Does the U.S. military still use flamethrowers?  It seems to me that they would be useful in certain situations involving cave warfare.

-kill-9

I have not heard whether they were still in the inventory. I never heard anything about them when I was a grunt in the late 80's. I know they are heavy and can turn the wearer into human Zippo [flame] with a little bad luck. I think they would have a great psychological effect on the enemy even today.
I Still have dreams of weilding a never below Elvis Flamethrower [pyro] while assaulting Hanoi in my dreams at night.

The Russians and German still have them for their troops, but as a different system.  Instead of spewing a jet of flaming fuel, the system most used these days is a disposable single-shot cartridge that shoots a solid fuel that ignites on impact.  

Something tells me these (liquid) are against most *new* human rights/ war rules, on that note - I also believe you can own one without a great deal of paperwork.

Don't quote me, but that's the way I remember it

Reference the Human rights/War Rules thing, I am really interested in this, is the flamethrower now not allowed in conflicts/wars?

Actually, you can own them with ZERO federal paperwork, your state may vary. They are completely unrestricted items and can be purchased/owned by anybody. However, I'm sure you would be squarely persecuted if the police, who are only doing their job, ever raid your house, for your own protection, and happen to find a flame thrower in your [b]arsenal[/b]. [:)]

Ponyboy: "Actually, you can own them with ZERO federal paperwork, your state may vary. They are completely unrestricted items and can be purchased/owned by anybody. However, I'm sure you would be squarely persecuted if the police, who are only doing their job, ever raid your house, for your own protection, and happen to find a flame thrower in your arsenal."  

One good thing about a 'zippo', kevlar doesn't matter........  

My dad was trained to use a flamethrower back in the early 80s in the army, so we still had them then.

I'd guess we still have some mounted on some engineering vehicles... but actual backpack flamethrowers would suck to carry. Weigh a ton, and if you get hit - poof.

A little known fact is that each infantry battalion has a teargas disperser at the HQ level.

The little known fact is that these items can be set up as flamethrowers and the Field Manuals are online at the Dennis Reimer memorial library.

We replaced the traditional flamethrower in our army with the M202 FLASH 4 shot incendiary rocket launcher.

Back in 1969.

It was tested in Vietnam. Has never been used since, even though it is a standard item of issue to all infantry battalions.

I have heard that it is avoided because it is not considered safe-even though it was clearly safer than the old liquid flamethrowers. Its range against a non moving target is close to 300m-or about 10 times the range of the old portable flamethrower. The FLASH ammunition will apparently ignite when hit with small arms fire. Now its much less likely to get hit with small arms fire than the old flamethrower gear, which also went up when hit, but no one will take the risk.  And after 33 years of non use there is some concern that the remaining stocks of ammo for them may not even be safe to handle.

[url]http://155.217.58.58/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/3-06.11/ch7.htm#par7[/url]

[img]http://155.217.58.58/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/3-06.11/image1373.jpg[/img]M202A1 FLASH and its 4 round clip of rockets.

You might recognize it from the Schwarzenegger movie "Commando" back in the early eighties, somehow they got a training dummy for that film.

Boy, how I'd like to see one of those fired into a cave in Afghanistan!

-kill-9

I saw a link to a flamethrower video here somewhere about a week ago, it was a cool video!

anyone have the link?

Every light/airborne/air assault infantry battalion is supposed to have 9 available attached to the HQ company. So there was no question of availability. But they have not been used anywhere in Afghanistan. And its not because of a political decision to not use fire weapons cause we have used pleanty of M14 thermite grenades and we did build and use the BLU-119 "thermobaric" bomb for aircraft.

Like the M14,It's time has passed(According to the planners who never see combat!)

A few years ago in the Austin-American Statesman classifieds, I saw an ad for two Chinese Norinco flamethrowers in new condition with full tanks.  I believe they were selling for something like $200-$500 each.

[(:|)]

No, its still in use. It just seems that the infantry officers are afraid of it, because of the fact that if the rounds are punctured or crack-and they are made of very thin aluminum-and leak they will ignite spontainously. They will then ignite the other rounds in a clip and you have a big mess.

So if we had used them during Anaconda, yes we would have done more damage to the caves, but probably some GI would have also been incinerated alive and that would have spoiled the no fatality record that we got thanks to the new body armor. We had a lot of GI's in the line units hit by both small arms and mortar/RPG shrapnel who walked away because of the Interceptor vests and their magazines and equipment absorbing the impact. If M202 clips had been in that equipment any of those soldiers would have been coming home in a bag as ashes.

I don't think that they would even want to think about what would happen if one of those FLASH rounds would have been hit on board one of the Chinnoks when they were landing under fire...

The Reimer library is a [b]GREAT[/b] website!! For those of you unfortunate ones that haven't checked out the site go here [url]http://www.adtdl.army.mil/atdls.htm[/url] Every known field manual, online.

Yeah the Reimer library is great,

And just recently, they have gone through and unlocked a whole bunch of documents that were password protected.

Untill recently the M16A2/M4 rifle marksmanship manual was locked under a password!

Now there are just a handful.

Javelin's manual isn't even on the site though, that is a little TOO cutting edge, although I understand that it is actually ridiculouly easy to learn-a Green Beret can teach someone who doesn't speek english and isn't even literate in his own tongue to use one in little more than a day. Its even easer to learn to use than Stinger.