Seems to me that with all the advantages that RDS provides the operator, the usefulness of full auto in many military and police scenarios would
be greatly diminished.  Not that F/A doesn't still have it's use in certain situations, but for much of "everyday life" ....well, it just kinda makes me wonder.
Maybe it's just me, but I find a HUGE difference under stress between irons and RDS.   Especially with models featuring multiple reticles along with
optic intensity.  Just a whole lot easier to get hits!   This just seems to largely wipe out the need for full auto for hit probability, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly.

WWII US Infantry tactics were based on the idea of having automatic riflemen (with BARs) pinning the opposition in place while the riflemen (with semi-automatic M1 Garands) broke it down.  (The same general concept persists today with automatic riflemen (M249s) and riflemen (M4s) at the squad and platoon levels.)  The greater volume of fire available with the M1 (compared to the 98K or other bolt action rifles) was an incredible asset on the battlefield and is why some people credit the M1 as being "the" weapon that won the war.

By the end of WWII the writing was on the wall regarding the value of a fully automatic rifle in both offesnive and defensive situations and development continued in several countries.  The US was hampered by a tendency for leaders to prepare to fight the last war rather than the next one - as well as by a huge inventory of M1s and 30-06 related weapons and ammunition production facilties.  They adopted the 7.62 NATO due to the insistence of the leadership of staying with a full power round and stayed with the basic case head size for production reasons.   THe US also got pushy with the Belgians and British over the medium powered .280 round they were developing for the FAL and even refused to consider the .280/30 that the British promoted as a compromise to retain the basic .30-06 case head dimensions.   The end result was the FAL ame out in .308 and was, like the M-14 the US adopted, nearly uncontrollabel in full auto fire.

The US of course then added insult to injury by developing the M16 and 5.56mm almost as soon as they had shoved the 7.62mm down NATO's throat and shortly after NATO countries adopted 7.62 NATO caliber weapons.  

The irony here of course is the fairly recent discussion of a 6.8 caliber replacement for the 5.56mm - essentially when the .280 was intended to be 60 years ago - which would offer a decent compromise between stopping power, full auto controllability, and logistics.

Somewhere in between I was trained to use the M-16A1 and full auto had several uses including close quarters combat, covering fire in the assault and final protective fire in a defensive engagement.  Engagements at night were also done looking over the carry handle and FA greatly improved the result of the less than precise aiming in the dark, even with low light sights.  

Too bad the 6.5 is superior and getting nowhere.

I'd be happy to see anything in that class adopted.

Exactly what I was looking for, but somebody or some group had published it "officially."  So to the OP, no RDS has not made fully automatic weapons obsolete by any stretch of the imagination.





 

Nothing will replace F/A for breaking contact.

The RDS is advantageous to the shooter to fascilitate quicker target acquisition. They have nothing to do with any particular ROF. No sighting system wipes out the need (or not) for full auto.

Isn't that why the U. S. military generally went to 3-shot burst instead of full auto for the M4?

FA has its place, but we found out in Nam that grunts were firing several thousand rounds for every enemy soldier sent to Heaven, and it just wasn't an efficient use of resources.

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edited for ignorance

Forest changed it - don't get all uppity.
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Don't get me wrong,  it's not about replacing or deleting full auto.  And I probably should have said that this RDS "effect" is most notable with
5.56mm cal. weaponry.  No, F/A will be around for as long as there's an AR platform.   RDS simply makes it easier to get effective hits with a
lower expenditure of ammo.....in CERTAIN situations. The 5.56mm also having lower recoil impulse over the larger calibers should make hits more
certain with either fire mode.

Sorry, can't claim the title of 'cool guy operator' over here, just another REMF doing his job. After this term of service is up though...

I don't think they will ever get rid of it. If you need it, its good to have. Better to have and not need then need and not have.

I don't see how an optic has any impact on the mechanics of a firearm.

it's easier to get hits with a red-dot in FA too...


ETA: you ever practice double-taps? putting mulitple rounds on target, quickly, will always have a place in certain situations. FA will be obsolete when we stop exploding fuel to send one piece of metal out of another piece of metal.

Full-auto is one more tool in the toolbag.

It's not useful in all situations, but when you NEED it, you're pretty glad to have it.

not only does fa provide more hit probability, but the more holes the better, and you cant pull the trigger 900 times a minute.  up close, its like turning your rifle into a shotgun, which is so devastating because of the massive damage, couple that with fragmentation...  Good God!!!!.


Anyway, it will never be obsolete becuse you cant put enough holes into someone trying to kill you fast enough...

This^ and it looks like he speaks from experience(Thank You). Most needed in military situations I would think. If you're in the "litter box", sometimes you just can't pull the trigger fast enough.

Agreed.  It's not always about accurate fire.  Sometimes it's about "area denial" or "suppressive fire".  If you're putting enough lead and steel into a particular area (with pinpoint-accuracy or otherwise), then the enemy is more likely to think twice about trying to go there or stick his head out to shoot back, respectively.

I forget the name of the study and the exact semantics but it outlined that small arms combat was decidedly always won by the side that could put more rounds downrange.  I'll look into this.



 

well said sir

I believe you're referring to Project SALVO, or more specifically, the conclusions drawn from that effort.  It was the US Army program that lead to the conclusion (already reached by the UK) that more, smaller bullets were more effective than fewer large ones in typical combat.  These conclusions eventually lead to the adoption of the 5.45X56 and the M-16. :)

That sounds similar but the study I viewed had more to do with the World War 2 and the influx of adoptions of full automatic weapons by all involved.





 

You wouldn't mean 5.56x45 and the M-16 would ya?

Ummm... have you ever NEEDED a Ma Deuce opening up to get you enough time to escape??  There's not a sound more comforting than a M2 opening up when you need it.  Red dots are fun and all, but really, suppressing fire can be worth more than it's weight in gold.  Or is this under the category of "certain situations I'll never encounter from an arm chair and can therefore discount"?

I also heard a rumor that before the internet came out, the primitive people that walked the earth used iron sights to kill things/people.  Hell, I once heard a rumor there were entire wars fought with single shot weaponry.  But those were rifles with less than $2,000 in bolt on tacticool goodies, so we can comfortably discount that as legend.

Red dots CAN be effective if properly used.  However, it seems many users think it replaces cheek weld, trigger squeeze, and good technique.  Don't be fooled.  It may make one part of the equation easier, but it does not replace the entire equation.

But that's my .02