US Army issue weapons
 

I've never been in the army, and the only time I was in an infantry unit in the Corps was 2 years in a Reserve Headquarters Co.

I'm putting together an NPC party, with issued weapons.

What are the issue weapons - M16, M4, M9 pistol??? for:

Infantry Staff Sergeant (E-7) Issued an M9 pistol, but I'm thinking of giving him a remington 870.

Enlisted Bradley driver- I've got him with an M4 carbine

Enlisted Medic- M9 Berreta

Enlisted Combat Journalist/Photographer- M9 Berretta

Thanks.

I'm not sure if medics are issued weapons. Otherwise, nothing looks terribly unrealistic.

First off, he's a Sergeant First Class if he's an E-7. And he gets an M4 (or M16 depending on your year and supply system) and possibly an M9 if the unit in question has them to spare.

M4, or M16 as above.

Or M4. Most of our medics, we gave an M4 as his only weapon. We took the M9 for the PLs.

He'd get an M4/M16 instead of an M9.

In an infantry battalion, a medic carries the same weapons as a basic rifleman -- which means he's one of the heaviest members of the platoon. They trained with us and were pretty much as good as infantrymen as the rest of us were.

As an aside: Who's the most heavily-armed individual infantryman of an infantry battalion? It's the Chaplain's aide. For example, in my first active duty unit at Ft. Stewart, Slev (nobody could ever remember his mile-long name) carried an M-16A2/M-203 combination. He was issued twice the ammo of anybody else. The HMMWV he drove had a wartime load of a Dragon and two missiles, six AT-4s, two satchel charges -- and it was the only armored HMMWV we had. The Chaplain, who is unarmed, is considered very important in a US Army unit, and the Chaplain's Aide is his bodyguard. (And Slev also had to be able to assist in religious rituals!)

I have to semi-disagree with you on one point, Eddie -- if the combat journalist is a civilian, he would be unarmed (though unless he is stupid, he's have picked one up in a T2K context). That is because he is legally considered a non-combatant.

If he's a military Combat Correspondent, he's basically a rifleman with cameras.

Whoops, typo. E-6.

Thanks.

Ah, okay. I've done more WWII gaming that modern military gaming and medics in the ETO generally weren't armed as Germans usually didn't shoot at them (the Pacific was an entirely different matter).

But most modern armies don't have medics as such (apart from at hospitals and aid posts etc). They are combat medics which are infantryman trained to be a medics.
They are armed because a) they are infantryman first and b) they have to be able to protect any wounded in their care.

I have a friend who was a Royal Navy doctor before leaving the service. IIRC he usually carried a sidearm at least, both for personal protection and to protect his patients. I'll check with him when I see him at the weekend and let you know.

In the US Army there are Medics and Combat Life Savers.

Medics are the traditional aidmen attached to platoons. In the past they have been armed with sidearms for self defense, but there has been a trend to arm them with rifles/carbines in my experience in addition to the side arm. Their Aid bags, and carry an assortment of pharma & bandages which gives them the ability to triage personel in a broad range of ailments and injuries ranging from colds to traumatic combat injuries. The medic is responsible for the general health and hygene of a platoon in the field.

Combat Life Savers, are soldiers whom have completed a 40 hour block of instruction to enable them to stabalize casualties, and otherwise supplement the Platoon Medic. The are armed as a rifleman (or whatever function the platoon serves, depending on branch) and carry an aid bag which is less comprehensive than that which a Medic carries. They typically are able to apply field dressings, and start IV's (saline typically carried in aidbag). Generally, on Combat Life Saver will be present in a Squad, but there may be as many as one per fire team (again this is dependent on the unit and the TO&E).

Battalions usually provide aid stations in the battalion rear area, located away from the TOC, and the Logistical trains. There may be a physician, LPN, NP, or other health care professional there Plus several medics as staff. From the Battalion Aid Station, evacuated casualties may be evacutated further to a field hospital (the Aid Station may be bypassed by way of a heliborne Medivac), or returned to duty. Treatment for minor illness, injuries, may be completed at the aid station prior to a return to duty order. Personel will be equipt with a mixture of rifles/Carbines/sidearms... I never served in one myself, but I've seen them carry all kinds of weapons with no apparent logic to their assignment.

I say your orginal TO&E is good, while yes those weapons would not normally found on pers of thier rank, job ect. In Twiligt there any number of reasons as why this party was armed that way, I mean this is role playing as long as you come up with a logical reson, I say go for it

Anything goes in T2K. One of my favourite characters is an officer who carries a C-9 Minimi - not exactly standard issue for the leadership....

Since you're wanting to play semantics, I have to disagree with you then, pmulc, if he's a civilian, he's an embedded journalist, not a combat journalist. Combat Journalist is a Combat Correspondent.

