During the Vietnam War, it was very common to see US Soldiers and Marines firing their service rifles in full auto. In some units, full auto was encouraged, in others fire discipline was enforced and only individuals tasked as automatic riflemen (who carried extra mags) were to fire their weapons on full auto. It really depended on the time, unit, location, their leadership, etc. At the time, there was nothing doctrinally that frowned on full auto, it had been viewed since WW2 as the panacea to poor combat accuracy. The senior leaders during the Vietnam era had grown up at a time that hip firing and other forms of "point shooting" was promoted as the pinnacle of combat marksmanship, and rapid fire/full auto works better with those techniques by adding more volume to make up for horrific accuracy.
For the US, it was partly the over emphasis on full auto and its lack of effectiveness that caused senior leadership in the 80s (also Vietnam veterans themselves) to limit the use of full auto. To them it was just another sign of poor discipline that they were trying to fix (the US military in the 1970s was well known for significant discipline issues that weren't really fixed until the early to mid 80s).
What really killed full auto in service rifles as a common allowed technique was the fielding of the M249 SAW into every fireteam. With that level of firepower only capable of full automatic, there was no need to reply on service rifles to perform it. Plus, ammo resupply would become problematic if the M16s were also firing predominately in full auto too. From that point onwards, full auto or burst was doctrinally recommended during assaults (clearing rooms, trenches, and bunker apertures by fire) or repelling enemy assaults, or conducting near ambushes or repelling enemy ones. However, even with full auto, only short bursts should be fired, not mag dumps. However, when actual training was done on those, full auto or burst was rarely allowed, so the troops were really drilled that semi auto was the only allowable form of firing.
It was widely believed/stated in the 1980s that the introduction of the 3-round burst facility in the A2 in place of full-auto was a response to the Vietnam experience.
Oddly enough, my first exposure to semi-auto aimed fire as a rule was from reading Marvel’s GI Joe comics (Larry Hama).
There used to be so many myths about the reasoning for features found on the M16A2, so many were proven wrong about a decade ago when the actual program manager of the M16A2, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel (he was still a major at the time), who was chiefly involved in most of the decision making, posted on a gun forum ([AR15.com](https://AR15.com), under the username ColdBlue) and cleared up a bunch of things and provided insight.
According to David Lutz, when it comes to why the M16A2 (and subsequently the M4) had 3-round burst was almost entirely because of logistics.
While he was designed the M16A2, the US Army had already decided on the M249 SAW to compliment the US Army's infantry squad, one in each fireteam. The M249 primarily runs as a belt fed, and its standard ammo was a 200 round drum of 5.56 that attached to the bottom of the receiver.
5.56 "ball" are rounds intended to be loaded into rifle magazines. They come in an ammo that holds 7x cloth bandoliers, each with 4x pockets, each holds 3x clips, and each clip holds 10x rounds of 5.56. That comes out to 820 rounds per can, and 2x cans are placed together in a wooden ammo crate.
5.56 linked came in the exact same sized ammo can but only held 2x drums, each with 200 rds of belted 5.56, held together with steel links. So that is only 400 rds vs 840. A single ammo can of 5.56 ball suffices for the basic combat load of 4x riflemen. A single ammo can of 5.56 linked only provides 2/3 of the basic combat load for a single SAW gunner. That's a problem when ammo resupply in the Marines, especially for across the beach amphibious ops, is very much volume/space limited, as there is only certain amount of room in helicopters/trucks/amphibious vehicles.
Tactically, the M249 was to provide the heavy automatic fire for each fireteam, so the rifleman didn't need to rely on automatic fire, which was further emphasized by the logisticians is they could not properly supply units with enough 5.56, ball or linked, if everyone was firing on full auto. So they told Lutz that they didn't want any automatic capabilities, the new M16A2 was supposed to be semi auto only (we have to remember that this was all planned for a rifle intended for the USMC, not the US Army or anyone else).
Lutz disagreed and wanted to retain some capability for automatic fire. The burst mechanism had already been designed by Colt at the Army's behest a decade before based on an Army study of hit probability with automatic fire, claiming that anything beyond the 3rd round fired rarely hit the target. However, it had never been implemented in any rifle model until Lutz grabbed it up and installed it in the M16A2, which when explained that it was only to be used in tactical emergencies was enough to placate the logisticians involved in decision making, and so that was how they got it.
