situation, and efforts were begun to find a light machine gun that could use the same 5.56mm ammunition as the M16.
After many years of trials and experiments, the Army adopted a design called the FN Minimi, developed by the famed Belgian arsenal Fabrique National, as the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). This gas-operated weapon weighs 16.31b/7.4 kg, measures 41 in/103 cm in length, and has an effective range of 800 meters/875 yards. The rate of fire is an awesome seven hundred to one thousand rounds per minute, but SAW gunners are trained to fire short bursts to conserve ammunition. The M249 is normally fired from a prone position, supported by folding bipod legs and the soldier’s shoulder. The SAW uses a two-hundred-round plastic box magazine (it weighs 6.91b/3.1 kg) for its disintegrating-link-belted ammunition, but can also accept standard thirty-round M16 magazines from the lower receiver. A hinged plate covers the belt-feeder when a magazine is inserted, or covers the magazine opening when the belt is loaded. The M249 is among the best light machine guns ever produced, and has proven popular among rifle units. In particular, they like having all the personal weapons in a fire team firing the same 5.56mm ball ammunition. Tested many times in combat, the SAW has always performed well.
Cutlery, Ammunition, Mines, and Grenades. Important as firearms are to a paratrooper, he would never go into action without an impressive collection of cutlery. The government-issued knives include a bayonet for the M16 rifle and a rigger’s knife. This last is a spring-loaded folding blade designed to cut away the shroud lines of a parachute in an emergency, such as a tree landing. In addition, a survival/combat knife is often worn in a scabbard strapped to one leg. Then there is the matter of personal knives and tools. While most paratroops still pack the traditional Swiss Army knife, something else is taking the place of other tools that might be needed in airborne operation. Rather than lugging around a box full of tools, most infantrymen are today carrying “multi-tools.” These are folding pliers that contain a number of other different and useful tools (screwdrivers, wire cutters, etc.). Various models made by Gerber and Leatherman are favored, and actually quite useful. Today’s airborne soldier also carries a folding entrenching tool with a sharpened blade that doubles as a nasty weapon in hand-to-hand combat. An improved Fighting Position Excavator (IPV-government for “shovel”) is under development. While all of this may seem excessive, try telling that to a young paratrooper jumping into a dark night, knowing nothing of what may be out there. Remember, these knives and tools may mean the difference between mission failure and success for an airborne trooper.
Along with all the cutlery, a paratrooper typically jumps with six M16 5.56mm ammunition magazines (loaded with thirty rounds each) and four M49 grenades (a mix of explosive-fragmentation, flash-bang, and smoke, depending on the mission). These are carried in a pair of pouches attached to the web gear. In addition, each trooper in a fire team not equipped with an M203 will usually carry an extra two-hundred-round M249 SAW magazine. If necessary, the SAW magazine can be broken down to reload empty M16 clips. For the M203-equipped trooper, there will likely be a stock of various types of 40mm grenades, depending upon the mission, threat level, and rules of engagement. Also towed away in the rucksack may be a claymore or other antipersonnel mine or a few rounds of 60mm mortar ammunition for the company’s heavy weapons platoon. Usually, the mortar rounds are dropped off in an assembly area, prior to the paratroops starting off to their objectives. All told, a U.S. paratrooper is probably carrying over 40 1b/18.1 kg of ammunition and weapons. It is a heavy load, but one that must be borne if the mission of the airborne is to be accomplished.
Sensors and Communications Gear. If there is any single area of military science that the United States leads the world in, it must be the use of advanced electronics to overcome night darkness and the general “fog of war.” The electronics revolution has even reached down to touch the individual paratrooper, as you will shortly see.
Two thousand years ago, our Roman legionary was lucky to see at night by the light of a few smoky torches around the perimeter of his camp, or by a tiny clay lamp inside his tent fueled by some of his precious olive oil ration. Today, every paratrooper carries a couple of personal flashlights (usually one in a pouch on his web gear and a spare in his rucksack). These are miniature “Maglites,” the same kind you can buy from any camping-supply mail-order catalog. In the field, though, they must be capped by a pack of red and yellow filter inserts. Red light is not normally visible to the enemy at long range, and it does not impair troops’normal night vision. Besides, if you show a white light at night around airborne troopers, you are likely to get shot — by them! However, today’s infantryman has a lot more than just a flashlight to see his way on the night battlefield.
