QBZ-191 service rifle family
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Well gun ownership is heavily restricted, not many people have ever held a gun in China, let alone know what all the bits inside do.
She's likely a influencer just doing videos on various things including the military.
Likely vloggers correlated to military stuff and larping, Airsoft etc..
Going off topic a bit, but I have been seeing these type of perspectives spread for quite awhile. So I have to respond to it.
The terrain, weather, and etc all play a big role in determining how one fights. For example, in WW2, the Sherman’s performed ok when compared to their German counterparts in the European front. However, in the Pacific, they were devastating as Japanese armor was more suited for the battlefields of WW1. Plus, the jungles and islands severely limited the maneuverability of tanks. So, one weapon that is effective in one side of the world doesn’t mean it is effective in another.
In the case of the two hot spots you are talking about, Ukraine is an incredibly open country that is mostly agricultural. Why do you think Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe? Infantry in Ukraine are incredibly exposed due to this terrain. However, do note that Ukraine is slowly but surely losing ground, and that is partially due to the lack of infantry. In addition, Russian ships got clobbered in the Black Sea by drones. Does that mean warships are obsolete? Absolutely not. The Russian ships got hit hard due to a mixture of limited technology and terrain/environment. After all, the Black Sea isn’t the Pacific. For a potential full scale Pacific conflict, interestingly enough, infantry (or at the very least those of the USMC’s style) may have a better chance of survival and even effectiveness than the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers do right now due to the jungles of the islands and vastness of the Pacific. Those who actually trained professionally or at the very least trained to the levels of a professional would know that drones, thermal or not, aren‘t as effective in jungles or any terrain with a decent amount of overhead cover as they are in Ukraine as of now.
Finally, the kill chain cannot be overly reliant on anything. Chinese and US satellites can all be shot down. GPS and Beidou signal reception can be messed up. Lasers can be detected. Radios can be compromised. Drones can be jammed or, worse, hacked and commandeered. So, redundancy and making sure everything works together just well enough to produce the desired effect is the formula to success. As far as I am concerned, nobody here and in the professional military world believes that infantry is the sole important part of combined arms warfare and kill chain for ground forces. However, rifles with incredibly cheap coatings, shit boots, lack of radios, optics and sensors, lack of live fire and force-on-force training while artillery is leaps and bounds above that of the US are all symptoms of a potentially bigger issue in the PLAGF: the obsessive focus on firepower over the other aspects of combined arms warfare on the ground that allows firepower to be effective. To be fair, the US Army also has a similar issue in nature, but that doesn’t nullify my observation of the PLAGF.
LOL! everything infantry private thinks he's cut out for Delta or SEAL Team 6 and therefore deserve the latest HK416 and night vision for stealth missions!!
Yes. Where you fight makes a big difference. Fighting in close quarters (eg. MOUT or Jungle) brings limited sight ranges and engagement distances to well within small arms envelope and limits application of big ba-da-boom stuff. Within this, your every infantryman a gunfighter level of training and equipping can make a difference. BUT again, it depends - Stalingrad levels of street fighting is less and less likely to happen in a full scale no ROE MOUT. With the level of mechanisation of current forces, you are more likely to see soldiers calling up vehicle mounted support, use ATGMs and PGMs to take out strongpoints rather than CQB assault the thing in the flesh. So really, this influence is one borne of COIN policing environments with highly restrictive ROEs and limits on Collateral damage. Does this translate to other theatres? As mentioned, depends on your conflict - Eg, conflict in Afghanistan and Ukraine points to a totally different situation where extended sight ranges and engagement distances relegates small arms to almost insignificance (hence the bringing back of section level 7.62 DMR and GPMGs).
Does this change the importance and basic role of Queen of the battlefield? Not really. You still need infantry to hold ground - to, as mentioned screen the actual stuff that matters. You could give each individual grunt the best boots, the best optics and NODs, tailored plate carriers for ultimate fit and mobility etc but will this change the ability of the individual grunt to hold ground? Not really. A SEAL team with their individual bespoke Gucci kit in a trench on an open elevation in Ukraine will die as uselessly as a section of territorial conscripts in basic issue gear will.
