What do you base this characterization on? The reason I ask is because I disagree completely with it. Every ground troop is issued either a bayonet or a combat blade or both. Neither the commanders nor the troops want to be burdened with extra largely irrelevant gear. Yet, almost to a man they carry these items. They carry these items even after shedding their heavy and hot body armor.

Bayonets are only used to kill? Interesting.

I used my bayonet almost daily when I was in the Gulf. You didn't?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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Doh, you ruined my set up counselor!

That a bayonet has other purposes is nice, but not what we are talking about.

It isn't? How many insurgents were killed by combat boots in the last 10 years? How about kevlar helmets? Flak jackets? Canteens? Are those important to the military's mission?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

People wouldn't remember sober and knowledgeable. Whether or not being snarky will end up be beneficial is an open question. I don't know that he himself doesn't know that we still use bayonets, but it was meant to sound good to a undecided (aka low-information aka moron) voter. Wouldn't surprise me if many of them had to google bayonet. To be fair the last bayonet charge was during the Korean War and the Army has discontinued bayonet training (as of 2010).

The level of mental gymnastics you seem to be willing to go through in order to make this a positive thing for Romney is amazing to me.

Exactly.

No they haven't. Starting in 2010:

To make bayonet training relevant again, the Army got rid of the bayonet assault course, in which soldiers fixed a bayonet to the end of a rifle, ran towards a target while yelling and then rammed the bayonet into the target center. Instead, soldiers learn in combatives training how to use a knife or bayonet if someone grabs their primary weapon.
“There’s never going to be a day when we issue a pistol to every soldier, and traditionally a soldier’s secondary weapon has been his blade – his knife or bayonet,” Larsen said.
The new technique was demonstrated during last year’s Association of the United States Army convention in Washington. A soldier approached an attacker, who grabbed the end of his rifle. In the ensuing scuffle, the soldier grabbed his bayonet from a sheath on his leg and stabbed the attacker into submission.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I am just asking where you are getting your information. You seem to believe that bayonets are irrelevant. It wasn't to me or anyone in my unit. Care to share your source?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

They continue training in hand-to-hand including the use of blades or unaffixed bayonets. So, yes, you can attempt to suggest that what Obama was driving at was the lack of modern bayonet charges but we know he did not say that. He may yet be hung (at least a little bit) on his own snarky and immature pitard.

That would be great if it were true.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

So just to get into the weeds a bit here, what's the difference between a knife and a bayonet? I know we'll never agree that the comment was made in jest to mock the idea that ship levels from 1917 have any use in guiding policy today, but I'm still curious.

    Well Obama could have taken a more intelligent and more reasoned tack by pointing out his own budget item, or alternatively, Romney could have pointed this out to Obama. Most likely neither knew.

10 Ships for U.S. Navy in New Budget
Feb. 12, 2012 - 10:06AM |

By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVASAt least $12.8 billion in shipbuilding funds will be part of the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 defense budget, according to a Pentagon document prepared for Feb. 13 news briefings and obtained by Defense News.
That’s enough for 10 new warships, and includes money to start construction on a new aircraft carrier and refuel another.
http://www.defensenews.com/...-U-S-Navy-New-Budget

I think that the stupidity of comparing present ship levels with those of 1917 needed to be mocked. It seems uttering bayonet was a mistake because OMG we still use those. Most people won't know the difference and so won't get hung up on that particular fine point. They don't realize bayonets are still in use because that isn't something they think of when they think of the military. Similar to Romney's attempt to nail Obama for the way information was reported after the consulate attack it seems the substantive point being made will be lost in bickering ( in Romney's case he tried to make too much of one particular turn of phrase, in Obama's he chose a bayonet which is a poor example for the point he is making)

I'd say that's how 95% of viewers interpreted that. Myself included. I see how people can technically say otherwise, but it's missing the forest for the trees.

Standard issue is bayonet, so, that's what the military uses for training. The primary defining feature of a bayonet is that it can be fixed to the end of a rifle. However, the M11 bayonet is unique in that it does not having that feature. Rather, it looks more like a "regular" knife. The M11 is used primarily by EOD (but, also troops like 12B, combat engineers) who will use it more like a utility knife for disarming, breaching, etc.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

link5485 wrote:

So just to get into the weeds a bit here, what's the difference between a knife and a bayonet? I know we'll never agree that the comment was made in jest to mock the idea that ship levels from 1917 have any use in guiding policy today, but I'm still curious.

A bayonet is a knife, sword or spike that fits on, in, over, or under the muzzle of a long arm.

So a bayonet could be a knife, but not all bayonets are knives, and not all knives are bayonets. It's from the French.


