M1 Garand. Still could be used for modern warfare?

I believe that the M1 Garand could still be good use for today's soldiers. I know it has been replaced by the m14 rifle but the M1 still could be a good weapon.

For one Its .30/06 cal. The main bullets on the battlefield today are 5.56 and .308 or 7.62.

The .30 cal round still a much bigger bullet than the 5.56 round. but is smaller than the 7.62

So do you think it could still be good for today's soldiers?

 

Not really. You get a bulky weapon with limited capacity (8 rounds) and you are unable to recharge in the middle of a clip. The bulky part is particularly troublesome when entering buildings and such. Plus, it's smaller caliber still packs a hell of a kick. Also, How'd turn a Garand into a modular weapon system?




Cheers...

 

The M-14 is still a better semiauto rifle.

 

It could but there is alot of stuff today that's better. The 7.62mm NATO / .30-06 round the Garand uses is generally just too much firepower. The reason for the reduction to the .223 and other small caliber rounds for military weapons was to allow a larger ammunition load in terms of rounds carried. This outweighs the value of the more powerful round in most cases.
The Garand with a 7 round clip is also going to need frequent reloading causing a decrease in firepower. But, there is no reason the M-1 couldn't be used in combat today. I do like its grenade launcher attachment and the round itself better than today's 40mm M203 round delivers. For building busting a 60mm mortar bomb was clipped on the grenade attachement and fired instead of a Mk II. Basically you could clip anything that fit on the base grenade fitting and fire it. Much more flexible than the M203.

 

Thank you for your post.
Really usefull

 

I hate the .223, but agree that the bulk of the M1 is too much for today's combat. I have an Armelite AR-15 and an M1 and I'd say I shoot the M1 10 rounds to 1 over the AR. Only thing is, the AR you can shoot faster. I've never had to rely on either caliber in combat, but if I had to...I want something thats going to knock a guy on his ass. The .223 is GREAT for shooting coyotes. But a .30-06 will knock a man down. Usually one shot.

 

Lets get a few more threads about the Garand up here!? haha.

You already said it, the M-14. A garand with a 20 capacity and better round.

Once again i enter the classic caliber debate... Some hate the 5.56, some swear by it. I myself have fired both rounds, but obviously never been in combat, and must rely on evidence and testimony of those who have.

If you ask me the smaller 5.56 is the way to go. Look at the facts, despite the fact that certain marksmen in the U.S. army have the choice of carrying M-14's (a rifle which i adore!) from what i believe the vast majority still opt for m-4's and m-16's. They have carried this round for over 40 years.

Hell, look at Russia, even they have developed their AK design to fire the even smaller 5.45 caliber round instead of a 7.62. Modern military combat simply demands a smaller round capable of more fire superiority (having more rounds in the air than the enemy).

Ideally i'd like to have a round with the best of both worlds, i believe i have posted this before, the 6.8 mm...

YouTube - || Barrett Firearms / M468 / 6.8 Remington SPC ||

Barrett is doing big things lately.

 

Better round? How so? The 7.64 NATO and 30-06 are virtually identical ballistic ally.

It depends on what you are doing where. In some roles a full size 7.62 is superior in others the 5.56 gets the nod. In most situation the 5.56 currently is the preferred round but army was also looking at a 20mm grenade launcher. Tech and training are making considerable differences especially right now.

 

Strictly speaking, you're right. The M1 and its powerful 30.06 round would be just the thing to have in alot of these long range firefights going on in afganistan right now. Say 2 per squad and fit them with scopes and they'd be more effective than the m-16 with its little old 5.56 round.
5.56 is good enough in an urban area, like where most of the fighting when on in Iraq. In a firefight it's often fire superiority, not accuracy, that counts and a 5.56 weapon is good at getting and keeping fire superiority - because the ammo is so much lighter than 7.62 or 30.06 more rounds can be carried, alot more, and a 5.56 bullet will kill, or wound, just as well as a larger round.

But of course this is not going to happen, the best a US troop in Afganistan can hope for is maybe getting a couple m-14's per squad (they are no longer made any more and millions have been sold to foreign countries or even destroyed - a tremendous waste if there ever was). Or at least to get an M-240 machine gun in 7.62 instead of the SAW.

 

Sure, you could use it. It is still a gun, if you shoot someone in the right place with it they are still going to die.

However, I would surely not want to enter the modern battlefield with a weapon from the 1930s just because there are better weapons I could be using.

 

as one vet here said, "you fight with whatever you have." if scoped bolt action rifles chambered for rounds more powerful the 7.62 have a place in today's war, i see no reason why one can't fight with a garand. it would be a great "garrison" weapon in afghanistan where allied troops hunker down less than 300 meters away from taliban positions and both sides occasionally answer each other with machine gun fire. in a fortified position, rate of fire isn't as important as range and accuracy. in the field, the garand is very rugged and robust. it can out-range any small arm the other side has.

