"Taliban Tactics and "Effective" small arms range" Topic

NOTE: This is also related to another thread on Taliban organization but this covers a recent change in tactics.

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The link above is to an article about recent changes in taliban tactics. Specifically, they're moving away from company-sized units to less direct confrontation by using bombs/IEDs and longer range "sniper" fire.

The article notes that while the Taliban are fighting from longer ranges they're not necessarily using "sniper" class weapons, only long-barreled rifles.

One interesting point is how a US officer describes "long range". The article states, "A Marine officer who's faced Taliban fighters said he'd seen them shoot from as far away as 400 yards."

So, the idea is that the Taliban are now fighting from longer ranges and a Marine officer interviewed for the article describes the new style of fighting based on Taliban troops firing at 400 yards.

Question for those with direct knowledge of effective small arms ranges under combat conditions (mine is limited to one-way rifle ranges!). What would you call "effective range" for various classes of small arms such as M-16s, SAWs, and M240s? Official and similar websites usually show effective "point target" range for the M16 as something like 500m or so and 800m for the M240.

But in many memoirs that I've read troops note as "out of the ordinary" shots beyond 200m with most small arms, which would be consistent with the article above (and we're talking US troops here from Vietnam to today). Like other weapon systems it seems that quotes for "effective range" "on paper" are somewhat optimistic. I'm sure that a weapon can fling its bits of metal many hundreds or even thousands of yards but actually hitting something is another issue! And the numbers above are specifically for point targets rather than area/suppression targets.

Your thoughts on the matter, whether through actual experience or reading?

MB

A very big restriction in practice is spotting the target at any range – modern day combatants prefer to try to make themselves difficult to spot.

Griefbringer

Nuke em from orbit.. its the only way to be sure.

One of the key items with engaging targets beyond about 200m is that people who are trying to live move quickly from cover to cover, or at least concealment to concealment, in short sprints. At 200m even a 6-8inch roll in the ground with a bit of turf can make good concealment and a 10inch fold of ground is workable as cover. Those sprints tend to not be directly to the point of engagement, but moving laterally back and forth across the defenders line of sight.

Add to that some covering fire coming from the attacker's base of fire and the defender has a lot of noise to overcome in order to effectively engage a target.

If your range will let you do it get a popup target set down range and have one friend stand behind you with some fire crackers while another has a riding crop. As you try to engage the target, have them use both in whatever order they want. Even the anticipation will slow your response time and the actuality will send your rounds off target.

Should the riding crop be used just for making a scary noise, or for spanking the OP while he is trying to aim?

For simulating battlefield conditions, I think the spanking would give more realistic results.

Griefbringer

400m is pushing it for 5.56mm weapons, which is partly why 7.62mm is making a comeback. It depends what you mean by 'effective' of course, you have to be very unlucky to get hit by small arms fire at that range, unless doing something daft like standing up, but it certainly has a suppressve effect.

Hi

Both Mao and Che and "War in the Shadows" discuss the phases of a guerrella war as going from 1:low level remote bombings and actions at individual levels, progressing through platoon/company then finally army level. If one loses, you drop down a level. Win, go up, the observation is in this line.

As to the weapons. Mechanically, both the 16 and the AK would be "effective" at 300 or more only by wild chance. Now, the target doesn't know you are just trying to be lucky, so the psychological aspect is partly there (you need to have some success).

The 16 has an moa of about 3, which is more accurate than the AK, but the energy level falls off so quickly that it is meaningless that at 400m hitting randomly within 12 inches of aim still isnt likely to work. The AK has better momentum, but is so inaccurate.

Both sides have some 30cal available, and those are going to be the ones of choice. You can rely on a 762 to carry killing energy to about 750 yards. Hitting is another matter, but that is what 3 round bursts are for.

R

I doubt most fighters would be effective at more than 200 – 250 yds., but that doesn't mean they won't try it from further away.

Most likely though, the firing from more than 250 yds. will be suppressive fire, as opposed to actually hitting a target, unless troops are just standing in a group, in the open. That will cease at the sound of the first rounds being heard.

