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The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

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111–120 of 148 posts

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if electronic mules are so great, I would expect to see some actual mules still in service.

Funny story. I was listening to an interview with Chinese historian Carl Zha. According to Zha the CIA ran a breeding program for mules in the 1980s for use in Afghanistan to supply the mujahadeen. The breeding program was in Tennessee and used Tennessee mules. All the mules died after about a year because for whatever reason they couldn't deal with the conditions in Afghanistan. So the CIA went looking for a mule pr…

...and now I understand why the Uyghur are persecuted in China.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#112
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isnt mentioned is how this weight is dictated by modern combat doctrine. We expect troops on patrol to be ambushed and to fight back and win. That is new. It didnt happen in ww2 because, if ambushed, retreat was always an option, a good one considering you often had no idea how big the enemy was ahead of you. But today we assume the enemy is always six guys with guns. We expect our patrols to never retreat. So t…

I disagree. The USMC doctrine on this matter has remained the same for generations, so that doesn't explain the increasing loadout. Also, and I don't know what the official Army guidance is on matter, but we took over an AO where an Army unit had previously been responsible. They regularly got ambushed, and regularly broke contact. One development that I heard about a couple of years ago, which should certainly ease…

It is a subtle change. In the past, a patrol was expected to move in stealth. The goal was to find the enemy and then decide whether to engage. That started to disappear in Vietnam. Today, patrols do not focus on stealth. They move in the open. Often the goal of a patrol is to be seen. First contact isn't 'finding' but being fired upon by the enemy. Being ambushed isn't considered a failure. It is the plan, the primary means of identifying an enemy position. Under that mentality, every soldier becomes a tank.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#113
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>rather than having to march 30 miles with their gear. Not all of that is just physical conditioning, there's a sizable mental component to it that helps condition you to less than ideal situations so you don't go "welp, I'm tired, fuck it, I'm sitting down to die" when you're in a bad situation and instead you're like "I got this, I've done worse, this is nothing, just a little farther" as well as equipping you to k…

"There's a reason we readopted some of these conditioning practices from ancient militaries." I'm curious, could you expand on this, or post a link for further reading?

Off the top of my head the book Manthropology by Peter McAllister covers some of this, as far as what was expected of the ancient solider.

Also look into the history of Special Forces in the United States. WWI was in large part trench warfare, the Civil War was largely fought in open fields in lines not unlike trench warfare. Marching was something you did for parades and pageantry.

Basically though if you look at ancient armies like the Romans had you needed to be able to march 15-20 miles in full kit over most terrains and this is how you trained.

If you want to dive into the current Special Forces community you need to start with the First Special Service Force where you first start seeing long marches (on a 60 mile course) as well as learning things like hand to hand combat, skiing, mountain climbing, parachuting. Then go look at Darby's Rangers and Merrill's Marauders. From there jump to to Vietnam and the 5th SFG[A] and look at some of their feats.

Today you have stuff like Robin Sage and Operator Training Course which, special tactics aside, some ancient soldiers would felt right at home with the long range marches and covering unimproved terrain as well as handling shelter and meeting their basic needs.

If you really dive into the history of special forces and the backgrounds of the original trainers/leaders, you'll see men with well rounded knowledge of ancient tactics/warfare as well as knowledge/training in more modern, yet primitive, tactics like guerrilla warfare and taking on much larger forces (again, something that there are great examples of in ancient warfare like the Battle of Marathon, Battle of Julu, Battle of Badr) as well as ancient units/groups (Medjay, Akkadian, Spartan, Sacred Band of Thebes, Dacian, Varangian Guard etc).

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#114
post #29

I was infantry, USMC. I have sustained permanent injury just from carrying heavy shit around for years. It's pretty hard on your body.

Looking back, would you leave anything out of your daily loadout to avoid injury?

