There is a NSN just for a replacement receiver assembly. It's NSN 1005-01-214-8884.

I found that searching for info about Morrissey Inc. recently (since they make receivers for FN's M249S). Colt won a DOD contract for replacement M249 receivers in 2012 and Morrissey was the subcontractor.
See link: https://www.highergov.com/awardee/morrissey-inc-10056109/

Apparently Morrissey's receivers are coded MAE and FN's in-house production receivers are coded MAF. Not sure if those are FN's codes or what. There's a 4-digit number after that 3-letter code which may be a lot number.

Attached File


Thread here with pics: https://www.ar15.com/forums/armory/Mystery-Mark-on-M249-Receiver-Solved/24-546095/

If you have more info about the receiver codes, or the 4-digit #, please comment in the above-linked thread.

The actual effect?  We lost.

Agree with all.

The future will be more fires and more UAVs and more fires killing grunts.  Big grunt formations will stick out like sore thumbs.  A little grunt formation can hide, and launch UAVs, and direct fires, but if a larger grunt formation shows up they will need firepower to hold them off to call in fires. Modern infantry will be more like recon.

They actually will need a lightweight SAW to create  suppression and separation and then use fires.  Probably don't need the M240 as much.

You should seriously reconsider working on your ability to do research.

A 1930 US Army squad had a corporal SL, two man BAR team, grenadier, and four riflemen.  One corporal leading seven men.
A 1940 US Army squad had one sniper, three man BAR team, SGT as SL, ASL as a corporal, two scouts and four riflemen.  One man supervisor of 11, one was his assistant.

Carlson created a ten man squad, one SL, three teams of three, 5 tommy guns, four M1s,and a BAR.  In 1943 1st Raider Bn reorganized where each team had a BAR, carbine, and M1.  

Carlson introduced the fire team and each squad leader had a span of control of three subordinates, not ten or eleven.  This was partially due to three man cells and Communist dogma but it was tactically useful. Very rapidly the Marines put a BAR in each team.  Big USMC went to 13 man squads and kept the triangular organization. 3x4+1SL

Modern organizational theory states a 1:5 span of control is optimal, and a four man team is big enough for a one man automatic weapon but not a crew served.

None of what you said has any relevance toward the original post about that dude, or the topic at hand.

Which is extremely uncommon. To have ALL of yours with that issue...I'd say that the problem is elsewhere.

Is there anything about replacing the receiver on a 249 that is so difficult that a company armorer couldn't do it or is it the same level of skill as an M4/M16 and you can change everything over in 30 minutes?

you CANNOT order that at the company level as it's a serialized part.

It must go to higher echelon and they will either repair it or send it to depot in exchange for a new gun.

This is the easiest method to do things when the gun is worn out.

Got ya.  Thanks for the clarity.

It's not the actual swapping the parts over.  It's the bureaucratic process of ordering the new receiver.  It's not that it's very expensive.  It's that it's a serialized item, so the bureaucracy has to track it, and that gives them power.  If they just dropped the damn thing in the mail to the unit, they would have no power.  So it can't be done that way.  It must go to a higher depot, put on a wait list, prioritized, re-prioritized, defunded, refunded, defunded again, and then forgotten about.

That's why units don't bother sending them in.  If they sent in half their 249s, that would raise alarm bells upstairs, and commanders would be asked weekly about their status.  The depot isn't going to give weekly status updates, the part is on backorder, or there's no funding this quarter - meantime, a commander has a giant RED dot on his weekly status report - for months.  No officer wanting to promote wants RED on their status reports.  The path to promotion is GREEN.  An M249 in the armory is GREEN, even if the receiver is stretched and it doesn't run worth a shit.

The problem with machineguns since 1919 has been that they're an important part of readiness - so if you actually send in a LOT of your firepower to get it properly fixed, you're a bad officer.  No officer wants to be seen as a bad officer.  So instead, receivers are worn out well past their sell-by dates, until a new machine gun is issued to replace it.  Which is loved by everyone except the enemy.  And then the process repeats itself as the machineguns beat their receivers to death, and no one ever replaces the receivers.

Yeah....that's the biggest wall of BS I've ever seen.

