Quote:
Originally Posted by sabresandy
* OBATs 12 and 13, US and USMC. Instead of the generic WWII-era "rifle grenade", US forces should have the ENERGA from 1950 onward, and the M31 from sometime in the 1950s. I recognize that fiddling with the US infantry sections will be an absolute pain, so for my personal TO&E I compromised by introducing an ENERGA clone with the introduction of the M14. That seems to be the easiest fix: introduce the M31 grenade at the same time as the M14 is introduced. Trying to fix the M1 Garand-armed infantry will be difficult.
* OBATs 12 and 13, US and USMC: M16 SAWs and M16A2 LMGs. (For OBAT 12, these are weapons 21 and 234; for OBAT 13, these are 21, 24, and 26.) Seriously, what's up with them? By the Vietnam War, every squad had an M60 if they didn't hang on to their older M14A1s or BARs. I couldn't find any references to frontline squads using M16s as light machine guns. I think it'd be better to replace them with a mixture of BARs, M14A1s, and M60s as appropriate.
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RIFLE-GRENADES
M9A1 HEAT c.a. 1943 Penetrate 60-100mm of armor. Ineffective vs the Soviet used by the North Koreans.
M28 HEAT c.a 1952 Copy of Belgian "Energa" Effective range 90m
M31 HEAT c.a. 1955-1965 Penetrate 200mm of armor.
By the end of the Vietnam War, both the US Army and US Marines had essentially phased out rifle grenades in favor of the M72 LAW and the M203 GL.
The Rifleman's Assault Weapon (RAW), a big-azz sphereical-shaped rocket-boosted 140mm rifle grenade for the M16 was developed in 1977 and put into limited service by the United States Marine Corps.
It had a 1 kg HESH warhead and a remarkably flat trajectory to 300 meters (max range, 1200m).
It was designed for urban warfare; making holes in walls, taking out fortified positions & bunkers, and destroying unarmored vehicles.
There was also a HEAT version.
The Rifle-Launched Anti-armor Munition (RAAM) was another program during the 1990s for a rocket-boosted HEAT bullet trap rifle grenade with a tandem warhead.
The RAAM has a maximum range of 250 meters and can penetrate armor more than 400 mm thick.
M16 SAWs and M16A2 LMGs
Not quite.
Each USMC Rifle Company (in it's Weapons Platoon) has 6x M60 MGs. Generally allocated 2 per Rifle Platoon (which has 3x Rifle Squads).
The USMC does not generally use the M60 as a LMG (one of the reasons the USMC still uses a 4-man machinegun team vs the US Army 2 or 3-man).
Tho many units held onto their BARs till the 1960s they were officially phased out in 1958 when the M14 was adopted.
The M14 and later the M16 were officially designated, and used, as automatic rifles in the USMC (not that either was very good at it) until the adoption of the M249 in 1986.
DAGR/APKWS II
Fastboat covered those quite well.