Another new gee-whiz gizmo for the Pentagon crowd to push. If the enemy is at 2 klicks, he's not engaging our SF or infantry with small arms. If he has tanks or artillery, SFis in big trouble and needs air support.
SF requires every member be capable of learning language skills and testing at OCS levels. And, well, Force Recon are, well, Marines.
SF guard units go back a long way, at least to the early 1960's.. I served in the Mississippi SF guard units in Hattiesburg and Colunbus, and Florida NG Tampa unit in the middle 1970's. Louisiana had an SF NG unit but converted it to an engineer unit after some hurricane showed that they needed the heavy equipment more.
Wait. Stop. Halt. I have a really rad idea. How about the military GO BACK TO THE OD FATIGUES? Most military are not deployed in a combat zone, never deploy in a combat zone. WTF do AF maintenance people need camo for? And blue water sailors? Clerks? Tankers? Artillery guys? If the grunts ARE deploying, odds are whatever camo they are wearing is not for that environment anyway. The Army wore essentially the same uniforms from WWII to Vietnam, 20+ years, with special purpose camo for specialized environments. KISS!
Great idea. Lets make weapon parts out of plastic. What could go wrong? And now we can staff mortar crews with women. I'm waaaaay too old for this s..t.
As I've said, I'd never heard of the .300 Blackout round before this article, so I don't pretend to be an authority. What I do question is how a round can be both subsonic and capable of 300 yard and 1,000 yard performance. Then I looked up the round in Wikipedia, and the article cites velocities of between 2000 and 2300 fps, hardly subsonic. Rounds in this range of velocities very much have that supersonic "crack". Whatever, if you really want to "reach out and touch" someone, it's hard to beat a 30-06 or a better, and the rifle doesn't look like it was designed and made by Mattel.
Looking at the picture, I'd say it is a variation of the 7.62x39? Since I've never heard that this cartridge touted as a particularly good cartridge for accuracy, and sub-MOA performance usually requires MATCHING A ROUND TO A PARTICULAR FIREARM, it seems unlikely a company could legitimately make such a claim. The claim seems even more unlikely when coupled with the information that it uses a 220 grain bullet, when the standard loading is either 123 grain or 154 grain bullets. Heavier bullets require a faster twist than lighter ones.
"The ammunition gives shooters exceptional accuracy and enhanced noise reduction without sacrificing the terminal performance hunters and marksmen expect, SilencerCo officials maintain." HUH? Terminal performance, like in energy remaining? Granted, a bullet that starts off at subsonic velocities will lose less of its energy after traveling a given distance than a round that starts off at higher velocities, but a slower round starts off with lower energies.
All-in-all, unless SilencerCo has developed a magic potion, I'd have to call BS on this article. It generally defies what I know about firearms and ammunition.
Military parenting. Geez. I'm old enough to remember when it was "If the Army wanted you to have a wife, they'd issue you one.".
http://www.urbanaero.com/category/airmule
Interesting article. Answers a lot of objections.
If your Aunt had balls she'd be your Uncle. It's always possible to hypothesize a situation where doing something is worse than doing nothing, but having a platoon of AirMules at the Battalion level would give the commander options he wouldn't have otherwise.
![[Avatar]](/images/avatar26.png){kind=avatar}
Opus