I often ditched as much gear as I could. Sometimes it bit me in the ass though...one time in training we had to build entrenchments, but I'd left my e-tool behind. There's an old saying, "Pack light, freeze at night." I often chose to freeze. Infantry is not a comfortable life!

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#115
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, would you leave anything out of your daily loadout to avoid injury?

The largest weight I experienced in the service was Sapi plates and Ammo. Those are two things you definitely don't want to leave out, though it wasn't entirely uncommon for people to leave out plates when deployed, leading to forced inspections before movements.

I remember a kid putting a laptop in his flak jacket in place of a sapi plate...to watch movies on post or something. LCPL shenanigans.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#116
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt bad for you weapons guys. We had a guy in our company that barely met the height requirement. He was like, 5'3" and 95lbs soaking wet. He was a machine gunner and he humped his heart out but it was painful to watch.

For a long time I was pretty irritated about landing in a line company instead of a mounted weapons company... but after a combat tour, where the majority of KIA was from roadside IEDs, I didn't mind walking so much. The loadout did get more and more ridiculous though - after some officer got shot in the heart through his armpit, we all got issued side SAPIs that added weight, interfered with room clearing mobility,…

At the end of a deployment, I had such severe shoulder pain that I could barely carry a weapon. Of course, the corpsman "couldn't find anything wrong". That shoulder pain is still with me. I've been to a number of doctors and therapists, but haven't found anything conclusive.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#117
post #4

This story reminds me of a scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan: https://youtu.be/inEY1dHXyGA

I cant find the particular scene, but in the beginning of Platoon, Elias goes through Chris's (Charlie Sheen) pack and just starts throwing unnecessary shit out after he nearly humped himself into being a heat casualty.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#118
Two Ideas- why cant amour not be manufactured fast in situ? Aka, i have a huge layered plastic bag, that is filled in a second with dirt from the ground, acting as armor?

Could Ammunition not be catapulted in? Basically a mortar round with re-supplies that can be requested by the infantry at location? Also wasnt there a case-less ammunition program exactly to reduce weight? So replace ammunition-charge and batterys with one fluid standardize energy component? Guns ignite it, radios use it in fuel cells? Just dont have all those disjointed systems, and find more unions in stuff?

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#119
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time I was pretty irritated about landing in a line company instead of a mounted weapons company... but after a combat tour, where the majority of KIA was from roadside IEDs, I didn't mind walking so much. The loadout did get more and more ridiculous though - after some officer got shot in the heart through his armpit, we all got issued side SAPIs that added weight, interfered with room clearing mobility,…

At the end of a deployment, I had such severe shoulder pain that I could barely carry a weapon. Of course, the corpsman "couldn't find anything wrong". That shoulder pain is still with me. I've been to a number of doctors and therapists, but haven't found anything conclusive.

Hopefully it gets better with time for you. My complaint wasn't with pain, but numbness. I developed this problem very early on, in SOI, and kept it to myself because I knew that it would get me medically discharged. Thankfully I never had to explain to anyone why I'd go to the lengths I did in order to avoid handling grenades. After 2 years of civilian life my knees and lower back stopped bothering me, but 15 years later: my hands still feel like they're falling asleep.

Re: The Overloaded Soldier: Why U.S. Infantry Now Carry More Weight Than Ever

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of a deployment, I had such severe shoulder pain that I could barely carry a weapon. Of course, the corpsman "couldn't find anything wrong". That shoulder pain is still with me. I've been to a number of doctors and therapists, but haven't found anything conclusive.

Hopefully it gets better with time for you. My complaint wasn't with pain, but numbness. I developed this problem very early on, in SOI, and kept it to myself because I knew that it would get me medically discharged. Thankfully I never had to explain to anyone why I'd go to the lengths I did in order to avoid handling grenades. After 2 years of civilian life my knees and lower back stopped bothering me, but 15 years…

I feel you. My toes went numb on a hump once and they've never fully come back. I've been out since 2012 and still have the shoulder pain and numb toes so I'm not holding out for that pain to go away.
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