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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the mystery-cleared-up dept.

Many M-16s, the conventional wisdom goes, entered Syria after militants seized thousands of them from Iraq’s struggling security forces, which in turn had received the guns — along with armored vehicles, howitzers and warehouses’ worth of other equipment — from the Pentagon before American troops left the country in 2011. The militants’ abrupt possession of former American matériel was part of the battlefield turnabout last summer that led Julian E. Barnes, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, to tweet a proposed name for the Pentagon’s anti-militant bombing campaign: Operation Hey That’s My Humvee. And yet by this year, for all the attention the captured weapons had received, M-16s were seemingly uncommon in Syria. The expected large quantities had eluded researchers.

The investigator urged his host, a local security official, to rush after the Kurd and ask if he would allow the rifle to be photographed and its origins ascertained. Soon the investigator (who works for Conflict Armament Research, a private arms-tracking organization in Britain, and who asked that his name be withheld for safety reasons) found a surprise within his surprise. The rifle, which its current owner said had been captured from the Islamic State last year, was not an M-16. It was a Chinese CQ, an M-16 knockoff that resembles its predecessor but has a starkly different arms-trafficking history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/magazine/where-the-islamic-state-gets-its-weapons.html

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:06AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:06AM (#176363)

    Yes, but they aren't building American weapons in caves or outlaw machine shops. There is a reason the AK-47 is so popular in revolutionary and insurgent settings, because it is a simple to manufacture design and an uneducated, even illiterate, third worlder can quickly be taught to maintain and use it. Yes they build rockets but they aren't too accurate. Even the Iranian built ones that Hamas rains down on Israel every few years are just terror weapons, even less accurate that the original 'terror weapon', the German V-1. American arms are on a completely different level. The downside of course is they require a completely different level of support and don't make much sense without the totally insane U.S. Defense budget and the American aversion to casualties.

    Now compare a lowly American Humvee to the typical ISIS vehicle. Theirs is the better choice for their warfighting methods.

    Lets look at the disadvantages: The recently added heavy armor is designed to protect the valuable American soldier from IEDs. They do not value the lives of their individual soldiers and none of their enemies even use IEDs or any other sort of road mines. The extensive electronics are far too dangerous to leave operational once they leave US friendly hands. The extra weight kills fuel economy and while ISIS sells crude oil it must buy refined products and transport it, neither of which they have excess capacity for.

    No, better to have some fun joyriding around a bit, upload some video to Youtube to get a propaganda victory out of it and just as soon as it breaks down leave it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:54AM (#176394)

    Umm, the Humvee is a typical ISIS vehicle. Multicam is typical cammo. M-16s, M-4s, and so on are typical ISIS weaponry. They all came from Iraq and Afghanistan. We practically gave them their supplies. What is surprising is to find Chinese knockoffs on the battlefield, thus why this is news.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:44AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:44AM (#176428)

      History repeats itself. It reminds me of the U.S. efforts to support Chiang Kai-shek as the main opposition against the Red Chinese. The Chinese lobby was the largest and most effective foreign lobby in Washington, backed solidly by the Republicans (mostly because they were against whatever Truman was for or for whatever he was against). Massive amounts of money was given. What was spent on weapons went to troops who, if they didn't cross over and join the Reds, surrendered quickly to them or were slaughtered in battle. In any case, far too many of the weapons donated ended up quickly in the hands of the Red Chinese and was used against those the U.S. supported. Of course, most of the money just disappeared into the bank accounts of Chiang Kai-shek and his staff, long before any was lost to troops.

      • (Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:55AM

        by Fauxlosopher (4804) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:55AM (#176434) Journal

        (reply made here to keep the thread intact)

        My post about humans being smart and making precision parts in caves was made to highlight the fact that after a point it doesn't much matter how specific war materiel is de-militarized. Since the same part(s) are destroyed within a weapons system to prevent assembling complete weapons systems out of the intact parts on others, if there is enough materiel around to bother with, fabricating replacement parts from scratch quickly becomes feasible. Ten thousand M-16s de-milled by broken firing pins (and/or cut barrels) becomes ten thousand potential M-16s for the low cost of setting up production of only one (or two) parts.

        De-milling is fine if your threat timetable is short term, the threat does not possess basic maching capability, and/or the potential victims have comparable equipment to rely upon for defense. None of those situations apply in general in regards to the Islamic State.