If it Ain't Rainin' we Ain't Trainin'

I Had an interesting experience the other day. My Guard unit went out for a three day jaunt into the wilds of Camp Pendleton to conduct some dismounted reconnaissance training. Now, granted, we were technically “on base” but since we’re a leg unit, we have to support ourselves; no barracks, no latrines, no water sources, etc. We were responsible for everything.

With this in mind, when I started to pack my kit, I had to pause for a minute to think about what I was going to do for some form of shelter. That’s when it dawned on me that the Army really hasn’t advanced past the WWII era canvas shelter half when it comes to individual shelters. Yes, they have great and wonderful expanding and self-erecting medium sized tents, which weigh 300 pounds and fit nicely in the back of a 1.25-ton trailer, but there’s nothing for the individual.

Now I’ve heard all the arguments about this before, “you can’t use a tent in combat” and “you just need to use what’s available to you in the field, namely, use brush and trees or dig out a shelter” being the most often cited ones, but we’re not talking combat here, we’re talking bivouacking in the field. Moreover, on most bases where you conduct training, chopping up the flora or digging in the ground is strictly verboten, so those really aren’t options. The bottom line is, if you’re going to be out in the field for longer than a couple of days in really crappy weather, it’d be nice, tactical situation permitting of course, to have the ability to get out of the rain. Those gortex bivy sacks we’re issued now are nice for snow or a light drizzle, but in an out and out downpour you really can’t get into it fast enough to prevent the sleeping bag from filling with water, and that’s assuming that you jump in with all your wet clothes on. In those situations, you’re probably better off just putting on your wet weather gear and trying to sleep through it.

So, I started doing a little research. There are a number of companies out there that make good, ultra light, 1-man tents. Unfortunately, most of those are alpine supply companies like MSR, The North Face, and Mountain Hardware and their products tend to be a bit, well, colorful (now this is not to say that these folk wouldn’t make one of their tents in a different color fabric as a custom order job, but that’s probably not a realistic option for the Joe looking to purchase one tent) and have a lot of parts. In fact, the only company I found that made an honest-to-God military style tent was Eureka, who makes both 1-man and 2-man systems, with a reversible woodland/desert camouflage pattern rain fly to boot (as an added bonus you can opt to just use the rain fly as a stand alone shelter if you don’t need the additional wind protection.) The only downside to the Eureka tent is weight; the one man tent, complete, weighs just over 6 pounds, though it is certainly something you could spent your entire military career sleeping out of.

Another interesting option, and certainly one of significant weight savings, was to go the engineered tarp route. The folks over at Tarptent make some awesome, lightweight (18-oz. in the case of their 1-man shelter) shelters that are easy to set up, roomy, and keep the rain off of you, and the color is even reasonably tactical. In addition, they also provide, free of charge and publically available on their website, the plans to build your own first generation tarptent out of what ever material you choose.

So my solution? I snapped a couple of ponchos together, brought some bungees, 550 cord, and a handful of lightweight aluminum tent pins and lashed a lean-to to a tree limb and slept like a brick through two straight nights of continuous rain. Granted it got the job done but I was completely dependent upon that tree being there for me to tie off on. In the future I might have to look seriously into either some shock tubes I can erect to create a free standing dome for my ponchos one of those tarptents.

-- Eric Daniel

The Gun That Never Was

Well, it looks as if the Army has again officially opened the can of worms that is the debate revolving around a replacement for the M16/M4.  With this go around however, the Army says all limitations are off.  They say they’re willing to consider any caliber, any operation system, and any configuration.

Given the Army’s track record with sticking with the M16/M4 through thick and thin, as well as the Army’s previous position that it would stick with the M4 until there was a “revolutionary” breakthrough in small arms technology (hand held death rays?) I’m taking this most recent statement with a salt lick, but in as much as they are soliciting ideas, I might as well offer up mine.

On its face, it would seem that there are only three real issues to consider; how big (in caliber) how many (bullets in the magazine) and how to crank it (what operating system do you go with.)  Once you settle on those, putting them together is packaging. While there are any number of cartridges and operating systems that offer obvious advantages over the M16’s feeble 5.56mm bullet and wretched gas carrier key operating system, if you wanted a truly revolutionary replacement for the M4, I would put my money on the H&K G11.

For those of you not in the know (not that I am, but I remember when it was developed) the H&K G11 rifle was developed as a replacement for the 7.62mm G3 battle rifle in the 1970s.  What the Germans wanted to develop was a weapon with a large ammunition capacity (50 rounds) low weight (< 10 pounds loaded) flat trajectory (no sight corrections at <300m) and a high degree of accuracy in 3-round burst mode.

