Vietnam-era SAW?

[Questerr]

What's the feasibility of the US Army and Marines adopting the Stoner 63 Commando in the role of a SAW or Light MG in the Vietnam-era (specifically mid-60's)? The Commando is way lighter than the M-60 and would give a good base of fire weapon to the infantry fireteam.

I'm asking because I've been kicking around the idea of a timeline involving improved mechanized US Army fighting in Africa in the Cold War (where Africa is the big focus instead of East Asia).

 

[TxCoatl1970]

You need a lot more infantry-centric US Army

One thing we've bandied about ad infinitum on this site is WI the US adopted
more emphasis toward light infantry /professionalism/gear/doctrine etc a la the British/Australians in the 1960's?

The Brits did so b/c of their regimental outlook (you train and serve with a unit from induction to discharge) and experiences in policing their colonies. Also, they emphasize something in the British forces- marksmanship, that American soldiers who relied on airstrikes or artillery or armor to squish opponents.
Marines are an exception to that rules as America's traditional expeditionary force in emphasizing good infantry tactics, marksmanship, fieldcraft, and esprit de corps.

The US Army emerged from WWII with a profoundly fubar way of looking at unit cohesion, infantry tactical doctrine, and so forth that it took the better part of a tour in Nam for most grunts to overcome and adapt to local conditions/learn and use effective tactics etc.

What you want is a weapon for independent infantry action that emerged after they relearned their lessons in jungle combat from WWII.
I see your point about using Stoner's concept weapons, but nobody saw the need for a squad-level belt-fed LMG to lugged along on foot patrol until mid-1960's, despite the WW2 experiences GIs in Europe had with MG42's- especially a 5.56-caliber LMG that limits it strictly to anti-personnel use.

We know now, fifty years later, a SAW's sweet for squad-level combat.
Somehow I severely doubt the US Army of 1965 would be fully behind LRRP squads as the main unit deployed in Vietnam and give them a SAW tailored to that concept.
Units did, but only after a lot of trial-and-error.

 

[Hipsterredneck556]

The US military toyed around with a couple of other squad support weapons besides the Stoner 63. Colt developed the CMG-1, a 5.56mm light machine gun around the same time as the Stoner 63 series of weapons. The CMG-1 also featured a 1x9 twist barrel, which would have allowed it to fire a 68 grain bullet. The 68 grain bullet would have had excellent terminal charictaristics, as well as improved range. Besides the CMG-1,the US military developed a light machinegun chambered in the 6mm SAW, but nothing ever came of it.

I'm very intrigued by the OP's timeline idea, but I agree that the US would have to undergo a significant doctrinal change. Perhaps a intensive counter-insurgency war in the Philippenes after WWII?

Link for the CMG-1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMG-1

(Yay!!! First Post!!! )

 

[Life In Black]

One thing we've bandied about ad infinitum on this site is WI the US adopted
more emphasis toward light infantry /professionalism/gear/doctrine etc a la the British/Australians in the 1960's?

The Brits did so b/c of their regimental outlook (you train and serve with a unit from induction to discharge) and experiences in policing their colonies. Also, they emphasize something in the British forces- marksmanship, that American soldiers who relied on airstrikes or artillery or armor to squish opponents.
Marines are an exception to that rules as America's traditional expeditionary force in emphasizing good infantry tactics, marksmanship, fieldcraft, and esprit de corps.

The US Army emerged from WWII with a profoundly fubar way of looking at unit cohesion, infantry tactical doctrine, and so forth that it took the better part of a tour in Nam for most grunts to overcome and adapt to local conditions/learn and use effective tactics etc.

What you want is a weapon for independent infantry action that emerged after they relearned their lessons in jungle combat from WWII.
I see your point about using Stoner's concept weapons, but nobody saw the need for a squad-level belt-fed LMG to lugged along on foot patrol until mid-1960's, despite the WW2 experiences GIs in Europe had with MG42's- especially a 5.56-caliber LMG that limits it strictly to anti-personnel use.

We know now, fifty years later, a SAW's sweet for squad-level combat.
Somehow I severely doubt the US Army of 1965 would be fully behind LRRP squads as the main unit deployed in Vietnam and give them a SAW tailored to that concept.
Units did, but only after a lot of trial-and-error.

