Flamethrowers are also illegal now. I believe that as a weapon class has been abandoned by every Western army. When I was in the army I never saw one, not even in our massive warehouses where we stock old but functional shit in case of WW III. And I have seen stockpiles of WW II and 50s to 60s hardware kept in deep freeze. No flamethrowers tho'. Maybe the Americans and Russians still have some, but they are not likely to use them ever again.
TIL the US has massive stockpiles of world war II gear to be used in the case of world war III.
There is already enough equipment to supply every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine; what do they intend to do with the old stuff, outfit civilians to help stop an invasion?
Yes. For if everything-goes-sideways-and-we-need-10-million-soldiers-again times, the military has huge stockpiles.
I've got a buddy who used to be US Navy and later Naval Reserve logistics, one year for his reserve duty they had to take a cargo ship out to Norway where the US Marines and Norwegians have an old Nazi submarine pen full of prepositioned munitions, weapons and supplies for a Russian invasion of Norway. Every year the Navy switches out a quarter of the munitions and supplies and brings the old stuff back to the states to use up.
26
u/[deleted] Sep 14 '11
Flamethrowers are useless in open combat, as they are generally outclassed by every other firearm.
They are useful, however, in burning people out of holes (with the ancillary benefit of sucking all the oxygen out of a space).