To meet the burst accuracy requirement there were two ways to go, either fire projectiles simultaneously (shotgun shells or duplex rounds) or fire bullets very fast.  The shotgun shell method was dropped because the bullets which would do the job not only generated too much recoil to be effective, but their size put them outside the round capacity requirement, so H&K went with the “shoot really, really fast” approach.  This is where the G11 comes into its own as a revolutionary weapon.

H&K realized that the bigger the bullet, the more propellant it would require to drive it, and that propellant would be translated into not only recoil to be absorbed by the shooter but a loss of overall ammunition capacity in the magazine.  One solution was to use a smaller bullet.  The 4.73x33mm bullet developed for the G11 is smaller that the 5.56mm bullet currently used in the M16 but the high degree of accuracy with the G11 in burst mode makes the G11 as accurate firing 3 shots as the M16 firing one, so the combined effect on the target, with the G11, is greater.

The second issue was dealing with the recoil.  As has been documented since the invention of the first shoulder-fired automatic weapons, felt recoil will bring the weapon off target, thus rendering accurate, aimed automatic fire impossible at desirable ranges.  H&K’s solution was to eliminate the issue by having the weapon fire a 3-round burst so fast that the bullets were out of the barrel and going down range before the recoil reached the shooter. Again, how H&K did this was pretty slick.  To speed up the firing process H&K eliminated several steps in the firing sequence, specifically locking, unlocking, extracting and ejecting, by going with a caseless ammunition, where the propellant, rather than held in a metal casing behind the bullet, is actually molded around it.  This eliminated the need for extracting and ejecting spent casings, as there were no cartridges to extract, since, when fired, the propellant body was consumed and the bullet launched out the barrel.  Using a caseless cartridge also enabled H&K to not only make lighter bullets (there was no weight wasted in metal casings) but also allowed them to pack more of the bullets into a given space (since the bullets are square, there’s no wasted space in the magazine.)  The net result was a cyclic ROF of 2,000 RPM in 3-round burst mode (in single shot and full auto, the ROF is only 460 RPM.) An additional benefit with going with caseless ammunition was the elimination of additional openings for contamination.  Lacking an ejection port, the G11’s chamber remains relatively sterile.

To eliminate the recoil issue H&K “floated” the barrel and action on a secondary recoil mechanism.  The effect here was that when the burst was fired, the body of the rifle would remain stationary against the firer’s shoulder, while the action and barrel recoiled down the secondary rail; by the time the action came completely out of battery, where the recoil would be felt by the shooter, the burst cycle would be complete (a recoil spring pushes the action back into battery for the next burst.)

The end result was a weapon that was light, with a high ammunition capacity, and which was capable of firing accurate 3-rounds bursts.

So what happened to the G11?  Well, as luck would have it, as the G11 was nearing production capability, peace broke out all over the world and with all the lions-and-lambs group hugging going on, the West German government decided it had more important things to do than buy a bunch of new wunder rifles, (like look for jobs for all it’s new citizens from the East “zone”) so the program was shelved. 

Well, if the Army is looking for revolutionary, I don’t think you can get any more revolutionary than this.  I just don’t expect the Army to explore it.

Check out the G11 here.

-- Eric Daniel

Why Not?

Jason posted this comment a while back on my “What is a Combat Handgun?” entry.

When I got out I worked personal security for individuals.  I had to take 3 levels of firearms qualification classes.  Even with my experience several of my instructors asked me to try the revolver (yes I am going there)

I was skeptical.  But in their opinions (all were similar), if I got the **** scared out of me I would be more accurate with a revolver.  I went to a gun shop after doing some research and picked up a S&W Model 66.  Stainless steel, .357 Magnum, and adjustable sights.  Night sights too.

I started practicing with it every night for about an hour during my courses and would shoot both types of firearms.  No question I could get two in the chest and a head shot (had to unlearn that per my instructors, though...) even when worked up (we did push ups, sit ups and ran in place and then went into shooting scenarios and drills at the sound of a whistle).

In my very few engagements I felt 100% better with the revolver.  Stainless steel doesn't rust and conceals nicely when not in use.  Speed loaders are exceptionally fast to load when taught the right technique.  And a .357+P hollow point round will mess the BG up.

Besides aren't almost all of these engagements where you switched to a pistol for whatever reason CQB.  You are going to end up stabbing the BG in the head or chest anyway when the gun is empty, so reloading is unlikely.

I know the instructors who taught me had rarely seen statistics that involved a successful engagement between two combatants where the winner (good or bad) had fired many more than 3-6 rounds.  Anything with more shots than that fired usually involved one or more of the combatants retreating and looking for cover with someone or both wounded.  All instructors (to my best recollection) had fired their handguns successfully as I remember.  That is what made me pay such good attention.

