USA and USMC Common Issues

[sabresandy]

As noted, here are some issues I'd like to discuss regarding the TO&E. Obats and numbers will be in bold when possible. I'll focus on issues common to the US and USMC obats, since it'd be impractical to separate them out.

The first three issues are relatively fast "quick fix" problems. The ones after that would probably require a little more discussion.

* OBAT 12, US use of 2x70mm DAGR, weapon 187. This weapon is not in service. Easy to fix, though: replace the name with APKWS-II, which is in service. Oddly, units begin using these in 2006, six years before they enter testing.

* OBAT 13, USMC, also needs fixing for the DAGR rockets. Weapons 178 and 188 should be renamed APKWS-II instead of DAGR; in addition, units 500-505 have the rocket much too early. It only entered active-duty testing in 2012 or so.

* OBAT 12 unit 902, the US Pave Low, should be out of service in 9/2008. Ditto for its Marine counterpart, OBAT 13 unit 314.

* 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.

* OBAT 13, weapon 27: the M27 IAR for the USMC. I think it'd be better reflected as a high-accuracy, low-killing-power weapon like the RPK-74 or the British LSW. As it is, its current stats at 19acc/5HEK reflect neither its lower bullet count nor its higher accuracy. I suggest 28ACC/4HEK, in between the RPK-74 and the LSW.