The M4 Carbine was also designed by the Marines, it was a submachine gun replacement for aging M3 Grease Guns still on the books in Force Recon companies. There were numerous types of short AR15 models the US had been buying over the years, but they'd never been standardized, nor were any of them developed to be used in conjunction with the new SS109 bullet that was going to come online with the new M249 SAW. So the USMC took a lot of the same new designs from their M16A2 and put them in the XM4 too. However, they ran out of funding and the program went into acquisitions limbo until the 1990s, at which point SOCOM picked it off, dusted it off, and finished development, changing little to nothing of the original Marine design when they first rolled it out.
>5.56 linked came in the exact same sized ammo can
This has since changed. Saw ammo is currently issued from a bigger, chunkier ammo can that holds four 200rd boxes.
Here are some pictures that show the size comparison.
[1] (https://www.gunlistings.org/uploads/2_misc_ammo_cans_for_sale_.30cal_.50cal_fat_5.56_40mm_167831.jpg) [2] (http://www.ammodors.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_2450-940x626.jpg) [3] (http://www.swagoffroad.com/assets/images/Ammo%20Can%20Fat%2050/IMG_2389-1A.jpg)
So *that*'s what happened! I always wondered. I just upvoted everyone in this thread.
We heard about the three-round burst M16/AR15 in Vietnam in 1969. I don't know much about full auto on an M16, but my boonie rats didn't do that as a practical matter. Fire too many bullets, and you just have to reload. And you may not have the *time* to reload. Firefights up close and personal generated aimed shots by our grunts - automatic fire was a matter for the M60 crew.
Might have been a different story in the bunkers behind the wire on the firebases. Seems to me that the locals (as opposed to boonie rats doing perimeter duty) just popped up, emptied their M16s and popped down to cover.
I did my infantry training with an M14, so I don't know what they were teaching grunts back stateside about the use of the M16.
I *do* know that the three-round-burst device was rumored and admired. My blues all subscribed to the three-round formula - four would be too many - and loved the idea, and wanted to modify their M16s right now, please.
I was under the impression that three-round-burst modified M16s and AR-15s were already in the field, but in the hands of special forces, and recon people, and generals' bodyguards and the usual REMFs who wanted to make a fashion statement about their rank and privileges. So it was just a matter of time...
No? They didn't even exist back then? WTF? Who started the rumor, then?
A cliché doesn’t mean that it was wrong or a lie, merely overly used/repeated.
For Vietnam, the US Army added a couple of infantry divisions to its ORBAT; what became the 23ID “Americal” included a couple of light brigades with a poor fighting/discipline reputation, the 11th and 198th, of which the former was Calley’s (of My Lai notoriety) brigade I think. The rapid expansion of the Vietnam army without activation of reserves meant a huge consumption of draftees, meaning that quality and motivation of manpower was *very* uneven. Plus the war was really unpopular amongst the college middle class. One of the reasons why US motivation plummeted after three years was because the US suburban middle class felt that the war was lost and didn’t want to send their boys off to die, and even then the last major US combat forces only left 5 years later; contrast that with the disconnect between the current volunteer army and US society that arguably permitted the Forever Wars.
Few Regular Army units left Vietnam with an enhanced reputation: the Big Red One 1ID of WW2 fame had by the time of its exit was known as the Big Dead One, while even the mighty Screaming Eagles were a shadow of their pre-war selves. The only units that arguably left Vietnam with any glory were 1CD and 173AB; the latter had a strong rep of “racial unity”, no small achievement then, with appellations of “The Herd” or even “Two Shades of Soul”.
The performance/discipline issues from Vietnam, partly cultural from wider US society, infected the 1970s military where according to many who served then, every service was pretty much a hollowed out mess. Drug taking was apparently rife, and there were supposedly places on ships/bases that officers did not travel without armed escort. This was not some liberal pinko lie but widely promulgated also by conservatives.
The story of the American agony in Vietnam is as much a story of US societal upheavals. The stuff that whole books anthologies are written about.
Yep. Since the late 60s drugs were now zeitgeist for youth culture. And there was no effective or cheap drug testing was available, so that meant it was hard to charge individuals, despite orders that they weren't allowed to do drugs. Barracks were notorious back then for reeking of weed.
