@
NativePortlander1970 That's a actual image of a old stock M14, wood and all, in Iraq (note the HESCO Barriers and the confused Iraqi (probably IPs) standing in the background.
Most of the Army's M14s were found in a bunker that hadn't been open since the Vietnam War up in Alaska when I first arrived at my unit in late 2004, still in the packing grease. I was one of the first to get it. I would of kept it had I not broken my glasses before a qualifying course (couldn't see beyond 700 meters, they can shoot alot farther).
Varients of the M14 are still used in special forces. I will not say what the ranger A Team used, but the varients used in the Army wasn't used by them (ranger battalion gets more more money than tank divisions, they can afford really good stuff for their scout unit).
Look at the picture. Ask yourself why such a elaborate conspiracy to mess with just your mind would exist. Go and google M14 military. Use Bing, Yandex, yahoo, whatever. I can't possibly of rigged them all in the space of a few minutes. The weapon is still in use. New varients are still manufactures. Fiberglass frames are made to replace the wood if you want that (I was seriously thinking of doing that).
My unit also had a M1, a Tommy Gun with the old fashion round magazine, and a bunch of russian weapons listed on the units inventory. No laws exist that prohibits a infantry armory from keeping whatever weapon they want in their armory. Stuff from WW2, Korea, and Vietnam is regularly found in abandoned or forgotten bunkers. They were staffed by draftees using hand written paper records, and entire bunker complexes were forgotten. Heck, the north side of Elmendorf and Fort Richardson (my old base) is uninhabited because the draftees dumped nuclear waste up there, and a old artillary range is somewhere up there too, and nobody remembers where. Why? Draftees are excited to leave andack the professionalism to pass on gokd records to the next guy, if they meet them at all. Shit gets lost all the time. And in Alaska in a bunker, it's cold enough to preserve. I've seen old soviet trucks (some 5 ton varient) driven out of bunkers and put to use. Nobody knew they existed. You drive them till they break down and can't be fixed, then you launch hand held missiles at them on some fjring range up in Fort Greeley. Congress doesn't care. President doesn't. It's government owned, you put them back on the books.
Only time I've seen anyone panic about having gear was stuff already listed on a MTOE. Nobody knows how to read a MTOE except a high ranking supply sargent working in Building 1. Unit XOs pretend like they can, but they can't. If a unit messes up it's books (inventory) the unit's captain freaks out, because that the most important factor in their promotion- not combat loses, the inventory. If they have too much of a listed item, when the inspector general shows up to look at the missing stuff, they might take a interest in why they have more, thinking the unit was stealing from supply or other units. My old units had Ahkios, a military sled filled with sled hammers, ice picks, saws, axes, ten man tent, etc.
I was the lead sled dog for my old unit due to my powerful legs and long endurance before I messed up my knee. You don't use actual dogs when you have privates around. Woof Woof.
All the extra winter tools we had were initially hidden in a space below the loading dock of the supply room, but when the new company commander saw them he freaked out and told us to get rid of them. Everything except a Thor sized 25 pound sledhammer (it became mine, next to my bed, I slept next to CQ and wanted a weapon that could crush someone breaking into the barracks) was taken out by me and a supply sargent out into arctic valley and dumped down a hillside riddled with rusted old military saws.
Everything else gets hidden. I had to get a E3 a new helmet when he lost his in Iraq. Turns out the platoon sargent (E7) had it, but we didn't know that and we were being tested on how we dealt with missing gear. I knew where the base supply kept helmets, and knew they didn't maintain inventory (yet), and so just walked over, went bin to bin and built him a new helmet, all the gear except his little nametag on it.
We showed up for a mission and all the NCOs looked at us jaws dropped. His old helmet came out. I didn't understand the fuss. Apparently nobody ever thought of just going to supply and getting a new one of something lost. I was new as a team leader and didn't even know I was in the wrong. Nobody yelled at us, they kept the new helmet just incase a inspection happened in the future and someone lost a helmet. We had to play hide the potato with it when congress (democrats) ordered the universal inspection of all military gear, but that was just a enlisted conspiracy. Officers hate duplicates of stuff on their personally signed books. The enlisted love it because you can never have enough of something that gets regularly inspected.
Feel free to call bullshit on this, I can go into great detail about unit supply, I was never a armorer but know a bit. I can provide more pics of soldiers in ACUs shooting M14s in Iraq too. I really don't know why you are in this hyler critical mode.
M14 shoots 7.62 rounds. We got plenty in stock. It takes standard gun lubricants. I think I jjst used my M14 cleaning kit on it, don't remember anything special, other than strilling the wood off to clean the barrel was a pain in the ass. Was a very good weapon, better than the M14 and way better than the M4 in terms of accuracy, and it definately had some stolping power. I can link you to some youtube videos discussing the M14 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers loved it, vietnam era generals and the military industrial complex hated them.
