On Dec 18, 2008, at 8:42 PM, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:55 PM, lukhman_khan
<[email protected]> wrote:
Who wants the police? The army is the right choice.
*shudder* You are scaring me. Do you really think policing with the
army is a good idea?
This is not about placing as many warm bodies as possible in street
corners. The army is trained from the ground up for a very different
role. The world armies are even now deathly scared of the street
warfare roles they are increasingly asked to play. Traditional
military combat troops are good at advancing under artillery fire and
shooting up just about everything in their gun sights.
The doctrinal assumptions of infantry and police are inverted.
Infantry operate in a hostile environment in proximity to a few
friendly people, police operate in a friendly environment in proximity
to a few hostile people. Their tactics and procedures reflect this.
From my limited knowledge even I know this: The INSAS rifle uses
ammunition designed to maim rather than kill.
The 5.56x45mm is *not* designed to maim except to the extent that
maiming leads to death. This is an old urban legend based primarily on
the fact that it uses a significantly smaller bullet than the
cartridges it replaced. This particular cartridge has the distinction
of being one of the very few military cartridges that can undergo
explosive fragmentation when fired from common weapons. In terms of
terminal lethality, you would be better off getting hit by a larger
bullet that does not undergo explosive fragmentation.
The Special forces like NSG use
sub-machine guns like the HK MP5 which are designed to kill rather
than maim...
Actually, the H&K MP5 has very benign terminal ballistics as military
weapons go, since it uses a 9mm pistol cartridge. Survival rates for
these types of wounds is very high, though in the case of the MP5 the
standard practice is to hit the target with a burst of well-placed
bullets which mitigates the relative non-lethality of a single random
shot.
The INSAS is cheap to produce but will
overheat after 10 rounds of continuous fire.
It stretches plausibility that a modern AK-47 derivative would
overheat after 10 rounds of continuous fire, since that is barely
enough rounds to warm the steel. Even the lightest of lightweight
military rifle actions -- and the INSAS is not lightweight -- can
absorb the thermal waste of a full 30-rd magazine at maximum cyclical
rate without overheating. Military small-arms of the last half century
are designed to indefinitely sustain fire of 50-100 rounds per minute,
including AK-47 derivatives actions, which is roughly rapid semi-
automatic fire.
As another example, I couldn't believe that they were allowed to use
the AGS-17 in Mumbai.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGS-17
...
I have no idea how many rounds were fired - but there is absolutely no
way to be sure you are hitting a terrorist and not a civilian when
using a high explosive fragmentation warhead like this.
This particular type of weapon shoots a vast array of non-lethal
specialty rounds. I'm not saying that is what they were using,
because I have no idea and they can be used for very localized direct-
fire, but these kinds of weapons are popular the world over for things
like riot control precisely because they have such a diverse range of
payloads they can deliver. Even in the military context, you carry a
number of non-lethal utility rounds for these types of weapons in case
you need them.
In the hands of someone well-trained, they can put a tiny explosive
charge through a small opening in someone's cover e.g. if they are
shooting through a small window. The lethal radius is pretty small,
3-5 meters, and the fragments have very short range, so it is even
plausible to use such things in a city if you need to clear a room
your target is hiding in.
I can't blame them too much
since they were fighting with whatever they had on hand, however this
should illustrate why the army is just not designed to be in civilian
security situations.
While I agree that military units make poor police, the reasons have
more to do with doctrine and training assumptions than the particular
weapons they use.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
