The Automatic Rifle: The Biggest Boots to Fill

As most people who may be interested in becoming a regular reader of this blog know that I am strongly in favor of a strict military style of play all the way down to radio protocol. This article is about the proper implementation on the Automatic Rifleman (AR) and his main weapon. Each squad has 2 of these soldiers, they carry any weapon with a good range and fast ROF that is hooked up to a box mag. Though I am in favor of the use of the SAW and the required weapon for this position a M-4 with a C-mag makes an excellent Special Forces AR.
In Mil-Sim operations that are being executed properly the AR should be the only man on the field who fires on full automatic all the time, or at all depending on you mil-sim intensity level. This being said it you don't want to elect you most trigger happy team member into the position because it takes a lot of patience and an understanding that you may not get that many kills.
Yes, you did read that right. If you are a potential AR and are reading this and had set your mind on the AR position because of its high kill rate, you may want to reconsider. If a team leader or squad leader properly employs AR's then they will be used to suppress down enemy positions while the rest of the team maneuvers.
Allow me to give you a tactical example, I am a team leader and my group came under fire from the doorway of a small house. There are no windows on the side of the structure that my team was approaching. I take my AR an set him behind cover and direct his fire into that door way with instructions to fire in 7-9 second bursts. I leave my rifleman there with him as rear security and begin to move towards the structure my Grenadier taking the point with a 40mm locked and loaded in the instance of someone charging at us out of the door. Stacking onto the wall I signal to my AR to shift fire out of the doorway so there was still an allusion of fire before myself and the Grenadier stormed the room.
In this tactical example I used several tactics. Suppressive Fire which is the act of using fire to keep the enemies head down. Illusion of Force which is a rudimentary psychological operation implementation where the AR lays down so much fire it makes the fire team seem like a much larger sized unit, this is one of the best and most practical uses of the AR and his weapon.
A technique of suppressive fire that can helpful against larger elements is the 'sweep fire' technique where the AR sprays back and forth along a location where the enemy is know to be approaching. This technique can be countered by very skilled operators who know how to communicate and properly bound towards contact.
There also needs to be an understanding of the operator at the reins of the Automatic Rifle that he doesn't feather the trigger, he's rough with it. When an AR fires the BB's should come out in at least 3-4 second bursts. There is an easy way to remember this when you pull the trigger say in your head 'Die Terrorist Die.' This phase takes about three seconds to say and is simple to remember.
A squad with full AR capacity is a scary thing to have knocking on the door of your forward operations base (FOB) if the Squad Leader knows how to properly employ these devastating weapons systems. If a squad was trying to overtake a small FOB the first order of business is to set the AR's in a grid fire style position creating a kill zone on the FOB. The AR kill-zone in reference to the squad attack is the area that the teams AR fire criss-cross. This is what is referred to as your base of fire, and is the most important part of any attack.
The base of fire is important for many reason, but the two main reasons are volume of fire and Psy-Ops. Volume of Fire is simply you have enough BB's flying at that FOB that some one might make the mistake of standing up or popping up too soon they might be struck by the random fire of the AR as opposed to the precision fire of the Riflemen, Grenadiers, and Team Leaders. The Volume of Fire ties directly into the other reason for the base of fire and that is the psychological effect on the enemy.
If the enemies heads are pinned down then they cannot see the tactical moves of the maneuvering elements (a benefit within itself), but this lack of visual on enemy movements will make the enemy antsy and it may force them into drastically bad decisions very quickly.
So when considering a position as an Automatic Riflemen consider these things I've mentioned and try to execute them to the best of your ability. For squad leaders when designating someone to fill the AR role it is my recommendation to fill that spot with the most mature and skilled individual in your element because the job being done right or wrong can easily make or break the quality of an attack or defense.