That didn't happen anywhere that I saw.  Weapons might have been unserviceable but they sure didn't stay that way for long.  Once a problem was identified it was rectified in a usually timely matter.


Grunt units wear out weapons...that's not a secret.  Getting them fixed/replaced is just part of the daily routine and it's not a difficult thing to do.  At least in the USMC it isn't... can't speak for the other branches.

How did all those M249s get so worn out then?  Getting minor parts replaced early in the lifecycle of a machinegun isn't a big deal.  Toward the end of life, the system collapses b/c there are too many receivers that need to be replaced.  This is a cycle that has repeated from the M1919A4 to the M60 to the M249.  It's not a mystery.

The receivers don't really wear out on the M249.

If a unit says most of it's M249 are down because the "receivers are stretched" I'm betting they are not that bad at all and just need some TLC.

We "lost" in Afghanistan like we "lost" in Vietnam: The military defeats the enemy decisively in every engagement above a rifle duel, but the enemy is not a modern State that can be crushed, occupied and forced to surrender. Then the enemy merely has to not give up until the US government changes hands enough times that someone uses unilateral disengagement as a campaign promise. It had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the US military, or of the Mujaheddin.
Which still leaves my question unanswered. Beyond harassing fire that stops a patrol on its route for a few hours, what effect did the PKM achieve in producing casualties? Was this such a stunning tactical innovation as to invalidate every single combat study by every single nation in the world for over a century? Or were the ROE and leadership expectations such that patrols simple took cover and waited it out in frustration?
How was that, and the mythical "near peer" mass issue body armor, used to reinvent the M14?

I'm not sure most direct support folks could do it, nevermind and Armored

When I deployed (to Kuwait...) my battery commander didn't want to tell anyone that we only had one magazine per soldier. I managed to work a deal to get more just in case we needed them. We didn't go anywhere on that trip but the guys after us drove up the highway to shoot missiles at ISIS.

I have very little SAW experience, we didn't even have them in most of my units.

The one thing I saw a lot of was links getting stuck in the magwell.

Damn sure does, wow!

Honestly, in over three years as a maintenance and supply officer I never saw such a thing so I don't know. I managed to get a barrel changed once, that took my direct intervention since the support guys didn't want to do it (I woke them up from their siesta).

Now thats a badass piece of kit right there

Another great post as usual, but a service specific utility uniform as was envisioned by Gen. James Jones made sense, as the older woodland utility uniform required too much attention and time to look half way professional.  Likewise, black combat boots requiring polish were and are equally stupid, so if the rest of the services want to devote hours upon hours to ironing utilities and polishing boots like it’s still 1960, let them.  The Marines moved forward and hopefully never look back.  The other services seemed to agree.

On small arms, I absolutely concur:  Interoperability in munitions and infantry weapons up to Bn level is manifest to successful logistical support during prolonged campaigns and where the USMC needs to be reigned in IMHO.   I’ll take the mindset of the USMC over any other service but that doesn’t mean every decision made at MCWL IWB or HQMC is infallible or in the best interest of fighting and winning wars (Dave Berger notwithstanding).  

The USMC already distinguishes itself from the other services in the way they remain able to deploy or respond quickly to a crises on the ground, and how they are able to  maintain proficiency throughout the FMF in the operational art of combined arms /  air-ground integration to punch way above their weight.  In the big picture, USMC-centric infantry weapons add nothing of consequence above what the Army issues just as you stated.  After examining three versions of the M27 IAR a couple of months ago, I remain underwhelmed, as did at least one platoon commander I spoke with.

I’m sure I’ll continue to read someone opine “but the IAR is lighter than the M249!”  Yea, well that just means you carry more of something else lol.  It’s the infantryman’s lot in life, and I say that with sincere respect.

Maybe the IAR ends up being the greatest thing since sliced white fucking bread, but the concept is flawed IMHO because there isn’t same gap between the issue Infantry rifle and the GPMG now like there was in WWII or Korea between the M1 rifle and the Browning .30 cal light or heavy (water cooled) machine guns.  

I hope the USMC is refurbishing M249 SAWs to NOS condition and holding them in storage in case the IAR turns out to be the turd many of us think it will be in the next war (it is HEAVY for what it is).  

