Unless a person has paid essentially no attention to any news for the last twenty years, strident complaints and warnings about the abysmal state of basic infrastructure in the United States is nearly impossible to avoid.
Highways, local roads, bridges, railroads – the arteries that carry both commerce and the work force, both inter- and intrastate – are in terrible condition. The situation has become critical enough, that it has noticeably slowed the velocity of the supply chain, compounding the impacts of both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the grounding of the MV Ever Given container ship in 2021.
Critically, failures in the railroad network caused by favoring profiteering over operational efficiency – one of the few examples of actual failure in deregulation policies – are leading to staff cuts of up to twenty-nine percent, while the mileage of operating rail track has steadily decreased, even though per-mile profits rise.
An eastbound freight train at West Drive overpass in Brampton, Ontario. CCA/4.0
This is a toxic situation, as the imbalance between railroads and over-the-road (OTR) trucking continues to grow. Even given the inefficiencies inherent in OTR vs Rail (as freight trains commonly haul between 200 and 300 intermodal containers, or dedicated freight cars, allowing a crew of three or four to do the work of 200 or more people), slowdowns caused by poor infrastructure increasingly impact the economy…
All of this has been known for decades, although it is little remarked about in the mainstream press, unless there is some major newsworthy nugget to titillate the audience…That said – what does this have to do with a critical strategic threat to the United States? What does this have to do with security and defense, aside from the obvious logistics advantages?
A recent YouTube video by the channel “Real Life Lore” (YouTube link) pointed out that the Continental United States, i.e., the “Lower 48”, is uniquely blessed with a unique terrain that practically guarantees global economic dominance to anyone who can control this territory. This has, in fact, been the reason for the meteoric rise of the United States over the course of the last one hundred and thirty-odd years.
A map of the Mississippi River Basin, made using USGS data. CCA/4.0
The driving engine behind this geological and geographical system lays in the facts that, first, no major agricultural or manufacturing center in the Lower 48 is further than 150 miles (240km) from a navigable waterway. East of the Rocky Mountains, the majority of navigable waterways feed into the Mississippi River system (which is itself navigable all the way to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota), which then flows south, to the port of New Orleans.
From there, the Intracoastal Waterway chain of barrier islands provides a near contiguous navigable seaway, for almost the entire length of the US coast, from Brownsville, Texas, to Virginia, and from there, to the Hudson River, which connects to the Great Lakes, all with little exposure to open sea conditions. No other continent has this precise mix of features. And, as water transport is anywhere from ten to thirty times more efficient than any other type of transport, the titanic economic advantages are obvious.
However – there is a catch: Vidalia, Louisiana.
Most readers will have never heard of Vidalia. This is not surprising, as it is a tiny town of barely 4,300 people, even though it is the seat of Concordia Parish. Vidalia, however, is home to perhaps the single-most critical point of physical security in the world:
Completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1963, the Old River Control Structure was built to prevent the Mississippi River from diverting its course into the Atchafalaya River. The Mississippi River’s tends to wander over time. For the entire existence of the United States as a nation, the Mississippi followed (more or less) its current course. As a result, the city of New Orleans – and its seaport – was built and expanded into the critical complex that it is today. Indeed, it was a pivotal point in the War of 1812, in a battle that launched the career of a future President, and later formed a cornerstone of Federal strategy in the Civil War.
The delta of the Atchafalaya River on the Gulf of Mexico. View is upriver to the northwest. 1999. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In 1953, however, the Corps of Engineers concluded that the Mississippi was beginning to shift its course again, and that if left unchecked, it would divert into the Atchafalaya Basin by 1990. Thus, they launched the Old River Control Structure project at their predicted point of divergence at Vidalia, as the result of such a diversion would be catastrophic, as the Mississippi river would quickly and violently carve a new channel and river delta complex, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico some sixty miles to the west of New Orleans, an even that would leave both New Orleans and the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rouge not simply ‘high and dry’, but would leave both major cities without a source of fresh water.
Aside from the catastrophic environmental impact on the United States and major cities along the river’s route –as well as the significant impact on the strategic military system of the US in the Lower 48 – the impact on the economy of the United States would almost certainly lead to another “Great Depression”, virtually overnight, an economic contagion that would almost certainly crash the world’s economy, as the United States’ economic system is not designed to flow “upriver”.
The Corps of Engineers did a fantastic job on the control project; the only significant natural threat to the structure was the Mississippi flood of 1973, with damaged the structure to a degree.
Mississippi River inundating Morgan City, Louisiana, May, 1973. Environmental Protection Agency. Public Domain.
But now, we live in the world of the early 21st Century, and “lateral thinking” about security has to be taken into account…Specifically, the “Poor Man’s Nuclear Weapon”.
On April 16, 1947, an explosion in the port of Texas City, Texas mostly vaporized the SS Grandcamp, formerly, the SS Benjamin R. Curtis, a Liberty Ship built during World War 2 and later gifted to France to help rebuild that country’s merchant marine. The ship had been loaded with approximately 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate – used in fertilizer or explosives – as well as small mounts of other cargo. The explosion leveled nearly 1,000 buildings within 2,000 feet of the explosion, killing at least 560 people (including all but one of the town’s 28-man volunteer fire department) and injuring more than 5,000 people, almost 1,800 of whom were admitted to area hospitals. Some 63 people were unidentifiable, and were buried in a memorial cemetery; an additional 113 people were declared “missing”, because no identifiable parts could be found. The Grandcamp’s 2-ton anchor was hurled over 1.5 miles, digging itself into a 10-ft deep crater, while one of her propellers was thrown 2 miles inland. More than 1,100 vehicles, 360 rail freight cars and 500 homes were damaged; 10 miles away, in the city of Galveston, half the windows in town were shattered. All told, damages totaled between $1,000,000,000 and $4,500,000,000, in 2019 dollars.
Texas City disaster. Parking lot 1/4 of a mile away from the explosion, 1947. University of Houston Digital Library.
Then, on August 4, 2020, an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer – confiscated from an impounded ship nearly a decade before – detonated in a gargantuan explosion. The blast – estimated as equal to 1.1 kilotons of TNT – killed at least 218 people, injured over 7,000, and left nearly 300,000 people homeless.
Port of Beirut, Lebanon. Before (Left, 7/30/2020) and after (R) comparison showing blast damage from the August 4,2020 explosion (circled area). Google Earth Pro and Maxar Technologies.
Such a blast would critically damage the Old River Control Structure; two or three, should they happen simultaneously, would certainly destroy it outright. Neither ships, nor ammonium nitrate, are hard to come by. And they are not, comparatively, all that expensive. Both are within easy reach of many “extra-national hostile groups”. And the MV Rhosus, the ship at the center of the Beirut blast story, would have been capable of transiting for most of the Mississippi’s length…
…And yet, there are no real security measures in Vidalia that would prevent an American version of the St. Nazaire Raid.
Someone should really look into this.
Really.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
As strange as it may seem, the “Vietnam Generation” – meaning, those of age to have fought in that conflict – are in their very late 60’s, at best, and more likely in their early- to mid-70’s. In addition to the more “televisable” repositories of collective memory that have been lost, there are nuances within those repositories that fade into the background.
The MPC (pdf link) was a form of “occupation currency”, used by the Armed Forces of the United States from 1946 to 1973. The idea was to try and control inflation in occupied zones, as well as attempting to limit black market activity in the various occupied nations as close to the minimum as possible. The very first iteration of this practice, however, was the “HAWAII Overprint” note, issued from 1942 to 1944.
The Hawaii Overprint was an otherwise-valid US note that was printed by the US Mint in San Francisco, but that was stamped “H A W A I I” on the reverse. The rationale was that, in the event of the island chain’s invasion and capture by the Japanese Empire, all existing “HAWAII” stamped notes could be declared invalid, preventing Japan from trying to inflate the United States’ currency reserves by mass-dumping captured cash back into the US economy via Mexico. In fact, a version of this strategy was employed by the Nazi SS in their “Operation Bernhard”, which resulted in £15-20 million worth of nearly undetectable counterfeit notes being in circulation by the end of World War 2; adjusted for inflation, this amounted to approximately £493,146,000 – 657,528,000 (c.$611,052,280 – $814,736,370) in 2022 figures.
Hawaii overprint note issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco during World War II. National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History. Public Domain.
The United States’ MPC, along with various similar types of scrip from other occupying powers, accomplished this by paying Allied troops stationed “in country” in specifically made military scrip, instead of the normal national currency. In this way, the troops could spend their pay within the local economies, without injecting inflationary levels of hard currency – such as US dollars or British pound-sterling notes – that would trade at far higher levels of exchange on the local black markets, thus forcing the occupation governments, in turn, to print vast quantities of paper currency to compensate, devaluing the local currencies even further. In fact, such a resultant death spiral of currency hyperinflation in post-World War One Germany (albeit for different reasons) was one of the root causes that allowed the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
An Operation Bernhard forgery of the Bank of England five pound note. UK-Public Domain.
