I would hope there will be a full evaluation of what went wrong in this situation, including this weaponry “malfunction” issue. Could there have been sabotage with the ammo or the weapons themselves? Given our enemy’s cunning strategic moves, I wouldn’t doubt that they had methods to affect the supply chain.
Just speculating here and answers are needed.
I was in the army quite a long time ago, when the weapons primarily in use were the M-1 Rifle and the Carbine. It was customary, back then,to consider the Carbine as a kind of toy. Even if it didn’t jam, it would hardly be the weapon you would want to hold off a mass attack of people armed with AK-47s.
The second question is, who was responsible for it jamming? Was it the supply chain, or was it improper maintenance within the company. We don’t know the answer, but I would suspect that it was a supply chain that was not being fed proper and timely equipment. I can’t imagine any troops in a dangerous and isolated outpost not maintaining their weapons carefully. So the likely answer is that the carbine was old, maybe ground down with sand over the years, and overdue for replacement.
And it should have been replaced with a proper weapon, not a bloody carbine, IMHO. This isn’t some sort of Fourth of July Parade, this is a deadly war.
“President Barack Obama says he will end ‘don't ask, don't tell’ military policy.”
AP has a long history of publishing hysterically inaccurate, fraudulent hit pieces when it comes to the US Military. This reads like one of them. Sounds suspiciously like the stories told about the M-16 when it was 1st introduced in Vietnam.
Bigger, heavier and battle proven means just that - heavier ammunitions, weapons and logistics. M-1 Garands, M-14s, M2HBs - all good, but take a lot of support.
I guess that if you're going to have your soldiers work with arms limited in some fashion they need to be backed up by other support (close air support, etc.). This sounds like they didn't have that and were caught in an untenable situation.
I want to know if the new, more restrictive ROE prevented CAS strikes and/or artillery missions against the attackers.
Think I’ll wait for the report, I think this is an AP story. They’re usually pretty happy when US Forces die or can be made to look bad.
“nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded.”
Meanwhile, Obama intends to drag his feet over the reinforcement request for ‘several more weeks’.