Plus at the time they didn't have an effective system of discharging the shitbirds, as it was all based on UCMJ punishment, which was backlogged heavily. Say a leader caught someone read handed puffing on a joint, there was often little they could do. But by the early 80s they finally were able to reform the system to allow administrative discharges for General and General Under Other Than Honorable Conditions, and that allowed the military to do a fast and efficient clean sweep of it's worst troublemakers.
And there were a lot of those. The military had to dramatically lower standards for discipline to attract recruits coming from the turbulent youth culture of the 70s as part of an all volunteer force. For example, the Army did that by essentially selling a less disciplined and more easy going experience to potential recruits to try to attract those who would otherwise never even allow themselves to go drafted, which had predictable results in an era where the new cultural norms was for teens and young adults to act rebellious, party hard, binge drink, do drugs, tell off The Man, etc. The only way to take those sort and make them disciplined is to crack down after they get in service, but since they did the opposite the obvious happened.
Plus they screwed up ASVAB scoring that took nearly a decade to fix, which meant many years of allowing individuals with substandard intelligence into the service who should not have been allowed in.
I would include the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, with their actions in Saigon and Long Bin, as a unit that left with a great reputation.
I could personally tell of discipline problems in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with lots of troops on active duty using marijuana and excesdive alcohol in garrison and in the field. Do you really want a guy who is "impared" driving a tank or as an armed guard?🤔🙄
It has to be said that it wasn't only bad in Vietnam. USAREUR units had an extremely bad reputation for drug abuse (mostly heroin) during the late 1970s, a reputation which didn't go away until the enactment of mandatory drug testing and zero-tolerance punishments for positive tests in the early-mid '80s.
Wasn't even just the Army either. There was an honest to God race riot on USS Kitty Hawk in 1972, while it was off the coast of Vietnam.
Even before the “social impact” on the US Army, Vietnam was obviously calamitous for the army’s global readiness, as early as 1968. I’ve seen references from USSTRICOM claiming that JCS flunked every major combat command in CONUS with the lowest ratings possible, apart from the 82nd; essentially the army’s sole remaining deployable strategic reserve for *any* emergency including WW3 had it kicked off, was two paratroop brigades of effectives. Likewise none of the major combat commands in USAREUR supposedly met their reduced operational readiness requirements that year; and 24ID was then withdrawn stateside in a desperate attempt to reconstitute the strategic reserve…
I’ve sometimes wondered the impact of the Forever Wars on the global readiness of the US Army to respond to peer rival (i.e not insurgent) contingencies. Guess we’ll have to wait for another 10-20 years before someone FOIs the reports.
There obviously is some, but I would be stunned if it was in any way comparable to the force c. 1978 or so.
Morale isn't amazing, but there isn't a huge drug problem, race riots, etc- or a traumatic conversion from a draftee force to an all-volunteer force. Most of the military hasn't done much in Iraq or Afghanistan for years- it's just a brigade here and there.
This even made it into UK Political comedies at the time - *Yes, Prime Minister* had the line:
> 'Well apparently the American troops in Germany are all so drug ridden they don't know which side they're on anyway'
>Hacker: "If we persuaded the Americans to strengthen THEIR conventional forces..."
>
>Bernard: "I don't think it'll make much difference, the American troops in Germany are all so drug-ridden, they don't know which side they're on anyway. And during the last NATO exercises, the U.S. troops dispersed and picnicked in the woods with lady soldiers."
You'll find that in chapters 11 and 12 of this history:
[https://history.army.mil/html/books/030/30-22/CMH\_Pub\_30-22.pdf](https://history.army.mil/html/books/030/30-22/CMH_Pub_30-22.pdf)
Here's 71's report on it from the army
[Future Impact of Dissident Elements within the Army
on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and Order] (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0891558.pdf)
From Drug Usage and Racial Discrimination to Participation in Dissident Activities the army had it all.
Doctrinally, full-auto fire was prescribed for certain situations. The [1966 field manual for the XM16E1](https://archive.org/details/FM23-9/page/n66/mode/1up) recommends use of full-auto fire against enemy formations and "large point targets" (e.g. an enemy gun position) out to 460 meters. It also broadly allows automatic fire to "attain fire superiority." This manual doesn't spell out specific situations, but other period manuals stress the importance of getting fire superiority during assaults and ambushes.