But also, he's specifically listed as an Enlisted Combat Journalist, so we can argue the semantics all day, but the OP already identified what he meant.

Meh, it's T2K. Arm him with whatever you feel like....

Guns??? What are you a bunch on panty waste sissys! I killed more men with my sharpened spoon then my gun! Ahhh nothing better then the feel of hot blood running over your hands when you make the first cut!!


(Okay... I have to stop eating my spiked rum cake... That was my alter ego Sgt Mayhem taking over for a bit...)

situational
 

if overseas ,the group can have been in units that have seen action and thus have captured weaponry / civillian weaponry .

I agree with your original line up , ( and it adds a few interesting game aspects such as range and damage considerations for the characters as well as for style -the seargant with the pa 12 gage is semi iconic as an action film character )

the post which outlines what is regulation is of course text book .

also I like the fact that you havent over armed - being outgunned is a joy for the players ,they just dont know it on a conscious level , its all in the tingling they get after the session is over and their PC actually survived against the odds..

I like another twist as well - the journalist is a civillian - and thus he gets whatever is left over after the soldiers are armed say a rusty and bent AK that you blunt the stats for so that it gets in accurate and faulty..

anyways - have fun with the outfitting - I like that part alot too.

The journalist is Army, MOS code 46Q, I looked it up. I've never encountered one so I didn't have a clue how he'd be armed.

As far as the medic, the only ones I've encountered were Navy Corpmen and I can't remember seeing them armed with anything, much less a pistol. I did have the idea of making him a concientous objecter/pacifist and refusing to carry any weapon.

By 2000 I tend to think most of them would have been weeded out of the gene pool by "natural selection"...

I absolutely disagree with you Leg!!:p By 2000 pacifists would be everywhere but they would be heavily armed.:D Objecters would be armed as well but they might be wiser in their use of weapons. It's a position you can't hold when your friends and family are dying around you.;)

I agree with the series "Tour of Duty" on what happens to objecters.

Okay...I gotta go on a logic rant here. I still consider myself new to these forums because I primarily lurk, so let me apologize to the regulars here in advance that I know I'm about to offend in some unintended way. I'm not attacking anyone, just the idea of scavenging odd-ball weaponry in the Twilight environment that everyone seems to latch onto "because it's T2K, anything goes". As such, I will remove names in any quotes I take.

It's absolutely textbook. It's also logic and common sense. You have a 50m range with a 9mm, a 75-100m range with a shotgun or a 300m range with a rifle...which would you prefer to be armed with? I absolutely love the cool factor of walking around with my M9 on a FOB and during training, but when rounds were coming at me, I was grateful for standoff. That takes care of the common sense part.

"But you take what you can find...it's Twilight, after all..."

Yeah, exactly, but stop and think about it. NATO sent all these troops into the fight at the start of the conflict. How were they armed when they were sent? Was there a shortage of "textbook" weaponry? I mean after all, a unit doesn't get sent to combat unless they have the majority of their MTOE equipment, and specifically they won't go unless they have all of what is called their "pacing items" (I can talk more about pacing items if you wish, but really it's more real-world information than necessary at this point). MTOE gives the majority of combat soldiers a rifle or machinegun (light or otherwise, and yes, an M249 is a machinegun by definition) as their primary weapon, with a few special jobs receiving an additional pistol as a backup or in some extreme cases as the primary.

Then people start dying.

What do you think the most excess, lying-around weapons are going to be? The few thousand backup weapons spread throughout the theater, or the primary combat weapon of whatever nation the troops deployed from? And what nations sent the most troops into a theater? Has the largest supply chains? The US and Russia, right?

Now then, because the nation in question was the US and the Army was specifically named, I have personally sat in Brigade-level meetings on a monthly basis since June because up until last week I was a company commander for an Infantry company, and believe me...no COL or LTC is going to send a unit to a combat theater understrength on rifles. They'll do what is called a "lateral transfer" from rear-echelon units or better yet non-deployable units and trade out all pistols if nothing else. Or an Operational Needs Statement (ONS) before deploying to buy enough weapons for everyone to deploy with.

Now battle damage and casualties will wear down the availability of rifles, but most of the casualties will be meat damage, not metal damage, but even if a single Army Battalion bought every single M4 in existence, all of them died, and the weapons had to be coded out, there are still hundreds of thousands of M16s in the inventory and I'd say tens of thousands of M14s (which would be an even cooler game-twist in my opinion), which will be the subject of those lateral transfers for combat. How long does it take? When I was stationed at Ft. Drum in 1999 and we gave up all of our M16s to the NY NG and we received M4s, it took one day for them to pick up the weapons and less than a week for our supply guy to complete all of the paperwork transactions. As a company commander now, when I laterally transferred my four SAWs for M4s in August, it took three days to get the weapons and close out with the Property Book Office.