Not to mention the fact that with body armor on US and Allied troops, the bad guys will have to get a lucky hit to wound a soldier.

Given the ratio of rounds excpended to casualties suffered in wars from WW2 onwards, most fire appears to have been 'random' rather than aimed. From the reading I have done (relatively little compared to many on these boards) most small arms casualties were inflicted either
a) in situations where the enemy were at relatively short range (less than 400 yards and preferably half that), in the open and not firing back – think ambush, or enemy in retreat or
b) inflicted by the very small proportion of the fighting troops who could both spot the enemy and ignore all the peripheral things going on while they target him.

One of the main excuses for going to lower-powered weapons like the AK47 and M16 in the first place was that the average soldier can't hit a thing at 300 meters, so why have rifles that shoot farther than that? (And,of course, by stepping down to a less powerful cartridge you can have fully automatic capability in a weapon light enough for the average guy to carry.)

The article confuses me. The US are worried because they are winning? The fact that company level actions are no longer viable for the Taliban should be seen as a good sign.

Sniping is all very well if you have your own front lines to fall back into, or in a dense town. In the more open areas, facing troops who outnumber you and have long-range weapons it is a much dicier situation.

It seems to me the "solution" is to ensure that every sniper get taken out after his first shots.

If it's true that the Taliban is now mostly Afghani, then the suicidal "martyr" types will be somewhat limited.

The problem is that snipers are great speedbumps. No grunt (of whatever nationality or branch of service) wants to stick his head up and draw fire. It's also hard to see a dusty turban (nevermind actual camo) @ 400m.

If you can stop/slow the patrols, you can do what you want in the provinces.

The following links will provide interesting background information regarding the increase in sniper activity on the Afghan Front for those of you who don't want to take the time to read anything more than a few hundred words at a time…

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As will this link: artactical.com for those who want to understand sniper and counter-sniper weapons and tactics.

For those of you who want to take the time to read and learn something try almost any book by John Poole.

"Tactics of the Crescent Moon" and "Dragon Days" are excellent sources of information for the student of unconventional warfare and have become required reading for all troop commanders deploying to the Theater… I/S

This is about modern weapons but cross posted to ww2 ?

In ww2 terms.
Combat was often at very short range.
20 to 30 yards is the sort of range numerous veterans describe.
What they're describing is what is sometimes referred to as "decisive" encounters in modern combat.
( Excluding unusual terrain ).

When you read up on combats you find that there are returns of fire at 100, maybe 200 yards with rifle and mg fire.
Further out it's mainly machine guns.
Read more.
These combats go on for hours and hours and nothing much happens, hardly anyone is hit.
Then someone manoeuvers into that decisive range, wipes the floor with the opposition and game over.
Or a huge amount of artillery leaves a bunch of smokin boots.

Something is clearly going on which makes battlefield small arms fire way less effective than the firing range would seem to indicate.

Modern highly trained and motivated soldiers are supposed to be better, but it's not my area of interest.

I would point out that people under combat stress seem to be remarkably bad at shooting. It's not unusual for returns of fire from pistol toting criminals to happen within a room for some time before anyone actually gets hit.

I would also point out that in any sort of terrain to speak of it gets very hard to see someone beyond even 50 yards.

I have watched footage of real encounters in Afghanistan fairly recently.
That series with Ross Kemp for example.
There's are exchanges of fire across a field is about 150 yards.
This goes on for hours, on and off.
You might have expected heaps of casualties at such range.
Not a lot happened.

Cross-posted to WWII given that many of the issues and even weapons are the same or at least similar. For example, MG-42 was first GPMG, MP-44 first effective assault rifle, etc. At the very least WWII combat experience informed the early development of post-war armies and weapons development. I suppose a better way to think of the topic is "late 20th century small arms ranges".

AONeill, you make some excellent points about firepower vs casualty rates which match what up perfectly with combat memoirs, youtube combat footage (of many different periods), and even current news accounts.