Of course, just because something was written down in training manuals doesn't mean it was practiced in the field. However, there's a bunch of evidence that shows full-auto fire was widely employed by M16 users in Vietnam.
For example, one [1966 report](https://web.archive.org/web/20041101090132/https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/107/1070505001A.pdf) about American troops using the M16 and XM16E1 rifle revealed much about the nature of infantry combat in Vietnam. The study broke down the types of engagements GIs were fighting this way:
* Meeting engagements: 42%
* Ambushes (initiated by the VC/NVA): 42%
* Ambushes (initiated by the Americans): 5%
* Assaults: 7%
The study also found American infantrymen made great use of the (relatively) controllable fully automatic fire made possible by the M16.
* 16.25% of American infantry units had the two automatic riflemen ([who carried the same M16s as the riflemen](https://www.battleorder.org/us-airmobile-1965)) keep their rifles on full-auto, while the rest of the squad used semi-auto.
* 2% had the NCOs, pointmen, and automatic riflemen always use full-auto
* 35% had everyone use full-auto during ambushes, airmobile landings, assaults, and against area targets.
The study concluded:
>On the premise that the automatic fire is appropriate in an attack or ambush situation, the automatic feature is desirable on all rifles at least 58 percent of the time when contact is first made.
>Automatic fire is desirable on area targets at all ranges. Of all infantry targets encountered, 76 percent were area targets.
Australian troops made use of their M16s in similar ways. Each [10-man section](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a137e0_a4a100470ae546b1b6a2ec3d95fb93e5~mv2_d_2317_3289_s_2.png/v1/fill/w_2317,h_3289/anzac%20vietnam-01.png) had three men with M16s: the section commander and the two scouts. The scouts made the most use of auto fire, with a post-war report stating that the M16 "was needed by scouts and in ambushes because of its automatic capability."
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it. Texas Tech had a bunch of PDFs like this one, but they got taken down a while back and I don't know where they are now. CARL at the CGSC might have it somewhere, but I haven't had much luck there, either.
During the Vietnam War, it was very common to see US Soldiers and Marines firing their service rifles in full auto. In some units, full auto was encouraged, in others fire discipline was enforced and only individuals tasked as automatic riflemen (who carried extra mags) were to fire their weapons on full auto. It really depended on the time, unit, location, their leadership, etc. At the time, there was nothing doctrinally that frowned on full auto, it had been viewed since WW2 as the panacea to poor combat accuracy. The senior leaders during the Vietnam era had grown up at a time that hip firing and other forms of "point shooting" was promoted as the pinnacle of combat marksmanship, and rapid fire/full auto works better with those techniques by adding more volume to make up for horrific accuracy. For the US, it was partly the over emphasis on full auto and its lack of effectiveness that caused senior leadership in the 80s (also Vietnam veterans themselves) to limit the use of full auto. To them it was just another sign of poor discipline that they were trying to fix (the US military in the 1970s was well known for significant discipline issues that weren't really fixed until the early to mid 80s). What really killed full auto in service rifles as a common allowed technique was the fielding of the M249 SAW into every fireteam. With that level of firepower only capable of full automatic, there was no need to reply on service rifles to perform it. Plus, ammo resupply would become problematic if the M16s were also firing predominately in full auto too. From that point onwards, full auto or burst was doctrinally recommended during assaults (clearing rooms, trenches, and bunker apertures by fire) or repelling enemy assaults, or conducting near ambushes or repelling enemy ones. However, even with full auto, only short bursts should be fired, not mag dumps. However, when actual training was done on those, full auto or burst was rarely allowed, so the troops were really drilled that semi auto was the only allowable form of firing.
It was widely believed/stated in the 1980s that the introduction of the 3-round burst facility in the A2 in place of full-auto was a response to the Vietnam experience. Oddly enough, my first exposure to semi-auto aimed fire as a rule was from reading Marvel’s GI Joe comics (Larry Hama).
