doctor ordered.
 
Oh, the posts are getting better (except for mine).

To answer the question, a rifle squad or section (Groupe de combat d'infanterie) will have, on paper, from eight to twelve men, depending on the army. It may or may not be further organized into a fire group and a maneuver group with any number of names. There seems to have always been some kind of heavier automatic weapon within the squad or at least at the platoon level (three or four squads). These days there is typically someone with a rifle with a higher magnification optics, again in most armies.

I say, on paper, because once the fighting starts and there are casualities, it becomes an ad-hoc organization.

There has been a lot of experimentation in squad automatics over the last 50 or 60 years, going from a magazine fed full caliber gun to a intermediate caliber belt-fed gun. The FN 5.56 machine gun seems to be one of the more widely used guns in the West. I don't know if it says more about the gun and what soldiers want or about FN's marketing.

No army lives and fights in a perfect world, as if war could be a perfect thing, so while civilian gun enthusiasts are discussing the fine points of weapons, they go off and do their thing with whatever they have been given, which will be, if what you hear is to be believed, old and worn out, inaccurate, too heavy with a cartridge that is too light, unreliable and in need of replacement.
 
Psychologically full auto wrecks havoc with your mind knowing that a gun firing hundreds of rounds increases the probability of you getting hit thus forcing you to into survival mode. and it works against the enemy as well. No one wants to take the chance of getting killed. The advantage of a whole squad having this means the enemy now instead of having one crew with a automatic to take out now has to worry about a whole squad.
In combat you carry so much so you want that supply of ammo to hold you over from the time you leave the wire to the time you get back into it. Logistics is very limited. So you tend to conserve what you have. And even though full auto is more wasteful and can make you combat ineffective. Most of us tended not to use spray and pray. (at least that was my perception) But rather take well aimed shots so you can save the next round for the next enemy that may come up.
 
Leckie's ambush

Seems to me there is a time and place for everything. It is better to have and not need than to need and not have. When Bob ambushed the Japanese patrol coming up his back trail they (The enemy) were at close range and enfiladed on a narrow trail. An extended burst of high volume fire was just the thing that was needed in that situation. That was in the jungles of Guadalcanal in 1943 with a Thompson. I am sure that the same scenario could be (and probably has been) repeated in a dusty alley in Iraq or a narrow mountain trail in Afghanistan with an M-4.
 
I remember talking to my Grandpa about his service, he was a BAR man in Europe and he said that he was suppose to have a designated "assistant BAR gunner" who would carry a bandolier of BAR magazines and that each person in the squad was supposed to carry an additional BAR mag as well.

He said in practice, however, his assistant gunner was non-existant, he humped all the ammo himself, disregarded the bi-pod first thing, and never carried his issue pistol.
 
After going through several books on the 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, and the ongoing operations, I would have to say that full auto is a definte necessity. It isn't a full time use necessity, but one that keeps getting used over and over again when needed.

In combat, the M4 is pretty much exclusively fired in semi-auto mode.
Click to expand...
Except when it isn't, such as at Takur Ghar.

Full auto is rarely used in combat because it's inaccurate and a waste of valuable ammunition. Laying down cover yes, everything else no.
Click to expand...

It is only inaccurate if used inaccurately.
 
It's an option that I feel is good to have available for an infantry soldier. About as useful as the aforementioned condom in the rucksack but a good option to have.
 
more is better

Looking from a historical point of view man started with a single shot front loading firearm. It was time consuming to reload, much less lay down fire. The man in the field was overjoyed to get a firearm that held a magazine, or was tube fed. Then came the semi auto, even better yet. Next the full auto, which often would be inaccurate, as the following shots would rise with the barrel. Now we have full auto weapons which can stay on target when fired.
Which brings me to this quote from an unknown source.

Ammo is cheap, life is precious.

countered with;

hits count, misses don't.

countered with;

many misses in rapid fire do contribute to a huge pucker factor.

:)
 
It is an interesting thing how much all of those things overlapped one another. For instance, the M1 rifle was introduced in the later 1930s, yet Great Britain was still manufacturing Lee-Enfield bolt actions 20 years later--just after we quit manufacturing the M1. India was still making Lee-Enfields ten years after that.

Even more interesting is the resistance the M1 met when it came along. Inaccurate was the most common complaint.
 
I've always found it funny that the 1931 Officer Handbook lists in great detail the best method to employ the BAR, the Springfield '03, and even the Platoon Leader's 1911A1, and yet at the time M-1 Garand was being stonewalled.

Every thing listed in said Officer's Guide, with the exception of the rifle was semi-automatic, but giving average Private Dogface a semi-automatic rifle will suddenly lead to a tremendous expenditure of ammunition?
 
There was also resistance to the submachine gun, too, and not just in our army. The Marines were a little more progressive in that regard. As for the .45 auto, if you had one, you were only supposed to have 21 rounds of ammunition and probably you did. It occurred to me that while it was believed that accurate rifle fire (from a bolt action, of course) was more effective, there were still submachine guns to help out in tight places.

Anyone ever hear of reconnaisance by fire?
 
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