In a nuclear battlefield, the concentration of forces into a spearhead would present a perfect target for the employment of tactical nuclear weapons. A single well-placed weapon could break up the attacking forces before they even had time to properly prepare, causing enough casualties to make them ineffective even in the defence.
This is the type of equipment it was expected an infantryman attacking an irradiated zone might need to push forwards after the employment of a tactical nuke on an enemy formation.
https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/army-soldier-future-1959-video/
Jeep mounted Davy Crockett tactical nuke:
It makes sense. Every major war the US had been involved in was either that, or an island hopping campaign and we’d decimated the Japanese. This was around the end of the chinese civil war. We expected Germany to start some shit again or war with Russia. Maybe China. The fact that we’d spend decades fighting in every tropical rainforest was a surprise
I get what you mean, but in 1959 we had already been in Vietnam for 5 years, and had plenty of knowledge about the shortcomings of the garand. Then we just, made the same fucking mistake with the M14. Not to mention how poorly it handles in even small amounts of mud and dirt
I was gonna say. Keep your M14. Gimme a stock for the 1911 or whatever pistol they were using back then and and somewhere to place a bayonet. At least I’ll know it will fire when needed.
Also we’d just fought in Korea which had lots of cold weather combat. You might appreciate those nylon layers in the cold.