Typical combat footage and written memoirs seem to indicate that modern war is one of extreme contrasts. Typically vast amounts of small arms ammo are expended on well concealed targets in protective cover. The purpose and effect are not so much to kill but to make the other guy stop firing so your guys to maneuver (or simply to make the other guy stop firing!) So inflicting the fear of death is the aim.

But that fear-inducing objective is quite do-able since exposed targets are so vulnerable. Thus when targets are exposed, either in the open or discovered in concealment which does not provide protection, they're very quickly slaughtered or forced to surrender.

I suppose it's a little bit like trench warfare in that respect but with foliage covered bunkers, caves, and buildings replacing the trenches and with small unit flanks more exposed. In that context the stalemate is broken when one side is fixed, suppressed, and then close assaulted/flanked or hit with overwhelming firepower from supporting arms (eg in modern terms the Stryker MGS 105mm gun, Abrams 120mm gun, or maybe a laser guided bomb.)

The challenge for wargaming is making this interesting while representing those high contrast aspects of modern warfare. This past weekend our local group played a scifi game (very heavily modified AT-43…sort of combined with Battlefield Evolution)and a WWII skirmish game (Disposable Heroes). In both cases I think we got the bulk of these core issues correct (troops in cover pretty resilient but moving in the open was dangerous!).

Getting this back OT, one thing that interests me from a wargaming perspective is that if weapon ranges are unrealistically long and op-fire too perfectly responsive you lose a lot of entertaining maneuver decisions (op-fire rules often allow laser/robot-like reflexes). But if too permissive (ie weapon ranges too short and/or ineffective) you end up playing something which has little to do with modern tactics (think 40K's combat model).

MB

I'm not so sure you have to be very well concealed to be almost immune from fire so long as you're over a hundred yards or so away.

In that Ross Kemp thing they advanced under fire across an open field at one point.
Admittedly with some support giving suppressive fire.
If you haven't seen it then keep an eye out on satellite/cable/fileshare.

I also recently watched one about the Paras reconnaissance.
You might think paras, recce… that'd be sneaky deaky on their hands and knees?
Nope.
Chuffin big armoured lorries with big guns nailed on em.
40mil grenade launcher eg – something of a "You what?" moment for me.
Something like 600 grand apiece and two of the damn things went OC on their first trip.
Pathfinder it was called, a special for Sky.

For all moderns I would strongly recommend taking a look at Stargrunt 2.
This works pretty much as is for present day moderns and with some tweaking for ww2.
You can download it free from ground zero games.
I would also recommend nailing on some of my ww2 modifications which are on my website.
Under ww2
link

There are these sort of things modelled in the rules.
The main effect of ranged combat is to cause suppression.
When you get into "close combat" of 20 yards is when you start inflicting serious casualties.

Oh.
I also modify the armour rules quite a lot more than history really needs. That's simply because players like tanks AND sticking one tank on the table can mean you win or lose based on whether it lives or dies.

I fear tha the article quoted by the OP is both interesting and misleading…

long range fire is a fixture of tribal tactics in gthe area from the time of colonial wars… it can mean a lot of thing, they are simply exhaisting the supply of religious fanatics (and so the expendable foreigners) and reverting to a more natural approach… if their return to long range incoclusive engagmenents is more a sign of their difficulties than of "sophistication" of their tactics.
also we can even think about the recent Pakistani actions in their share of pashtunistan… Delhi has force them to show their commitment agaisnt terrorisdm, attacking talibans is safer than cracking on other extremists… but also mean that:

1) The talibans have to defend their safe areas so they are withdrawing forces from a'stan and reverting to harrasment and delay there

2) The pakistani army is much more tractable than the coalition, they could have shfited resources anf fighting strenght there hoping to get some sort of big victory while harrassing on the other side…

Also the whole thing of mao\che asymetrycal warfare is always inserted out of place (asymettry if also getting your light infantry nailed by a B52 flight… bu no one talks of this asymettry…)

Also sniper are a nuisance more than a impediment to patrols (also in A'stan you can patrol with armored vehicles increasing the challenge to the enemy and showing their impotence… roadside bombings are a problem, but also ceding the field to the coalition is an indicator of weakness.

