What about an M4 on a bipod?

[Cruzan]

If it was set to 3 round burst mode and accidentally went off -- e.g. safety off and it was kicked or brushed up against -- could that have done it, or would the shot group still be spread too wide?

[Zywiec]

1. Three rounds going off in a 1/5 of a second?

I think the shot group would be pretty tight.

[sammythecat]

18. My post, #17, addresses this issue.

According to the info in the article, a tight group like we're talking about would not have been posible from a distance of 50-100 yards.

[formercia]

2. Since the weapon had nothing to recoil against

like a shoulder, the second and third round would have been way off.

Anyone who leaves a weapon unattended and loaded with the safety off should be written up and have their ass kicked.

[Squatch]

5. At 30 meters, when shooting in a prone position

with an M-4, my first round is center and my third round is usually +/- 10 inches up and right. Shooting a 3 to 6-round burst on an M-249 (SAW), I can usually keep the rounds on paper well beyond 30 meters.

The SAW and M-4 fire the exact same cartridge.

[formercia]

7. agreed

I've fired several cans of 5.56 and used a bipod as well.

The original premise was someone brushing up against an unattended weapon with nothing to recoil against.

Not everyone is going to be able to hold the same group, even if they all try with the same weapon.

The 5.56 doesn't have much recoil, but the M4 is a lot lighter than the SAW and the apparent recoil and muzzle climb will be greater. It's just basic physics.

[Squatch]

9. I think people have been watching too many Tom Clancy movies

It is hard as hell to control a M4 on burst. You've got 30 rounds in the magazine and it takes about 7 or 8 seconds for a reload. The last I'd want to do is put the weapon on burst and then realize only a 30% hit probability at 30 meters...you've effectively cut your magazine capacity to 10 rounds.

[formercia]

12. With an M-16 at 50 Meters

my spread with a 3 round burst was about a foot, and that was trying to control the weapon as best I could.

Anyone who says they can hold an automatic weapon on target while firing and looking through the sights is full of it. The muzzle blast from the first and successive rounds obscure the target, so it's just a guess.

The russians have a 5.45 variant that can hold a burst much better than ours but it's not widely issued.

In competent hands, the 5.56 can do the job, even with one round. I knew a commercial deer hunter in New Zealand that made one-shot kills on a couple of thousand Red Deer using a Rem 600 carbine in .222.

Personally, a 7.62 or bigger has a better comfort factor.

[madokie]

3. since the barrel, receiver and stock is in a straight line there is little lift

when a round is fired so yes its possible to keep a 3 shot burst in a relatively tight circle from say 10 meters or so. The gun was designed on purpose for that reason.

[Squatch]

4. "Gun"?

You should know better than that.

[madokie]

6. who besides you cares that I use the word gun

wtf over

[Squatch]

8. Who said I cared?

:shrug:

[madokie]

10. you have a good day

Main Entry: 1gun
Pronunciation: 'g&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gonne, gunne
1 a : a piece of ordnance usually with high muzzle velocity and comparatively flat trajectory b : a portable firearm (as a rifle or handgun) c : a device that throws a projectile
2 a : a discharge of a gun especially as a salute or signal b : a signal marking a beginning or ending
3 a : HUNTER b : GUNMAN
4 : something suggesting a gun in shape or function
5 : THROTTLE
- gunned /'g&nd/ adjective
- under the gun : under pressure or attack

[Squatch]

11. Thanks, buddy! You do the same.

[Solo_in_MD]

13. Have you actually tried that and seen such results with the M4 *rifle*

[madokie]

14. no when I was in the service we used the m-16

and its been so long ago as to when I fired one I can't remember, but the design of the 'gun' was to lessen the rise of the barrel upon firing, thats what I'm talking about.

[Selatius]

15. It's likely the man was killed when someone intentionally aimed at Tillman.

One of the big things they try to teach you in the Army is not to fire before you know what the hell you're aiming at.

