I've had worn out SAWs and those sucked but new ones ran perfectly.  The SAW was the shittiest gun to have to haul.  It's not that light (pkm weight) but the killer is putting a 200rd belt under it and having at least two more on you.  Most of the m240 gunners barely carried any ammo, their AG or ammo bearer did that.

When I was in Afghanistan we had our m249s replaced with mk 46 (lightened SAW) machineguns and 240s with mk 48s (MK 46 in 7.62) for patrols and that was fantastic for the terrain.  The mk46 felt a lot more like m4 weight.  Both of those guns weren't as reliable as the SAW and 240 but after break in they were good.

The belt feds suck every second you're not using them but when it's time to go prone and lay scunnion it's what you want.

If a belt fed is that important, and fire teams being able to maneuver is that important, what’s the thought on reorganizing the infantry squad around 2 fire teams and a weapons team with a M250, ammo mule and a whatever you want to call a squad designated marksman.

UAV online

That is a double edge "issue" though.  Less impact on the enemy psyche but better concealment due to the reduction in sound and flash and more important better communications within the units.

ETA:

I still believe they need a weapon system that can suppress fighting positions or areas.  I think that can only come from a belt fed system at this time.  

I can’t speak for how well removing the SAW from the squads is working for them but I can attest to them being clapped out during GWOT. As an armorer there was nothing technically wrong with them but they also never really ran right. Also worth pointing out I was in an armor company and ours were additional equipment probably handed down crap some infantry company didn’t want.

M240 and M2 on the other hand were tough and reliable as you could get. Provided the solider did their part on the M2.

I’m not sure the new rifle and ammo is the best idea. Feels like it’s a response to Afghanistan after the fact. From the outside it looks like adopting a new M14 with all the limitations of a full power cartridge without the logistics benefits of 7.62 nato.

My experience in the 90's, rock solid reliable.  Something that rarely is mentioned is that is a very easy machine gun to shoot so you can concentrate on what you are doing.  It is a pussycat and was always my favorite weapon to instruct or coach at SOI.

@HIMARS13A

What have you observed, as far as "mode of failure" for the SAW receivers?

(Open question for anybody.)

I've read about MK48 receiver failures (being more common than with the M249/MK46). They seem to beat themselves up tragically as the gas port(s) erode and the system becomes additionally over-gassed. Parts deform and then welds start to crack and let go.

The MK48 bolt is only rated for 15,000 rounds (which seems awfully low) but M249 bolts are rated better.
Not sure what the numbers are for the 5.56mm bolts. I'd expect a MK46 bolt to outlast an M249 bolt, on average, since they omitted the relief cuts required for magazine feeding.

Mine was a piece of shit. Bitch folded folded rounds in half.

Our company armorer was whatever dude was currently on light duty

My seniors taught us how to take the feed pawls apart, that was not something we were supposed to do.

In a perfect infantry, everyone would be a form of gun nut. But most 18 year olds are just stoked to dump belts and not worry about what that’s doing to their already thin reciever.

I guess the reason grunts don’t have armorers at the company is they have organic 0331s.

Riveted sheet metal (240 is more like riveted plates) will go out of tolerance after a while. And not easy to diagnose and fix because it's a dynamic failure.

I have read in a few technical reports. It’s an issue of stretching and throwing things out of tolerance.

Lolz.  I was a WSQ.  I had to help out on swim Qual days by grabbing the few dark greens and jumping off the tower with them....then swimming to the bottom of the pool and dragging their nonswimming asses to the surface.

We did that once a year.  I liked it.  Not as much as I liked the gas chamber though.

Dumbasses slamming the feed tray cover down hard prematurely wears the rails inside the receiver where the feed tray latches.

The feed box support use to be a huge wear item that has been upgraded about 5 years ago.

The SAW is in fact a LMG and requires proper cleaning and maintenance and a lot of units outside of the infantry do not properly maintain it or train their gunners to maintain it.

I'm clueless on this part of the arms room: what is the process to send in clapped out weapons for depot level rebuild? If it's the receiver, they're NMC and (I would think) should be sent back instead of just sitting in an arms room.

Zero chance id swap my teams belt feds for mag fed rifles, pure retardation.

I do think that is the thin metal. We got Saws when they were new and they were great, but after a few thousand rounds, humping through the fields, getting tossed around.

M60 recievers are sheet metal from what I remember, but their problems were due to too many parts, safety wire, gas plug/piston issues,  etc rather than them going out of tolerance and not working.

Don't you remember how we won in Vietnam, because of our superior long range, M-14s out ranged the AKs and SKS?

We pmcs them and fill out a 2404 if something is wrong. Then we hand the 2404 to our supply sergeant to send the 240 to the depot.

The USMC, well Evans Carlson of the Marine Raiders...pioneered the fire team with automatic rifle.  It is a great idea.  Look at all the times in Ukraine videos someone is using automatic fire to allow someone else to bound, assault, frag a bunker...it makes sense.

New SAWs work fine.  I had a few in my unit. They worked fine. Rangers, SOF, use SAWs. They work fine.  They have a shelf life.  Old SAWs need to be replaced. If the Marines wanted to keep their SAWs, and the concept, then they would have worked fine.    Seems to me they chose to run them into the ground and poison the well and create dissatisfaction, and aid in support for the HK.

