The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into “rifle fights,” tactical situations for which many of America’s troops have been ill-prepared.
….
Until recently the infantryman’s primary weapon was a radio connected to an artillery battery, a helicopter gunship or an A-10 Warthog. But in today’s asymmetric warfare, traditional American advantages, such as artillery and air power, have largely been negated. The majority of combat-related casualties are caused by explosives rather than small arms, but in direct combat, riflery matters as never before.
[GardenSERF: I'm tired of the repeated inaccuracy of the "today's asymmetric warfare" phrase. Other than a few battles when Western Europeans squared off on open fields, warfare was rarely symmetric.]
….
The Army’s default setting is high-volume firepower from infantry arms. Yet most combat-experienced marksmen disapprove of the three-shot burst option, let alone full-automatic fire. Jim Coxen, a Vietnam rifleman and cofounder of Oregon IPSC said, “I would have done at least as well with a scout rifle. You can never train everybody well enough to handle full auto, and you won’t always have enough training time or ammo anyway. It’s a really bad idea.”
Even with competent riflemen, long-range engagements very seldom equal the sniper’s “one shot, one kill” mantra. Clint Smith, proprietor of Thunder Ranch, has trained special operations personnel for decades. He said,
“Even with good riflemen, first round hits beyond 400 yards probably drop off about 50 percent for each hundred yards.” That figure tracks with observations from other highly experienced instructors such as John Pepper. A Korean War infantry veteran and inventor of the Pepper Popper target, he said,
“In combat, maybe one soldier in 10 will look at his sights and control the trigger.”
[GardenSERF: that 1 in 10 figure has been debated (some estimate it's much higher). The key there isn't lack or quality of marksmanship training, but other psychological
factors which have greater bearing once in combat. I don't have the time to detail that here today. I agree with Clint's figure about the major drop off in hits as distance increases, but I would drop the initial distance to 300 yards. He is probably getting the cream of the crop to begin with.]
The American military usually does an adequate job of teaching marksmanship to large numbers of people. It does less well in teaching large numbers to fight with rifles. Consider no less an authority than Maj. Gen. Merritt Edson, USMC, a Distinguished Rifleman who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal. He later became executive director of NRA, and during the Korean War he said that the military could not be expected to teach lifesaving marksmanship skills to every soldier or Marine.
His advice: If parents wanted their son to have the best chance to survive combat, see that he learns to shoot a rifle as a boy.
[GardenSERF: The general is right. But, try countering years of anti-gun propaganda taught in school and the MSM. Add that to an urban/suburban population which has never hunted or even possesses basic fieldcraft skills. The first hurdle in training is just getting people comfortable with pooping outdoors so they're not immediately going from constipated to suddenly relieved and squishy as the shooting begins.]
History was on Edson’s side. Many of America’s infantry heroes grew up shooting: Alvin York, Sam Woodfill and Audie Murphy to name a few. But in 1940, 43 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today it’s about half as much, with attendant diminished civilian marksmanship skills. We no longer have large numbers of recruits arriving with gun handling skills or a basic knowledge of ballistics, let alone marksmanship.
[GardenSERF: There was a reason why I mentioned York in my pistol review recently --it's not always about distance and it's good to be skilled across a wide range. Literally.]
….
The problem is systemic, as noted by Maj. Thomas Ehrhart’s 2009 study, “Taking Back the Infantry’s Half Kilometer.” Ehrhart wrote that the U.S. Army dropped long-range riflery as a primary skill in 1958, deep into the Cold War. Engagement out to 600 meters was replaced by “trainfire,” which emphasized 50 to 300 meters. Ehrhart argued, “While the infantryman is ideally suited for combat in Afghanistan, his current weapons, doctrine, and marksmanship training do not provide a precise, lethal fire capability to 500 meters and are therefore inappropriate.”
In 2010, California National Guard S/Sgt. Jeffrey Wall wrote an influential paper for Small Wars Journal. “A Rifleman’s War” immediately caught the attention of marksmen everywhere. A Distinguished pistol shot and former Marine officer, Wall is intimately involved in Army marksmanship training.
He notes that 52 percent of Afghan firefights begin at 500 meters or more, placing a premium on skilled riflemen—especially when supporting arms are limited by rules of engagement.
[GardenSERF: Again, I could go into a long aside here on ROE since I was around for the change of that becoming more restrictive in Iraq.]
Wall writes of pre-deployment training, “We are most frequently given one day to present Preliminary Marksmanship Instruction and four or five days on the ranges for all weapons, with one day on the rifle range. According to First Army standards we are to—ideally—train a rifleman going to war with 58 rounds of ammunition— 18 to zero and 40 to qualify on the ‘pop-up target range’.”
[GardenSERF: I can vouch that the pre-d training I attended only involved approximately 60 rounds. Yes, we had X00 people deploy to a combat zone with that as their total trigger time. We spent more time using compasses.]
The problem is only aggravated by a shortage of facilities or ammunition. In 2005 at Fort Sill, Okla., a deploying helicopter company was unable to qualify with most arms. Said former Warrant Officer Dave Long,
“We didn’t have enough pistol ammunition, so we ran around with our Berettas, going ‘bang-bang.’ Although we’re an aviation unit, we had to train for convoy escort but there was no training ammo for the .50 calibers or Mark 19 grenade launchers. So we did like Sgt. Rock, going ‘budda-budda.’ It was laughable and pointless.”
[GardenSERF: Yes, I also did the empty bang-bang training as part of my "live-fire" convoy training. Sometimes the attitude of Big Army is "they're aviator, medical, etc so they won't do any convoys outside the wire and don't really need the ammo to train for the real thing." What happens when the helicopter goes down or the medical guy like me only
travels by ground convoy outside the wire?]
….
Military personnel sometimes attend club events just so they can shoot military-type arms.
In 2005 an Arizona police instructor provided three days of pro-bono small-arms training to a Marine helicopter pilot bound for combat. The aviator had not fired a hand-held small arm in two years.
[GardenSERF: I received a pro-bono tactical small arms course.]
Seth Nadel is an NRA Patron member, retired federal agent and competitive shooter. He recalled,
“At one of our club’s machine gun events, two Army guys showed up to shoot a privately owned M60. Seems they could not get enough time to shoot on duty. They got more trigger time in that one day than they had in the previous few years.”
[GardenSERF: I also had to pay for my own trigger time on privately owned Class 3 weapons.]
….
Therefore, thirdly: let the shooters shoot. Allow unit commanders to devote extra range time to soldiers with the desire to become as proficient as possible. In combat, they can take the time to hold, aim and squeeze while their friends lay down area fire or at least make noise. The two concepts are not necessarily contradictory.
To summarize: The overall standard of Army marksmanship can be raised by quality, not quantity.
The army recruits about 80,000 people a year, so let a few hundred with the interest and ability do most of the shooting. In some remote, desolate battlefield, a few good riflemen can mean the difference between life and death. 
Are troops this ill-prepared?
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