Quote:
Originally Posted by Stan187
Not necesarilly. Ambushes frequently happen. Being surrounded or cut off happens. That's war. Even for the world's most powerful military. Unless whole platoons are used to clear houses, which is not the case.
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Oooookay... So you're saying that a heavily loaded soldier who may have to move very, very fast at a moment's notice should carry a relatively heavy, clumsy and ineffective weapon in case his primary weapon fails.
This primary weapon will have an MTBF in excess of 10,000 rounds with minimal/no cleaning. It will have plenty of spare ammunition spread out among the platoon for when you run out. It will be the weapon the soldier is best trained with and is most effective with. And that soldier will never be alone.
Spare weapons are carried in only the very rarest of specialist circumstances, for very good reasons. To instinctively use a weapon well takes a lot of training, and supporting it in combat takes a lot of logistics. "Just in case the extremely unlikely happens" isn't a good enough arguament to support taking a spare weapon given the massive problems it causes.