Jason’s comment got me to thinking.

“Why not?” 

Fine, revolvers, as battlefield weapons went out of style in the American army a century ago (surviving until recently as aircrew holdout weapons) and they don’t carry as many bullets as modern automatics go (6 v. 15) but is the revolver really that bad as a defensive firearm when compared with an automatic?

I would think, from a purely layman perspective, that revolvers would have a number of things going for them, as a mass-produced, mass-issued defensive firearm. 

Firstly, they are reliable.  Yes, I know that most properly maintained military-grade weapons are reliable, but I would think that a revolver would have an advantage over an automatic in that it has fewer moving parts and it’s operation isn’t dependent upon the effective transfer of energy (be the slide gas or recoil operated.)  There’s no energy to be lost, no slide to bind, no failures to extract, eject, or feed.  In short, if you can get the hammer to fall, the weapon should function as advertised.  Hell, even if you get a misfire, there’s no SPORTS to perform, you just pull the trigger again. 

Secondly, they are durable.  Again, I’m not saying that automatics are not durable, but I would think, especially when compared with a polymer-slided auto, the all-metal revolver has a longer working life.  Now, to clarify further, when I mean durable, I mean 30-50 years durable.  My issue .45 was 40 years old for Pete’s sake.  Yes, I think modern firearms are, for the most part, well built and will provide years of service, but I do believe there’s a difference between a sportsman who uses the same handgun for target practice for 10 years and a weapon that gets issued to soldiers for field duty over a 30 year period; in general the Army pistol will see more abuse and have a poorer maintenance program, so “soldier-proof” weapons are a big plus (now before all you out there bag on me about dissing “your” weapon maintenance habits, you’ll notice I didn’t mention you by name, so I wasn’t talking about you.)  How many police officers us hand me down weapons that old, or stick with the dame duty weapon for that period of time?  Durability would also translate to maintenance costs as well.  With fewer moving parts, there would be fewer parts to replace over the life of the weapon, though this might be negated by the cost of having to replace a barrel (I’ve never replaced a revolver barrel, mind you, but it’s got to be harder to do than swapping out one in an automatic) but then, on the flip side, there are no magazines or magazine springs to replace either. 

Finally, there are the politics and training considerations.  Revolvers are double action only weapons (okay, sure, if we brought back the Colt SAA, we’d have a cool single-action handgun in .45 Colt, but I don’t see that happening) which means that they are politically more palatable than are SA weapons (which also dovetails well with the fact that a revolver only has 6 bullets rather than 15.)  Mind you, I’m not saying that this is a good thing, or that it is even appropriate to entertain such considerations when selecting a piece of life saving equipment, but nonetheless, the fact remains that it does happen, and so it would be a consideration.  In addition, in the one-size-fits-all category, a revolver would have the advantage over all the double stacked autos out there, and with the case of the .38 special/.357 magnum combination, you’d even have the added bonus of issuing different rounds if you wanted to (yes the same could be said of automatics, but to get an automatic to function reliably with either a different cartridge or lower powered cartridge you’d need to swap out some parts to account for the change in slide operating recoil.)  Also in the ammunition realm is the discussion of anything other than ball type ammunition.  Since we are never going to use anything other than ball ammunition (at least until personal linear accelerators come out) in the rank-and-file military, comparing .357 JHP to .45 WC to .460 Nitro Express is pointless and non-productive.  Again, I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it is something that those in power seem to focus on, so it’s worth mentioning.

All this having been said, however, there are a number of huge, real world, realities that a revolver would have to overcome in order to get selected. 

First, there is the dearth of revolver ammunition in the military supply system, which is to say there’s none at all.  Before we all started shooting our new wheel guns, we’d need some bullets to shoot first (no, I don’t see the Army adopting a 9x19mm revolver, though given how things have been going of late in procurement, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.)  I also realize that there’d be the issue of overall effectiveness. 

Second, all those revolvers would have to be purchased, and those purchases mean money.  This issue is further compounded by the fact that revolvers, at least on the free market, appear to be more expensive than automatics (I came to this conclusion by looking at the MSRP for a variety of “stock” handguns, so it is more an anecdotal conclusion than a scientific one) and that there wouldn’t be any commonality offsets associated with the new purchase, meaning a S&W Model 60 and a Beretta 92 FS are not going to have anything in common.  This means that all those Berettas still on the books would need to find a home in someone else’s army.