The United States continued its use of the MPC throughout its occupation period in both Europe and various parts of the Pacific, into the 1960’s, when the war in Vietnam began to accelerate. In the same way as in the post-World War Two era, the South Vietnamese đồng (which had replaced the French colonial piastre in 1953, at their independence) was simply too weak to survive against the US dollar. MPCs were issued as pay for US troops posted in the country, to limit the arbitrage impact. The method the United States used to effect this was to arbitrarily convert to a new issue of MPC to US troops; US troops were never told when a “Conversion Day” (or, “C Day”) would happen, but would find themselves suddenly restricted to base, where they were informed that they had to exchange their old MPC issue for the new version, as the previous MPC issue would not be valid for exchange after that C Day. This, in turn, prevented the MPC from acting as a wholesale stand-in for the US dollar.
The MPC program was retired after the United States’ involvement in Vietnam ended. The MPC system was deemed unnecessary by then, as by the 1970’s, the nations occupied at the end of World War Two had been long ago released from their occupied status, and their economies were, in general, strong and flourishing. As a result, the circulation of US dollars paid out to US troops stationed there was not deemed to be destabilizing, and the United States went back to simply ferrying US dollars in cash to various bases for direct disbursements to troops stationed there.
In 1997, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the United States found itself deploying forces to semi-permanent stations for “peacekeeping” duties – occupation duties, in all but name – in portions of the former Yugoslavia, as the region exploded in a series of ethnic and sectarian wars.
The costs of transporting cash to troops stationed in the hostile areas quickly became very expensive. Given that the United States’ Department of Defense (DoD) had established a vast, world-girdling logistical network by then, and given that there was very little available for purchase in the war zones, the DoD expanded what had been a pilot program used in various military basic training facilities within the US, into the “EagleCash” system.
EagleCash functions in a manner similar to a gift card, in that it allows deployed troops to use an ATM-like kiosk to transfer money from their bank accounts in the US to the EagleCash card, then use that card to purchase various goods and services from on-post stores and exchanges.
There is, however, a catch: The EagleCash system, like so many other things in the 21st Century, is a great, streamlined system of finance that functions reliably to pay troops forward-deployed in hostile areas…as long as the backbone infrastructure the system relies upon works.
With the rise of cyber warfare, as well as the potential for a disruption of the satellite communications network – to say nothing of actual nuclear warfare – there is a very good chance that the United States and its allies may well need to return to an MPC-type system of finance for deployed troops. While there is a specific entry in the Code of Federal Regulations (pdf link) regarding MPC’s, it remains unclear if the US government is prepared to reissue paper MPC’s in the event of some major network disruption…
…And unpaid troops can become very unhappy and disgruntled troops, very, very quickly.
Food for thought.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
When people think of military actions, those thoughts are usually centered on frenetic Hollywood action sequences. There are the occasional meetings/briefings where the stock, lantern-jawed heroes get their orders from a grizzled, crusty-looking officer, who occasionally pushes their “knife hand” across what is probably a real enough map of…somewhere, but probably not the “somewhere” of the show.
The effect is even more divorced from reality when watching the average news broadcast: the tall, swarthy, lantern-jawed heroes are almost always either completely hidden by helmets and body armor, or are somewhat short, usually bald, and squinting through their sunburns and badly wind-dried skin. The vehicles and surrounding terrain are anonymous and dusty (or heavy with tropical foliage, or a blasted city-scape) – things are certainly happening, but the viewer has little context. The reporter delivering the story probably has even less.
The grizzled and lantern-jawed stock characters from Central Casting do occasionally appear – and are even frequently as heroic as Hollywood portrays them to be – but the above images (real and fictional) obscure the reality: the Grunts who have to carry out the mission have their tasks explained to them by sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and hyper-stressed troops suffering from ulcers, who have likely been awake for over 24 hours, straight, and have been monitoring units in combat with the enemy, while coordinating artillery fires, air support, medical evacuations, resupply, reinforcement and probably armored support, as well…and have to get creative on short notice when one, some or most of those things are not available, because of shipping delays, bad weather, enemy attacks on the supply lines and just plain bad-to-non-existent maintenance means that something else needs to be found to help the Grunts get the job done.
Those officers and troops, punchy from lack of sleep, are the Staff.
In the “old days”, military staff work was not overly taxing, by today’s standard. Literate officers and troops (read the letters of some officers on campaign in the old days – yikes) made the decisions and wrote the orders, trying to be as clear – yet couched and polite – as the writing conventions of the time allowed. Unit sizes were rarely above the Brigade level (c.3-5,000 troops), and the “optempo” (“operations tempo”, or, the pace of operations) was measured by how far a unit could march in a day. By modern standards, it was quite sedate. The only real “specialization” in the military staff were the Surgeon(for obvious reasons) and the Quartermaster, who handled the acquisition of supplies; this last position, while recognized as highly important, was not much sought after, as it was viewed as a rather menial task.
The railroad revolutionized warfare in a way not seen before in land warfare. In the past, like cargo, the fastest and most efficient way to move troops more than 100 miles was by water. By 1863, the United States Military Railroad (USMRR) was able to transfer some 25,000 troops a distance of 1,200 miles in just 12 days. The USMRR did this by creating a dispersed staff of railroad schedule planners who communicated via telegraph to coordinate their movement plans. In 1866, the Prussian Army – having sent observers to both sides of the American Civil War – calculated that they could concentrate 285,000 troops in twenty-five days, and used this ability to overwhelm Austrian forces. Four years later, Prussia would demonstrate the defensive advantage of the railroad, by using their internal rail system to rapidly shift their outnumbered troops around the country to first blunt, and then counterattack the French invasion, resulting in not simply the defeat of France, but the capture of an Emperor and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, specifically because they had established a “railway section” as a part of their ‘general staff’ system after the return of their observers from the American Civil War.
This is not, however, an article on the military use of railroads. Instead, it shows the first real expansion of the military staff system since the days of Napoleon, and going well beyond his reforms.
Napoleon Bonaparte created what we now refer to as the “Continental Staff System”, minutely categorizing and specializing roles that had previously been handled somewhat haphazardly. As armies began to grow in size and complexity after Napoleon, the old staff methods simply could not keep up. Even in the case of Napoleon’s own staff reforms, they could barely keep up with the demands of La Grande Armée. The US Army, first, then quickly followed by Germany, began to make significant reforms and expansions.
However, this was not a streamlined or consistent process. In fact, in Germany’s case, it became a decided negative, as the German General Staff took the statistical process too far, imparting a rigidity that more or less completely ignored the Clausewitzian warnings about “friction” and the “fog of war”. This rigidity contributed to the failure of the Schlieffen Plan and led directly to the hell of trench warfare on the Western Front of World War 1.
In the modern day, the staff system has evolved to the point where it can swiftly alter itself to account for new technologies. As radio replaced visual-sight signaling, dispatch riders, carrier pigeons and the telegraph, staffs were increasingly able to effectively control and support their subordinated commands in real-time. Today, that progression includes satellite communications and (theoretically) secure internet connections, as well as incorporating intelligence from ground- and air-based drones.
In order to better streamline the core functions of a staff, tasks and responsibilities are divided between departments led by specialized officers. Even in the last 30-odd years, there has been expansion and readjustment, as some of the current offices either did not exist in the 1980’s, or were considered to be part of a “Special Staff” section, created on an ‘as needed’ basis.
Currently, there are a total of nine departments recognized as part of the Continental Staff System. These nine offices scale upwards, as designated by a prefix letter code (see below), and generally only begin to appear as part of a battalion-level staff. The nine offices in general use are:
Manpower or Personnel. This office manages the more mundane, non-combat personnel-management tasks of a unit, such as record-keeping and handling pay for the troops.
Intelligence and Security. This is the office with the unenviable task of trying to predict what the enemy in a local area are planning. However, their ‘side functions’ are much more extensive, and include everything from weather monitoring and map making, to cultural and demographic surveys to refine information that was likely glossed over by their national-level counterparts.
Operations. This is the office that actually controls the troops in the field. The unit commander, their executive officer (i.e., the “second in command”) and the “-3” officer (who is effectively 3rd in command) direct operations, through the mechanism of the “command post” system.
Logistics. Logistics – what used to be called the “Quartermaster” office – is one of those dreary, ho-hum functions that people only get annoyed over when they either fail, or when someone points out that the military unit in question is incapable of functioning if they ignore the “4-Shop”. If your logistical plan is deficient in the civilian world, that is annoying and inconvenient. In the military world, bad logistics lose battles, campaigns and wars.
Plans. This is where you will find those grizzled old officers making knife-hands over a map. The Plans office has to take the commander’s ideas and vision, lay them out coherently on a map, then write the orders to the various sub-units to carry out those plans.
Signals (i.e., communications or IT). “Signals” are the people who run the radios, and make sure the computers are working right. They will also occasionally restore telephone service to a town or city…usually inside of 36 hours.
Military education and training. Exactly what it says – there are always new things coming out, that troops need to be trained on, which can also include seemingly non-military course like the dreaded “Personal Finance” course. In case anyone is wondering why distance-learning courses like that are offered, troops who badly manage their pay are frequently preoccupied, hyper-tense and distracted in the field; this leads to very unpleasant results for them, and likely everyone in their general vicinity.
Finance and Contracts. Also known as resource management. This is the department that handles buying tools, materials and food from the local area. In the “home country”, these kinds of contracts are normally handled at higher levels; when operating in a foreign country, however, the situation frequently dictates that a units needs to let contracts with the locals…which not only gets the unit supplies locally, easing the logistics burden of the higher commands, but also helps a local economy that may have been destroyed and needs more than simple hand-outs of cash.
