If your enemys soldiers are scared by shiny metal then they are not much of an enemy. Get our guys to shoot so well(USMC) the enemy wont stand a chans in an infantry firefight. that should scare the enemy....Make sure your tank gunners are not only capable of hitting 1st round from 6000ft, but also open fire and hit with the 2nd or 3rd from 15000(Israeli Armored Core), so your enemy tank commanders fear encounters. thats good intimidation, not a knife, or triangular metal attached to your gun.....

Originally Posted by sherman105

If your enemys soldiers are scared by shiny metal then they are not much of an enemy. Get our guys to shoot so well(USMC) the enemy wont stand a chans in an infantry firefight. that should scare the enemy....Make sure your tank gunners are not only capable of hitting 1st round from 6000ft, but also open fire and hit with the 2nd or 3rd from 15000(Israeli Armored Core), so your enemy tank commanders fear encounters. thats good intimidation, not a knife, or triangular metal attached to your gun.....

You don't get it, do you? The intimidation factor is one thing, also is the utility the bayonet has in training and instilling agressiveness and a warrior mentality within troops. The training factor is what I'm talking about. Believe it or not, that 'shiny metal' can be helluva lot more frightening than bullets or bombs. Death by bayonet is not necessarily as neat as by firearms, you can suffer for a long time in agony, and so on. And then there's the image of someone charging right for you with a bayonet. Think a little on that.

You talk about Marines, you ever see any of their basic training? The bayonet is a fundamental part to that as well. That and marksmanship help in instilling the agressive spirit which makes Marines so renowned.

Maybe your right, all im saying is that you can do with out it....

You can do well without it, as long as you have enough ammo...

Bu the second you run out of ammo and ends up in a close combat situation, the bayonet is a great thing to have.
Also if you are capturing a position, having your bayonet mounted on your weapon will also have a strong psychological effect on your enemies!

I would never go into a situation that may develop into a close combat situation without my bayonet.
I have trained a lot with it, both mounted on a weapon, and as a hand-to-hand weapon, and it is really a great close combat tool if you know how to use it.

Some great bayonet quotes from my site:

"Then, Sir, we will give them the bayonet!"
- Stonewall Jakcson's reply to Colonel B.E Bee when he reported that the
enemy were beating them back.
At the first battle of Bull Run, July 1861.

"Have you not got your bayonets?"
- Sir George Cathcart, November 1854.
At Inkerman when word came that his division was low on ammunition.

"The bayonet has always been the weapon of the brave and the chief tool of victory"
- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Few men are killed by the bayonet, many are scared by it. Bayonets should be fixed when the fire fight starts"
- General George Patton Jr, "War as I knew it" 1947

"The bullet is a mad thing; only the bayonet knows what it is about"
- Field Marshal Prince Aleksandr V. Suvorov, "The science of victory" 1796

And you can find even more if you search for bayonet on the site..

They are all very old....besides patton non had a sens of modern war....And agian, the IDF is an army that has a long tridition of seeking contact and attampting to press the enemy in to CC, and yet byonets were never included in the IDF equipment....As i said, maybe its that lack of byonet tredition is the reason im having trouble with the whole thing.

Originally Posted by Acerbus

And Redneck, yeah the whole scaring the bajesus outta them does kinda make it a moot point. But first you gotta scare the hell outta them, then show them that you're not so bad as you look. Either way they still wouldn't wanna mess with you.

I have to say I disagree 100% with you on this one. As far as enemy combatants go, you want to prove to them that you are just as or even more badass than they first thought you were, while at the same time maintaining a level of professionalism that allows civilians in the AO to know that they will not be harmed and that they need not be afraid of our soldiers. If you run around with weapons that are designed to LOOK mean, regardless of function, it makes it a lot harder to achieve this affect.
I agree with Redleg about the bayonet, and do not think that it should be removed from service at all, but bringing back a "scarier" design seems to me to be counter-productive.

I didn't say that we should bring back a 'scarier' design. I was just defending the utility of the bayonet. Not like soldiers pulling guard duty in the city should be doing it with fixed bayonets anyways.

Sorry, but that's exactly what it seemed like you were saying. And it's not that soldiers would be parading around civilian areas with bayonets fixed, I realize that, but if we outfit our troops with weapons designed with intimidation being their main function rather than utility, then civilians in areas like Iraq for instance, who have heard tales of the American soldier's "monstrosities" all their lives from their governments would see these weapons as proof that those lies were true, and we definitely do not need that.

It depends....In Gaza or Bagdad you might as well fix them....

Hey Redleg, you forgot my favorite bayonet quote.

"You can do everything with bayonets, but you are not able to sit on them"
-Otto Von Bismarck