You've hit the nail on the head. Many moons ago I posted a challenge of the US adopting the MG42, and the thread ended up (rightly in my opinion) discussing that the US would need to revamp their infantry tactics. Now, had such a change taken place, a better SAW-like weapon would almost certainly have been in use during Vietnam, as it would have been a continuation of using the MG42 in a squad-support role much like the Germans did during all of WWII.

[shameless plug] https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=185495 [/shameless plug]

 

[Questerr]

Would increased experience with urban combat be a good way for the US to build better infantry doctrines?

I see what posters have said about the US abandoning its good formation doctrine and forgetting a lot of lessons learned in WWII. When did the US Army abandon the Regimental Combat Teams? It seems to me that they were basically forerunners to the BCTs of today.

 

[Life In Black]

Would increased experience with urban combat be a good way for the US to build better infantry doctrines?

I see what posters have said about the US abandoning its good formation doctrine and forgetting a lot of lessons learned in WWII. When did the US Army abandon the Regimental Combat Teams? It seems to me that they were basically forerunners to the BCTs of today.

I don't know about urban combat helping. WWII, the US' mentality towards infantry combat, and especially when it came to squad support, was that this was provided at the platoon level, and that the BAR was sufficient to provide squad-level machine gun fire. The Germans, actually centered their squads around the machine gun, thus the squad's job was more to support the MG42 team, rather than the reverse. Now the US during WWII, actually attempted to copy the MG42 (and chamber it in .30-06 rather than the original 7.92x57mm Mauser) as a replacement for both the BAR and .30 Browning machine gun. This would have required switching tactics over to something akin to the German model; making the machine gun the integral part of the squad, not something tacked on as needed. As it was, this change didn't come about in the US until the tail-end of Vietnam and afterwards, when it was rightfully decided to revamp how things were done in light of the experience gained in Vietnam.

If there's one thing WWII hammered home, it was the use of combined arms tactics. This meant that armour, infantry, artillery, and tactical aircraft (be they rocket armed Typhoons or Mustangs, Stukas, etc.) all had to be able to operate together to cover each other's weaknesses and to accomplish given tasks. This type of cohesion isn't easy with the hectic nature of combat, and it can be difficult to assign units together as needed, versus having them already part of a same smaller unit. For example, say you need artillery to cover the armour's advance against the enemy. If the artillery is assigned by the division, there's the problem of needing to possibly go through the chain of command in order to have the attached artillery fire at whatever's needed, when it's needed. Now where this artillery already integrated into the armoured unit in question, this extra step is removed, as it becomes one commander in charge of everything in order to accomplish the given task. The difference then between an RCT and BCT then and a Battlegroup (aside from size) is that a battlegroup is usually an ad hoc formation formed either due to losses sustained in combat (like the German Kampfgruppe) or out of a need to further subjugate tasks. The ultimate goal through all of this though, is to have as self-sufficient a unit as possible in combat. This plays back into the US Army's WWII and beyond habit, of assigning units and weapons as needed, when it would have proved more effective had such units and weapons been a part of the unit all along.

I'm sure someone will come along and rip me a new one on this for getting everything wrong, but I tried.

 

[DD951]

(snip)I see what posters have said about the US abandoning its good formation doctrine and forgetting a lot of lessons learned in WWII. When did the US Army abandon the Regimental Combat Teams? It seems to me that they were basically forerunners to the BCTs of today.

IIRC, the US Army abandoned the RCTs in the late 1950s when the 'Pentomic Division' TOE was adopted- it was felt that attaching tank battalions to infantry regiments or vice-versa was too awkward when it came to properly coordinating & utilizing the combined arms in a mechanized division, as well as increasing vulnerability to a tac-nuke, so the regiment was abolished as a tactical unit in the reorganization, being split up into battalions, & the old regimental numbers being retained as identifiers that would preserve something of a unit's history & lineage, though the active battalions of a regiment didn't have to be in the same brigade, or for that matter, in the same division, even if some effort was made to maintain historic divisional affiliations for a few years for purposes of tradition.

