Force
US Army Rangers
Elite American light infantry tracing their lineage to Rogers' Rangers, reborn at Pointe du Hoc and leading the way since.
American Rangers trace their name to Rogers' Rangers of the French and Indian War — frontier troops fighting by Robert Rogers' 28 'Rules of Ranging,' still printed in the modern Ranger Handbook. The modern lineage began in 1942, when Darby's 1st Ranger Battalion formed in Northern Ireland on the British Commando model to give the U.S. Army a raiding and spearhead force.
The Second World War made the legend in hard coin: Arzew, Gela, and the Cisterna disaster in the Mediterranean; and on D-Day two feats in one morning — the 2nd Battalion scaling the sheer cliffs of Pointe du Hoc under fire to destroy the guns, and the 5th punching off Omaha Beach behind the words that became the motto: 'Rangers, lead the way!' In the Pacific the 6th Battalion executed the Cabanatuan prison raid, freeing over 500 POWs.
Disbanded and reborn through Korea and Vietnam, the battalions were made permanent in 1974 as what became the 75th Ranger Regiment: the Army's premier light-infantry raiders — airfield seizures, direct action, and the standard-bearers of the school whose tab is the Army's hardest common badge. From Grenada through decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, the regiment has been in continuous combat rotation longer than any comparable American unit.
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M1 Carbine
The M1 Carbine was the most-produced American small arm of the Second World War: a five-pound, semi-automatic .30-caliber carbine designed in 1941 to give officers, drivers, gunners and paratroopers a weapon more useful than a pistol and lighter than the Garand. Its short-stroke gas piston, conceived by David Marshall Williams at Winchester, and its light straight-walled cartridge made it handy and pleasant to shoot, and more than six million were built by ten contractors from typewriter and jukebox makers to General Motors. It served on into Korea and Vietnam.
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M1 Helmet
The M1 helmet was the steel combat helmet of the United States armed forces from 1941 until the mid 1980s, worn through the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam. It consisted of two parts: an outer manganese steel shell, the 'steel pot,' and a separate fitted liner carrying the suspension, which could be worn alone as a lightweight helmet. Some twenty-two million were made during the Second World War alone. Deeper and far better protected at the sides than the Brodie-pattern M1917 it replaced, it became the defining silhouette of the American soldier for four decades.
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M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System
The M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System is the United States Army's self-loading 7.62mm sniper rifle, adopted in 2008 to give sniper teams rapid follow-up shots against multiple targets at the ranges of Iraq and Afghanistan. Built by Knight's Armament Company on Eugene Stoner's SR-25 — an AR-10 refined with AR-15 parts — it carries a twenty-inch match barrel, a quick-detach suppressor, a Leupold 3.5-10x scope and a rail handguard, and shoots the M118LR cartridge to 800 meters and beyond. It supplements rather than replaces the bolt-action M24 and is being succeeded by the compact M110A1.
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M14 Rifle
The M14 was the United States' last wooden-stocked battle rifle: a select-fire development of the M1 Garand chambered for the new 7.62mm NATO cartridge and fed from a detachable twenty-round magazine. Adopted in 1957 to replace the Garand, the M1 Carbine, the BAR and the M3 submachine gun in one stroke, it served as the standard rifle for barely a decade before the M16 displaced it in Vietnam. Yet it never left: as the M21 and M25 sniper rifles, the Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle and the Navy's shipboard rifle it fought in Iraq and Afghanistan half a century after its adoption.
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M1903 Springfield
The M1903 Springfield was the United States' service rifle from 1903 until the M1 Garand replaced it in the late 1930s, and a sniper's and Marine's rifle long after. A Mauser-pattern bolt action so close to the German original that the government paid Mauser royalties, it fired the .30-06 cartridge from a five-round magazine loaded by stripper clip, and it was the most accurate infantry rifle of the First World War. Springfield Armory and Rock Island built about 1.3 million; Remington and Smith-Corona added nearly two million simplified M1903A3s in the Second World War, and the scoped M1903A4 sniped through Korea.
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M1918 BAR
The Browning Automatic Rifle was John Moses Browning's shoulder-fired automatic weapon, adopted by the United States Army in 1918 and the backbone of American infantry squads through the Second World War and Korea. Firing the full-power .30-06 cartridge from a 20-round magazine, it sat between the rifle and the machine gun — too heavy for one, too light for the other — and it gave each rifle squad its base of fire. Around 350,000 were made, and it stayed in American service until the late 1950s and in allied armies long after.
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M1919 Browning Machine Gun
The M1919 Browning is John Browning's water-cooled M1917 machine gun made air-cooled: a short-recoil, belt-fed .30-06 weapon that armed American tanks, aircraft, vehicles and infantry from 1919 to Vietnam. The M1919A4 of the Second World War, thirty-one pounds on a fourteen-pound tripod, was the medium machine gun of every rifle company; the A6 with a shoulder stock and bipod was a makeshift light machine gun, and the aircraft AN/M2 fired at twice the rate. Simple, robust and endlessly reliable, it served the United States and dozens of allies for fifty years.
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M21 Sniper Weapon System
The M21 Sniper Weapon System was the United States Army's sniper rifle from 1969 to 1988: a National Match M14 selected for accuracy, glass-bedded in a walnut stock, fitted with a Leatherwood ART auto-ranging 3-9x telescope and, in Vietnam, often a Sionics suppressor. Built at Rock Island Arsenal from the best M14s in the inventory, it gave Army snipers a semi-automatic rifle accurate to 900 meters at a time when every other army issued bolt guns, and it was recalled from storage for Iraq and Afghanistan forty years after its adoption.
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M24 Sniper Weapon System
The M24 Sniper Weapon System was the United States Army's standard sniper rifle from 1988 until the 2010s: a Remington Model 700 long action in 7.62mm NATO, bedded in a fiberglass-and-Kevlar H-S Precision stock with a 24-inch heavy barrel and a fixed ten-power Leupold scope. Issued as a complete system with scope, detachable iron sights, sling, cleaning kit and carrying case, it replaced the semi-automatic M21 and served through Panama, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan before most were rebuilt into the .300 Winchester Magnum XM2010.
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M249 Squad Automatic Weapon
The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon is the American version of the Belgian FN Minimi: a gas-operated, belt-fed 5.56mm light machine gun light enough to move with a rifle squad and firing the same ammunition as its rifles. Adopted in 1984 after a decade of trials, it gave each fire team a base of automatic fire the M16 could not provide, and it fought in Panama, the Gulf, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It can feed from a 200-round belt box or, in an emergency, from a standard rifle magazine, and the shortened Para and Mk 46 versions serve special operations forces.