As noted above, there are a variety of letter designators for these staff functions, depending on the size and/or function of the unit in question. The most commonly used designators are:
A, for air force headquarters.
C, for combined headquarters (multiple nations) headquarters.
F, for certain forward or deployable headquarters.
G, for army or marine general staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a general officer and having a chief of staff to coordinate the actions of the general staff, such as divisions or equivalent organizations (e.g., USMC Marine Aircraft Wing and Marine Logistics Group) and separate (i.e., non-divisional) brigade level (USMC MEB) and above.
J, for joint (multiple services) headquarters, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
N, for navy headquarters.
S, for army or marines executive staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a field grade officer (i.e., major through colonel) and having an executive officer to coordinate the actions of the executive staff (e.g., divisional brigades, regiments, groups, battalions, and squadrons; not used by all countries); S is also used in the Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (SeaBees) and in the Air Force Security Forces Squadron.
U, is used for United Nations military operations mission headquarters.
While there is certainly much more to military staff functions than this brief outline, the goal was to introduce the Reader to the idea behind the Military Staff, in a general way. If you would like more information on the subject from the source, check out the US military’s field manual on the subject, FM 6-0 – Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, in print here, or as a pdf download directly from the US Army, here. (Note that most military manuals in the United States are unclassified and publicly available for anyone to own – if it’s classified, you will definitely know, and you are definitely on your own, in that regard.)
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Many times, taking the status quo for granted is the normal mode we all operate in. In this context, when growing up in the 1980’s, if one aspired to study “things military”, you would simply accept the organizational structures of various militaries without question. Studying old – even ancient – military organizations was seen as a good thing for historical research, but really didn’t have much utility in the modern day…
…Or did it?
On New Year’s Day 2023, I had one of those head-slap moments, when I realized something profound: In some four thousand years of recorded military history, only nine organizational units have made it down through history, some of which still exist to this day. Nine. There have been other unit organizations, certainly, but none of them have ever taken hold for any length of time, and none of them are ever seriously considered for resurrection. This is not a merely academic idea, either – trillion-dollar military budgets are largely based on supporting these unit formations (in theory, at least).
Today, we’re going to explore a basic outline of those nine unit types.
The Tribal War Band
The Tribal War Band is the oldest continuously used formation in recorded history. It is an amorphous collection of extended family and clan warriors, hastily assembled to either make a raid, or defend against one, after which it would disperse until needed again. The War Band grew out of familial hunting parties that took advantage of human numbers, communications and cooperative effort to hunt down either game animals, or predators encroaching on the family/tribe’s hunting/foraging grounds. In many parts of the world today, the tribal war band continues, as underdeveloped areas and peoples see no reason for a more formalized organization.
Combat for the old war band was similar to the kind of melee combat popular in modern television shows and movies, being essentially a street or bar brawl, albeit with swords and spears, instead of sharpened bicycle chains and switchblade knives.
“Three Young Ngoni Warriors, Livingstonia Malawi”, ca.1895. Public Domain
The tribal war band, in the modern day, remains dangerous primarily because it is almost impossible to gather meaningful intelligence on them, and thus it is nearly impossible to create plans to counter them by remote study and planning techniques. The only solutions in the “military tool box” are to use massive, overwhelming force and numbers to occupy and saturate an area, or to send in tiny parties on the ground, to locate the tribe[s] in question, and find out more information about them…which is usually vastly more effective – and practical – than simply running the proverbial steamroller over the area.
The Phalanx
The Phalanx was the first regularized tactical unit on record. While we know of armies before the time of Classical Greece – those of Sumer, or Egypt and the Hittites, specifically, as well as armies in China and India – those armies did not leave a record of their formal organizations.
In contrast, the ancient Greeks, as first described by the poet Homer, deployed their armies of citizen-spearmen – the Hoplites – in a rigid, square or rectangular formation, of anywhere from 100 to 500 men, and occasionally more, in files of 16 to 32 troops. These troops were armed with a sword and shield, but their main weapon was the “sarissa”, a type of spear or pike that could be up to twenty feet in length. In combat, the phalanx would try to use its weight and mass to basically “shove” the opposing phalanx off the battlefield. In a contest where the sides were more or less evenly matched, this came down to individual physical strength and stamina, and a willingness to hold out until the enemy got tired, and decided to try and run for it…and, as in most battles before about 1900AD, that would be where the real casualties would happen.
A phalanx fighting the Persians. 19th Century. Public Domain.
The phalanx has disappeared, only being resurrected by pre-gunpowder forces that were unable to organize or train for anything more complex, because the formation had severe and fundamental flaws: it was hard to keep it in formation; it was slow and clumsy to move in anything but a straight line; and it was helpless against lightly armed forces, such as archers, slingers or peltasts (a type of skirmisher that threw javelins).
Agrianian Peltast by Johnny Shumate, [email protected]. Public Domain.
As soon as the phalanx met an infantry formation that was more flexible, it was completely torn apart.
The Contubernium/Section
The next unit is the second-oldest unit overall, and the first of four units still in use to this day, well over two thousand years after its inception: the Contubernium.
Roman Reenactment legionaries about to attack. CCA/3.0
The Contubernium (derived from a Latin term meaning, “tenting together”) was the basic eight-man unit of the Roman Army. It consisted of eight legionaries who lived, trained and fought – and occasionally died – together. Unlike their modern equivalent, the Section, there was little volatility in the Contubernium, as the legionaries within would frequently remain together for up to a decade or more, barring deaths or promotions. The contubernium was the basic building block for the next level up, that being the Century.
Today, the contubernium still exists as the “Section”. The modern Section of eight troops is used in many armies for the same purpose as its ancestor, as the infantry’s basic fighting unit in combat.
A Wehrmacht infantry Gruppe (Section) armed with the MG 34 light machine gun. Poland, 1941. German Federal Archives.
The Century/Company
The Century was a unit of 80-100 troops (the number varied over time). Their leaders, the Centurions were long-serving, professional officers, and had to be literate, have prior military experience in the ranks (at least in theory, although this was mostly true for most of the era), had to have “connections” (expressed in ‘letters of recommendation’) and had to be able to demonstrate proficiency with all the common weapons of the soldier. The centurions were simultaneously soldiers, officers, disciplinarians, combat commanders, administrators, and occasionally, even jurists or spies.
Roman Centurion (reenactment). Hans Splinter, 2010. CCA/2.0
The modern Company, in contrast, is about one-half to twice the size of the Roman Century. However, that was an evolution, over about three hundred years, because the infantry Company, from before the American War of Independence, was roughly 50-80 men at full strength, until about the time of World War 1, with the advent of more complex weapons and the organizations to support them. However, the organization of the “fighting company” has remained stable at 100-200 troops. There have been attempts at explaining this, but the one theory that has taken hold is that 150 troops is the rough “sweet spot”, where one person can directly lead about 150 people in combat with only a minimal staff.
Soldiers assigned of Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, pause near Narizah, Afghanistan, 2002. US Army Photo.
In the Mess, we call that “learning through trial & error”.
The Cohort/Battalion
The next level up from the Century/Company is the Cohort/Battalion. The Cohort was a subset of a Legion (q.v.), which had a total of ten Cohorts. The Cohort, like its descendant, was a collection of centuries. Unlike its descendant, however, the Cohort was generally fixed in size, at about 600 legionaries. The modern battalion, in contrast, can be anything from 300 to 1,200 troops in size, depending on its specific job and organization. (As an aside, some translations of John 18:3 note that it was a “Roman cohort” that arrived to arrest Jesus at Gethsemane.)
“A Roman Legion”, by Marco Dente, c. 1515-1527. Public Domain.
This level of command is typically regarded as both the first “operationally capable” unit that can operate on its own, as it includes its own internal (or, “organic”) support elements, such as a medical staff that offers more than First Aid +, communications, supply, maintenance and a number of other dedicated support elements, is considered to be the basic tactical unit in combat. In Roman times, specialist officers within the Cohort and Legion were assigned drafts of troops for non-fighting tasks such as building roads and entrenchments, or manning artillery pieces.
Group portrait of the Australian 11th (Western Australia) Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force, posing on the Great Pyramid of Giza on 10 January 1915. Public Domain.
The Battalion, like its ancestor, forms the bedrock for larger units.
The Legion/Brigade
Rounding out the “units of history” is the legendary Roman Legion. Composed of ten Cohorts, plus additional troops (mostly cavalry and scouts) and support staff, a Roman Legion at full strength numbered anywhere from five thousand to seven thousand troops in size. The twenty-eight Legions of Octavian Augustus – a force estimated at c.300,000 troops overall – formed the core of a Roman military machine that would maintain the security of the Empire for nearly five centuries.
In the modern day, the basic structure of the Legion continues as the “Brigade”, which is at the core of most modern armies. While the modern-day brigade is a miniature army – effectively mirroring the Battalion albeit much larger in size – this was not always the case, as it evolved from an ad hoc grouping of Regiments (q.v.). With the end of the Cold War, however, most nations ‘downsized’ their militaries, leaving Divisions (q.v.) as mostly administrative commands for their component “maneuver brigades”. With the return of large-scale (if rather desultory) mechanized warfare with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, many nations are reevaluating their policies of leaving brigades to operate independently, outside the “support umbrella” provided by the Division.