In it's place, a division would be comprised of several brigade battlegroups that contained both infantry & armor elements, and supposedly capable of a high-degree of independent action as well as dispersing combat capability in a way that would minimize the consequences of a nuke vaporizing part of the line, modeled on the combat commands of WW2 armored divisions & the German 'Kampfgruppe' concept from the same war. Artillery, air-defense, and assorted supporting assets would be similarly broken up into several dispersed groupings to reduce the risk of a nuclear attack being used for rear-area interdiction crippling a division by destroying its tail.

Although the Pentomic Division proved to be a bad idea that was abandoned after a few years, the regiments no longer existed as any sort of coherent unit, and the brigades were found to be a better way of organizing divisions for combined-arms mechanized warfare.

 

[Life In Black]

IIRC, the US Army abandoned the RCTs in the late 1950s when the 'Pentomic Division' TOE was adopted- it was felt that attaching tank battalions to infantry regiments or vice-versa was too awkward when it came to properly coordinating & utilizing the combined arms in a mechanized division, as well as increasing vulnerability to a tac-nuke, so the regiment was abolished as a tactical unit in the reorganization, being split up into battalions, & the old regimental numbers being retained as identifiers that would preserve something of a unit's history & lineage, though the active battalions of a regiment didn't have to be in the same brigade, or for that matter, in the same division, even if some effort was made to maintain historic divisional affiliations for a few years for purposes of tradition.

In it's place, a division would be comprised of several brigade battlegroups that contained both infantry & armor elements, and supposedly capable of a high-degree of independent action as well as dispersing combat capability in a way that would minimize the consequences of a nuke vaporizing part of the line, modeled on the combat commands of WW2 armored divisions & the German 'Kampfgruppe' concept from the same war. Artillery, air-defense, and assorted supporting assets would be similarly broken up into several dispersed groupings to reduce the risk of a nuclear attack being used for rear-area interdiction crippling a division by destroying its tail.

Although the Pentomic Division proved to be a bad idea that was abandoned after a few years, the regiments no longer existed as any sort of coherent unit, and the brigades were found to be a better way of organizing divisions for combined-arms mechanized warfare.

Thank you for saying that better than I could.

 

[Questerr]

Snip

So in short, the degradation of US tactical doctrine and structure was in part do to the US military's obsession with fighting a nuclear war instead of a conventional one.

Correct?

 

[Life In Black]

So in short, the degradation of US tactical doctrine and structure was in part do to the US military's obsession with fighting a nuclear war instead of a conventional one.

Correct?

That was only part of it, the US military also has a habit of being stubborn and complacent.

 

[Riain]

Its similar in a way to the decline of dogifighting in the USAF and USN in the handful of years before it was needed. The US forces looked into the future and came to a conclusion and developed doctrine accordingly, the problem was that it was the wrong conclusion.

 

[Cook]

The US forces looked into the future and came to a conclusion and developed doctrine accordingly, the problem was that it was the wrong conclusion.

A large part of the problem was that the doctrine was for a war in Europe, where contact with the enemy would be at greater range and heavier calibre machine gun would be advantageous. In S.E. Asia this proved to be a disadvantage.

 

[NothingNow]

A large part of the problem was that the doctrine was for a war in Europe, where contact with the enemy would be at greater range and heavier calibre machine gun would be advantageous. In S.E. Asia this proved to be a disadvantage.

Everywhere else this proved to be a disadvantage, like the US deciding that they'd always have air superiority, and could thus let DIV-AD languish after the 60's.

 

[BlairWitch749]

as I argued in LIB's previous thread

The US having a light squad machine gun would also have to involve a considerable shift in infantry doctrine to mirror the fire team type operations that the Germans used in WW2, and that the US and Russians use now

In Vietnam, an MG-42 or equivilent would have put in great service, as US squads in the crazy visibility/terrain situations they encountered frequently found themselves cut off and forced to confront charging attacks

If the NVA or VC met the business end of an MG-42 (or equvilient) in these attacks which could hose them down at 1200 rounds a minute at ranges up to 1000 meters, they would find that those attacks would not work out as well as they did in otl

 

