New Lease on Life for the Beloved M-14

[unhappycamper]

New Lease on Life for the Beloved M-14
November 13, 2008
Tactical Life|by Eric R. Poole

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated how critically important snipers are to a fight marked by urban canyons and high-mountain caves. Problem is, those highly-trained sharpshooters are in short supply, and the need for accurate, long-range fire has outpaced the services' ability to field one-shot killers.

So both the Army and Marine Corps began a program to seed infantry squads with so-called "designated marksmen" -- call them "snipers-lite."

The growing need to equip these new marksmen with accurized rifles prompted the Army to reconsider the role of the venerable M-14 rifle for the war on terror. Back in Desert Storm, armorers from the 10th Special Forces group took M-14s equipped with a match barrels and fitted a gas piston on them for optimal performance, re-designating it the M-25. They replaced the stock with a McMillan M1A fiberglass one, developed a scope mount and added a Bausch & Lomb 10x40mm fixed-power optic or a Leupold Mark 4.

The revamped M-14 provides the Army squad designated marksman with on-command direct fire support for his squad, a fire team or his platoon. The heavier-caliber sharpshooters provide cover when machine guns displace, counter-sniper fire in urban areas, and they help in overtaking valuable real estate.

Infrared targeting lasers such as the AN/PEQ-2 and PAQ-4C make the DM's job more like 24-hour shift work. Now that suppressors for the M-14-series of rifles are available, the night-vision capabilities coupled with sound mitigation makes the Soldier's ability to own the night even more secure.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/new-lease-on-life-for-the-beloved-m14.html?col=1186032310810

[old mark]

1. Good ol' .308.

I was in one of the last training groups to get the M-14. I liked it a lot. I have nothing against the M-16, but my serious rifle is a FAL, chambered in.308.

About time they are being used again.

mark

[unhappycamper]

2. I started out with an M-1

and I got my first M-1 thumb at Ft. Leonard Wood in 1963.

[old mark]

3. Saw 5 M-1's in a gun shop yesterday - they are a little more

expensive than they used to be - lowest was around $500. They are still great to shoot, but too much money for me.

mark

[TahitiNut]

4. I think I can still field-strip an M-1 (or M-14, even) blindfolded and behind my back.

I can't even count the hours spent drilling and field-stripping in the 60s. I gaze upon them in the case at my local VFW when I visit and I get this time-warp feeling. (Yikes.)

[happyslug]

5. Doing what the Russian have done since WWII

Even with the adoption of the AK-47, a full size cartridge rifle was ALWAYS part of a Russian Platoon (Which is about 2/3 the size of a US Platoon). Thus in a Russian Platoon of about 20-30 men, you had one person with the ability to reach out and touch someone. Till the 1960s these were WWII era Bolt action rifles, in the 1960s these were replaced by the Dragunovs series of rifles. Looked down by Western Snipers as inferior Sniper rifles, but Sniping was NOT their primary purpose (like Western Armies, Snipers in the Russian Army are NOT assigned to Squad or Platoon units in the Russian Army, but at Company or higher level, the Dragunov is NOT for such Company or higher level assigned Snipers but to provide Platoons and Squads long range rifle fire). Thus the primary role of the Dragunov is the same role the M14 in providing today.

More on the Dragunov:
http://www.dragunov.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVD_(rifle)
http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn18-e.htm

More on the "United States Marine Corps Designated Marksman Rifle":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Marine_Corps_Designated_Marksman_Rifle

175 Grain bullet in a 7.62mm round? Is the Marine reinventing the 1924 M1 Cartridge? My father who enlisted into the National Guard in early 1941 was issued a M1903 Sprngfield and M1 ammunition. Later on he was provided M2 Ammunition (Which was nothing more then a modernized versions of the M1906 Ammunition with a 150 grain bullet). The reason for the Switch from M1 to M2 was that the M1 Rifle could NOT handle M1 Ammunition. THe M1 Rifle was only Standardized in 1936 and even as late as 1940 the Army was still working the bugs out of it (One of the Bugs was that the M1 Ammunition, in use since 1924 was to powerful for it). The M1 Ammunition was a 174 grain Bullet, which extended the ranges of Machine Guns from a Maximum of 3000 yards to 6000 yards. The bolt Action Springfield could handle it, but apparently the M1 Rifle could not. M1 Ammunition was preferred for Machine Gun use in the early years of WWII, but apparently was quickly displaced by M2 Ammunition just to ease supply lines (The Addition of M2 50 Caliber Machine Gun also eliminated the need for 6000 yard range in 30 caliber machine guns).

Just a note on how this is just a re0invention of an old idea, more than anything else.