Every four-man fire team will normally have one or two sets of Night Vision Goggles (NVGs). Optical devices of this type are sometimes called “starlight scopes.” Originally developed during World War II, starlight scopes for many years were “black” weapons, shrouded in secrecy and issued mainly to snipers and covert intelligence agents. During the Vietnam War first-generation scopes were mass-produced and widely issued to U.S. soldiers. The scope uses reflected moonlight or starlight at night and can amplify dim images up to fifty thousand times. Civilian hunters can now buy excellent night-vision goggles of this general type (made in Russia, no less!) for less than $800.
The most common U.S. model of NVG is the AN/PVS-7B, which is based on a third-generation image- intensifier tube, which amplifies even the smallest amount of available light from stars or moonlight. The AN/PVS- 7B represents the 1996 state of the art in NVGs, and is a significant improvement over earlier systems. The single- tube image intensifier uses prisms and lenses to provide the user with simulated binocular vision with no magnification. Through the dual displays (the NVGs are mounted either on a “Fritz” helmet or head harness) you see a greenish, monochromatic view of the world without peripheral vision, so you have to scan continuously, left to right, up and down. It takes training and practice to move, search, and engage targets wearing NVGs, but the trouble they cause is worth the effort. A fast-acting “blooming” protection circuit prevents the user from being dazzled if a flare, vehicle headlights, or other bright light appears in the 40° circular field of view. In starlight (with no moon) a man-sized target can be spotted at around 100 meters/109.4 yards. In full moonlight that same man- sized target can be spotted at over 300 meters/328 yards, and vehicles out to 500 meters/547 yards. The AN/PVS- 7B operates for up to twelve hours on a single battery, and weighs only 24 oz/.68 kg. Unit cost is about $6,000, and production is dual-sourced by ITT and Litton. Once a soldier is equipped with NVGs, there are other pieces of gear that can help him do his job.
Fitted to his weapon, the soldier may carry an AN/PAQ-4C Infrared Aiming Light, nicknamed the “death dot.” This is a lightweight (9 oz/.255 kg), low-cost, Helium-Neon infrared laser which is invisible to the naked eye. However, the infrared “death dot” shows up beautifully when wearing NVGs. Once the beam is boresighted to the weapon for a “point of aim/point of impact,” the firer simply places the pulsating spot on the target and shoots. This aiming light has been adapted for use with the M16 rifle, and can be fitted to the M60 machine gun, M2 heavy machine gun, or M249 SAW. Team leaders can also use the laser spot to designate targets or movement directions for their soldiers out to a maximum of 200 to 300 meters /219 to 328 yards, depending on the level of ambient light.
One other small but vital piece of night-vision equipment is the “chemlight.” This is a liquid-filled plastic stick that glows for up to twelve hours when crushed. They are used at night for silent signaling and marking positions. Chem-lights come in various colors (green, yellow, red, white, etc.), including one type that glows only in the infrared spectrum, visible only to night-vision devices such as NVGs and thermal sensors. All of these devices make American infantry the most capable night fighters in the world today. Because of advanced technology and a little Yankee ingenuity, our troops truly “own the night” on the battlefield.
Another area where advanced electronics are serving the paratrooper is communications. This represents a vast improvement over ancient times. Back in Roman days, every legion had a unit of trumpeters who stood by the commanding general to signal his orders down to the cohorts and maniples by blowing pre-established calls. Given the noise of battle, though, these were probably limited to “advance, withdraw, flank left, and flank right.” If a centurion in a tight spot needed to urgently request reinforcements, the only way to do it was to send a runner. Even better, two runners with the same message, by different paths, in case one took a javelin in the back. By the time of the American Civil War(1861 to 1865) the electric telegraph was beginning to influence events on the battlefield, but the technology of small-unit tactical communications did not change much until the U.S. Army introduced the handheld, battery operated “walkie-talkie” during World War II. Its range might have been only a few hundred yards/meters, but it was enough to allow a platoon leader to talk to his company commander, who himself had a radioman lugging a forty-pound transmitter-receiver set to pass the word up to the battalion headquarters. Strangely, today is little different from five decades ago.
Now, you might wonder why, in an age where every city cop has a two-pound “brick” radio on his belt (and every drug dealer has an even smaller cellular phone or pager in his pocket), every soldier doesn’t get a personal communications device. The answer is explained in just one word: security. Anything that transmits in the radio
