Deleted member 94680
And only people in the military will willfully ignore operational research and pursue rifles that have ranges of 800m+ when combat is at 300m or less and combat evidence shows that the average soldier, when he even fires his weapon, can hardly hit anything until its right on top of him. That also assumes that the only effective use of a weapon is to hit the enemy, whereas operation research has shown that supressive fire is amazingly effective in slowing the enemy to a halt and automatic fire gives a morale boost to the majority of troops while in practice not causing the logistical problems that the 'experts' fear.
Maybe the SMLE has less parts than an MP18 or Thompson, but what about a sten or other simpler weapon?
Fair points, but suppressive fire works best at “range” to allow your men to move on the enemy. Probably outside of the useful range of SMGs firing pistol rounds. By that range, you want to be hitting and killing the enemy. A rifle with a range of 800m will hit and kill at 300m, they aren’t mutually exclusive. Whereas if your maximum range is 300m, you’re out of luck if the enemy is, say, 400m away. Accurate to 800m (admittedly - and I totally agree - in the hands of well trained, settled and importantly good troops) mean it’s got a good chance of scoring hits at 300m. I know what I’d prefer in my hands if I was moving across hundreds of metres of contested ground. I’m also pretty sure we’ve disproved the “generals hated auto weapons due to waste” trope on this site previously, but I may be wrong.
A sten may be simpler than a MP18, but I’ll still confidently wager it has less parts than a bolt action mag fed rifle like the SMLE.
Edit: I stand corrected! After a brief search online, I found a reference for a SMLE (4 Mk1?) at 128 parts and a sten at 50 parts.