A Rifleman’s War
A Rifleman’s War
by Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Wall
Download the Full Article: A Rifleman’s War
Afghanistan has become a rifleman’s war.
Because we are fighting a counterinsurgency campaign against a tribal warrior society we have and increasingly continued to limit the use of supporting arms. Machineguns are even proscribed in villages and cities for fear of inflicting innocent civilian casualties.
The result is that we must rely more and more on our riflemen to engage and defeat the enemy. We know that 52% of the fights in Afghanistan begin at 500 meters and go out from there.
Recent publications by Dr. Lester Grau (Foreign Military Studies Office) indicate that a majority of the fights in Helmand Province are between 500 and 900 meters.
The problem is that we don’t teach soldiers to engage with their rifles at those ranges anymore.
Download the Full Article: A Rifleman’s War
Jeffrey Wall, now a Staff Sergeant in the California Army National Guard, is a 1976 graduate of VMI, and a former infantry officer in the Marine Corps who commanded infantry and weapons platoons, a rifle company and guard forces and other companies of up to 600 Marines. He retired as an independent business man in 2001and fought his way back into the service after 9/11. Since then he has served as an ETT in Afghanistan in the Eastern Operating Zone at company through brigade levels. At the California PTAE he has trained hundreds of Soldiers in rifle and pistol marksmanship as well as machinegun gunnery. A Distinguished Pistol Shot, he has “leg points” toward distinguished with the rifle and is a qualified sniper. He is the 2010 All Army Combat Marksmanship Open Champion.