Thirdly, there is the fact that revolvers are, well… old.  While this has absolutely no bearing on the actual merits of the item in question (you’ll notice farriers still use an anvil and hammer for shaping horseshoes, devices introduced in the early Bronze Age (3300 BC)) in today’s, “it’s gotta be digital, carbon fiber, and Land Warrior compatible” world, revolvers are looked down upon as being less advanced than automatics, and therefore less effective and ultimately less desirable.  Also, as mentioned, while there are very few things that can go wrong with or wear out on a revolver, the things that do wear out, like the barrel, are big-ticket maintenance items.  Given the Army’s tolerances for equipment wear, and the relative ease of replacing worn parts on an automatic, the revolver, over the long haul, might be the less effective of the two options.  There is also the issue of weight.  Hands down, revolvers, especially when compared with polymer automatics, are significantly heavier than automatics.  Is that weight difference a deal breaker though?

That all having been said, where are we now?  Personally I would want a weapon that was firstly reliable (if it doesn’t work, what good is it) secondly effective (the purpose of the weapon is to kill or disable the target, not piss it off) and thirdly is everything else; size (smaller is better) capacity (6 v. 15.) and ergonomics (how well does it fit in my hand (allowing for custom grips would be a nice touch) with political considerations last of all.  Would I personally select a revolver over an automatic?  I don’t know, but I certainly not opposed to the idea and wouldn’t frown upon a good .357 S&W if that were what the Army issued me.

Fighting Knives 101

Gerber knives are very sturdy and well-made. That having been said, they have also always been too gimmicky for my taste and most, if not all, have typically been considered wannabe knives by real professionals who use knives. There are only two killing knives I'd consider:

1. The old Army fighting knife with a blade that's just like the issue Colt M-16 bayonet without the rifle hook-up. This knife has a sturdy, curved, dagger point, and it's very smooth with a sure-grip handle in both the old leather rings and the newer rubber rings from Ontario Knife. It doesn't jam between the ribs and is a perfect ear-canal knife. If you are a pro, you'll know what I mean.

2. Is the Tanto; although the Tanto is more geared for outright fighting, it's also a great rib-stabbing and cutting knife, and also an excellent ear-canal knife. I probably shouldn't say this, but these knives also cut through bullet-proof vests like they were butter, as long as they don't hit the ceramic plate. Even then, if they slide off of it while you are still pushing on it, they can still do some terrible damage.

The Ka-Bar of Marine fame requires too much brute force to make it work in too many circumstances, but it might be something I'd consider if I was forced to do so. That's it for killing knives.

For working knives, there is nothing like the bulky and heavy Victorinox Swiss Army Champ. Not Wenger, but specifically Victorinox. It's worth many times its weight in gold, if you have ever needed a really great working knife while out in the bush. One of my sons once cut a piece of tool steel with the hacksaw in one of my old Swiss Champs and didn't damage the knife!

Gerber knives, with all those candy-ass serrations and gimmicks are more geared for the fire-rescue unit than the fighting man. I'd like to see anyone stick one into someone else's ribs without getting the serrations stuck in between them. Yes, you can do it, if you turn it horizontally going in and coming out, but in a fight for life and limb, who the hell knows how they are sticking a knife into someone else? Sideways, upside down, it's all the same when the chips are down. A real professional, chock-full of adrenalin, with a knife stuck three inches deep between ribs will still easily kill you without a second thought while you determine how you'll get your knife back. (To free it, you have to violently pull it up or down to break a rib. By the time you decide to do this, you might be dead. Having tremendously injured the other guy is immaterial to your being dead.)

The guy who said that the aluminum handle would be bad for both cold weather and not to be left in the sun was absolutely correct. In very cold weather it will freeze to your hand and having been in the tropical sun for any length of time, you wouldn't be able to hold it in your bare hand. The guy who talked about wrapping a handle with 550 cord (parachute cord) was absolutely correct too, except that before you wrap the handle, you take out the guts, so the cord lays flatter and ties better over the handle. If you want to make it better, twist the empty cord as you tie it and create a greater gripping surface. It's not about making it stick to your hand, but about creating friction so that under any and all circumstances, including blood, gore and slime, you will be able to maintain a secure grip on your weapon. I gave my wife a Cold Steel Tanto with a 550 cord-wrapped handle some years ago and she loves it. She says it's a 'pretty' knife, as opposed to my old U.S. Army fighting knife, which she says is a 'nothing killer and a pirate knife.' I love it. My children all say they'd rather meet me at night in a dark alley than to do the same with their mother. I'm very proud of the way I trained her, especially having taught her how to overcome female deficiencies in fighting men, something a majority of women have not been taught, consequently, when the chips are down they lose. It's a shame. Me

ED – The only reference to an old, “bayonet-style” fighting knife offered by the Ontario Knife Company was the SP3-M7 knife (I’ve included the picture above) which features a 6 ¾” blade (11 1/8” overall.)  I hope this is what you were referring to.  If not, let me know and I’ll update this posting.

