I read that on the Sgt York the radar picked up the vehicles own cooling fans !The Rockwell B1 had a bit of an iffy start until the Septics made up a role for it.

I think the end of the sgt york came at a demo where it tracked targeted and destroyed the mobile toilets at a vip firepower demo fortunately nobody in them.
I imagine after that any other mobile loos were in big demand


US armys new pt uniform

they can attempt to disguise themselves as chavs

Just about any large joint development programme can be guaranteed to hit the buffers, or at least major delays...

Franco-German-Italian MBT programme of 1950s (Germans ended up with Leopard 1, French with AMX-30, Italians with US M60s and Leopards)

US-German MBT-70 programme of 1960/70s (Germand ended up with Leopard 2, US continued with M60, the XM-1 programme)

UK-German MBT-80 programme of 1970s (crashed in '77, Germans continue with Leopard 2, UK (eventually) buys Shir2 as CR1)

UK-US Tracer/Future Scout (canned late 90s, UK persues FRES, US pursues FCS programme....)

UK eventually ends up putting most of FRES into deep freeze, US cans FCS. Both countries realise what they actually need is a TRACER/Future Scout programme, which they canned 10 years ago...)

TThe MK1 AFV 432 was ok if you drove it with a fire extinguisher on your lap,

None of this makes any sense to me at all. I've Googles GBQ and MV76 with no result that would make sense and as for the rest WTF is a 'polished ball'?

I was wondering that. Maybe you have to be in with the the right "crowd"... nudge, nudge, wink, wink....

Saying that, when I was in the B&Q with the MK, I found that the 987's were really useless, and were sold to the Sylvanians.

Wrong propellant, insufficient issue of cleaning kits and general GI slackness.

They were issued to Gurkha and Brit infantry and to FO parties. There were a few M79s available as well. But like the Aust inf in SVN were far too smart to replace all SLRs with them.

It seems that the MOD obtained about 10,000 AR 15s in 1961 for issue to Gurka,RM and some infantry units in Bornio

I once heard a story (perhaps other ARRSErs can confirm/deny about a French machine gun so secret that it was issued without instructions on the outbreak of WW1, leading to them being abandoned en masse as usual...

Romanian Navy with A1's and no foresight (might just be for ceremonial though)



Not just weapons, our kit too!

I think you are confusing two weapons...

The one the French were so secretive about was the Mitrailleuse, which is classed more as a Volley gun than a true machine gun..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse

The WW1 French machine gun was the infamous Chauchaut which they fobbed of on the US (serves them right for being late and buying ANYTHING off a Frenchman IMHO.)

..both weapons utterly useless

Chauchaut
was apparently used by the yanks as there boss wanted to keep the new Bar back till the offensive of 1919 germans were quite good at back engineering any half decent allied kit they captured

Iraqes brought some tanks off the chinese which were so shite they only ever gave them to their reserve units .

Not just the combat jacket, but the REME TRF too...

I dont think they are real either... imho

No the BAR simply wasn't ready when the US Army went to war. Full-scale production started in June 1918 and it was being used in action by September. The Lewis gun, though heavier, would have been a better alternative than the Chauchat.

Since work on the gun did not begin until February 1918, so hurried was the schedule at Winchester to bring the BAR into full production, that the first production batch of 1,800 guns was delivered out of spec;[6] it was discovered that many components did not interchange between rifles and production was temporarily halted until manufacturing procedures were upgraded to bring the weapon up to specifications.[7] The initial contract with Winchester called for 25,000 BARs. They were in full production by June 1918, delivering 4,000 guns and in July were turning out 9,000 units....

By July 1918, the BAR began to arrive in France and the first unit to receive them was the U.S. Army’s 79th Infantry Division, which took them into combat for the first time on 13 September 1918.[7] The weapon was personally demonstrated against the enemy by 2nd Lieutenant Val Allen Browning, the inventor's son.[7] Despite being introduced very late in the war, the BAR had made an impact disproportionate to its numbers; it was used extensively during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and made a significant impression on the Allies (France alone requested 15,000 automatic rifles to replace their notoriously unreliable Chauchat machine rifle).[7]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...atic_Rifle

The Chauchat was utter crap, its .30US chambering even more feculant. It's estimated that over half the number purchased for the AEF were thrown away by Doughboys.

We had the Lewis in USMC/USN service, but due to a personal beef the Chief of Ordnance(General Crozier) had with Col. Lewis, it was a non starter for the US Army. A few thousand were used for training in the states, but when the Marines landed in France, their Lewis's were confiscated, replaced with the rusty sardine can, Le gun.

Lewis donated every cent of the royalties he recieved during the war to the US Treasury.

American Cockups

T24 Light Machinegun- American MG-42. Developed in 1943 and intended to replace the M1919 in Infantry platoons, it was abandoned after firing trials. Seems the engineers at Saginaw Steering didnt make the MG-42 receiver long enough for the .30US Service Cartridge. Weapon jammed almost every burst, several catastrophic failures to due short chambering

T13 Beano Handgrenade, fragmentation- Developed under the premise that all Americans knew how to throw a baseball. Combined with an impact fuse, Premature detonations ensued when Joe pulled the pin and fliped it in the air before throwing it.

M50 & M55 Reising Submachinegun- Total Crap with a 12 rd mag. used by the USN/USMC/USCG. Col. Edson of the Raiders had his Marines dump the units issue in the Tenaru river on Guadalcanal.

M1903A4 Sniper rifle- Ordnance didnt even test them for accuracy before slapping on cruddy telescopic sights. Now the USMC M1903A1 with the 10X Unertl was a whole 'nother story, a real killer.

and of course how can one forget the USAAF's Bat Bomb.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb (apologies for using Wiki)

Moving on we have the
M60A2 Tank aka the "Starship"
M551 Tank aka the "Shank"
Both used the 152mm Gun/Shillelagh Missile launcher. Sheridan also had a crap tranny and ended its days as a VISMOD OPFOR vehicle at NTC. Most of the M60A2's became AVLB chassis.



The M2/M3 IFV/CFV swimming screen- I had the dubious pleasure to experience a failure of the screen during a crossing of Cowhouse creek at Ft. Hood, Tx in 1982. We re-enacted a sinking U-Boat crew trying to unass that vehicle without drowning. By sheer luck all 9 of us made it out safe. It took 3 M88 recovery vehicles to dredge the Brad out of the depths.

The RAN ordered 11 SH-2G Super Seasprites in 1997. The aircraft never entered SQN service, the program cost over A$1 billion, all for nought .... scrapped in 2008.

"Premature detonations ensued when Joe pulled the pin and fliped it in the air before throwing it."

Bet they were popular with the rest of the squad, "Hey, watch this guys!" *Splatter*