Archaic?

This is coolbert:

From a comment made to the blog:

"But I am not surprised at the current problems with materials and parts. This kind of stuff just doesn't seem to be considered 'important' until there is a crisis."

"Nobody here thinks that we will actually need any old, 20th century technology like armor plating. I mean, we will have composites and satellites and lasers and stealth fighters and we will kick ass with that. Bullets and boots are passe', right?. Somebody forgot to tell our enemies that."

I would think that if after the first Gulf War, you had told someone that in about ten years or so in the future, the U.S. Army will be bringing out of mothballs weaponry first designed in the 1950's and re-issuing to troops, most everyone would have said that this was a nutty person talking.

I am thinking here of the M-14 rifle, the M-60 machine gun, the M-113 "Gavin" APC.

And of course let us not forget the venerable and "retired" forty-five [.45] autoloading pistol. Designed almost one hundred years ago now!! Also being issued to the troops in Iraq.

Wondrous things can be done with those "old-fashioned" weapons. Very useful in the current Iraqi situation. Those 7.62 NATO rounds chew things up good. And the APC can be re-furbished with slat armor, a souped up engine, spall lining, and gun shields for the machine gunner operating the fifty caliber [MG] out of the top hatch.

[whose idea was it in the first place to remove those gun shields after all??!! Were effective for the ACAV [armored cavalry] in Vietnam. Still useful now!!]

I can fully understand too why the U.S. Army and other federal agencies adopted the Beretta 9mm handgun as the standard sidearm. A NATO compatible round. And at the time of adoption, federal agencies were using no less than twenty five different types of handguns. I am talking about Army, Secret Service, FBI, FPS, Border Patrol, etc. There was a strong reason to standardize. But now, facing a fanatical enemy [an enemy sometimes on "buzz" [BZ]], engaging in city fight and close-quarters combat, the forty-five is way more useful.

Well, after World War Two, the thought was, as the comment says, THE NEXT WAR WILL BE A PUSH BUTTON AFFAIR WITH NUKES, AND THAT WILL BE THAT!! Did not transpire.

Hey, even experts can be wrong.

coolbert.