Wild description from a guy working with the UA in Bakmut, describing the combat load and ammo expenditure on the front lines there. 

"Friends routinely tell me that they might fire upwards of 2k 545 rounds [a day] at 0 positions in Bhakmut. It’s so bad that an Ak might loose a barrel after 1-2 weeks.

..

Pkm barrels? Lots of keyholing bullets flying around on both sides.

..

The full auto thing is real with them, and with a 74 it’s ok as it’s not totally waisted if you know your trade but both sides shoot a lot at eachother.

...

Friend told me to expect to carry 20 loaded mags plus 440 loose rounds, 4 frags, one mine or a box of pkm ammo (heavy) plus normal 2-3 day sustainment."

-->

Makes the expected 140rd loadout of the NGSW seem silly. But also highlights the current 6-7k round barrel life of the button rifled M4 may be inadequate in a HIC, and that it would be worthwhile to spring for a CHF barrel with a ~20k round barrel life.

Then again, we have optics. And a tendency to not use spray and pray.

Farmplinker said:

Then again, we have optics. And a tendency to not use spray and pray

I'm not sure how well that will hold up in a HIC / close quarters situation.

Heres a squad taking pretty low levels of aimed long range fire in afghanistan, proceeds to attempt to suppress the whole horizon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ2SWWDt8Wg

Vietnam reportedly resulted in very high levels of hosing / rof when making contact in the jungle. 

...

Not that my youthful days of playing paintball and airsoft count as combat experience, but what I observed was the closer one was to the 'enemy' the more ROF increased and aiming decreased. 

Likewise when taking close fire, the natural reaction was to duck, stick your gun over the top, and put out as much fire as you could to try and counter the fire without exposing too much of your body to getting shot. 

I've seen a number of combat videos that looked much the same. 

...

I suspect in a real war, HIC combat, lots of NGSW employment will look quite different then the expected 'aim carefully and engage from long range using the smart scope' thats envisioned.

Nice write up and documentary on FN FAL usage in Ukraine

https://armourersbench.com/2023/02/24/right-arm-of-the-free-world-fn-fals-in-ukraine/

And video

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Right Arm of the Free World: FN FALs in Ukraine

The FN FAL is one of the iconic infantry weapons of the Cold War. Since Autumn last year we have seen several variant appear in use in Ukraine. In this video...

A butt puckering look at arming a grenade dropping drone:

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Mohsen Berkhaneh on Twitter

Creative and highly dangerous. #UkraineRussianWar #UkrainianArmy https://t.co/TicyEFKTWb

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Look at recent US package - very drone intensive - featuring a number of new systems:

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Special Kherson Cat on Twitter

Jump 20 - https://t.co/Vtejj6W48p Altius 600 - https://t.co/F0S12lXHq5 Switchblade 600 - https://t.co/Owv4ru1Cvh Cy... https://t.co/q17ReUtEWn

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You're probably right.

Article looking into the new drones being sent to Ukraine:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-gets-huge-boost-in-deadly-drone-capabilities-from-u-s

gatnerd said:

Not that my youthful days of playing paintball and airsoft count as combat experience, but what I observed was the closer one was to the 'enemy' the more ROF increased and aiming decreased.

Likewise when taking close fire, the natural reaction was to duck, stick your gun over the top, and put out as much fire as you could to try and counter the fire without exposing too much of your body to getting shot.

I've seen a number of combat videos that looked much the same.

Having played paintball in the past as well and having participated in some quite intense simulated combat for training my opinion nowadays is that paintball and an actual firefight have a lot in common. Except for the dieing part. The behaviour of the participants is pretty similar. Unless we talk about the highly sportive small field, inflated obstacle paintball. But if you are crawling around in the woods or an abandoned factory building in camo its pretty close. So IMHO conclusion can be drawn.

gatnerd said:

I suspect in a real war, HIC combat, lots of NGSW employment will look quite different then the expected 'aim carefully and engage from long range using the smart scope' thats envisioned.

As Farmplinker I agree.

The thing is that the US now has gone full circle with their small arms.
They entered WW2, a no holds barred HIC scenario, with a full caliber rifle. Which has been found unnecessarily powerfull. Basically all other participants came to the same conclusion. So they started to downscale. Which worked great in the following wars. But with the steady move away from HIC and imposing self limitation on what means can be used heavy weapons, that dominate HIC type scenarios since the invention of rapid fire cannons and the machine gun, had less and less effect. This caused a change in the behaviour of the opposition and all of a sudden the short range optimised equipment intended to function under the umbrella of massed heavy weapons showed drawbacks and limitations. The reaction has been to move back to step one, more than a century back to befor heavy weapons being a dominant factor... only they are. A self imposed limit to heavy weapons doesn't mean they are not there.
Now in UA we see what modern HIC really looks like. Since the NGSW has been optimised for a different scenario its IMHO very likely that it will work less then optimal in a similar one to UA.

The Modern Tactical Shooting channel had a video on why NGSW is a bad idea. One of the things he pointed out was most Ukrainian firefights are 100 meters and in, he hadn't seen evidence of any past 300 meters.

The "explosive-heavy" infantry talked about here is probably a good idea based on Ukraine.

Interesting thread on Russias shifting tactics and formation of 'Assault Units' and the weapons employed. Whole thread worth reading.

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Tatarigami_UA on Twitter

1/16 Russian forces are revamping their assault tactics after experiencing failures with their current structure.... https://t.co/pJfEGJhX5X

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