[formercia]

16. I'm sure they knew exaxctly what they were aiming at. n/t

[sammythecat]

17. 3 rounds within a 2" grouping

seems almost impossible with a burst from an automatic weapon, but, having never fired an automatic weapon I can't be sure. I do know, however, that when a gun is fired and it is not held by a vise, the gun will move from the recoil. Each bullet, after the first, will leave the barrel at a different angle than the original line of sight.

Here's a link to a rifle that was developed to overcome this limitation: http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_G11,,00.html

The article explains the interesting details of this weapon but here's a quote that is relevant to this thread. By the way, this fascinating gun, the G-11, was never adopted and was never put into production.

"Of these requirements, the most challenging to overcome, and what made the G11 such a revolutionary weapon, was the issue of burst accuracy. Following a 1960s study at Frankfurt's Battelle Institute, it was determined that current methods of automatic and burst fire management were not capable of meeting the accuracy demands established by the German government. Fully automatic fire generates individual recoil impulses which not only causes the rifle to rise (as the weapon pivots on the firer's shoulder), but when transferred to the shooter's body, these impulses cause the shooter's torso to rotate as well."

According to the article, in order to overcome this accuracy problem due to recoil, in order to get 3 shots within a 2" circle, the rate of fire would have to be 2,000rpm in a 3 round burst. The m-16 and the m-4 have a rate of fire of 800rpm when fired in a 3 round burst. What this means is that, at 2,000 rounds per minute, all 3 bullets from a burst would be out of the barrel BEFORE the recoil caused the barrel to move off target. 2,000rpm = tight grouping. 800rpm = not tight grouping. By "distance" I mean 50-100 yards.

From the information I see, there are only 2 possible conclusions:

a) He was shot by the enemy and 3 bullets entered his forehead within a 2" group. This would be an impossible shot from the position (50-100yds) of the enemy. It IS possible this could have happened by coincidence when a large number of shots are fired, but the odds of this happening by coincidence are simply astronomical. I don't believe this happened.

b) He was shot at close range (less than 10yds) by a fellow American soldier. "Why", whether murder or accident, is the big question.

[formercia]

19. Here's the key to solving the question

If the entry wounds were in a linear spread, it could be argued that it was a burst. If the entry wounds are in a random, somewhat triangular pattern, then it was deliberate, aimed fire.

[sammythecat]

20. Makes perfect sense to me

The Army has the knowledge and expertise to have come to a definitive conclusion by now.Why this matter is still open to conjecture amazes me.

[Elidor]

21. Everyone keeps talking about a burst. I'm confused

What if you just squeezed off three shots manually, one at a time? Is there something I've missed that specifically rules this out?

[yella_dawg]

22. The confusion comes comes about because somebody

conflated three-round-burst with three head wounds. For some reason, everybody is hung on that in spite of the fact that such a situation is highly unlikely. Much more likely is three individual, aimed shots, or, more than one shooter. I can snap shoot an M-16 with more accuracy than using the sights at short range. (My personal opinion that it is a piece of plastic crap comes from experience 35 years ago, so it could be outdated. But I doubt it.)

[moondust]

23. When the first shot hits the target

the target is going to move, perhaps a lot, making it all but impossible to manually squeeze off two more rounds from 30 feet and place them right on top of the first round while the target is in motion. Of course once the first shot hits and the target goes down someone could easily walk up and casually place two more rounds wherever they choose.

[Elidor]

25. As I understand it, Tillman was laying down, and had already been hit

When the fatal shot hit him in the head. His head would move a few inches at the most between shots. So if someone had him sighted in and squeezed off three rounds one at a time at the same spot, it would appear as a tight group. I really don't think this was a semi-auto burst.

[RamboLiberal]

24. Some interesting stuff in this CBS report from 11/06

One investigator told the Tillmans that it hadn't been ruled out that Tillman was shot by an American sniper or deliberately murdered by his own men — though he also gave no indication the evidence pointed that way.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/09/terror/main2165223.shtml#ccmm

[benEzra]

26. I think it was most likely a SAW, not an M4...

for the reasons discussed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1453683&mesg_id=1462238

And, as this link points out, the evidence does quite clearly point to it being an accident, and speculations about it being an assassination only serve to distract from the very real coverup and possible crimes committed by Administration officials in connection with the incident.

