But now you have me thinking all sorts of other questions.
But it really can be summed up with: goddamn what don’t soldiers carry? Like you got a have less cartilage in those knees after a deployment to an active battlefield than anyone older than 70?
Soldiers carry a TON of stuff. Physical fitness and strength are a big part of the job.
The main reason soldiers carry so much ammo is that suppressing fire is so critical to modern infantry tactics. Without suppressing fire of your own you’re going to get pinned down by enemy suppressing fire. An immobilized unit is a dead unit.
Weapons, food, bedroll, comms gear, mission specific items, spare parts for everything to try and thwart Murphy, etc…yeah it’s a lot and that’s just a regular grunt, not someone like a machine gunner with an even heavier weapon/ammo or carrying rockets.
Knees and ankles are an issue for pretty much every infantry soldier, the ones jumping out of planes with all that shit bundled to you even more so.
Man, I don’t get it. Infantry has pretty much been a “hold this heavy ass shit, walk long distances, kill enemies before they kill you.”
And somehow militaries for thousands of years have been able to convince huge groups of young men to either sign up for this or because they were told “or else.”
And I guess “or else” is usually starvation, conscription, or execution. At any point a group being trained could say “yo guys this is stupid” everyone else would probably agree, and then the entire army thing would … Stop. wouldn’t it?
That’s way more than I was expecting.
But now you have me thinking all sorts of other questions.
But it really can be summed up with: goddamn what don’t soldiers carry? Like you got a have less cartilage in those knees after a deployment to an active battlefield than anyone older than 70?
Soldiers carry a TON of stuff. Physical fitness and strength are a big part of the job.
The main reason soldiers carry so much ammo is that suppressing fire is so critical to modern infantry tactics. Without suppressing fire of your own you’re going to get pinned down by enemy suppressing fire. An immobilized unit is a dead unit.
Weapons, food, bedroll, comms gear, mission specific items, spare parts for everything to try and thwart Murphy, etc…yeah it’s a lot and that’s just a regular grunt, not someone like a machine gunner with an even heavier weapon/ammo or carrying rockets.
Knees and ankles are an issue for pretty much every infantry soldier, the ones jumping out of planes with all that shit bundled to you even more so.
Man, I don’t get it. Infantry has pretty much been a “hold this heavy ass shit, walk long distances, kill enemies before they kill you.”
And somehow militaries for thousands of years have been able to convince huge groups of young men to either sign up for this or because they were told “or else.”
And I guess “or else” is usually starvation, conscription, or execution. At any point a group being trained could say “yo guys this is stupid” everyone else would probably agree, and then the entire army thing would … Stop. wouldn’t it?