[Hipsterredneck556]

as I argued in LIB's previous thread

The US having a light squad machine gun would also have to involve a considerable shift in infantry doctrine to mirror the fire team type operations that the Germans used in WW2, and that the US and Russians use now

In Vietnam, an MG-42 or equivilent would have put in great service, as US squads in the crazy visibility/terrain situations they encountered frequently found themselves cut off and forced to confront charging attacks

If the NVA or VC met the business end of an MG-42 (or equvilient) in these attacks which could hose them down at 1200 rounds a minute at ranges up to 1000 meters, they would find that those attacks would not work out as well as they did in otl

An MG42 in Vietnam would not really make any difference. It would do the same thing as an M60, albeit with a higher rate of fire. It would still be a heavy weapon which requires heavy ammunition. The whole reason why the US military sought to develop a 5.56 or 6mm machinegun was to provide a more portable and light weight weapon for infantry combat. The SAW is not meant to be an anti-material weapon. It is solely meant to be an anti-personnel weapon.

 

[Life In Black]

An MG42 in Vietnam would not really make any difference. It would do the same thing as an M60, albeit with a higher rate of fire. It would still be a heavy weapon which requires heavy ammunition. The whole reason why the US military sought to develop a 5.56 or 6mm machinegun was to provide a more portable and light weight weapon for infantry combat. The SAW is not meant to be an anti-material weapon. It is solely meant to be an anti-personnel weapon.

It would make a difference, as it would mean the squad was finally more self sufficient, and based around the machine gun, rather than the machine gun being an after thought attached "as needed". If the US had mangaged to successfully copy the MG42 and adjust infantry tactics accordingly, I guarantee a smaller, more man-portable version of the MG42 would have been developed by the time Vietnam came about. I imagine it would be akin to the Austrian MG74, only lighter.

 

[Life In Black]

as I argued in LIB's previous thread

The US having a light squad machine gun would also have to involve a considerable shift in infantry doctrine to mirror the fire team type operations that the Germans used in WW2, and that the US and Russians use now

In Vietnam, an MG-42 or equivilent would have put in great service, as US squads in the crazy visibility/terrain situations they encountered frequently found themselves cut off and forced to confront charging attacks

If the NVA or VC met the business end of an MG-42 (or equvilient) in these attacks which could hose them down at 1200 rounds a minute at ranges up to 1000 meters, they would find that those attacks would not work out as well as they did in otl

This isn't my thread, BlairWitch.

 

[BlairWitch749]

It would make a difference, as it would mean the squad was finally more self sufficient, and based around the machine gun, rather than the machine gun being an after thought attached "as needed". If the US had mangaged to successfully copy the MG42 and adjust infantry tactics accordingly, I guarantee a smaller, more man-portable version of the MG42 would have been developed by the time Vietnam came about. I imagine it would be akin to the Austrian MG74, only lighter.

Even if it just graduated to the MG-3... the high sustained rates of fire AND accompanying infantry doctrine would be significant

 

[Hipsterredneck556]

Even if it just graduated to the MG-3... the high sustained rates of fire AND accompanying infantry doctrine would be significant

The MG42, MG3, and so on really don't produce all that much of a change in infantry doctrine. You are still tying a squad to their machinegun team. I think that the BAR or Bren gun were probably more revolutionary than the MG series of weapons. They both afforded the average infantry squad a decent mix of suppressive fire and mobility. While both of these weapons were somewhat lacking in magazine capacity, the idea of a highly portable, yet powerful squad support weapon still persists. The Ultimax LMG and the M249 SPW both strike me as good examples of this concept.

 

[Electric Monk]

So in short, the degradation of US tactical doctrine and structure was in part do to the US military's obsession with fighting a nuclear war instead of a conventional one.

Correct?

Primarily.

In addition the USAF buys the most expensive weapons systems (in the '50s and '60s) which means more jobs in Congressional districts with the Army doing the least to create jobs, hence less money. Note that historically the three services get 1/3 each of all money regardless of requirements but of course has varied in some periods.

Robert MacNamera basically bought shiny—conventional—toys to distract the US military from blowing up Russia with nukes.

You'd need a massively large shift in politics to achieve an Army focused policy.