What is interesting comparing today's bayonet to what was issued in 1916, is that in '16, we used the M1903 Springfield which had a 16" long blade for it's bayonet! That's a nice sized bayonet. In 1917, the M1917 Entfield started production (and issuing), but used the same bayonet.
The top one is a M1903 with bayonet.
The bottom is a M4 bayonet on a M1 Carbine (the M4 and modern M9 have almost the same blade length 6.75" vs. 7.0")

As I said in the other thread:


Romney was pandering to Virginia and its many naval shipyards. Obama's response is getting an interesting reaction on twitter. Navel vets are going nuts. Many are claiming this will be a Romney sound bite in Virginia. It is even getting a very large reaction here in WI where Marinette Marine has gone from 150 employees to over 900 employees in the last 2 years b/c of a large Navel contract for the LCS, which will run through 2016, unless the Navy faces more cuts from Obama's proposed military cuts.

Many comments coming out of Alabama as well, where Austal, in Mobile, has the second LCS contract. As with Marinette Marine, Austal has increased their workforce by nearly 8 fold as a result of this contract. Those ships mean a ton of jobs.

So, it was cute and funny, but, you are going to hear the President's comment in many sound bites in those areas.

- and -

Yeah, a little, but, consider the Navy's plan for the LCS program alone:

The deal, if approved by Congress, would replace an earlier plan by the Navy to pick one of the two competing ships and bid out the winning design to other shipyards. The Navy said the dual buy was preferable because it would deliver new ships faster, support more jobs and sustain competition between the two manufacturers.
The Navy ultimately plans to buy 55 of the new modular warships that will operate close to shore, a key part of its drive to expand the naval fleet to at least 313 ships.

There is no question we are light on ships. To the target audience, the President's comment was a very big deal. To everyone else, it will be forgotten before Thursday.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I remember reading something about Marine Corps legendary general Lewis B. 'Chesty Puller who, upon seeing a flame thrower for the first time, asked: "Where does the bayonet go?" ;-)

Generally, for each rifle with the capability to support a bayonet, one is supposed to come with it. Over time, though, you can end up with many more bayonets than rifles, and vice-versa, in an infantry or other unit as troops lose them, keep them as souvenirs and so forth. Bayonets are maintained in a unit's armory and the armorers are responsible for keeping adequate numbers of them in accordance with the unit's TO, or Table of Organization or TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment, though I think it's called something else nowadays). A bayonet is a specific piece of infantry rifle equipment and it differs from the so-called 'combat knife,' or Ka-Bar (in the Marine Corps and in Navy special warfare units), a lot of troops sport.

The 'bayonet charge' was instrumental in several US military actions of note, including at Little Round Top, at Gettysburg in the Civil War, where Union troops, nearly out of ammunition and in danger of having their lines broken and outflanked by charging Confederate troops, fixed bayonets and charged forward, turning the Confederates and putting them to rout. Bayonets were also fixed and US troops charged forward using them in WWW I and II in more than a few major battles as well as in Korea and even Vietnam, at Ia Drang in a couple of smaller unit melees and elsewhere. Knowing how to effectively fight with your rifle and bayonet combination is an indispensable part of the US infantryman's combat toolkit, God bless him. :-)

I see no fucking way in hell that Romney issues an effective ad focusing around this. I may eat my words on this, but I just don't see it happening. While there may be a few people that think this is some gigantic gaffe for Obama, the overwhelming majority will take it for what it was, and it did make Romney look foolish. Like I said, I think about 95% of viewers would have taken it the way it was intended and scored it for Obama. The other 5% are people who were looking for any reason to be pissed off at Obama, and go figure, they found one. Imagine that. But if you show it in an ad, 95% of people are still going to think it's foolish for Romney, no matter how you frame it.

Really. Someone explain to me how such an ad would go.

You are not the target audience and the ad or campaign speach or whatever it is will only impact those targeted few. There are a lot of military contractors who are worried about the proposed budget cuts and this exchange is going to be used in those areas. In an election where every vote is going to matter, a candidate cannot afford to alienate anyone. In addition, you may think it "scored" point for Obama, but, on the CNN tracking poll, every snarky comment from either candidate received significant negative reaction.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I'll give it a go

Fade in from black to image of a Marine with a rifle with a fixed bayonet
Voiceover: Obama thinks our Marines don't use bayonets anymore, play Obama quote
New image: Fighting somewhere
Voiceover: If he doesn't even know what our Marines use, how can he lead them.
New image: People on horses somewhere rugged
Make sure to remember our troops- Make sure they have the horses and bayonets they need.
This message was paid for by Crossroads Super PAC (aka the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, et al.)

Bayonets? Pffft.

Motherf***ing CHAINSAWS, baby!

I know I'm not a target audience for the bayonet thing. Who is? And what would you say to them?

That's true about any negative statements made by the candidates. People disliked that. Maybe Romney was baiting Obama into being snarky by saying something so dumb?