 

This answer makes no sense at all. If people are trading machine-gun fire, that's more firepower than a rifle anyway. Get mortars/snipers/air or more machine guns involved.
Then, if the only advantage full-power rifles have is in range, why use them in base? For 'garrison' duties at <300m you'd want something cheap (hand them out willy-nilly), light (mostly dead weight - very few enemy surviving within 300 yards of a US base) and low-powered (only needs to reach a short way). Plus if your perimiter did ever get rushed, lots of firepower would be nice. M16 all the way, plenty of those in inventory. If you need to reach out and touch someone annoying, an M24 or two will do the job a lot better.

For non-garrison formations out on patrol, they do indeed need plenty of range in the wide open spaces. But is a Garand better able to give that to a marksman than than any of the umpteen modern 7.62 systems like SCAR-H, HK416 etc., not to mention the various dedicated long-range .338, .416 and .50 rifles? Certainly not.

It could still be used for modern warfare, but so could a flint axe. Good for today's soldiers? Absolutely not.

 

I don't know about that. Modern warfare involves a lot of asymmetry, especially nowadays. If you lack the ability/funds/industry to project heavy support but have enough manpower, some sort of cheap, reliable, surplus rifle would fit the bill. Humans are still fleshy, after all.

The M1 isn't fit for, say, the US Army, but I think that people in Afghanistan might find it useful for today's battles. High-tech and heavy optimization is only one half of modern warfare. If you are fighting against high-tech, optimized armies, fighting back in the same-yet-inferior way is just going to get you slaughtered.

I think the M1 still has a part in the other side of asymmetrical warfare, the side that isn't First World. Which is, undeniably, still modern warfare. It's certainly going to fade as time passes, though, until it becomes truly backwards.

 

you put in too many specifics to suite your points. all i'm saying is that a fortified position would be an ideal place to use a garand given its features and limitations.

 

You state (correctly) that the Garand has only one good feature nowadays - it's range. Then you propose using it in a situation where its range is largely irrelevant and its many drawbacks come into play. The Garand is, by modern standards:

• Heavy
• Slow-firing
• Overpowered/Heavy-recoiling
• Inflexible (no rails for accessories)

If you HAD to use a Garand then certainly you would want to be in a fortified position, ideally with a lot of better-armed people to protect you .
But at the end of the day, today it would make a terrible garrison weapon, or indeed a combat weapon. Anyone who is likely to need the extra range and be able to make use of it (i.e. a marksman) would be far happier with e.g. a bolt-action (if he wants more portability and range than rate of fire), an MG (if he wants more RoF and range than portability, a .50 cal rifle (if he wants lots of range and to hell with portability or RoF) or whatever. However you slice the tradeoffs between RoF, range and weight the Garand is always a poor choice assuming you have even a limited armory of semi-modern gear available.

If you can't afford to give your troops decent equipment, then you also can't afford to train them properly in order to use the range and accuracy of a full-power battle rifle. So you give them some cheap assault rifles and make sure you are behind good cover when they are firing.

 

...Because military training is the only way to learn how to use a full-powered rifle, right? Places like Afghanistan have been war zones on and off for the past half century, I would be very surprised if a substantial amount of the population didn't know how to operate rifles.

I'm not sure about the costs, but I think that a semi-auto is less complicated to build than an automatic, and therefore should be cheaper as well. Considering that the Garand is universally army surplus by now, it should be even cheaper, now that no army has to make a profit off of its original production cost.

AK47s are good, too. Much superior, even. But turning down Garands is just stupid, take all the guns you can get. Beggars can never be choosers, Dad used to tell me about Chinese "volunteers" armed with machetes in the Korean War. And most of the forum veterans have seen that STG44 they found in Iraq.

If you want to send some high-tech foreigner home in a coffin, I'd think that a more powerful round would have a better chance to go through protection as well. Bodies make headlines and reduce popularity, after all. I suppose that wounding them might be a better option, seeing horrifically injured men use up even more tax money seems to have that effect on many people for some reason.

 

While in general I agree with what you wrote I do dissagree with this.

The Garand has more good features than that, especially for troops trained to fight like US troops. It doesn't have enough of them to offset the advantages of more modern weapons but that's another story.

 

You could easily substitute the "last two or three milenium" for "past half century" and still be correct.

Also a lot of people learned to use full power rifles as hunting weapons.

 

Very true. But what is the one rifle they best know how to operate? The one that they nearly all have handled since they were kids? The one that they use whenever they have a fight with someone? My preference would be to give them AKs and try to teach them the basics of infantry tactics, rather than faff about with old weapons that are more complicated to handle in the field.

And it seems surprising anyone would be 'turning down' Garands. Surplus weapons the US is handing out is probably stuff like M16A1s and maybe M14s. Alternatively there are literally shiploads of surplus AKs from Iraq and the various eastern european states that are getting themselves to NATO spec. Who's in such desperate straits for modern automatic weapons that they'd want Garands, and where would you find large quantities of decent condition rifles which were pulled from front-line use forty years ago?

It has plenty of good features, but as far as I am aware it has been far surpassed on every one of them other than effective range, where it's still up there with the best as far as ordinary rifles go. In terms of weight, capacity, effective rate of fire, reliability, effective accuracy, accessories and whatnot it doesn't seem to be a contender any more even compared to some of stuff available from surplus.