Regarding your comments about the utility of the “skull crusher” point you see on many knives (the Gerber Yari II or the SP3, for example) I agree with you that a pointed “crusher” will be much more effective in a fighting situation, than would a flat basher like the Ka-bar.  For me though, as the poster child for the “non-knife fighter” community, if push ever came to shove, I’d probably reach for a cinder block as a means of self-defense rather than a “professional” fighting knife (I’ll never hit the ear canal, but I’ll probably get the guy’s head with my brick.)

Regarding the use of the 550 cord, I agree, you need to strip the handle down to create a smooth wrapping surface.  With my kukri I sanded down the handle, with the Yari II I wrapped the forged aluminum handle with athletic tape to “fill in” the holes, and then wrapped it.  For me, I like to leave the core threads in the OD sheath, to give the material better absorbency.  One thing I found that worked real well was leather bootlaces.  They wrap well and they grip well.  Unfortunately, they are also porous and I was concerned about how to clean the knife up after getting it “contaminated.”  So I went with the 550 cord.

-- Kit Up!

What is a Combat Handgun?

Read this article the other day about the Air Force’s $90 million request for new pistols getting nixed and instead they were granted $5 million to “study” joint combat pistol needs with the Army. This, in turn, reminded me of a piece I’d written several years ago on the H&K Mk. 23 Mod 0 SOCOM.

A lot of money was invested in building that state of the art pistol, and there’s no arguing that it is in fact, one hell of a handgun; but you don’t see too many of them around. Of all the SOF personnel I saw in Iraq, none had anything other than the M9 Beretta, and of the several I spoke to about the .45 SOF pistol, none had ever seen one.

To be sure, I’m sure there are more SOF folk than there are SOCOM pistols, and there might be some sort of SOP regarding the use of the SOCOM, but if that were the case, why go through all that trouble to make such a superlative firearm and either not issue it in greater numbers, or restrict the use of the ones you do have?
Now, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am not a “gun” guy. As a soldier, I use firearms as the tools of my trade. I can take them apart and put them back together, and I know how to troubleshoot them when something does not work right.

What I can’t do is quote chapter and verse on muzzle energy, knockdown power, stopping power, fit, feel, or functionality of any particular firearm or bullet. This having been said, however, I think, even given my own limited “gun” knowledge, I could come up with a replacement for the M9 for less than $5 million dollars.
Take my experience with the M1911A1 .45 pistol and the M9 Beretta. The thing I liked best about the M1911A1 was the fact that it was made out of forged steel; You could drop it, kick it, crawl on it, you could do anything to it short of melt it, and you wouldn’t affect it’s reliability. Moreover, properly blued or parkerized, the M1911A1 was very forgiving of the elements.

Not everything on the M1911A1, however, was perfect. I thought the ejection port on the slide to be too narrow and I remember that “stove piping” was a constant issue, where the spent casing would extract from the chamber, but would not eject clear of the slide. Now I don’t know if this issue was the result of the small ejection port or some other issue, but it was something I noticed with the pistol. The lack of removable or adjustable sights seemed to me to be a viable point of improvement.

While I understand that the inclusion of such features would obviously drive up the price of the weapon, I would have, at a very minimum, liked to have seen replaceable sights on the pistol. Many, many of the .45s I saw had mangled front and rear sights, no doubt the result of decades of service. Adjustable sights might have been something of a luxury for a strictly “defensive” weapon, but I believe replaceable sights would have been an improvement.

Finally, some complained about the recoil from the .45, that it was too powerful, or that the weapon, being made from steel, was too heavy. I personally thought the recoil was manageable (more than the M9 to be sure, but not alarmingly so) and when compared to all the other gear I was hauling around, the extra 2 pounds from the M1911A1 was hardly noticeable (not to mention a loaded M9 weighs almost the same.)

As for the M9 Beretta, it fired well, it was easy to take apart and put back together, and since it was made of a non-ferrous alloy, it was again very tolerant of the elements. Moreover, it did have a nice big ejection port (right out the top of the slide.) On the downside the M9 was made of a non-ferrous alloy, which made it significantly more susceptible to damage from what I would consider routine exposure to the combat environment. I’ve seen M9s crack when dropped off of vehicles, suffer significant gouging, and pinching of the frame.