Your grunt is not part of the kill chain for all the stuff that have a sensor-shooter loop. He's there to provide security for the people that actually are tied into that loop. Insofar as that a lot of the sensor elements in that loop (eg. JTAC, FO, etc) are "infantrymen" to the extent that they are on legs - The discussion here is really on the kit level of the actual, real GI grunt infantrymen - The Riflemen. Kitting your grunt to really nice levels is good for morale but does nothing outside of certain specific scenarios. eg. the giving individual soldier comms is not about enabling them as a ISR node (except in those future soldier concepts) - it's about enabling C3 at the team level in closed terrain where C3 is inherently difficult.
So, without taking it to extremes - No one is saying that Infantry will function with absolutely trash gear and therefore lets not to waste a cent on them. That's not the call either. They need good enough kit - both for functionality and morale. BUT kitting levels and the actual difference it will make is dependent on the role of the infantrymen which is dependent on the role of the unit they are in. PLAGF is a large organisation that relies heavily on short term 2 year soldiers and there is only so much of a vocation you can drill an Infantrymen in within that short 2 years - you are never gonna get to the levels of a professional soldier where it is possible for Gomer Pyle grunts to even learn how to call in artillery over time (if he can get access to Btn Net). As such, you train your infantry according to their specialised roles and you equip them to fulfil exactly that - with no rose tinted glasses of what constitutes some magical generic level of TOE that "all" modern armies should aspire to - There ain't no such thing.
Yes. Very OT so last post on this.
Alright, this may be a bit weird to say but:
Outside of the bad coatings thing, I barely see any reports of the QBZ-191 functioning badly, which is good.
Granted, almost every modern day rifles function fine, but the QBZ-191 doesn't suffer from the rust(?) and zeroing issues of the AK-12 (So far at least) and doesn't have things like weight complaints or whatnot like the XM7.
As generic as it is, it's a pretty fucking good rifle all and all.
Outside of the bad coatings thing, I barely see any reports of the QBZ-191 functioning badly, which is good.
Granted, almost every modern day rifles function fine, but the QBZ-191 doesn't suffer from the rust(?) and zeroing issues of the AK-12 (So far at least) and doesn't have things like weight complaints or whatnot like the XM7.
As generic as it is, it's a pretty fucking good rifle all and all.
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I'm not sure if it's "pretty fucking good," but it is definitely 'good enough' as in there is near zero benefit in upgrading to an HK416 or summ gucci shyat idk. But what I am worried about is this pattern of chabuduo for the PLA's infantry. These are our brave soldiers! These are our workers' and farmers' sons! Our 从无畏惧绝不屈服英勇战斗 fighting men! Arm them better! Like the QBZ-191 is definitely fine, the Type-21 boots are dogshit but good enough, the plate carriers are loose and empty lacking plates but ok whatever we can fix that later... the problem is in how this spells out the PLAGF unprofessional and unprepared; why give the QBZ a shitty coating when you could give it a good coating for a few dollars more? Why give the boots zippers when you could save money and not? Why give our soldiers subpar kit when you are the world's number one textiles and number two materials science powerhouse? People are acting like these procurement decisions are from God and we just make do with what we have and although what God gave the PLAGF is not as good as the US army it's good enough, all when these are real decisions made by real people!
I mean, yeah. I do agree that the PLA infantry deserves better. I think it might be something more to do with the structure of the PLA as a whole.
Regardless, there might be more to think of than meets the eye.
Being fully realistic, US Army just have more money and less people to feed and arm. They have like half the soldiers but probably twice the budget, ngl I don't see the point of having 1M+ active soldiers. China isn't going to fight a major land conflict in any foreseeable future, reducing the amount of people the army needs to feed would be a overall positive as they could afford to equipt infantry with better gear and recieve better training. US is capable of fighting multiple wars across the globe with only ~400K active army service men.