Depsite the theory of the moving up and down the ladder once you start to be pushed back you could also hit a a downward spiral… the business is to control real estate and real people, if you hide and pinprick you lose them both… also remember that insurgencies who have spiralled down had never recovered barring external intervention…

I've tried a few times to try and understand the 'mechanics' of the firefight/gun battle, but suspect being unschooled and unshot at it's a lost cause.

Even without experience though, you tend to form opinions. One is that reading recollections or reports of WW2 era actions there's almost a feeling that becoming a casualty to rifle fire was somehow unusual (can't think of a more appropriate word). There's a passage in 'The Heat of Battle' about the 16th DLI in Italy where the witness specifcally mentions something like 'we took a lot of casualties that day from small arms fire', as though this was not a common occurence. By comparison, the effects of mortars and artillery are repeated time and again by those providing the accounts.

The principle seems straightforward enough; with lots of bullets flying around the battlefield, lots of people are going to get shot. Yet the impression is that aimed, accurate and effective rifle fire is one of the hardest things to achieve on the battlefield. Targets are staying out of sight, movements are fleeting, distant, on the periphery, you see it, turn…and he's gone. No one wants to get shot and taking even rudimentary precautions 'seems' to reduce the risk quite noticeably.

Here's a thought. Was reading something the other day, a US Para attack during Market-Garden. Claims of dozens of enemy killed in close range actions lead by Thompson SMGs and BARs, plus grenades and gammon bombs. The attack was going in on a network of enemy defences, most of the dead would appear to have been in crew served weapons locations, looking to their front when they got whacked from behind. In other words, they were stationary, fairly closely packed, and vulnerable to close range automatic fire.

If you can keep moving on the battlefield, does that alone increase your chances of survival? Have those of us detached observers become too hypnotised by the movie view of battle, where the hero kills all the bad guys by shooting from the hip and would never need to call in an air strike, be it by P47s or Harriers?

It seems damn hard to hit someone from distance with a snap shot, even if they are visible. The most effective shot from a sniper is perhaps the first, because he can pick his moment without the targets necessarily knowing they're under observation. After that, everyone is likely to be horizontal (and effectively neutralised) for a good spell.

"There's are exchanges of fire across a field is about 150 yards."

I was just watching another helmet camera sequence from that series, in this one the exchange of fire was taking place at 400m between two compounds. Main weapons in use (for the British anyway) were GPMGs and M249s, plus a 51mm mortar, I didn't see any of the riflemen fire a shot, not even the LSW gunners. The fight was eventually broken up by the USAF, sadly in this case dumping a bomb on the British by mistake.

My guess is: mix fear, exhaustion, and adrenalin in approximately equal doses and you'd be lucky to hit a barn at 150 meters with anything smaller than a .50 MG.

I just finished reading a memoir from an infantryman in the 99th division during the Battle of the Bulge. He stated that effective rifle range was only about 75 yards--smoothbore range! :)

Griefbringer – the point of the riding crop is that once you are hit once, just the noise of the thing hitting the table will make you flinch.

I was watching yet another company sized attack on the Taliban last night with my kids, this time the film crew were back with the .50 cals. They were blazing away at around 600m while one of the rifle platoons got pinned down around 200m from the enemy positions. My daughter complained that she couldn't see who they were firing at, just the strikes around the buildings – which of course was the point. All the infantry had to do was fix the enemy in position. Another platoon outflanked the enemy covered by the fire suport group and just plastered the place.

Having won the firefight, the infantry pulled back a couple of hundred metres and called in an airstrike which utterly demolished the Taliban compound.

