Is there any point in adopting older weaponry or surplus as opposed to modern firearms, in an interest of reliability in extreme environments and durability in it's mechanisms and lower-maintenance?
Is there any place for the M1 Garand as opposed to a modern rifle?
From purely the standpoint of an insurgency*
Yes.
If you look at modern military casualties the number one cause of death by smallarms fire came from snipers.
So, a scoped M1 employed from concealment can serve a purpose, but only if the shooter remembers the two biggest rules of a guerilla.
>1 Do not fight pitched battles.
>2 Do not become decisively engaged.
A U.S soldier proud and true with
>plates/armor
>tactical rig
>nightvision/thermal/gaydar
>state of the art optics
>state of the art firearms
Have and Can still be killed by:
Taliban Steve and Mike the Muj with
>an AK passed down through the family
>an SKS with rusted iron sights
>a funny looking rock
like this anon said, any serviceable weapon in the hands of a willing insurgent will work as intended
>an AK passed down through the family
Killed before he can fire
Only a few hundred US troops were ever killed by small arms fire
Thousands of afghan fighters were killed in turn
Gunfire was so ineffective that they stopped doing it to focus solely on IEDs
Only a few hundred casualties were produced, but at least it didnt prune the entire family tree to wound a single enemy
I don't think most Americans have bothered to look at the casualty numbers. I wonder how many were friendly fire. Only 2,420 US servicemen died in Afghanistan.
Probably the biggest part of waging guerrilla war is being willing to endure more suffering than the enemy in order to achieve victory over the long term at least when fighting a modern western country. You'll be losing by any conventional metric but the insurgent lasts through enough elections while still sending home the occasional body-bag and they'll get bored and move on.
I think the enemy having aircraft, APCs, and tanks makes the rifle irrelevant though sure you'd do better in gun fights if you had gucci ARs or whatever but really the insurgent should be making IEDs and punishing collaborators instead of getting in gunfights.
I think that as long as the 'inferior weapon' isn't a literal 14th century arquebus the standard of infantry weapons is one of the least important factors in the strategic and operational level of planning.
It is not an absolute rule that older weapons are sturdier, more reliable, lower-maintenance and handles all adverse environments better. Progress has in many cases specifically been about making things less complex, more rugged, more foolproof, and all around more reliable.
So what you need to look at is whether or not some specific old weapon works better than the reasonably available new weapons in some specific environment.
Cost is also a major part of what's "better" here. Insurgent Whatshisname uses some old crap that's been left lying around his his grandpa's time because it's what he has, not because it outperforms an HK416. Canada isn't going to fight any major battles up in northern Nunavut, so bolt action rifles are good enough for the arctic patrol.
It depends. I'm not going to take pikes against assault rifles but an M1 Garand at least has a range advantage over the AK-47. The problem is that modern guns are actually pretty reliable. A lot of early guns like the Mosin Nagant are actually less reliable than more modern rifles.
>A lot of early guns like the Mosin Nagant are actually less reliable than more modern rifles.
How so?
I have a nagant and first time out with it I started with bulk steel cased ammo that came with it (wolf of tula((basically what would have been used in the war)) and I didn't finish a single mag before it expanded too much and got stuck in the chamber. Had to literally full bodyweight force hit the cleaning rod down multiple times after oiling the cartridge heavily to dislodge it. Heard about similar anecdotes where this was apparently pretty common and led to a lot of folks dying because their gun suddenly became an expensive club in a firefight
unlucky, or maybe im lucky with the fossil 1917 i have. though in this hypothetical fantasy that 5 foot club would not be the first thing id want to lug around.
would honestly probably start with my short carcano or sportered arisaka
With mosins, it's like ever one of them has a personality(or more accurately, a genetic disorder). My rifle (1948 M44) can go through hundreds of rounds without having any sort of serious cleaning and the bolt is working as intended, but lord be damned if I go a day without the ram rod sliding out the bottom.
And to answer OP, anyone who tells you something like "a mosin or even a kar is JUST AS GOOD as a modern rifle" is full of it, but I know i'll hit whatever it is I'm aiming at with my mosin than an AR platform i've had for a couple months
Rim lock, open action for debris to enter
First, our metalurgy has not stopped improving since the 1800s. It's subtle but modern guns are less prone to wear and tear than late 1800s guns.
Second, a lot of guns had some weird ideas for cost cutting that often didn't pan out.
Finally, industry has expanded so a lot of modern guns are made of higher quality parts.
The Mosin, for example, had this bottom rail component that was made of far too soft a steel as well as having a collar that was prone to trapping dirt underneath it.
The M1911 was hammer fired and occasionally you'd get crap trapped between the hammer and the firing pin. It's also a single stack magazine which we didn't realize was less reliable than double stack.
Ross Rifles were perfectly good for hunting but nobody realized that they were sensitive to dirt and that the mud of the trenches was far more tortuous than a hunting expedition.
the bolt on my mosin won't close when it gets hot.
Pee on it.
Bolt stuck
yes
>Is there any point in adopting older weaponry or surplus as opposed to modern firearms
Scarcity of modern firearms.
For example, one of the first Naxalite fight happened when hunters with bows have ambushed the police unit armed with handguns and bolt action rifles. However, those were 1960s, before police started wearing armour
a broadhead will go through kevlar
>in an interest of reliability in extreme environments and durability in it's mechanisms and lower-maintenance?
