American troops use three main infantry weapons.
First, there is the M16A2, a modern derivative of the old Vietnam era M16.
Secondly, there is the M4 carbine, a shortened version of the M16, often used by special forces troops.
Third, there is the Minimi Light Machine Gun.
None of these weapons can be converted from firing blanks to live, or back again, in a speedy manner.
Blank ammunition, when fired in these three weapons, is not powerful enough to force the weapons mechanism through its full cycle of operations. Because there is no live projectile, the build up of gas in the barrel is much less. When the weapon fires, there is no way that the mechanism will re-cock and chamber a fresh round. . .
American troops would be put in an awkward situation. Suppose, in the midst of this staged event, some Iraqi troops or Fedayeen irregulars appeared? How would they defend themselves? Clearly, converting the weapons from blank to live, in the heat of a battle, would be disastrous. It would take, at best, 2-3 minutes to remove a BFA, then vital more seconds in order to replace the belt or magazine of blank ammunition with live. In the dark, it would be very easy to get the blank and live rounds mixed up, too.
It is very hard to imagine how any Special Forces soldiers would agree to enter a combat zone with their weapons primed for blank ammunition.
Things are looking bad for the BBC’s story, but it gets worse. Much worse.
The BFA is large and brightly coloured. It’s a safety feature; a visible way of proving in training that no one is pointing live ammunition at you by mistake.
I don’t have the video footage of the rescue to hand, but I do recall seeing it. I didn’t see any weapons sporting BFAs.
Furthermore, fired blank shell casings look very different to live ones. Blank shell casings have a crimped end to them that is still clearly visible after the round is fired and discarded. So if the BBC wants to prove its story, it can visit the scene of the rescue and produce some discarded blank shell casings. Unless, it wants us to believe that the American troops picked them all up. In the dark. Behind enemy lines. In a war zone.
So how do blank rounds work in the movies? Well, the weapons used are not real. They are specially produced replicas, often based on the mechanism of a real weapon, with the barrel partially sealed. They cannot fire live ammunition under any circumstances whatsoever. This is how film makers create realistic scenes of automatic firing without attaching a BFA to the end of the weapon.
Clearly, no one will be carrying that sort of a ‘weapon’ into a combat area.
So what does this mean to overall importance of the BBC’s story?
Well, the BBC’s witnesses cannot be trusted.
And the BBC has made a huge error that a couple of quick phone calls could have put right.
The BBC may be guilty of seeing what it wants to see in another area too.
Early on in the story they make the astonishing statement that “Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.”
According to the BBC, the witnesses somehow magically know what American Special Forces knew or thought. How they managed this effort of mental telepathy is not explained.
At 1135 hrs GMT, Saturday, 17th May, I e-mailed a correction detailing my concerns to the comments section of the story at the BBC. I look forward to them posting it in their comments page unedited.
