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Old 08-31-2011, 03:24 AM
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StainlessSteelCynic StainlessSteelCynic is offline
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Location: Western Australia
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A few things here, my experience in the Australian Army Reserve was mostly in Infantry. I was in from the 1980s to the 1990s, my instructors where mostly combat veterans from Vietnam. Most of those instructors stressed that while individual marksmanship was something to strive for, the killing power of the Section/Squad was the machinegun - rifleman pin the target and the machinegun destroys it.

I guess what this goes to show is that doctrine changes over time like everything else. I know from my experience we never got enough live ammo time to be as good at individual marksmanship as we should have been but I did get plenty of time on the M60 and with grenades of various sorts.

As for people saying the Minimi/M249 SAW is too heavy... how do they think their fathers felt when they were lugging around MG3, M60 or MAG58 MGs? Or their grandfathers when it was Browning M1919, Vickers or Bren Guns? I carried the M60 for about half a decade, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who complain that a 5.56mm weapon is too heavy to carry around - can you tell!

As for Puckapunyal, unfortunately it's over the other side of the country from Targan, a trip by air of about 2700km (1700 miles)!
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