A couple of Pied Pipers convinced the rest of the USMC that with increased soldiers load, and body armor, that the SAW was too heavy so the USMC threw a to of money at the problem and got new rifles, with a little more precision (while new....see how that lasts) and cool optics.  They spent money on a solution to remake their squad doctrine and save a few pounds.   They basically see themselves as Boers, every man a DM, and a slightly lightened load.   There was also discussion of the role of a SAW gunner in the four man stack.  THAT argument is unsound as you need lots of suppressive fire to get across the street, and the four man stack isn't a valid justification.

Time will tell.  If the future is chasing muj across the desert, and you go light or go home, then I guess maybe, but a paraSAW is 16 pounds and a loaded M27 is ten, and this is an abhorrent waste of money for six pounds.  However it seems clear that in the close in fighting we see in Ukraine, the ACOG and accuracy is less advantageous then suppression, and if you want to pin a guy down in a bunker for 5-6 seconds so a buddy can toss in a frag, a lightweight SAW would be better. Same way a BAR was better.  

I think they are worse off, but time will tell.  They are better off for a very narrow mission set...chasing guerrillas in deserts, which isn't that relevant and could best be addressed with UAVs and tube artillery.    The US Army took a whole bunch of rifles on the offense against guys who had a lot of belt feds and it went badly.

You're in the Army.  The Army has a budget.  The Marine Corps didn't prioritize keeping their M249 fleet refreshed - and are never satisfied w/ their rifles.

They went from the M14 to the M16A1, developed the M16A2, went to an all optic fleet of M16A4s, then replaced those w/ M4s, and then went to the M27.  Replacing/refurbishing the M249s would have cut into the M27 budget.

The Marine Corps did not originally want the M249, they adopted it since at the time they did not have the money to develop a service specific AR.  They used GWOT cash to buy the initial 1600 guns.

Did they get rid of 3rd shop (FSB)?  When I was in, problem weapons/equipment went to 3rd shop (DS level) and then eventually to depot level if the FSB couldnt fix it

It always bothered me the Marine Corps didn't put more emphasis on actually being good at swimming - it's not incentivized the way the annual rifle range or PFT/CFT are and it should be.  Odd for an amphibious force IMO.



Wouldn't disagree with any of this.  



ditching ditching ditching

Is that K-Bay?  I always did it at Hansen or Horno.  Oki had a nice setup - the pool there is oddly squishy at the bottom.

It’s because even being an extremely strong swimmers has have little to do with survivability in most circumstances involved with amphibious operations.  Being a strong swimmer only really helps filter out people for suitability for training for means of entry that involved swimming.  

Quit saying bad things about my M60.

I'll admit that bits and pieces of the feed tray cover sometimes did their own thing.  Gas system--a good cleaning and a light touch of WD40 had an answer for that.  Runs all day long.  Still have the little combo tool somewhere.

9 soldiers in an army squad and 15 marines per squad? Am I reading this right?

The new FN EVOLYS is their take on the next gen SAW. Initial 'range day' reviews I've seen comment on it being much lighter and very smooth. Weight ~12lbs, vs 18 for the M249.

https://fnamerica.com/evolys/







Note the sideloading ammo tray and monolithic top rail; you get easier loading and a rock solid optics mount.

Exactly what I was thinking, if you are atleast going to have a LSW you might as well invert the magazine so you can keep up the fire provided you got a loader.
change the upper receiver design a bit, throw the gas tube on the bottom and you could probably keep the same lower with same interchangeable parts as the rest of the squad.

Well, y'know, that actually makes it worse.

The Marines don't fight really that differently from the Army, they think they do, but they don't.  Move out, make contact, infantry finds enemy, enemy finds us, kill with HE.  In COIN, deploy units big enough to survive but small enough to get the enemy to strike.  A SAW is more of an insurance policy then a rifle, and realistically the Marine infantry with body armor and weapons and 60 pounds weren't chasing any Muj with an AK, a spare mag, water bottle, and bag of nuts in Helmand any better then the Army was doing in Kunar.  

That all being said, the USMC wanting a "service specific AR" is preposterous.  The most useless thing would be a service specific uniform. Did that. Then a bayonet, pistol, and rifle #4  Its a whole lot of wasted resources for a marginal advantage better spent on a new UAV, or commo, or something that is a force multiplier.    Dumping tanks and artillery is making me wonder.

I am trying to think of anybody that has a "service specific rifle"....outside of Nazi Germany....not a procurement program to emulate when it comes to avoiding waste and redundancy.

If you look at the general pattern of small arms development in the last ~120 years (the smokeless powder era) that's actually the complete opposite of whats happened in small arms evolution.

The initial rifles and calibers were based on the notion of very long engagements (.30-06, 7.62x54, .303, 7.92x57). These were beastly rounds lethal to 1000yd and beyond.