Lightning strikes as Bradley Fighting Vehicles from the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team prepare to fire TOW missiles during an exercise at Fort Bliss, Texas, in August 2018. (Staff Sgt. Brendan Stephens/Army). Public Domain.
In one of those quirks of history, the modern Brigade has approximately the same “bayonet strength” of troops as a Roman Legion, although it maintains larger support units.
De Re Militari
How is it that the preceding four organizations carried over to the modern day, over a span of some two thousand years? The answer lies in a book, De Re Militari (English translation), written sometime in the early 5th Century AD by a late-Roman author, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. In it, Vegetius reviewed the organization, training and discipline of the old legionary system, attempting to convince the Emperor of the time to return to those methods. While those exhortations apparently had little effect on the Western Empire, copies of the work circulated throughout the misnamed “Dark Ages”, until it received its first printed edition in 1473AD.
A morocco bound copy of the 1494 edition of “De Re Militari”. Public Domain.
Kings and commanders throughout Western Europe tried to emulate various aspects of Vegetius’ work, but social, political and technological limitations hampered anything more than the most basic of his ideas. With the rise of larger, better-organized states in the 15th Century, however, Vegetius’ ideas became viable, and many states – especially after the near-total adoption of firearms as the main personal combat weapon in the various armies – latched onto the book as a template for their new, much larger forces.
The Tercio
The Tercio (from the Spanish term for “a third”) is somewhat unique in this list, as it only really lasted for about one hundred and fifty years, at most, but had an impact out of all proportion to its size and organization. This was because it was the first unit in modern times to show the potential of what infantry was actually capable of, in an arena where the mounted knight had been viewed as the dominant power.
As originally organized, the tercio deployed was split into three more or less equal types of infantry: pikemen, swordsmen and crossbowmen. Rapidly, however, the arquebus replaced the crossbow, and the swordsmen began to dwindle in number, replaced by troops carrying halberds. Eventually, as the arquebus first became cheaper, then evolved into the musket, the swordsmen disappeared entirely. The result was the first real “combined arms” formation since the Roman Legions, a unit of 400-3,000 troops what could operate independently of outside support.
Rocroi, el último tercio. 2011. Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau. CCA/3.0
The tercio revolutionized warfare, and lead directly to the next ‘unit of history’, the Regiment.
The Regiment…and the Bayonet
The Regiment evolved out of the Tercio, as the technology of military firearms advanced. As the arquebus evolved into the musket, it was realized that coordinated firepower was the infantry’s final, real answer to cavalry dominance. However, while the Tercio did have advantages, the use of pikes was increasingly seen as a waste of troops: while the pikes did well in protecting the infantry from cavalry attacks, commanders wanted to somehow combine the pike and the musket into a single weapon.
British infantryman in 1941 with a long WWI sword-type bayonet affixed to his rifle. 1941. Imperial War Museum. Public Domain.
In the late 17th Century, around 1671AD or so, French General Jean Martinet standardized the first practical bayonet (so named for its purported place of invention, the French city of Bayonne), the so-called “plug bayonet”. The plug bayonet was exactly that: it was essentially a type of dagger, fitted with a small, round hilt made of wood, that could be quickly inserted into the muzzle of a musket, turning it into a type of spear, which could be used to fend off cavalry that got too close, a common occurrence, given the limitations of the muskets of the time.
Obviously, though, this type of weapon was not ideal, as it could only be used while the musket was empty. The plug bayonet quickly evolved into the “socket bayonet”, which was fitted over the outside of the muzzle and was offset to one side, allowing the soldier to load and fire his musket while the bayonet was fixed.
It was at this point – in c.1700 – where the Tercio, as such, finally disappeared and was replaced by the Regiment.
The Sikh Regiment marching contingent passes through the Raj path during the 61st Republic Day Parade-2010, in New Delhi on January 26, 2010. GODL-India
This is not a useless digression – by eliminating the pike, military units (at least in Europe) became all-firearm formations, capable of both maximizing firepower, while simultaneously being able to counter direct cavalry shock attack.
The bayoneted musket directly allowed the creation of the Regiment. Nominally a unit of 500-1,000 troops, the regiment was usually organized into ten equal companies, ideally of 50-100 troops each, with a regimental command staff to handle administration, medicine and logistics. The troops could – as their Roman predecessors had been – be assigned to various specialist tasks under the supervision of officers skilled in fortification and road building, although gunpowder artillery was left to specially trained soldiers, given the dangers involved.
The Regiment, in this format, remained the dominant maneuver unit until after World War 1. Although the term was occasionally used interchangeably with the Battalion – even today – the Regiment remains the bridge between the Battalion and the Brigade. In its most basic form, the modern regiment is composed of two to three battalions, with perhaps a battalion’s worth of support units. This organization is the source of some confusion, as it appear to resemble a brigade…however, the main difference between the two units is in the number of support personnel.
Three hundred years on, the Regiment – while evolved in size and organization – is still going strong, and shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon.
The Division
While there has always been a delineation of larger military units into “divisions”, the modern Division (capitalized intentionally) originated during the Napoleonic Wars, as Napoleon reorganized the French Army into Divisions and Corps’.
In the modern day, a division typically consists of three brigades, of three “fighting” regiments/battalions each, with their associated support elements, and a collection of other support units under the direct control of the division headquarters. Numbers-wise, the division can range anywhere from 6,000-25,000 troops, depending on its composition, mission and national military doctrines.
M1-A1 Abrams main battle tanks of the U.S. Army 1st Armored Division, along with two AH-64A Apache helicopters coordinate their fire as they practice at a range in Glamoc, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on April 2, 1998. U.S. Army Photo.
As referenced above, while the Division faded into an administrative grouping in most nations following the end of the Cold War, the current (as of January of 2023AD) war between Russia and Ukraine is causing a serious reconsideration of reviving the Division as an operational combat command among nations fearful of being drawn, once again, into an all-out, conventional (hopefully) slugging match.
Soviet troops of the Voronezh Front counterattacking behind T-34 tanks, 1943. Mil.ru
Conclusion
Why is it important to know these things? Well…that really depends on one’s view of their place in the world: How much do you trust your government to properly inform you of what is happening with your nation’s military? When you see or hear a news story about “military unit X”, what does that mean? Is it a minor issue, or a major one? The popular media rarely, if ever, bother to try and explain it to you, and when they do, they usually get it wrong.
To paraphrase historian Niall Ferguson, in his 2008 series “The Ascent of Money”, not knowing this stuff can seriously affect your life.
For nearly seventy-five years, the military forces of the world have been saddled with “assault rifles”, weapons that use an “intermediate cartridge” – smaller than a “full-power” rifle cartridge, but considerably more powerful than a handgun cartridge.
There is a never-ending controversy in the “gun vs. anti-gun” debate over the term “assault rifle”. While the “pro” side is technically precise in its language, the “anti” side verges on the neurotic in insisting on ignoring anything but the screaming propaganda fed to them.
The “assault rifle”, as such, comes from three distinct and separate strains of “institutional DNA”. The impact of the fusion of those strains on military affairs is our subject, here.
The German Strain
Prior to World War 2, a “rifle” was, well…a rifle. After the introduction of smokeless powder by France in 1884, the world’s militaries settled on rifles with calibers between 6- and 8mm, with bullet weights in the vicinity of 140 to 160 grains. This seemed to be the proverbial “sweet spot”, giving long ranges (as far as c.2200 yards/2000 meters), with acceptable terminal performance at the limit that troops could shoot.
An Indian rifleman with a SMLE (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield) No. 1 Mk III, Egypt, 1940. Public Domain.
And then – 1914 happened.
The First World War brought on (as could be expected) more military innovation in four years than in the previous four decades, radically altering the perception of warfare in all the participating states (whether those states could act to maximize those perceptions is another matter, entirely).
April, 1918 During the German Spring Offensive in Artois two German A7V tanks (Hagen 528) and (Schnuck 504/544) roll towards the Western Front. Public Domain.
The victors of WW1 were content to make a few improvements to their military structures here and there, but the collective sigh of relief at the war’s “conclusion” (because fighting continued for nearly five full years, at least, past 1918) imparted a dangerous wave of “Victory Disease” in those states, whose armed forces, while doing research and making a few alterations to their doctrines, either largely failed to learn the right lessons from the war, or failed to convince their political leadership to fund improvements promptly. This would come back to haunt them twenty years later. What most nations could agree upon, though, was the need for a semi-automatic rifle to replace the universally deployed bolt-action rifles, in models unique to every major nation.
Two of the major combatants in WW1, however, took the exact opposite approach.
While “Imperial Russia” was destroyed and replaced by the Soviet Union, “Russia”, as such, had suffered such a crushing defeat in the war, that the new Communist government immediately launched a long-range plan to create the most advanced armed forces in the world…and largely succeeded, at least on paper. This impressive force would be gutted by Stalin’s Great Purge, and would thus nearly collapse in the early days of its new war with Germany, in 1941…but that is another story.
Soviet tanks on Khalkhyn Gol, 1939. Public Domain.
