More AK-47's For Iraq

[rmsharpe]

Other than handling the domestic violence, what does Iraq really need an army for right now, anyway?

[pchang]

Take the ones already there

Do a village by village lock down and house to house search. Seize all weapons and shoot any resistors. Redistribute seized weapons to new Iraqi Army.

[pchang]

Better weapons

Besides, the best assault rifle in the world is the new AK-94. However, no one has bought any in quantity (not even the Russians because they can't afford them).

[Joseph]

The Iraqi army should be for defense only, no offend. That means no Tanks, no Jet Power Fighter, Bomber, and or Attack aircraft.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Joseph
no Jet Power Fighter, Bomber, and or Attack aircraft.

You want them to have Bi-planes?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Joseph
The Iraqi army should be for defense only, no offend. That means no Tanks, no Jet Power Fighter, Bomber, and or Attack aircraft.

It's better to be the hammer than the nail. There is only one form of defense, and that's wasting the mother****ers before they have the chance to unload on you.

[Dis]

hey at least you can't say Bush handed the contract to his buddies in America.

And with the performance of the M-16 by Jessica Lynch and her crew, I'm not impressed by the M-16's reliability.

[CerberusIV]

Presumably one of the reasons for choosing AK47's is ammunition supply. AFAIK the Iraqi's did produce their own in the past and there are considerable captured stocks available.

As for differences between the various manufacturers of AK47's, yes but most differences are minor and you would think that they have enough unused AK47's that are near enough the same to be getting on with.

The reasons for a new Iraqi army. People in the Iraqi army aren't on the other side. Iraqi army/police units tackling terrorists will go down better with the local population and world public opinion generally. A lot of the US/UK troops would like to come home, where else are the replacement troops going to come from to allow a reduction in US/UK troop numbers.

[Ned]

I think somebody has got a screw loose. This has got to be fixed.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Dissident
hey at least you can't say Bush handed the contract to his buddies in America.

And with the performance of the M-16 by Jessica Lynch and her crew, I'm not impressed by the M-16's reliability.

A person does have to take the time to clean their rifle every once in a while. And I'd have a hard time judging the M-16 based on Jessica Lynch's performance.

[:) Smiley]

A big reason for bringing back the Iraqi army is unemployment. Iraq is a nation of 21 million. That means over 10% of their working men were in the army. When the Iraqi army was disbanded, all of a sudden you got a huge jump in unemployment. That tends to lead to a big jump in crime anywhere.

[Ned]

Smiley, I don't know if uninployment has anything to do with the new army. Iraq needs some kind of army if we are going to withdraw. The sooner it is established, the sooner we can leave.

The basic problem I have, as do many here, is that it makes no sense to buy AK-47s for the Iraqi's given that there are more than enough new AK's available in-country already. If we were going to buy weapons, why not pick the best NATO weapon available?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Dissident
hey at least you can't say Bush handed the contract to his buddies in America.

And with the performance of the M-16 by Jessica Lynch and her crew, I'm not impressed by the M-16's reliability.

An RPG blast in a confined space tends to degrade performance of most weapons. None of the five in that Humvee were in any condition to ever use their weapons. The weapons didn't jam, they were damaged beyond use or repair when the RPG hit killed one two of the five instantly, and fatally wounded two more.

Their performance can't be degraded (the weapons or the soldiers), because there was no performance, it was a slaughter.

Ned - the best NATO caliber weapons available, the Sig FASS-90/StG 90 and the IMI Tavor series, are far superior to what we give our own troops.

[Ned]

MtG, Is the difference so great as to justify the cost of upgrading.

However, if one is going to start from scratch, why not start with the current state-of-the art?

[MichaeltheGreat]

One, it would be outrageous, and politically suicidal for a "pro defense" candidate to spend taxpayer money giving a foreign army (any foreign army) better weapons than we give our own troops.

Two, it would violate the principles of domestic corporate defense pork to buy foreign for NATO caliber weapons - that's why we get issued the mediocre crap we're issued.

Three, "state of the art" weapons require good armorers, diligent weapons maintenance in the field, and a proper infantry culture. "My Rifle" is a bit gung ho, since it's jarhead mantra, but the general essence of it isn't far off. We're not going to train these guys to SOF capable status, we're not going to train them like US Army Light Infantry or Airborne. So we need to issue them a weapon that can take typical levels of third world military neglect.

All that's really needed is to scrape together some E6 and E7 light weapons armorers from different units, and create an impromptu inspection board to sift through the new and near new weapons we've confiscated en masse. Set a standard for type (full stock 7.62 x 39 WP chambering), for grooves and twist (there's some variability depending on the country of manufacture), get the serial numbers off the candidate weapons, do a visual inspection, disassemble and inspect the actions, clean 'em, test fire 'em, and certify 'em.

The armorers are already in country, as are the weapons, so it's a virtual no cost solution, that will deliver the same result. "New" weapons under this contract will have to go through more or less the same inspection procedures prior to acceptance anyway.

As far as upgrading our troops goes, we've had several chances to do that, with the incremental upgrades to the M4A1 and M16A2.