With the M1911A1 if I could get the slide to work I had faith that the pistol would work, and work safely. Not so with the M9. Moreover, the M9 was a SA/DA (single action/double action) pistol, which meant that you didn’t need to thumb cock it like you did with the .45 or rack the slide to cock the hammer, you could just pull the trigger and the hammer would cock itself and fire. However, with the Beretta the trigger, in DA mode (hammer down) was WAY out there and for some folk, reaching all the way out there with one finger was literally quite a reach (I’ve even seen folk “double pull” the trigger where they pull the trigger partway and then readjust their finger position to complete the process.)

For me, coming from a M1911A1 background, I always thumb cocked my M9 during qualification. This may not have been the standard, but it was how I “grew up” and I didn’t see the need to go to a different method simply because TRADOC said so. Others have also complained about the “fat” double stacked, 15-round magazine, but again, with my big hands, that wasn’t an issue.

Finally, as with the M1911A1 the M9 does not have removable or replaceable sights, though again, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t really a deal breaker as much as it would have been means of maintaining the accuracy of the pistol over its service life.
(Now, before anyone mentions it, I intentionally did not address the physical characteristics of the bullets themselves. Over the course of my military career the only thing I’ve ever “killed” with my pistol was paper and plywood, so I can’t comment on the combat utility of either the .45 ACP or the 9mm Parabellum. But bullet lethality is a whole ‘nother can of worms, which we will get to shortly.)

My question before the court is this. What is a “combat handgun” and what is it that we really need and what do we want it to do. I would think that really what we’re talking about here is a defensive/back up/bail out weapon, not one that you would use as your primary offensive arm (yes there are many situations where a pistol is superior to a long gun in offensive operations, like searching confined spaces, vehicles, or what have you, but I don’t think a pistol would be my first choice for assaulting an enemy position or defending my perimeter.)

Again, I’m not a gun guy so I’m not going to tell you what that ought to be, but let all of you take the ball and run with it. To better organize the discussion, though I thought it might be helpful to break down the discussion into a couple of functional areas.
Automatic or revolver? Yes, it seems a bit antiquated to ask the question, but it’s as good a place as any to start.

In terms of sheer reliability I would thing there would be nothing more reliable than a revolver. Up until the introduction of the M9 in fact, aviators were still issued a .38 revolver. They were small, easy to operate, and very reliable. On the down side however, I would think that, unless you trained regularly with one, reloading one under combat conditions would be something of a disaster waiting to happen (I have visions of Stanley Baker as Lt. Chard in Zulu trying to reload his revolver with shaking hands) but the same could be said of any weapon I suppose.

Something else to consider is action type. Should the pistol be SA (single action) only DA (double action) only or SA/DA? Many law enforcement agencies are adopting DA only pistols for liability purposes, but should this be a consideration for military personnel as well?

Construction. Steel or alloy? As I said, I grew up with the all-steel M1911A1 and then transitioned to the alloy M9 and now there are “plastic” polymer handguns, of which I have only very limited experience with (while deployed in ‘05 I carried a Glock Model 19 9mm compact.) I like the durability of the steel over the alloy M9, but the Glock also seemed to hold up well (it had a steel upper on a polymer lower.) Furthermore, what kind of finish should the pistol have? Blued? Parkerized? Stainless steel or some other exotic metal?

Size. How big should the pistol be? Full size (4+ inch barrel) or compact (2 inch) barrel? Should it have a double stacked magazine or single stack? Over the years many folk have complained about the weapons they were issued, that there were certain aspects regarding them that they didn’t like, but I’ve never heard any say that they couldn’t use a weapon. Another question along these lines is, should the services field different sizes of the same caliber, or just a single unit? Should we have a pistol with a single stack or double stacked magazine? More is always better, but as would be the case with a double-stacked .45-style pistol, you’re talking a lot more (in terms of grip size, that is.)
I think there is a tendency now a days to look for a “satisfy everyone” approach (the XM-8 with it’s golf bag of mission flexible barrels, for example) rather than a “satisfy the requirement and learn to deal with it” approach (here’s your M1911A1, have a nice day.) We don’t have his and hers M-16s or M2s or M249s, so coming up with five different flavors of handgun so that everyone can pick the one that “feels” best to them is, in my opinion, a waste of resources.

Cartridge. Ok, here comes the can of worms. Traditionally, this discussion tends to degenerate into .45 v. 9mm. Again, I have absolutely zero experience with actually using either cartridge for anything more than killing qualification targets, a task for which both are more than adequate. What I do know about them is they have both been around FOREVER, and their ballistic characteristics are well known. At a purely visceral level, when it comes to bullets, I tend to believe that bigger is better, so I like the .45, but is that really a proper basis for selecting a cartridge? Moreover, while the 9mm and the .45 are proven, they’re also old. There are many new (relative to the .45 and the 9mm) cartridges out there, such as the .357 SIG, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, just to name a few. Should we consider one of those?