In contrast, Germany – the leader of the losing faction of World War 1, the “Central Powers” – had the Treaty of Versailles inflicted on it, losing large swathes of territory, being forced into paying crushing war reparations (including the physical seizure of actual industrial plant equipment and machinery) to the victors, and being forced to officially reduce its military forces to a pale shadow of their former size.
While the minutiae of the Treaty are not the subject of this article, it did conclusively show that Germany had been defeated. This caused the remnant of the German military to immediately begin a careful assessment of what it had gotten right – and more importantly, wrong – during the war. This actually began before the war ended, in early 1918, when a certain Hauptmann (Captain) Piderit, part of the Gewehrprüfungskommission (“Small Arms Examination Committee”) of the German General Staff pointed out that infantry rarely fired at enemies further than 870y/800m distant, and that a physically smaller, intermediate cartridge would save on materials and allow for a smaller and lighter Maschinenpistole (submachine gun), while allowing the troops to carry more ammunition (the contradictory irony of his conclusions apparently escaped Hauptmann Piderit).
While these points did have some validity, specifically in regards to the American M1895 Lee-Navy rifle (YouTube link), it contained two fundamental flaws: first, that the General Staff was perfectly satisfied with its MP18 SMG, and second, that Hauptmann Piderit apparently concentrated his study on actions on the Western Front, which is the stereotypical vision of WW1, where most of the war was fought in the hell of the trenches, and largely ignored the much more mobile warfare of the Eastern Front, as well as the mountain warfare on the Italian front. Hauptmann Piderit’s assessment stands as a sterling example of the dangers of relying strictly on sterilized statistics.
A Maschinenpistole 18 (MP 18) in service in Berlin, Germany, 1919. Public Domain.
In any case, Germany – like most nations in the postwar period – recognized the need to adopt a semi-automatic rifle. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on one’s view – the Reichswehr (the post-Versailles German army) seemed to have taken Piderit’s study to heart, laying out requirements for a new rifle for the military that would ultimately lead to the StG 44 rifle, developed, manufactured and deployed during 1944, at the height of World War 2. This weapon, formally termed the “Sturmgewehr 44” – or, literally, “Assault Rifle 44” – is the origin of the term “assault rifle” itself.
The German Sturmgewehr 44, found in Iraq by US troops, c.2004. DoD Photo.
Using a cartridge very similar to the later Soviet M43 cartridge, the StG 44 proved a nasty surprise to Allied troops…when it worked. Postwar assessments were not kind to the design, which was made as the German economy and resource base were collapsing under Allied assaults, and which assessments thus overcompensated in dismissing the German “wunderwaffe”.
This flawed development process would continue to lie quietly, fascinating and exciting the minds of leaders and middle managers more enticed with monetary and resource savings than tactical utility.
The Soviet Strain
The Soviet Union’s Red Army, in contrast, was very practical in its approach to the problem of updating its infantry weapons.
Beginning World War Two with the perfectly awful Mosin-Nagant rifle, the Soviets quickly discovered that high-firepower weapons (mainly submachine guns) were the decisive winners in close assaults and urban warfare. Independently (probably), they hit on the idea of an intermediate cartridge for general issue. The first weapon to use this new M43 cartridge was adopted as the SKS (Samozaryadny Karabin sistemy Simonova) rifle, designed by Sergei Simonov. However, the Soviets freely acknowledged that the SKS was a carbine-class weapon…and, shortly after the SKS’s adoption, former tank commander and budding weapons designer Mikhail Kalashnikov perfected the first model of the AK-47, which would go on to become one of, if not the, premier, infantry weapon of the last seventy-five years.
Comparison of AKM and SKS 45. Swedish Army Museum. CCA/4.0
The AK-47 was adopted en masse as soon as it was made easier to manufacture. It seemed to be the very best “middle ground”: the M43 cartridge was suitably powerful; the rifle was accurate to 300-400m; it was lightweight and handy; it could fire in either semi– or full-automatic; it used a detachable 30-round magazine versus the SKS’s fixed, 10-round magazine; and was comparatively compact, even without a folding stock. Additionally, it was both rugged and easy to learn, making it the weapon of choice throughout a “developing world” with terrible levels of education, almost from the time of its creation.
The American Strain
In complete contrast, the United States of America backed into the assault rifle more or less by accident, aided by incompetence, parochialism, destructive pettiness that bordered on the criminal and a failed war.
The United States entered World War Two with what was arguably the best rifle of the conflict, the famed M1 Garand. Although an Army board had recommended the adoption of a lighter cartridge in 1928, the realities of shrunken postwar budgets precluded any real attempt at a fundamental change in caliber. However, development continued, as the Army searched for a combat-capable semi-automatic rifle. Adopted in 1936, the semi-automatic M1 was big and beefy, weighing 9.5lbs/4.31kg, and being almost 44in/1100mm in length. It fired the full-power .30-06 Springfield cartridge, fully capable of shooting out past 2,000 yards with ease.
M1 Garand rifle and M1 carbine. Public Domain.
As good as the M1 was, however, the US military realized that it needed to stay ahead of the development curve, and began experimenting with a detachable-magazine variant of the rifle as early as 1944, to counter the limitations of the M1’s 8-round “en bloc” clip…
…But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The US Army saw the need, as early as 1938, for a ‘light rifle’ to issue to its support troops (clerks, drivers, radio operators, etc), who needed something more powerful than a handgun, but lighter than an M1 Rifle or a Thompson SMG. The result was the somewhat confusingly named M1 .30 Carbine.
The M1 Carbine was about 40% lighter than the rifle (a little over 5lbs/2kg), and its “.30 Carbine” round, although significantly lighter in projectile weight and range, was much easier to handle for its light recoil. The much shorter range of the Carbine (300y/270m) was not seen as a problem, as it was seen as what we would now refer to as a “personal defense weapon”. The M1 Carbine would go on to evolve through several variants, including fully automatic versions, and would continue to serve around the world well into the 1980’s.
None of the Carbine’s development, however, would really have a meaningful impact on postwar rifle development.
After the creation of NATO, and that body’s adoption of the 7.62x51mm cartridge, the US Army would hold a competition in the mid-1950’s that would result in the adoption of the M14 rifle.
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Richard Wiley demonstrates shooting an M-14 rifle in Iraq, 2006. US Army Photo.
While the long list of shenanigans – rising, bluntly, to the levels of criminal incompetence, corruption or both – surrounding that trial series are better left to another discussion, the end result was the adoption of a weapon that was intended to do “everything”: the M14 was supposed to replace the M1 Rifle, the M1918A2 B.A.R., the M3A1 ‘Grease Gun’ SMG and the M1 Carbine…In the end, the M14 only replaced the M1 Rifle, and then for a paltry five years, from 1959 to 1964, although it continued to serve in Vietnam until 1967, and in other limited roles until 1970.
Although the M14 would mature over time, and eventually become an exceptionally good firearm (and was used as a sniper rifle, the M21), the program was initially so plagued with severe development, production and cost-overrun issues that it finally drew the official attention of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who overrode the protests of the parochial Army officers who had backed it, and ordered the program to be canceled in 1968…
…To be replaced with the M16…Back to the Fifties…
The original trials, which resulted in the M14, had three participants: the prototype M14, designated the “T44”; a version of the Belgian-designed FN FAL, designated as the “T48”; and the AR-10, from the ArmaLite division of the Fairchild aircraft company, which was a late addition to the trials, and did not receive a “T” designator.
AR10 rifle, with bayonet attached, 2017. CCA/4.0
The AR10 was an incredibly light and compact design for the powerful 7.62x51mm cartridge (which was essentially a scaled-down .30-06), weighing just 6.85lbs/3.11kg empty. Designed by the legendary Eugene Stoner, the AR10 was a huge leap forward in rifle design. Although the disappointingly gory details of the trials are best explained in “The Black Rifle”, by Edward C. Ezell, in the end, the trials guaranteed that the M14 prototype would be the winner.
Disappointed by the trial results, Stoner tried to shop the AR10 to foreign markets, and managed to get a few sales, with the rifles built by the Dutch company “Artillerie Inrichtingen”. Although the rifles received glowing reports from users fielding the rifles in combat, the AR10 never saw the kind of sales that it should have gotten.
Fairchild then decided to try and rework the rifle for the American market, and L. James Sullivan – working with Stoner’s notes, as Stoner had left Fairchild by that time – reduced the AR10 in size and caliber, resulting in the AR15.
From top to bottom: M16A1, M16A2, M4, M16A4. CCA/3.0
After the end of US involvement in Vietnam, in what President Jimmy Carter would call “a national malaise”, there was little incentive in Congress to fund yet another round of service rifle trials, despite there being a completely different,battle-proven weapon system designed by Eugene Stoner, that both the US Army and Marine Corps were seriously interested in. Instead, both services decided that the M16-series was good enough, and focused on acquiring the new “Big Ticket” vehicles and aircraft it wanted for its burgeoning “Active Defense Doctrine” (which would later be replaced by the “AirLand Battle Doctrine” that was the basis of US and Coalition strategy and operation in the 1990-1991 Gulf War) in the desperate attempt to erase the memory of the loss in Vietnam.
Now, some 60-odd years after it was first presented to the US military, the AR15/M16 series of rifles are still the primary infantry rifles for all of the country’s armed services, only now being replaced…
So…what are we to make of all of this wandering down three different avenues, to get to the intersection of today?