M249 was for 0311s. M240 and M2s were for 0331s.

So.. how long after shooting starts will they go 'we need more firepower' and they end up with more beltfeds?

In WWI, you just started seeing infantry leaders going from 1914, where you had a captain leading a company of rfilemen, to combined arms formations where you had MGs, ARs, light mortars, grenade launchers, and integration of HE, automatic weapons, and fire and movement.

Lieutenants were starting to become people who were expected to make tactical decisions, but squad leaders were usually tasked to keeping their people in formation.

Example:

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/the-last-100-yards-lsco-volume-9.pdf
Feel free to look at page 234.
Rifle grenadiers and AR teams and hand bombers had their places. Sergeants were flankers.

Being a squad leader was an immense challenge because the span of control was too high: 7-10 men.  At five meter intervals, when a squad leader hit the deck he could not control his people.  Thats basic organizational theory and infantry combat on the empty battlefield.

The Chicom concept was, one bad commie could go AWOL, two could go together, but three out of three was hard.  Carlson took a disciplinary tool and used it as a tactical tool.  Junior infantrymen become corporals or E5s and have leadership roles.  Pushing leadership down is a huge deal.  Yet if the smallest building block is an NCO and three pax, you cant have a two man crew served weapon, a rifleman, and a TL.  So you sorta get limited by the structure, to weapons choices.   If you want three teams that are identical then the weight of what one man can carry by himself is the heaviest squad weapon.
But you get three of them.  If you want a rifle section and a support section, you have a heavier squad weapon, like an MG42 or a bren, but you get one.  

This is neither unimportant nor insignificant, nor really up for debate; it is the structure based on human factors that scopes the upper ends of what can be carried around.


Realistically, the most lethal rifle platoon going forward will be one with an organic UAV and fires section.  Get your lightweight automatic suppression however you want.   The future is obvious when you look at these synchronized CQB/UAV videos.

I think adopting the IAR was the wrong solution to the problem, but it’s does not result in that significant of a reduction in capability.  The 15 man squad with an organic sensor/precision fires capability and everyone having an IAR can still put out a significant amount of fire power.

When trying to gain fire superiority to break contact I can’t see mag fed rifles beating out belt feds. The problem with fires is they take time to get on target. That time keeps shrinking but total divestment of the SAW seems premature. My hunch is this is another HQMC procurement money juggling effort till the next generation of SAW is bought by the army. I think the all IAR squad is something you can get away with in a COIN battlefield that would be disastrous against a near peer.

You have to look at the full history of the IAR, the gunner community has been trying to adopt one ever since the Gunners came back as a MOS in late 80s.  I think one told me general dissatisfaction with the SAW was one of the reason Gunners were brought back.

That's a leadership failure from top to bottom.  It's not hard to order magazines.

But you aren't the first Army unit I've heard of with issues like this.

I had a NG SNCO come to my armory in '07 in Iraq asking for some mags..I first thought HE needed a few..turns out the whole unit deployed without mags as they were told they would be issued them in country.  I quickly told him WTF..are you guys retarded?  Then called my Full Bird to let him know the cluster fuck nasty girls were here and they needed help.  We got them a full issue of mags in a few days.


Sad...

That's basically impossible...the mag well is on the left...the link is stripped and pushed to the right and out the link ejection port.  It would have to get under the feed try and move the opposite direction to get in the mag well.

Don’t know how it happens but I have seen that and in the receiver itself.

The PLA is using a 75 round drum fed QJB-95 light support weapon (LSW) 5.8 x 42mm as its squad automatic weapon. Looking only at photos my assumption is this drum is very similar to windup Chinese AK drums.

Probably from a belt change or clearing a malf.  They didn't sweep the feed tray when clearing it and the last link rolled back thru the feed tray slot and into the receiver.

That applies to every single piece of serialized equipment across the Army.

It's all green until 89 days before deployment, and suddenly it was found to be red.

Kharn

What does this have to do with anything?

Another vignette showing how fucked Army leadership is that they deploy w/o even a standard load of mags, getting a bunch of M249s receivers replaced is beyond them.