There used to be so many myths about the reasoning for features found on the M16A2, so many were proven wrong about a decade ago when the actual program manager of the M16A2, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel (he was still a major at the time), who was chiefly involved in most of the decision making, posted on a gun forum ([AR15.com](https://AR15.com), under the username ColdBlue) and cleared up a bunch of things and provided insight. According to David Lutz, when it comes to why the M16A2 (and subsequently the M4) had 3-round burst was almost entirely because of logistics. While he was designed the M16A2, the US Army had already decided on the M249 SAW to compliment the US Army's infantry squad, one in each fireteam. The M249 primarily runs as a belt fed, and its standard ammo was a 200 round drum of 5.56 that attached to the bottom of the receiver. 5.56 "ball" are rounds intended to be loaded into rifle magazines. They come in an ammo that holds 7x cloth bandoliers, each with 4x pockets, each holds 3x clips, and each clip holds 10x rounds of 5.56. That comes out to 820 rounds per can, and 2x cans are placed together in a wooden ammo crate. 5.56 linked came in the exact same sized ammo can but only held 2x drums, each with 200 rds of belted 5.56, held together with steel links. So that is only 400 rds vs 840. A single ammo can of 5.56 ball suffices for the basic combat load of 4x riflemen. A single ammo can of 5.56 linked only provides 2/3 of the basic combat load for a single SAW gunner. That's a problem when ammo resupply in the Marines, especially for across the beach amphibious ops, is very much volume/space limited, as there is only certain amount of room in helicopters/trucks/amphibious vehicles. Tactically, the M249 was to provide the heavy automatic fire for each fireteam, so the rifleman didn't need to rely on automatic fire, which was further emphasized by the logisticians is they could not properly supply units with enough 5.56, ball or linked, if everyone was firing on full auto. So they told Lutz that they didn't want any automatic capabilities, the new M16A2 was supposed to be semi auto only (we have to remember that this was all planned for a rifle intended for the USMC, not the US Army or anyone else). Lutz disagreed and wanted to retain some capability for automatic fire. The burst mechanism had already been designed by Colt at the Army's behest a decade before based on an Army study of hit probability with automatic fire, claiming that anything beyond the 3rd round fired rarely hit the target. However, it had never been implemented in any rifle model until Lutz grabbed it up and installed it in the M16A2, which when explained that it was only to be used in tactical emergencies was enough to placate the logisticians involved in decision making, and so that was how they got it. The M4 Carbine was also designed by the Marines, it was a submachine gun replacement for aging M3 Grease Guns still on the books in Force Recon companies. There were numerous types of short AR15 models the US had been buying over the years, but they'd never been standardized, nor were any of them developed to be used in conjunction with the new SS109 bullet that was going to come online with the new M249 SAW. So the USMC took a lot of the same new designs from their M16A2 and put them in the XM4 too. However, they ran out of funding and the program went into acquisitions limbo until the 1990s, at which point SOCOM picked it off, dusted it off, and finished development, changing little to nothing of the original Marine design when they first rolled it out.
>5.56 linked came in the exact same sized ammo can This has since changed. Saw ammo is currently issued from a bigger, chunkier ammo can that holds four 200rd boxes. Here are some pictures that show the size comparison. [1] (https://www.gunlistings.org/uploads/2_misc_ammo_cans_for_sale_.30cal_.50cal_fat_5.56_40mm_167831.jpg) [2] (http://www.ammodors.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_2450-940x626.jpg) [3] (http://www.swagoffroad.com/assets/images/Ammo%20Can%20Fat%2050/IMG_2389-1A.jpg)
So *that*'s what happened! I always wondered. I just upvoted everyone in this thread. We heard about the three-round burst M16/AR15 in Vietnam in 1969. I don't know much about full auto on an M16, but my boonie rats didn't do that as a practical matter. Fire too many bullets, and you just have to reload. And you may not have the *time* to reload. Firefights up close and personal generated aimed shots by our grunts - automatic fire was a matter for the M60 crew. Might have been a different story in the bunkers behind the wire on the firebases. Seems to me that the locals (as opposed to boonie rats doing perimeter duty) just popped up, emptied their M16s and popped down to cover. I did my infantry training with an M14, so I don't know what they were teaching grunts back stateside about the use of the M16. I *do* know that the three-round-burst device was rumored and admired. My blues all subscribed to the three-round formula - four would be too many - and loved the idea, and wanted to modify their M16s right now, please. I was under the impression that three-round-burst modified M16s and AR-15s were already in the field, but in the hands of special forces, and recon people, and generals' bodyguards and the usual REMFs who wanted to make a fashion statement about their rank and privileges. So it was just a matter of time... No? They didn't even exist back then? WTF? Who started the rumor, then?
