this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Standard combat roles, ahem, are not about small arms today. They are about FPVs and small artillery.
Don't know what's your definition of "combat roles" are, but below is the US military definition of Combat Arms.
In the U.S. Army, the following branches were traditionally classified from 1968 until 2001 as the combat arms:
Infantry (1775)
Field Artillery (Artillery 1775/ Re-designated Field Artillery 1968)
Air Defense Artillery (Created 1968)
Armor including Armored Cavalry, Light Cavalry, and formerly, Air Cavalry (Cavalry 1776/ Re-designated Armor 1950)
Since 2001, U.S. Army doctrine has included combat aviation, special operations, and combat engineer forces into the combat arms classification.
United States Marine Corps doctrine designates only Infantry forces as Combat Arms, with all other Ground Combat Element forces (Field Artillery, Assault Amphibian, Combat Engineer, Light Armored Reconnaissance, Reconnaissance, and Tank) considered Combat Support. Air Defense, as a part of Marine Aviation, is contained within the Aviation Combat Element.
I meant that every bearded urchin has an FPV drone in addition to his AK, and will drop a grenade from that FPV drone from beyond the range of small arms.
That's just not how they're using drones. They have specialised drone units, as well as drone operators that are attached to ordinary infantry units. If every guy in your unit is operating a drone, you're ridiculously vulnerable to people advancing on your position, if only because a drone, while being accurate, has a stupidly low "rate of fire". See my other comment on suppressing an enemy.
If a couple dozen soldiers with or without armoured vehicles are advancing on your position, you need a certain rate of fire to keep them pinned down to prevent them from advancing. One drone hitting that group every 30 seconds does far less of a job in that regard than a single MG sending out bursts every two seconds. Of course, once you've pinned down the advancing enemy, drones are great, but you can't get away from small arms being essential in combat situations where distances are < 400 m, which is a lot of them.
Tell that to their targets
What targets? In modern war you'll very rarely see an enemy combatant in the range of usual small arms.
Even in WWII, most soldiers didn't usually see the enemy they were firing at with small arms. Even if your sentiment that small arms combat is a negligible part of modern warfare was correct (which it isn't), this comment would still be wrong.
Yes, most casualties are not caused by small arms but by artillery. That doesn't means small arms are useless, they just fill a completely different role.
When fighting with small arms, the major goal is fire superiority, which essentially means firing more bullets in the general direction of your enemy than what they fire back. You will generally be firing at either known enemy locations ("A guy is in that building, let's shoot at the building.") or suspected enemy locations ("There might be a guy behind that bush"). This prevents the enemy from popping out and shooting at you so you can manoeuvre on them and use grenades or call in artillery or mortar fire. Sometimes you will hit people as well, because you are shooting at places it's likely that they are (the guy in the building eventually gets hit if enough people shoot enough shots at the building). Very rarely will you see an exposed person that you shoot and observably hit.
Tell that to the guys doing trech to trech and house to house warfare in Ukraine. Your statement is objectively untrue. This is what also shook a lot of the western militaries, they thought this kind of warfare was over. It isn't.