The lessons of WW1 / WW2 / Korea was that

-Its super hard to see any enemy beyond 300m in most combat conditions due to terrain / camo / dudes using cover / people trying to shoot you

-The average soldiers chance of hitting anyone beyond 300m under combat conditions is extremely poor

-These visible targets beyond 300m should really be blown to bits with artillery and mortars (and now drones) rather then attempting to hit them with precise rifle fire.

This is the whole reason for the development of the small caliber high velocity (SCHV) cartridge and the assault rifle replacing the battle rifle.

That the US was getting into long range firearms duels in Afghanistan against PKM's points more toward a lack of effective artillery/mortar coverage (why?) then a need for longer range rifles.

In the 300-600m testing of the ACR rifle trials agains pop up / slightly moving targets, hit probability was poor, and a scoped M16 was only marginally more likely to hit then irons M16. And these targets were larger then a man using cover in combat.





https://www.ar15.com/forums/AR-15/ACR-Rifle-Trial-Results-vs-M16A2-found-the-results-/118-759630/

Looking at whats happening in Ukraine, I'd want a caliber / ammo even lighter than 5.56 with 40rd mags, and a lot more hand grenades.

Now that you mention it, there is a unit that comes around once a year to do work on our weapons.

This guy gets it.

The USMC had the M249 in the mid 80s ..had nothing to do with GWOT.

I carried the first version with the fixed stock and carry handle then later on they were first starting to be upgraded to the current configuration sometime around '92 or so IIRC.  I carried and worked on them throughout my 20 year career.

They ARE good weapons...WHEN you do the required maintenance on them.  Marines were always told the SAW was a POS so if it quit working then that was "normal".  No it wasn't...you had a lazy or incompetent armorer.


For example...around '96 or so I worked in an armory and couldn't fine ANY records that our M249s had the required "annual gaging" done to them.  So I called in a team and they came in and started checking.  They were quite amused that they found a barrel that swallowed the bore gage.  I went to look at it and I'll be damned there was "zero" rifling in the bore.  Smoothbore all the way down.  They kept checking and guess what...out of 81 SAWs we had somewhere around 100 barrels that failed.  Mind you all of the bad ones were the "early" fixed handle style with two rates of fire (700 and 1000).  This was also a grunt unit and the guns were all the original contract weapons so at this time they were 10-ish years old and already worn out the barrels.  The inspection results caused quite a stir as Lejeune didn't have 100 spare barrels on the shelf and Division Headquarters was asking what the hell we were doing etc.  Turns out NOBODY had been doing annual gaging and they had to ship barrels directly from Albany to get us mission capable again.


This is systemic across the board in Comm, MT etc...


I rarely condemned any SAWs as we could usually get them running with typical organic spare parts.  Biggest issue was the extractor the ejector and the drive spring.  Secondly was no one was using the scraper tools.  Gas pistons were plugged with copper fouling it looked someone had melted pennies and poured them in there.

Once we had refresher training and everyone got the correct tools etc. the readiness percentage was (in my armories) ALWAYS in the high 90s.

They are a bitch to tote....but by god when you need to put the lead out...they are tits...

Need more men like you

Still around. I used them for servicing our guns when I was filling in as company master gunner.

Dupe

I love how Marines constantly rewrite history. That statement above just doesn't seem to make sense. I mean why would people not use BARs they had for two decades already, in a squad? so I looked into it a tad...

The Army had BARs in their 8 man squad organization, when they were available immediately after WWI. They also had grenadiers and riflemen.

Carlson didn't invent shit. He went from 10 to 8 man squads while a Battalion Commander in WWII... Not exactly a revolution. He probably got the idea from his time serving in the Army, who had a similar squad organization design (no Garand or Thompson then, but instead the predecessor) 20 years previous.

https://www.battleorder.org/post/u-s-army-rifle-squad-1918-2020

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Carlson

That is what I meant. He was only counting the lack of bang scaring the enemy from however far away, while failing to account for less noise and concussion a few inches from the shooter's face.

Carlson’s fireteam was based on his time observing the Communist Chinese forces

+1
Gew 98 sights.  I can barely see that far.  Let alone seeing part of a man sized target.

Attached File

Those ranges were for massed suppressive or harassing fire, were replaced by the tripod mounted machinegun, which then handed off ranges past 1000m to the modern mortar - invented in the 1st WW.

You've got an enemy crossroads used for his logistics 1500 yds forward of your lines.  No mortars.  No machineguns to speak of (in 1898).  How do you deny use of that crossroads that you can only see on a map?

"Form line!"
"Load!"
Range 1500!"
"Fire!"

Figured theyd still be around. I think the only time I remember anything going from the unit straight to depot was when they were spinning up the M16A2-A4 conversions. I was back in CONUS once that got underway though

Thank you for using the word scunnion. Haven't heard that in ages.

You have to wonder what the actual effect the ballyhooed "PKM firing at over a thousand yards" had beyond Mujies prancing around the campfire telling war stories about fighting the infidel.
Enough to overturn over a centuries worth of battlefield experience?
Or another sinecure for retiring officers to shill for Sig?

That thing is amazing, at 13 pounds it’s only a little heavier then the XM5 before they start bolting crap onto it.

Not when the problem is a stretched reciever.