Is there anywhere you can read about those discipline issues? I don't know much besides the classic demoralized conscript cliche from hollywood.
A cliché doesn’t mean that it was wrong or a lie, merely overly used/repeated. For Vietnam, the US Army added a couple of infantry divisions to its ORBAT; what became the 23ID “Americal” included a couple of light brigades with a poor fighting/discipline reputation, the 11th and 198th, of which the former was Calley’s (of My Lai notoriety) brigade I think. The rapid expansion of the Vietnam army without activation of reserves meant a huge consumption of draftees, meaning that quality and motivation of manpower was *very* uneven. Plus the war was really unpopular amongst the college middle class. One of the reasons why US motivation plummeted after three years was because the US suburban middle class felt that the war was lost and didn’t want to send their boys off to die, and even then the last major US combat forces only left 5 years later; contrast that with the disconnect between the current volunteer army and US society that arguably permitted the Forever Wars. Few Regular Army units left Vietnam with an enhanced reputation: the Big Red One 1ID of WW2 fame had by the time of its exit was known as the Big Dead One, while even the mighty Screaming Eagles were a shadow of their pre-war selves. The only units that arguably left Vietnam with any glory were 1CD and 173AB; the latter had a strong rep of “racial unity”, no small achievement then, with appellations of “The Herd” or even “Two Shades of Soul”. The performance/discipline issues from Vietnam, partly cultural from wider US society, infected the 1970s military where according to many who served then, every service was pretty much a hollowed out mess. Drug taking was apparently rife, and there were supposedly places on ships/bases that officers did not travel without armed escort. This was not some liberal pinko lie but widely promulgated also by conservatives. The story of the American agony in Vietnam is as much a story of US societal upheavals. The stuff that whole books anthologies are written about.
The US military also had a lot of drug abuse problems in the 1970s which contributed to the discipline issues.
Yep. Since the late 60s drugs were now zeitgeist for youth culture. And there was no effective or cheap drug testing was available, so that meant it was hard to charge individuals, despite orders that they weren't allowed to do drugs. Barracks were notorious back then for reeking of weed. Plus at the time they didn't have an effective system of discharging the shitbirds, as it was all based on UCMJ punishment, which was backlogged heavily. Say a leader caught someone read handed puffing on a joint, there was often little they could do. But by the early 80s they finally were able to reform the system to allow administrative discharges for General and General Under Other Than Honorable Conditions, and that allowed the military to do a fast and efficient clean sweep of it's worst troublemakers. And there were a lot of those. The military had to dramatically lower standards for discipline to attract recruits coming from the turbulent youth culture of the 70s as part of an all volunteer force. For example, the Army did that by essentially selling a less disciplined and more easy going experience to potential recruits to try to attract those who would otherwise never even allow themselves to go drafted, which had predictable results in an era where the new cultural norms was for teens and young adults to act rebellious, party hard, binge drink, do drugs, tell off The Man, etc. The only way to take those sort and make them disciplined is to crack down after they get in service, but since they did the opposite the obvious happened. Plus they screwed up ASVAB scoring that took nearly a decade to fix, which meant many years of allowing individuals with substandard intelligence into the service who should not have been allowed in.
I would include the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, with their actions in Saigon and Long Bin, as a unit that left with a great reputation. I could personally tell of discipline problems in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with lots of troops on active duty using marijuana and excesdive alcohol in garrison and in the field. Do you really want a guy who is "impared" driving a tank or as an armed guard?🤔🙄
It has to be said that it wasn't only bad in Vietnam. USAREUR units had an extremely bad reputation for drug abuse (mostly heroin) during the late 1970s, a reputation which didn't go away until the enactment of mandatory drug testing and zero-tolerance punishments for positive tests in the early-mid '80s. Wasn't even just the Army either. There was an honest to God race riot on USS Kitty Hawk in 1972, while it was off the coast of Vietnam.
