page_title: Saturation fire
section_title: Machine gun
hierarchical_section_title: Saturation fire / Machine gun
caption_attribution_description: English: A AC-130 Hercules aircraft banks to the left near Hurlburt Field
context_page_description: Saturation fire is an intense level of artillery, autocannon, or machine gun fire which is designed to fill an enemy position with artillery shells or machine gun fire.
context_section_description: Automatic weapons, especially belt-fed, crew-served machine guns, can be used to deliver a high volume of fire at enemy positions. A history of German military doctrine states that "...laying down saturation fire [with small arms] will keep your enemy's head down while allowing you to get on with the approach to the objective. During the Vietnam War, AC-130 aircraft incorporated side-firing 20 mm Gatling-style cannons which allowed them to provide area-saturation fire as the aircraft circled over a target. Another use of saturation fire in the Vietnam War was with "guntrucks" in convoys. These "2​¹⁄₂-ton cargo vehicles" with "two M-60 machine gunners" would "... provide a rapid, retaliatory saturation fire within the critical first 3 minutes of an enemy attack [e.g., an ambush of the convoy]".
  The use of automatic weapons for saturation fire has been criticized by a major US gun maker. The President of Armalite Inc. states that using an automatic rifle such as his company's AR-15 for saturation fire can waste ammunition, a situation which is particularly problematic in cases where soldiers have to carry their own ammunition. He argues that using carefully aimed semiautomatic fire can be more effective than sweeping enemy positions with random, full-automatic fire.
  US soldier Paul Howe supports this view in his statement that "volume [of full-automatic fire] in the wrong place is useless". An author argues that the widespread use of automatic rifles such as the M-16 by the US army in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, along with the "... concept of saturation fire and general abandonment of the principles of individual marksmanship and weapon performance" led to military failures; he argues that "...there must be a balance between accuracy and firepower in the general application".
caption: Smoke is visible as an AC-130 fires its Gatling guns during twilight operations in 1988
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