As pointed out in Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer, by then-Major Thomas P. Ehrhart, US Army (pdf link), around 50% of infantry engagements in Afghanistan occurred at ranges beyond 500 meters…and the 5.56x45mm ammunition of the M16 and M4 rifles of the US infantry were completely inadequate to meet those challenges. Major Ehrhart’s data, stating the obvious, is one of the drivers that resulted in the Army’s adoption of the XM5 in 6.8x51mm caliber – a caliber of usable size and power, comparable to the 7.62x51mm, but looking “shiny, new and improved”, because they can’t be see to be reverting to “old stuff” by a civilian leadership wholly unqualified to assess the military’s needs.
As the world is moving into more urban-focused combat (YouTube link), rifles firing lightweight projectiles are at an increasing disadvantage. India recognized this, when they opted for a stopgap purchase of almost 140,000 SIG Sauer 716 rifles in 7.62x51mm for its army, when they finally accepted that their native-designed INSAS rifle program had failed.
Indian army soldier armed with a Sig 716i, 2021. GODL-India
Modern infantry combat happens at a variety of ranges, and always has. Whether it is point-blank, on the other side of a door, or takes place at distances where telescopic sights are necessary for accuracy, the infantry battle area is wide – and the infantry needs a weapon that can reach all of those points within a rational distance.
The assault rifle concept was based on a flawed statistical study, a bloodthirsty and unimaginative style of combat operations, and sheer, petty – and possibly criminal – incompetence…and troops of many nations have been paying the price of those flawed policies for nearly eight decades.
It is no admission of incompetence to recognize that an idea has failed, and needs to be corrected.
If India can do it, the rest of the world can, as well.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
In the firearms world, there is a wide array of classifications for various types of weapons. These varying classes and “families” of weapons change over time, as buzzwords come and go; one of the current buzz terms, and one that generates a great deal of controversy, is the “PCC”, or the “Pistol-Caliber Carbine”.
A PCC is best defined as a firearm intended to be used like a rifle, but which fires a projectile and cartridge caliber commonly associated with a handgun. This is not really a “new thing” – the majority of the 19th Century Winchester family (YouTube) of level-action rifles all came in pistol cartridges, at first.
The first true “PCC’s” of the modern era, though, were the German submachine guns of the First World War, closely followed by the Thompson SMG, the famous “Tommy Gun” (a term that comes from WW2). These weapons – while not exactly “carbines”, as they were not “shortened rifles”, as such – showed armies that there was room in their doctrines for a lightweight and compact (comparatively speaking) type of “long-ish” weapon, that was cheaper and easier to produce than more conventional rifles and carbines.
In the United States this would eventually result, in 1942, with the introduction of the M1 Carbine. While using a cartridge considerably more powerful than most handgun cartridges, the .30 Carbine cartridge was far less powerful than a “full-power” cartridge, like the .30-06 used by the M1 Garand Rifle. The M1 Carbine was significantly lighter and handier than the larger and heavier M1 Rifle, and was only really usable out to about 150 yards/138 meters, but that was deemed to be perfectly sufficient for its intended use: giving troops who did not really need a “full-power” M1 Rifle something to defend themselves with that was more accurate and longer-ranged than a handgun.
M1 Garand rifle and M1 carbine. Public Domain.
The “carbine” field became somewhat muddied with the widespread adoption of the “intermediate” cartridge class after World War 2, but eventually settled back to the original idea of a “carbine”, that being a shortened version of a service rifle. One of the side effects of this adoption trend, meanwhile, led to fewer and fewer true “pistol-caliber” SMG’s being developed, as post-war battlefield developments made SMG’s largely redundant. Submachine guns were slowly pushed to the fringes, eventually used only by police or elite and highly specialized military units, primarily for hostage rescue and use in very crowded areas like airport concourses and large entertainment venues, where rifle cartridges – even coming from a shortened barrel – were not satisfactory, due to over-penetration at close-quarters’ range.
However, in areas that were friendly to private firearms ownership, the first PCC’s began to appear in the 1970’s. At first, these were weapons that mimicked the “look and feel” of SMG’s, but that fired only on semi-automatic. Soon, however, companies began to move away from the “military look”, as hysteria in certain quarters arose, and took on a more “civilian-friendly” look.
M105 Calico .22 carbine (Photo by Oleg Volk)
As the 21st Century dawned, companies in the United States began – after the 2004 sunset of the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” – to release PCC’s onto the civilian market. While little regard was given to these weapons at first, closer looks ensued as more an more people bought various types of PCC’s, for everything from recreational shooting to home defense. Inevitably, perhaps, highly raucous debate began as some quarters began to discuss the “tactical” uses of PCC’s…
…And, as in most debates about modern firearms, much hysterical screeching ensued.
The essential point of contention are that PCC’s are more or less useless against modern body armor – which is true…although the numbers of criminals staging “home invasions” at 2AM, while wearing high-grade body armor, is very low. As a result, the PCC is a good choice for home defense instead of a “full power” rifle or carbine, as its projectiles are less likely to leave your home and land a block or two away, in someone else’s home. As well, although there is a net savings on ammunition for practice, “training” (two different things) and recreational shooting, the savings are not that large, overall. One thing PCC’s are demonstrably good at, is acting as introductory weapon to ease new shooters into long-arm use.
Just Right Carbines (JC Carbine) 9mm. CCA/4.0
Do PCC’s have a “military” use? For an established national armies or police forces, the answer is “not really”. Although some arguments could be made that police forces would do better with a PCC than an actual “patrol rifle” (usually a military carbine), any real need for a pistol-caliber long-arm is usually better filled by a submachine gun.
Unlike more high-powered firearms, PCC’s are well suited to “guerrilla factories”, especially using “additive manufacturing” infrastructures, as the tolerances required are considerably less than those required for fully-automatic weapons. Likewise, additive manufacture requires few, if any, of the tools, equipment and supplies needed – and thus more-easily tracked – for more conventional weapons.
Anti-junta rebels in Myanmar, armed with FCG-9 carbines. 2021-2022. Author unknown.
In sum, then, if you are living in a “gun-friendly” location, a PCC is a good tool for both recreation and home defense, while also being a good choice for introducing new shooters to long-arms…and, if things really go sideways, they are a good choice for arming an insurgency or resistance movement, with the intention – as in Myanmar – of using them to capture more powerful enemy weapons.
The only “obsolete” weapon is the weapon that can no longer harm you. You have to work with what you have at hand. Thinking in advance is one of the keys to personal safety and survival.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Additive Manufacturing – better known as “3D Printing” – has been increasing in popularity and capability, while decreasing in price, for the last thirty years. Today, many very capable printers can be had for well under US$500. The products produced range from simple objects to complex and detailed models, both of mechanical parts, as well as people. As well, 3D printing has begun to expand into using metals, which can be heated after printing to make the printed items strong enough for working applications.
Naturally, as soon as the technology’s capabilities reached a certain, ill-defined threshold, minds in many quarters began studying the possibility of military applications. While many do see “potential”, is that potential actually useful “downrange”?
Military forces have – obviously – changed significantly over the millennia. A soldier of Sargon the Great didn’t really require a great deal in the way of supplies, weapons or equipment. Indeed, in many cases, a soldier of Sargon may likely have been able to make much of their needed weapons and equipment on the spot, if they had the time and resources. All that really needed to be supplied to the soldier was food and water (for both troops and animals), and perhaps some large parts for siege engines.
As time and technology progressed, of course, weapons and equipment became increasingly specialized and difficult to manufacture. But, while troops could still forage for food and water, once the weapons were delivered, they were comparatively uncomplicated to both use and work on, should repairs be required in the field.
By the end of the 20th Century, of course, weapons, ammunition and much of the soldier’s equipment had advanced to the point where the vast majority of troops in all armies had only a nominal idea of how their weapons worked, let alone how to make or repair them.
These were all factors taken into account by those studying additive manufacturing for military purposes.
As is it possible, and relatively easy, to pack a “job shop” or three into shipping containers, along with some raw material stock and possibly parts blanks (although 2- and 3-D pictures, animations and mechanical drawings are far easier with digital reference libraries that can “live” on computers, or even on microfilm archives), making repair parts for many weapons and vehicles are not overly taxing for most units in the field. Plus, there are no questions concerning how strong or durable the field-manufactured parts are…after all, armies are some of the most conservative organizations in history. As a result, there are few specifically military applications, at present, where additive manufacturing can excel over conventional methods…
Mobile Machine Shop truck of the 741st Ord. Co., 41st Inf. Div., at Horanda, New Guinea, 1943. US Army Signal Corps Photo. Public Domain.
Inevitably, someone was going to make a firearm using additive manufacture. While the saga of Defense Distributed is too complicated to wade through here, the point is that – like Britain’s P.A. Luty before them – Defense Distributed proved that making firearms at home was not that complicated a process, if a person could obtain some very basic materials and tools.
Side-view of Defense Distributed ‘Liberator’ 3D-Printed hand-gun.
Now, both the “3-D Printed Gun” from Defense Distributed, as well as Luty’s 9mm submachine gun, were – being charitable – both crude, barely-usable weapons. While Luty’s design is occasionally manufactured by criminal gangs in parts of the world with very strict firearms laws, the fact of these weapons’ existence simply proves the points made by both Defense Distributed and P.A. Luty, that no matter how strictly a state tries to enforce restrictive gun control, people who want firearms will get them somehow, even if they have to make them. But, in the law enforcement and military spheres, 3-D firearms remained crude and barely usable, even if they were dangerous.