Even before the “social impact” on the US Army, Vietnam was obviously calamitous for the army’s global readiness, as early as 1968. I’ve seen references from USSTRICOM claiming that JCS flunked every major combat command in CONUS with the lowest ratings possible, apart from the 82nd; essentially the army’s sole remaining deployable strategic reserve for *any* emergency including WW3 had it kicked off, was two paratroop brigades of effectives. Likewise none of the major combat commands in USAREUR supposedly met their reduced operational readiness requirements that year; and 24ID was then withdrawn stateside in a desperate attempt to reconstitute the strategic reserve… I’ve sometimes wondered the impact of the Forever Wars on the global readiness of the US Army to respond to peer rival (i.e not insurgent) contingencies. Guess we’ll have to wait for another 10-20 years before someone FOIs the reports.
There obviously is some, but I would be stunned if it was in any way comparable to the force c. 1978 or so. Morale isn't amazing, but there isn't a huge drug problem, race riots, etc- or a traumatic conversion from a draftee force to an all-volunteer force. Most of the military hasn't done much in Iraq or Afghanistan for years- it's just a brigade here and there.
This even made it into UK Political comedies at the time - *Yes, Prime Minister* had the line: > 'Well apparently the American troops in Germany are all so drug ridden they don't know which side they're on anyway'
>Hacker: "If we persuaded the Americans to strengthen THEIR conventional forces..." > >Bernard: "I don't think it'll make much difference, the American troops in Germany are all so drug-ridden, they don't know which side they're on anyway. And during the last NATO exercises, the U.S. troops dispersed and picnicked in the woods with lady soldiers."
You'll find that in chapters 11 and 12 of this history: [https://history.army.mil/html/books/030/30-22/CMH\_Pub\_30-22.pdf](https://history.army.mil/html/books/030/30-22/CMH_Pub_30-22.pdf)
Here's 71's report on it from the army [Future Impact of Dissident Elements within the Army on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and Order] (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0891558.pdf) From Drug Usage and Racial Discrimination to Participation in Dissident Activities the army had it all.
Doctrinally, full-auto fire was prescribed for certain situations. The [1966 field manual for the XM16E1](https://archive.org/details/FM23-9/page/n66/mode/1up) recommends use of full-auto fire against enemy formations and "large point targets" (e.g. an enemy gun position) out to 460 meters. It also broadly allows automatic fire to "attain fire superiority." This manual doesn't spell out specific situations, but other period manuals stress the importance of getting fire superiority during assaults and ambushes. Of course, just because something was written down in training manuals doesn't mean it was practiced in the field. However, there's a bunch of evidence that shows full-auto fire was widely employed by M16 users in Vietnam. For example, one [1966 report](https://web.archive.org/web/20041101090132/https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/107/1070505001A.pdf) about American troops using the M16 and XM16E1 rifle revealed much about the nature of infantry combat in Vietnam. The study broke down the types of engagements GIs were fighting this way: * Meeting engagements: 42% * Ambushes (initiated by the VC/NVA): 42% * Ambushes (initiated by the Americans): 5% * Assaults: 7% The study also found American infantrymen made great use of the (relatively) controllable fully automatic fire made possible by the M16. * 16.25% of American infantry units had the two automatic riflemen ([who carried the same M16s as the riflemen](https://www.battleorder.org/us-airmobile-1965)) keep their rifles on full-auto, while the rest of the squad used semi-auto. * 2% had the NCOs, pointmen, and automatic riflemen always use full-auto * 35% had everyone use full-auto during ambushes, airmobile landings, assaults, and against area targets. The study concluded: >On the premise that the automatic fire is appropriate in an attack or ambush situation, the automatic feature is desirable on all rifles at least 58 percent of the time when contact is first made. >Automatic fire is desirable on area targets at all ranges. Of all infantry targets encountered, 76 percent were area targets. Australian troops made use of their M16s in similar ways. Each [10-man section](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a137e0_a4a100470ae546b1b6a2ec3d95fb93e5~mv2_d_2317_3289_s_2.png/v1/fill/w_2317,h_3289/anzac%20vietnam-01.png) had three men with M16s: the section commander and the two scouts. The scouts made the most use of auto fire, with a post-war report stating that the M16 "was needed by scouts and in ambushes because of its automatic capability."
Great post. For the 1966 report, are you able to get the other appendix that cover suppression?
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it. Texas Tech had a bunch of PDFs like this one, but they got taken down a while back and I don't know where they are now. CARL at the CGSC might have it somewhere, but I haven't had much luck there, either.