There's a British Major won a medal for an assault in ww2.
Wrote "something about a soldier" Christopher Bulteen MC.
He reckoned you were safe from german mg fire so long as the first couple of bullets missed. He reckoned you were safe from the first couple of rounds at any sort of serious range. This was based on what seems to essentially be exposing himself to enemy fire.
Could of course be he never really found any quality opposition until the medal winning action. Although taking the objective his unit took a stack of casualties. He was shot in both arms.
Another interesting thing he mentions was that he never fired a shot in action.

On range of engagement.
I read something a while back.
British officer who was a keen hunter prior to ww2, a shooting and gun enthusiast known as a good shot. On one occasion he's with a couple of sections and an enemy is running. He's roughly a 100 yards away so nobody (even) bothers to shoot. A couple of them call to the officer who is not surprised they don't shoot… takes careful aim and hits the guy. This is a lone and probably unarmed german running and there is no combat as such.
Adrenaline and being under fire is far from the whole story.

Grossman would suggest a reluctance to kill.
Whatever the reason, people don't seem to try seriously until the enemy is up close and personal. Some individuals seem to be much better at the whole thing.
The demonstrable facts certainly seem to fit Grossman's theories, however counter intuitive they are.

I think Grossman might also suggest that one bloke stood in the open a thousand yards out is probably felt to be no threat. None of the gunners shooting at the Captain were that 1% of us who are OK with killing.

Griefbringer – the point of the riding crop is that once you are hit once, just the noise of the thing hitting the table will make you flinch.

If you want to make the whipping more disconcerting, this could help:

picture

Griefbringer

Hi

Actually, the short version of the story is backwards on this thread. As weapons get more effective per shot, the formation and reaction spreads out and "goes to ground". In each level of spread, the issue isn't the casualties, but reducing the effect. Blaming the soldier isn't the issue. The ability to hit.

Not the hit itself.

In any period, actual casualties are low compared to the rounds fired. "musket" range in the nappy period was fireing at densly packed lines. These days a battle fought on the field of "waterloo" would not have 200,000 men covering the front, but a few hundred.

R

The majority of US Infantry have gone to the M-4…better for CQB and vehicle use. All of us (US.Army) have engaged targets out to 300m to qualify. Beyond that and you have an M-60 LMG. and in all my experience I have never seen any person Male or Female who did not fire when under attack.Everyone on the Battlefield is tactical also your trained not to fire if you don't have a target(Not talking about fire and manuever or supression.)I myself carried a steralized AK47 and a glock 17. with the folding stock AK47 i had many succesfull engagements at around 300 Meters NOT Yards,and many of the folks to my left and right with M-4s serviced and droped their targets as well. Combat is scary and noisy but you find your training overides outside stimuly more then not and by the time you leave theater it becomes a matter of routine…Having said that killing is not easy no matter how much of it you have to do..No one wants to be in or around combat…Thank God it happens so fast that you don't have time to way options or the pros and cons and after well you just try to live your life the best you can…

In many WWII accounts, company reports of casualties were considered to be very heavy, when at around 3% – 5% for the unit.

Granted, that is for the whole unit, for a day, but does give you an idea of how low, or high that may be (depending upon your point of view), for the squads and platoons at the sharp end, e.g. 3% – 5% of a company of 150 men, is equivalent to 5 – 8 men, or so.

If that is spread out evenly, it doesn't sound to bad, but if it is your squad, or platoon that suffers most, or all of the casualties, then it is a lot of losses in a single day of fighting.

Extrapolated out at that rate for a month, and you can see that the whole unit will be eliminated in 30 days of fighting, or less.

Note that many casualties in ww2 would be from artillery – mostly mortars for the western allies in NWE. It wasn't just the sharp end taking the casualties.

WW2 infantry took huge casualties and you were pretty lucky if you went across the Normandy beaches and came out the end a year later intact.
Luckier still if your nerves weren't shot to hell.

My Dad was fortunate enough to catch malaria whlst doing jungle training. Dad was in the Chindits and due to go in the 1944 ops. A number of his friends didn't even survive the glider landing into theatre. None made it back.

Not one.