Economics. While talking about guns is great and wonderful, buying them is a completely different experience, and the bottom line here is, regardless of what the services decide to adopt as their service handgun, economics will play an important, if not THE most important, roll in the process. We currently have a lot of 9mm pistols in our inventory, and a lot of 9mm ammunition to go with them. So do our allies. Complain all you want about the 9mm, but it will require big bucks to replace the Beretta and its legacy (ammunition, spare parts, etc…) But it can be done. The Coast Guard did it just recently when they dropped the M9 and went to the SIG-Sauer P229R DAK in .40 S&W while the USSS (United States Secret Service) went to the SIG-Sauer P229 in .357 SIG, siting its armor penetrating qualities among others (that’s something else that has advanced significantly since the introduction of the .45 and 9mm; the proliferation of both soft and hard body armor.)

Finally, there is the question of going custom or COTS (Commercial, Off The Shelf.) Every couple of years someone will write in to ARMOR magazine about the need for a PDW (personal defense weapon) for tankers and other armored vecicle crewmen. The M4/M16 are too large they say, the M9 is too small – what tankers really need is a custom weapon that is sort of M9ish, and sort of M4ish, but completely unique to their needs.

Rubbish. If tankers really needed a “bail out” gun, and there is a compelling argument for such a need, especially with all the urban action going on (though seriously, unless the tank’s on fire, you’ve lost turret power, none of your MG’s work, or your stuck in front of an enemy ATGM factory, you are generally safer inside the tank than outside) there are plenty to choose from.

Yes the M4 (or the full auto version, the M4A1) will work just fine, but if you want something more “exotic” then go with something from the Heckler&Koch MP line, such as the MP5K-PDW. I thought it sadly humerous that the Army announced the development of a “combat shoulderbag” after claiming that they couldn’t find a suitable bag on the civilian market. To say the same about a handgun I think would just border on criminal insanity.

The bottom line here is there are enough guns out there that surely we can find one that meets our needs (you’ll notice that there isn’t a member from any law enforcement agency in all of America walking around without some sort of duty weapon) and I don’t think it would take $5 million to figure out which one we need.

-- Eric Daniel

Ka-Bar None

To me, knives are tools.

They are to be used and abused, to accomplish the mission or die trying.

I’ve been through several multi-tools (on average I break one a year) and pocket knives come and go (they get loaned out, lost, or break) but the one knife I have always had unwavering faith in (up until the time I had to quit using it) was the Ka-Bar USMC fighting knife.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a good utility knife is indispensable in the field. Pocketknives like the Buck 110 are great for light work, but sometimes you need something with leverage. Whether it was cutting open MRE cases or prying the wire off of crated ammunition, my Ka Bar took it all in stride. In a perfect world a bayonet would have done just as well for most things, had I been able to draw one from the arms room when we went to the field, but sadly this was not the case, which made the Ka-Bar all the more valuable.

Moreover, the Ka Bar’s design alone made it superior to the bayonet. The all-leather grip worked wonderfully wet or dry, hot or cold. The blade was thick enough that you could pry with either the point or the flat without undue fear of it snapping, and the big steel endcap, combined with the knife’s own mass, made for a fair field expedient hammer.

It didn’t bother me in the least that I was in the Army and I was using a Marine Corps knife. That Ka-Bar was a tool, and one I deemed best available to do the jobs I needed doing. I reasoned that since the Marine Corps used the same rifles, ammunition, artillery and armor that the Army did, it was perfectly acceptable to use “their” knife.

Silly me. Eventually, someone vastly more knowledgeable in trans-service etiquette than I explained to me the magnitude of the military faux pas I was committing. No, it simply would not do to be caught out of doors with such an icon of Marine Corps tradition prominently displayed on my LBE. As a Soldier and an NCO, I should have known better. Need to bust open those crates of MG ammunition? No problem – smash them on the ground or kick them, or use a stick (a good NCO always carries a good stick with them for just such a situation.)

The bottom line was that Ka-Bar was a Marine Corps “thing” and it simply had to go. No amount of pleading, reasoning, or rationalizing could resolve the situation. I just had to learn to do without.
Of course, ten years later I’m back to carrying a non-issue “fighting” knife, but now it’s made in Nepal, not Olean, N.Y. so I guess that makes it ok...

-- Eric Daniel

Barn Busting, Remington Rand Style

In 1990 I was issued an M1911A1 .45 caliber pistol that had been manufactured by Remington Rand during WWII.  Though a stout and reliable firearm, my “Colt” had one limitation. 

