Not current or former military but...G26ster wrote:I need a recent combat vet to school me on the "current" military (Army/Marine) policy on weapons issue. Back in the "olden days," from which my experience comes, pistols were not issued to everyone in the combat arms. For example, if you were a "rifleman" you carried the current battle rifle of the day, and no pistol. If you were a "heavy weapons" type that carried a light machine gun or part of a crew served weapon crew, you had a pistol. Support personnel usually had pistols or rifles dependent on duty position. When did the military begin issuing a rifle and a pistol to an individual soldier? I'm, not addressing special ops personnel, but rather the infantry type who are deployed in combat operations.CC Italian wrote:Both of them said the only time someone used an m9 was when there rifle or shotgun malfunctioned. One even described the M9 as useful as a door stop!
The article states that they have 238k and are looking for 265k replacements. That doesn't add up anywhere close to general issue so it doesn't appear anything has changed. I could be completely talking out my backside but that's my parsing of the details FWIW.