This all began to change in 2019, when the FCG-9 appeared, designed by a shadowy German-Kurdish anti-gun control activist known as “JStark1809” (who, incidentally, was tracked down in 2021, using financial transaction records; two days after a raid that found no weapons in his residence, the 28-year-old JStark1809 was found dead in his car of, according to the coroner, a “heart attack”).
Prototype of FGC-9 made by its designer, JStark1809. CCA/4.0
A photo of FGC-9 firearm unassembled components, included in original FGC-9 release files.
The FCG-9 is an altogether different 3-D animal, as it appeared in the hands of a dissident IRA splinter group in a parade during Easter of 2022 and – much more significantly – it is reportedly in use by anti-junta rebel groups in Myanmar, beginning in 2021. Being made of 3-D printed media, with a few steel parts for strength, the 9mm weapon is easy to mass-produce in guerrilla workshops, and is apparently far more reliable and useable than either Defense Distributed’s or Luty’s deisgns, further reinforcing the ridiculous nature of restrictive firearms laws.
Anti-junta rebels in Myanmar, armed with FCG-9 carbines. 2021-2022. Author unknown.
But…How useful is this technology to an army? Well, beyond the obvious utility for guerrilla forces, as mentioned above, the answer is ‘not much’. As also pointed out above, there are far cheaper and more conventional ways to manufacture spare parts for military-grade vehicles and weapons
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Inside the United States, people frequently talk about “exercising their rights”. Most often, this refers the freedom of speech, or the freedom of religion. The most vitriolic discussion of “rights”, however, is that of the right to own and possess “arms”, i.e., the rights of the Second Amendment to the Constitution:
While this is a pretty straightforward statement – for reasonable, rational and at least decently educated people – certain parties insist on hammering this sentence all out of proportion, to make it seem to mean the diametric opposite. In fact, the wholly unconstitutional (see Clauses 15 & 16) creation of the National Guard in 1903 allowed the “several States” to completely and deliberately ignore the maintenance, organization and training of “The Militia of the United States”, to the point of silently accepting the oxymoron of the concept of an “Unorganized Militia” (pages 230 & 231) – a ‘militia’, by definition, is a ‘military force’…which cannot be “unorganized”. This was coupled to a Supreme Court case, Illinois v. Presser (1886), which prevents citizens from forming militia units without the explicit approval of their state governors…and which, ironically, bans virtually all forms of restrictive “gun control” – but a lot of people aren’t ready for that discussion.
As a result, a “military class” has developed in US society, where a tiny percentage of the population volunteers for military service on a generational basis (this author being part of that class), while the vast majority of Americans have little to no contact with “things military,” beyond possibly knowing someone who enlisted or became a commissioned officer; video games don’t count. Coupled to the fact that a decreasing percentage of the US population neither hunts, target shoots nor sport shoots, most American firearms owners have little concept of guns in general, nor of what goes into “military training”.
While this is not the place to present a ‘full-court press’ for a plan of military training, this is certainly a venue for a brief explanation of what firearms Americans should own, in order to start exercising their Second Amendment rights properly.
The following are the views of the author, and not necessarily those of the Freedomist.
First, the Reader will need to carefully consider the laws of their state and locality of residence. While there are some websites that can help, the reader is strongly advised to check their state and local laws directly, to avoid confusion.
So – now that you’ve checked the state/local laws, what firearms should the you, the Reader, buy?
The next thing to understand is that firearms are expensive – there are plenty of firearms for sale as this article goes to press, which cost more than several cars this author has owned over the years. Just like buying a car, research the specific model of firearms you are thinking about purchasing, before you invest that kind of money in them.
And speaking of money, don’t spend more than about $1,200 on ANY firearm, unless you intend to become a professional sport shooter. Very few people in the world need a $2,000 firearm – what they need, is an $800 firearm, and $1,200 worth of training.
With those concerns addressed, let’s turn to ironmongery.
Every adult in the US who is not a professional shooter should own a number of firearms sufficient to cover the following five areas:
First, buy a handgun. There are plenty of cases where carrying a “long gun”, like a shotgun or a rifle, is simply too inconvenient. Handguns fill that gap. However, unlike movies and video games, handguns take comparatively more practice to master, and are nothing more than a “backup” weapon – in the words of a friend of this author, a handgun is what you use to shoot your way to something better. Handguns are also highly personalized: if you are not in the military, you currently have a wide variety of choices of frame. Visit a shooting range near you that will rent firearms for their in-house range, fire a magazine or two from multiple pistols, and see what you like – don’t let “experts” restrict your choice. Buy what works for you, and train with it.
Buy a firearm in “.22LR”. This can be either a handgun or a rifle. The .22LR is an old design of cartridge (see the image below), that remains in use because of its utility – it is almost the perfect cartridge for practice, small game hunting (like rabbits and squirrels), and just general “plinking”, because it is so lightweight and cheap.
Buy a shotgun, in either 12- or 20-gauge (shotgun gauges increase in size as the gauge number decreases, so a “12-gauge” is larger than a “20-gauge). Shotguns will handle somewhere around 75-80% of what you need a firearm for. While rather short ranged, it is great for home defense and hunting, when loaded with the appropriate ammunition. Shotguns are also some of the cheapest firearms you can legally buy, usually starting somewhere around $250 in most cases.
Buy a hunting riflesuitable for 4-legged varmints. Even if hunting is not your normal gig, the time may come where you need to hunt for food. That’s not being paranoid – that’s being prudent.
Buy a rifle sufficient for two-legged varmints. Yes – that means what you think it does. See #4, above, and consider the events of 2017-2021. You may think you are safe, now, but what happens if things really go sideways? If the statement, “That will never happen here” is rummaging around in your mind right now, why are you still thinking about this subject? Think about the safety of you and your loved ones, and act accordingly.
Now that we have addressed the five areas of firearms, the important takeaway is not necessarily that you need five separate weapons. That may be out of your price range. But, the thing about firearms is that, unless the firearm in question is highly specialized, you can get away with making one weapon cover multiple jobs. For example, a 12- or 20-gauge shotgun is fully capable of taking most game in North America up to the size of a deer, if you can get within 100 yards, and have the right ammunition. Because of the variety of shotgun ammunition (#4 Birdshot, “Double-Aught” [a.k.a., “00 Buckshot”], and Slug are the basic loads) out there, it will also work for hunting birds, as well as defending your home from an attacker. As well, any hunting rifle that can take a deer or a hog (Hogzilla is real…look it up) can also deal with a two-legged varmint – see #5, above.
How much ammunition should you have on hand? In general, 100 rounds per handgun, 100-200 rounds per shotgun, and 100-300 rounds for rifles should be more than sufficient. Note that there is nothing wrong with keeping more on hand, if you can afford it.
Cartridge comparison. CCA/4.0
But remember: You still need to trainwith your firearms. The absolute minimum should be putting at least 100 rounds ‘downrange’ per firearm, per year. If you can afford a professional training course, get that done. Working with a firearm is just like driving a car: it’s easy to learn, but you need to practice, as far as you are able.
It’s your life we’re talking about, after all…as well as those of your loved ones.
It has long been said that, “…the Pen is mightier than the Sword…” While that may be true, having that sword is far more profound and effective of a statement – words on a paper are only that: words on paper. Those words are much more effective, when backed up with a sword.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
There are very few machines in the world, today, that can claim to have been designed over a hundred years ago. There are some railroad engines, for example, that are still run as “living museums”, ferrying the curious around closed rail circuits, allowing modern riders to experience some of the feels and smells of bygone eras. In other places, there are hydroelectric dams that have changed little in the near-century since they were built; Hoover Dam comes to mind, as it nears its own century mark, with only minimal updates to its internal design.
Series of massive electrical generators beneath the Hoover Dam. CCA/4.0
This is equally true of firearms. The Browning Machine Gun, in both .30 and .50 calibers, and the Colt 1911 (also designed by John Moses Browning) all date from over a century ago, yet remain in both first- or second-line service around the world. The Mosin-Nagant rifle, and its 7.62x54mmR cartridge, in contrast, date all the way back to 1891, and while the Mosin rifle may no longer be in common service (aside from a few WW2-era examples turning up in Ukraine), the 7.62x54mmR remains the cartridge of choice for the PKMGPMG, one of the most widely deployed machine guns of the early 21st Century.
7.62 mm PKM machine gun used by Finnish military. 2012. Public Domain.
But one weapon stands apart from all of these: the Maxim Machine Gun.
Swiss Maxim Machine gun Model 1911, cal 7.5 mm. CCA/3.0
First invented in 1884 by an American inventory, Hiram Stevens Maxim, and first offered for sale in 1886, the Maxim Gun has been used in every part of the world, in virtually every conflict of note since that time. The Maxim was the first true “machine gun”, in the mechanical sense that we understand the term today. Unlike most machine guns of today, the Maxim is recoil-operated, meaning that it only uses the recoil impulse of the cartridge firing, to retract, extract, and eject spent cartridges, then chamber and fire a new cartridge. In contrast, most modern automatic weapons use some form of gas-operated piston – very similar to the piston in a car engine – to operate their cycle.