STAN: Not unless it occurred in front of at least eight people, all who had great respect for him, and who conspired to cover this up together. Two of the top gunshot specialists in forensic pathology in the nation agree with me that this was likely a squad automatic weapon (same caliber as an M-4). The army dummied up the distances, then drew them down to 85 meters to support a “fog of war” thesis (as opposed to the actual serial violations of the ROE that did occur… more likely at around 40 meters.

The three shots that killed Pat were actually two tight, and one flyer, all head shots and each instantly fatal on its own account. Now think in slow motion. Let me begin with the terminal ballistics one never sees in films and on tv. Destruction of the connectionn between the brain stem and the rest of the body caused a body to fall… straight down. No, people do not fly through the air like the stunt-people in Hollywood. Straight down. This happens instantly.

The new theory proposed by some so-called expert, says that this tight shot-group (less than 4 inches) could only have been fired by someone shooting on semi-automatic (one shot at a time, even if in rapid succession). A fully-automatic weapon, like the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) that is presumed (by me and two of the top forensics experts in the country) to be the lethal weapon, according to this theory, cannot fire this shot group because automatic weapons can not be controlled for this tight a shot-group.

This premise is the basis of the presumed distance (10 meters) and mode of fire (semi-auto)/weapon (M-4) in the ne AP-propogated theory. Two problems: (1) the theory about auto fire is wrong, and (2) Pat was shot in the face three times, while facing downhill, and standing on a steep incline dropping to his front.

(2) first. For this to have been an M-4 fiing on semi, the shooter would have had to fire, reaquire, fire, reaquire, and fire again, before Pat fell to the ground (straight down, on a steep forward inclining piece of terrain, with a large stone in front of him to prevent him tumbling down the hill). Even a very good rapid-fire shooter could not have place all three shots together quickly enough to fire the second and third shots before Pat fell away from the sight alignment. The only 5.56 mm weapon that could have placed those shots that quickly in the same place was the SAW… cyclic rate of auto-fire: 850 rounds per minute (14 rounds per second, ergo, three rounds in 2/10 of a second). Physics and physiology matter; now add on the statistical probability that a bunch of enlisted people wopuld willingly participate as accessories after the fact in a cold-blooded murder (that just happened to coincide with an unplanned (but ineffectual) ambush)… and we begin to appreciate how unlikely this scenario is.

Now for number (1). I’ll happily go to the range with anyone who cares to set it up today (which can be arranged with anyone who has been trained with the SAW), and demonstrate that these tight groups very well can be fired from a Saw, when they are part of a continuous firing cycle that allows the gunner to first walk the fire onto a target, then tighten down on the weapon as he orients on the impact signature (The rock in front of Pat was covered with bullet strikes.).

There are family members who will not easily dismiss this because they are not experts on these things, and because the government has lied and covered up again and again and again on this case. I don’t fault them; and in fact I have great affection for them. The depth of their sense of betrayal would make anyone think the worst, and want someone to prove otherwise. More than this, I am not willing to say because I am still under a confidentiality agreement.

Let me say this, though. If this case becomes about a conspiracy to murder, the focus is taken off the likely suspects for the real cover-up and crime, and the ones who all these sacrifices of Generals have been designed to protect… Donald Rumsfeld, Lawrence DeRita, and probably George W. Bush. They are all loving this right now.

(this was posted in the comments section of an unrelated thread in which Tillman was brought up: http://stangoff.com/?p=522#comment-82779

There is nothing the Pentagon would rather do with this case, aside from making it evaporate, than turn it into a debate about whether Pat was assassinated or not. (my bold) He wasn’t, and so they can not only poke fun at any of us who propose that hypothesis, they can relax as we all bark up the wrong tree.

I personally find that analysis pretty compelling.