Its accuracy. 

To put it mildly, I was surprised the bullets ever hit the ground.  At 25m I had a shot group of around 2 feet. 

Now, I was (and still am) by no means an expert on firearms, and stories abound regarding the inaccuracy issues of the M1911A1, but the one thing I did know was the .45 was, and still is, used extensively in pistol competitions, so I knew the weapon design was not the issue, nor was the ammunition, but I was at a loss as to why I literally couldn’t hit the target right in front of me.

This went on for a year or so until we got a new Platoon Leader in our company who also happened to be something of a shade-tree gunsmith and a Colt collector.  What he said was, no the weapons aren’t bad, and the ammunition, while not match grade, wasn’t the cause, but rather, the Army’s level of “tolerance” in key components.  Bottom line, all my troubles centered on the barrel and barrel bushing.  Upon further inspection it was noted that when fully seated (slide all the way forward) my barrel was still capable of movement, a LOT of movement, as was explained to me, which obviously was having an effect on my accuracy.  Unfortunately, as the LT explained, that “slop” was still within Army tolerance, so technically there was nothing to be done.

Well, the next day what should appear but a Brownell’s catalogue, listing all the parts I would need to ‘fix” my .45.  I purchased a barrel, barrel bushing, barrel link and pin (as well as a plastic deadfall hammer and some lapping compound to fit the barrel and bushing to the slide) and then spent the next field problem hammering the slide back and forth the fit them.

The results, however, were immediate and satisfying.  My shot groups had collapsed to about 5” (good I thought, considering I was still shooting a stock slide and receiver.) The Lt., on the other hand, was shooting VERY good groups, but then he’d gone the extra step to get a complete fitted slide assembly, to include adjustable rear sight; after qualifying he’d just remove his slide, re-attach the Army issue one, and turn the .45 back into the arms room (which would explain why folk who checked his .45 out to qualify with didn’t do so well.)

Anyway, that small investment on my part not only dispelled all those accuracy issues surrounding the .45, but also improved the quality of my shooting.

-- Eric Daniel

In the Weeds With Eric (Gunsight Edition)

In the realm of combat shooting the standard rule of thumb is, “he who hits first wins.” Consequentially, for the last couple of hundred years, the focus in firearms training has been sight alignment -- the faster you can align the front and rear sights on your target, the faster you can put lethal fire on your target.

Unfortunately, until recently, darkness presented a significant challenge to this theory. If it’s too dark to see your sights, you can pretty well guarantee that you aren’t going to be able to align them very well and your accuracy is going to suffer. While there are a number of ways to overcome this condition (illuminate the battlefield with flares, illuminate your sights with tritium or similar material, or illuminate your fire by using tracers) none has been universally effective.

Electro-optical “reflex” sights have changed all of that. These sights are battery powered, non-magnified, single sight optics that not only allow the shooter to rapidly acquire a good sight picture and alignment in all conditions (day or night) but also provide the shooter with better situational awareness since they need not be totally focused on aligning their sights, but rather need only put the dot on the target, literally.

The first of these sights was the Aimpoint M2 which the Army designated the M68 CCO (close combat optic.) It was driven by a watch-type battery and had a single on/off rheostat on the side to adjust reticle brightness.

While the sight did perform as advertised, I had issues with it. First, the on/off knob was easy to accidentally bump, which could either cause your sight to turn off or go to max power, which not only reduced your battery life, but also produced a visible red glow out of the back of the sight. Furthermore, the aiming dot was visible, at high power, through the front of the sight, which could reveal your location to an NVG equipped enemy (I am told this has been addressed though I can’t confirm it.)

The sight I liked, and what in addition to the ACOG seems to be the one being currently issued, is the EOTech model 550. The 550 is a non-magnified EO sight which displays a 1MOA (minute of angle) dot in the center of a 65MOA circle. Reticle brightness is regulated by up/down buttons on the back of the sight, and the newer versions are equipped with a NVG direct button that automatically dims the reticle for use with night vision devices. The 550 is powered by a pair of standard AA batteries, has a reticle life of 1100 hours, and is waterproof to 1 ATM (33 feet).

What I liked about the 550 over the M68 was the battery choice (AAs are much easier to get) the fact that there is no forward projection of the beam, even on max power, and that there was more positive control of the reticle brightness. The 550 is also mil-std 1913 rail compatable and works well with weapon mounted NVGs such as the AN/PVS-10.

While I’m sure that there are certainly more modern CCOs out there with many more bells and whistles, the 550 does everything I need it to and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

(See much more "beyond standard issue" advice and tricks over at Kit Up!)

-- Eric Daniel