As for the shotguns, there are 16-28 per battalion (less than M9s) based on type of Infantry unit...other types of units filling in the Infantry role typically have less than 50% of Infantry-assigned weaponry according to the Center for Army Lessons Learned.

Now all of this takes into the Original Posters comment:

I fully acknowledge once in theater, away from the flagpole trying to survive, PC instinct takes over and they raid every single body they come across. I fully acknowledge that if the OP is starting in media res, they could have acquired other weaponry. I fully acknowledge that having all US weaponry limits them to only NATO ammunition. I'm just answering the question asked by the Original Poster in the parameters that he gave us.

I agree with all your points Eddie and like most people here, I appreciate people with real world information. So thanks for posting.

Of course weswood's original armament is possible in the game. 100% soviet weapons are possible. A mix of civilian stuff is possible. Heck sharpened sticks are possible. It all comes down to likelihood and creating an effective back-story.

Extreme situations common in T2k can lead to unlikely results, but if unlikely results start to show a particular pattern realism might suffer. It all depends on what one wants from their game. We are all here for ideas which we will mold and shape into our own T2k world.

Eddie I fully agree that "meat" causalities will far outnumber firearms causalities, and my games usually have a majority of people, be they civilians, soldiers or marauders, at least show the appearance of being as heavily armed as would be logical given their location and situation. The status of their ammunition situation is of course an entirely different matter.

Well it one of those things with the mind set of local culture. I wonder how medic faired on the Eastern Front.

I don't want to play semantics, I'm just good at it.:p

Three cheers for Eddie!

I'm right behind you on this one. They issue you with a rifle so you can shoot the enemy while they're waaaaay out there. You're issued a bayonet so you can stab them while they're still beyond arms length. It's all about killing them at a range longer than they can effectively kill you in my book - pistols just don't fit into that concept except in rare circumstances (such as inside buildings, tunnels or other close quarters).

This is one of the reasons I prefer 7.62 over 5.56 and both (as well as just about any other round) over 9mm. They give you the range and hitting power you need to take them down before they can get close enough to take you down.

Thanks for all the help.

To further clarify ( or confuse!)the situation, in my Twilight world, I've pushed back the nuclear exchanges. War starts as usual, with China/Soviet border clashes in 1996. It stays conventional until '97 when the USA/Nato/reunified Germany enter the war. Warsaw Pact uses nukes in China to free up some Armies to send against NATO, but avoids using them against NATO. '98 is pretty quiet re nukes, 99% conventional warfare. '99 the tactical nukes start falling again, this time against NATO. Then, Thankskgiving of '99 Warsaw Pact launches strategic nukes against the US and others in a last ditch effort to win the war.

The NPC party ( 1 SSgt, 1 Cpl Medic, 3 PFCs) were part of replacement troops, the last ship out from the US. They were actually at sea when the US was hit.

The reason I came up with that timeline is because if I ever find live players they probably won't be prior military, or combat experienced. Having them fresh to the war will cover any serious tactical blunders then make. That, and I have a hard time believing that the US would send troops overseas after being hit with massive nuclear strikes (TDM).

And while on issue weapons, is there an Army equivalent to the USMC K-bar knife? Issued instead of a bayonet to those whose primary weapon won't handle a bayonet - machinegunners, M203's etc.

I'm not US, but back when I was in the Australian Infantry, machinegunners were not issued with any knives (besides a pocket knife hardly anyone carried). This was one of the reasons I made a habit of carrying a hand axe. There was a rumour though that gunners were to be issued pistols, but I never even laid eyes on one (the battalion only had 9 total if memory serves me).

Grenadiers (both M79 and later M203) were issued with bayonets, even though they could not be used while the launcher was fitted.

every company I've ever served with assigned bayonets to every soldier...

currently the US issues the M9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M9_bayonet which replaced the M7 (which had not been completely replaced when I first entered the army in 1990) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M7_bayonet

Zero bayonets in my company until about a month ago, and even then we only got 40. He's right though in that almost every Infantry Company will have them.

In the MC EVERYONE who had an M16 or 203 or SAW was issued a M7 Bayonet. Those who were "gunners" ie, SMAW, M60E3 and Mortars <and only the primary gunners> had 9mm but no Ka-Bars. As I recall, the Corpsmen, the Gunny, 1st Sgt and Company Comander had M9s with the Black Ka-Bar. Our XO chose to carry an M16. And most blades where banned or forced to check into the armory the exception being a KA-Bar with brown leather which was privately purchased or fixed blades with a blade length of 3 inches or less. Hell even my Kuhkri I traded for with the Gurhkas had to go into the armory. And when they found my Sykes Fairbian Comando knife WOW! They raised a fit. Bascialy it was a old style KA-Bar or the Pilots Survival Knife and that was about it.