An Australian soldier manning a Vickers machine gun during the Korean War. Date Unknown. Public Domain.
Similarly, the Maxim typically use a large, cylindrical water jacket to cool and protect the barrel from the heat of firing, unlike modern weapons which rely on the flow of air and “quick-change” barrels to accomplish the same task. While very good at cooling barrels, the water jackets were very cumbersome, and prone to damage, both in and out of combat, which could cause catastrophic damage to the weapon if no immediately repaired.
With a cyclic rate of about 600 rounds per minute, the Maxim is – by modern standards – heavy, clunky, and awkward. As well, it is certainly nowhere near to modern standards of reliability in the field…and yet, the gun refuses to quietly disappear into a museum, because it continues to soldier on in the 21st Century.
Twin-mounted Maxim Guns with a modern optical sight. Ukraine. Author Unknown.
The Maxim was tweaked and fiddled with by every state operator who bought copies. But Maxim wasn’t done with his design: in the early 1890’s, he released a much larger version of his machine gun (YouTube link) that fired 37mm explosive shells, at a rate of c.300 rounds per minute, to about 4,500 yards. Versions of this “pom-pom gun” (so-called, because the sound it made while firing) would be used as secondary and tertiary armament on ships, as well as early anti-aircraft weapons, until the end of WW1.
U.S.S. Vixen, Maxim machine gun and gunner Smith. The gun appears to be a Maxim-Nordenfelt 37-mm 1-pounder autocannon, known to the British as a “pom-pom”. Public Domain.
British QF 1 pounder Mk II 37 mm “pom-pom” gun, World War I era, on display at the Imperial War Museum, London. CCA/2.0
The Maxim would be used as a frontline weapon through the war in Korea. By then, though, it was showing its age, as better materials and designs produced lighter, more reliable and more portable weapons. The surviving weapons, around the world, were mostly placed in storage…but the Maxim’s legacy continued: the PKM and its successor, the Pecheneg GPMG, both use ammunition belts that are backwards-compatible with the PM1910, the Imperial Russian version of Maxim’s design, dating from before WW1.
Photo of a 1910 Maxim Machine gun. CCA/4.0
But again – Maxim’s design refuses to gently go into that good night.
As the world exploded in the aftermath of the so-called “Arab Spring”, many citizen rebels and resistance fighters overran government armories, and found Maxim’s old guns in storage crates. Those guns were broken out and cleaned, training and maintenance manuals were sourced from online repositories, and the century-old weapons went back into action. They may no longer be the best guns available, but old and creaky guns are better that harsh words and rocks.
Captured German Maxim machine gun. Malard Wood, 9 August 1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain
Firearms – of all categories – are very recent additions to Mankind’s arsenal, as they have been effective combat tools for considerably less than 1,000 years. They are one of the most – if not themost – decisive “force multiplers” in human history. Learning about firearms makes no one “evil”, nor is it “glorifying” weapons – it makes them well informed and productive members of the societies…who should REALLY be wondering just whose side they are really on.
Don’t go gently into the night – because it may not be as gentle of a night as you think it to be.
Disclaimer: The following are the personal views of the author, alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of FreedomistMIA.
In the closing weeks of 2022, it is painfully evident to even the most disinterested observer that the United States is in the throes of the worst political turmoil in generations. Significant blocs have formed within the voting-age population with diametrically opposing political views, views that are for the most part completely disconnected from their perceived opponents. Meanwhile, the majority sits quietly in the middle, struggling with skyrocketing costs of living, while wishing the rest would just be quiet for a little while.
But the populace of the United States is not alone in these views. Around the world, citizens of many nations protest regularly – and sometimes violently – over the same, or much worse, problems as the American electorate: whether those be skyrocketing inflation caused by the staggering incompetence of a disconnect globalist elite, the very real fact of a lack of fuel as winter closes in on Europe, fears of a widening of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the never-ending war on terrorism, and many more.
In short – people around the developed world are frustrated, disappointed, alarmed and very angry at governments in general, and usually their own governments in particular. These facts are enhanced by clear perceptions of corruption and wrongdoing, whether warranted or not. Indeed, “government contract” is virtually a dog-whistle signaling likely corruption being in play.
While your humble author makes no pretension of formal political science education, I have been studying this problem for over almost two decades. The following are my own conclusions, based on my own experience and research.
The fundamental problems are two: Firstly, most people simply lack an understanding of political tidal forces because, secondly, they have never been taught how to think about them.
This is a deliberate policy, because doctrinal public education models and doctrines have for over a century focused not on training students to think critically, but to learn just enough to be useful in the workplace. Thus, when situations accrete together, as they have at the end of 2022, the population cannot understand what is happening, which increases discord exponentially.
In the current realm, the point of the following discussion is to clarify the role of “government” as a generic entity, without delving into political mud slinging.
At the heart of this discussion is a fundamental question: Which is superior – ‘the government’ or ‘the people’?
The idea that the Government is inherently superior to the People is a childish and ridiculous notion, unsupportable in either logic or reason, for the simple fact that governments cannot create themselves – they cannot self-organize. “The People”, however that entity can be described, must decide to institute a governing body to oversee those things that individuals cannot carry out on their own, and retain the right to remove it at will.
And yet, there is a pervasive and festering notion that “government” somehow trumps the body that created it.
This idea comes from a sense of overwhelming intimidation, which has been drummed into the population at large by a scientific community that focuses on the mere mechanical reality of the vastness of Nature and the Universe, while ignoring the far more stunning fact that Humankind is able to consider and act to enhance its knowledge of what it can observe around it.
To attempt a start at a remedy for this condition of “directed circumstance”, I will present the following as an aide to those trying to understand the functions of government. We will focus on “functions” of government, to avoid getting lost in measly and petty political minutiae.
In short, “Governments” have a few critical functions that cannot be easily accomplished by the individual citizen. These were the real reasons why the collectivist rubric of a ruling structure that existed separately from the populace that created it was formed, back to at least the Sumerians, and likely much farther back than that (YouTube link).
Governments, in fact, have precisely eight jobs, and ONLY eight – anything else is automatically suspect, because of the propensity for corruption – and even in these eight functions, below, corruption and mismanagement happen frequently:
Government deals with the barbarians across the river, so that the average Citizen doesn’t have to…Whether this means talking to them or killing them, is immaterial.
There is a pervasive attitude that the individual citizen is perfectly capable of defending themselves without a government to tax them in order to go fight eponymous ‘bad guys’. Since this has been dealt with previously, what I will say is, good luck with that artillery battery that’s in range of your house.
Government establishes uniform weights and measures, to attempt to cut down on graft, theft and corruption by their Citizens, and their friends and neighbors…However, “Caveat Emptor” still applies.
Pretty simple. The legal term “fungible” was coined to describe the nature of an undifferentiated mass of product.
Government establishes a common and uniform medium of exchange, for the same reasons as #2.
See #2. Governments work very hard to keep their currencies from being counterfeited, for reasons that should be obvious.
Government sees to the maintenance of certain lines of communication, so that no area becomes too isolated.
Look around your house – if you didn’t grow it or dig it, every single thing in your house came from somewhere else, and it came over a line of communication (a road, an airport, a railroad or a seaport) that is almost certainly not maintained by you…your tax dollars, however, pay the people who do maintain those lines.
Government enforces only those “mala prohibita” laws sufficient to maintain #’s 1 – 4, and ensures that “mala in se” crimes are adjudicated fairly.
You and a couple of buddies are not “law enforcement officers” – you’re a lynch mob. Careful legal processes exist to adjudicate cases fairly, both for the safety of the community as a whole, as well as for your safety…if that’s a difficult concept, look up “Robespierre”.
Government collects reasonable taxes to make 1 – 5 function properly.
People really get hung up over this. Everyone hates taxes; it’s a thing. But the secret, dirty little truth is, people are happy paying what they see as “reasonable” taxes, if they think that the Government is spending those taxes wisely…As pointed out above, however, many people around the world most definitely do not think that they taxes are being spent wisely.
Government ensures, as far as possible, equality of opportunity…never – ever – equality of outcome.
This is another sticking point that many are encouraged to ignore. Governments can only provide “equality of opportunity”. It cannot give things away “for free”, simply because Government is a net consumer, not a net producer, and never has been. If a government “gives” you something, the government took it from someone else, likely under threat of violence. Even in the days when troops were paid with loot from conquered enemies, the expenditures the Government incurs are never recouped for at least a century…and it is the Citizenry that bears the costs.
Government ensures that monopolies are limited and strictly controlled.
This is Government’s primary failure, especially in the modern day, simply because there is far too much temptation in the amounts of money and potential pot-government sinecures that large businesses can dangle at Government officials…which is a fancy way of saying that “money corrupts”.
Reread the above, as many times as you need to…Then, sit down and read or listen to Sun Tzu – he did the work for you, c.2,500 years ago. The least you could do, is read him for free.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Back FREEDOM for only $4.95/month and help the Freedomist to fight the ongoing war on liberty and defeat the establishment's SHILL press!!
Are you enjoying our content? Help support our mission to reach every American with a message of freedom through virtue, liberty, and independence! Support our team of dedicated freedom builders for as little as $4.95/month! Back the Freedomist now! Click here
