Army Paper Prompts Look at Combat Gear
An obscure graduate school paper by an Army major that took the service to task over poorly training and equipping Soldiers for the fight in Afghanistan is causing quite a stir amid key service officials.
Special Operations Command has been picking the paper's conclusions apart with a fine-tooth comb. It is now required reading for Army weapons experts, and the service's top gear buyer has read it cover-to-cover.
But the paper's conclusions are causing some heartburn.
"I've read it. It's a very good paper. But he did take things out of context in a couple of places," said Col. Doug Tamilio, program manager for Soldier weapons. "He makes some conclusions that aren't substantiated with the documents he's got."
In a monograph titled "Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half Kilometer," Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, an infantry officer attending the elite Army School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, wrote that the Army undertrained and underequipped its front-line units to battle insurgent forces over long ranges in mountainous terrain.
Read Maj. Ehrhart's Paper Here
Debate over the study comes amid a series of major reviews within the service over improvements to the M4 rifle, a possible replacement for the Soldier's basic carbine, and radical changes to the equipment used by troops in Afghanistan, including a new camouflage combat uniform that better matches that country's varied terrain.
"We want to provide that squad a more modular capability specific to that theater," said Brig. Gen. Mark Fuller, the Army's top weapons buyer. "But do we want to do that across the whole Army? Maybe not."
Ehrhart wrote that despite the fact that 50 percent of Army engagements in Afghanistan occur with the enemy attacking at 300 meters or beyond, the majority of Soldiers are trained to fire their M4 carbines accurately to 200 meters, and more than 80 percent of Joes in an infantry company are equipped with weapons that can't touch the enemy beyond that range.
The enemy in Afghanistan, Ehrhart writes, "engages United States forces from high ground with medium and heavy weapons, often including mortars, knowing that we are restricted by our equipment limitations and the inability of our overburdened soldiers to maneuver at elevations exceeding 6000 feet."
The weapon systems that can engage the enemy in Afghanistan effectively beyond 200 meters "represent 19 percent of the company's firepower," he adds. "This is unacceptable."
Military.com contacted Ehrhart, who is now deployed to Iraq, via e-mail, but he was unable to respond to questions about the report by post time.
Army officials say they read the critique loud and clear and claim efforts are ongoing to re-evaluate basic rifle training and other tactics to better meet the Afghan threat. The service's weapons experts are also quick to point out that efforts are being made to arm Soldiers with more firepower that can reach out and touch insurgents in the Afghan hills.
Tamilio noted that the Army is in the midst of equipping each infantry squad with two EBR-14 systems --- modified M14 7.62mm rifles --- so more Soldiers will have the range and stopping power to engage the enemy with direct fire. Officials are also scouring the weapons lockers of special operations units to see if some of their firepower could be fielded to general purpose units to boost their capabilities.
But officials are reluctant to equip units with too many weapons that meet long-range needs at the expense of the close-range capability. Tamilio said the 5.56mm M4 worked well in the close-range urban fights of Iraq, but Afghanistan is proving the need for more options with heavier rounds.
Fuller added that his team has offered three Army brigades deploying to Afghanistan as part of the "surge" additional firepower for their operations, including the special operations M4A1 that can fire in full-auto mode and new long-range scopes.
"I can't give it to the whole Army," he explained. "But I can field an increased capability so you can have a little more kit in your kit bag to adapt to that environment."