This is frequently not the case. Modern firearms are often adopted on the basis of improved reliability and/or ease of use as compared to legacy systems.
>Is there any place for the M1 Garand as opposed to a modern rifle?
Since it doesn’t offer any substantive advantage over a good AR-10 or a SCAR, I’m going to say no unless you literally can’t access modern weaponry.
No. Weapons like this could be pressed into service in an insurgency but a Garand would not offer any advantage over an AR. They aren't as accurate and they aren't as reliable. .30-06 has a lot of sauce but an AR can put out so much more fire that it really doesn't matter.
"absolutely slaughter", I don't know, I don't think I'd go that far, but wasn't that one of the lessons from Afghanistan? 5.56 got adopted because yeah, we aren't going to be fighting beyond 2-300 yards or so, if it can reach that far it's fine. And then we go off into this sandbox with no trees and all of a sudden you can snipe or at least take potshots from two or three times that distance.
Anon I routinely shoot my AR with a ta31 at 600yds. Even if you butchered a Garand with some sort of optic, it wouldn't be as accurate at that distance. Hell, the m14 needs a ton of work and is pretty delicate afterwards to be made to compete at those distances.
Can you shoehorn an old gun into doing things? Yeah. But a modern gun will kick it's teeth in 99 times out of 100.
>take out guy with shitty rifle
>steal his modern rifle
simple as
>Is there any place for the M1 Garand as opposed to a modern rifle?
Yes, in a relatively open rolling landscape with long lines of sight a platoon armed with Garand would absolutely slaughter a platoon armed with modern M4s. Fact
No. It's a nice thought though.
only if you put modern optics on it
>using older firearms because you already have them, they aren't beat to shit, and they perform the task that you ask of them adequately
this is fine. Sirius sled patrol using M1917's is a good example, M14's in the late 80s/90s arguably as well
>preferentially adopting older firearms over newer ones
I see no reason. this isn't fricking Warhammer where the methods to design and produce milsurp is a lost technology. A new production firearm can do/can be designed to do pretty much everything an older one can or better, and if you're buying new guns anyway you might as well order the gun you want rather than selectively choosing one from the past. If you were to adopt an older design (say, a garand) you now have to worry about parts wear and refurbishment, replacement, and potentially new manufacture, which might necessitate spooling up production or maintenance lines for a weapon that has not truly been in production for decades, which may incur as much cost as just ordering new guns of similar capability that aren't held back by being older designs. the practical advantage simply does not exist
Also what he said. All of it. No use intentionally limiting yourself for no reason.
The answer is no, because you are not outperforming the weapon, you're outperforming the tactics of the enemy.
If the tactics are equal, the modern weaponry is going to win.
I wouldn't call .30-06 inferior.
Cost.
The gap is shorter between the Garand and AR than the Garand and the five-round bolt actions it was competing against in its heyday.
A semi auto rifle in a still-popular cartridge is going to be as useful as the person using it. Logistics, infrastructure, and tactics will be the defining factors especially if we’re talking about asymmetrical/guerilla warfare, wherein protracted gun battles are going to be avoided at all costs.
The Chauchat was a game changer, when compared to what was being offered at the time.
I'd say the genuine hard limit as far as obsolete but still viable is the NO4 enfield, 1886 Carbine or 10/22 and that's really pushing it and assuming non frontline service by irregular partisans
The opposite end of obsolete but still totally viable is the SKS and M1 Carbine
A poverty state arms AR is more durable and lower maintenance than a Garand. I love mine, but it's an antiquated, obsolete rifle for a modern battlefield.
Yes
There were a bunch of studies done based on after action reports of the 1ATF in Vietnam. Mostly jungle fighting, infante only.
In one of those they correlated the australiana ammunition expenditure and kill ratio to most common type of weapon found in vc caches.
When the vc started yo hace more aks and m16s (vs ww2 stuff). The australians spended much more ammo and had more difficult firefights. Even then the australians kicked ass... So yes, as long as you are not generations behind the soldier IS more important than the weapon.
My 2 cents, i dont hace the paper at hand but if you are curiois search for bang on target 1atf, It IS from the same authors.
Hyper niche expertise VS Standardized
Proficient familiarity
I think every human is different, we all have different tastes and body dimensions and limitations. I think it doesn't matter what weapon you use as long as it compliments the user to great effect. If you don't use Standard equipment and tactics, you throw your opposition off guard and confused. Might even be favorable bc they'll assume they have an advantage which can be exploited. Min maxing is kinda a meme, obviously you want to optimize but there isn't a single RIGHT answer. It's more ambiguous, however this isn't reasonable for modern military structure but you see mercs n pmcs run strange load outs solely bc it works for them.
(I'm just gonna say any weapon post WWII and up bc that's when shit started to pop off on innovation)
To your main point. >It's not outperforming modern firearms then. Superior tactics are outperforming inferior tactics.
To your secondary point regarding quality. > Every firearm works until it doesn't. Some just reach that point much faster during use due to age or quality. Some great guns have inferior designs. M1A for example. Great fun gun and range queen but generally accepted as an outdated design during hard use. Some old guns have stood the test of time too. The AK/AR rifle platforms have been very successful. Of the hundreds of designs to last through the decades these two have. Beretta 92 series and Glocks are good handgun examples of very successful designs. All of these have stood the test of time and while not equal while compared together, they have out lasted many competitors left and right.