Maybe I'm fucked up, but isn't the point of LONG range artillery to stay far and the fuck away from the enemy? So im not too butthurt about them not having mags. And wouldn't that fall on unit leadership anyway? Homie said he's an officer, fix that shit.

I cannot remember who said it, but in the convoy security class for Marine Arty Officers there was quote from the Korean War to effect: if I have seen one shot up artillery battery convoy, I have seen a dozen.

It was a lesson pressed home to the Marine Lts that Arty Batteries are high pay off targets and your Marines must be proficient at counter ambush immediate action drills.  

Wouldn't counter battery be more likely than an ambush on the rocket men? I'm not Arty. But isn't the point of wheeled artillery to be able to move quickly?

There is an issue with parts as well.


A LOT of units have leadership that believes their unit level armorer is a God and can fix all things in house.  They will simply task that armorer to dump parts into non working guns until they work...often without live fire testing to validate the repair.  This is problematic as the unit level supply of parts is finite and the local armorer has limited tools and knowledge.  They go down a rabit hole on pouring parts into non working guns that will never work because the entire system is worn out.  A new barrel, bolt, ejector, feed pawls, and so on...won't fix it.  Adding more oil won't help either.  


The larger issue is that leadership will consider that problem "solved"...and now you have a broken weapon that leadership emotionally feels like they fixed and will get buthurt if you go tell them it is still broken.  


So, it goes in the back of the armory.  


guns are disposable.  They are tools to be used until they need to be replaced, then destroyed and replaced...not rebuilt.  

Depends on who fighting, but generally counter battery is the higher threat

But you have to balance that with the first people meeting the stream of wounded from the 507th Maintenance Company were the artillerymen of 1st Battalion, 10th Marines and a friend of mine lost his hand when his vehicle was hit by an RPG in an ambush while leading A Battery 1st Battalion, 11th Marines.

The claim that's being refuted is that Carlson invented the concept of the automatic rifleman in an 8 man squad... He did not. The BAR was around long before that, as were squads.  

THAT is relevant to the thread, because its a discussion about having a SAW or not. The automatic rifleman concept predates WWI.

No one is talking about reorganizing the fire team or whole squad. So yes, the autistic screeching about the fire team, and its origin, is irrelevant and a distraction to the thread.

Nope.

What I posted on 14 August was this:



If you are going to refute the claim, then why don't you point out who said that?  Because nobody made that claim.  You cant refute it.  

The first use of an automatic rifleman in a rifle squad was probably the German sturmtruppen who fielded captured Lewis Guns in 1917, after the Brits fielded Lewis guns in 1916 as a section weapon in a rifle platoon, as the French fielded the Chauchat.


-----------------------

Your opinion on what is and isn't relevant is just that, your opinion.  When the US Army was fielding the BAR they had an assistant to help carry ammo, which made them tolerant of additional weight, similar to the British Bren and German MG34/42 teams.  The USMC philosophy since 1942 had been a triangular squad, and three ARs, and they have generally made the decision that three weapons light enough to be carried by an individual, each supervised by an NCO, is optimal.    

The obvious question is why a SAW is too light when it weighs less then a BAR, and a BAR is relevant to the discussion because that was the USMC innovation, and clearly it was light enough then.  I would argue the real reason isn't the accuracy or lack of same with the SAW, it's that the widespread use of body armor has increased soldiers load and therefore the USMC is driving the weight down, as a BAR man on Guadalcanal didn't have body armor.  A SAW gunner today does.  Body armor is teh most significant new development in teh equation.

Jesus.

If you can't read and comprehend what you yourself wrote, I can't help you.

There is a great presentation called the “Genesis of the Marine Rifle Squad”. It is like 100 slide pictorial history of each evolution of the Marine Squad and provides all the justification and history of the 13 man, 3 fire team squad.  To include when the Marine Squad was 13 but did not have fire teams.

We called it “Humping the Pig.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.battleorder.org/amp/21st-century-usmc

Problem being that the vast majority of artillery was either co located with their Maneuver elements (regardless of range) or basically parked their guns/launchers, and were used as more bodies for convoy security/trolling for contact.

The other side of that coin is cops/firebases/wtf ever where you forward locate a battery or platoon to cover a Maneuver area out of range of your existing fobs/bases

I played the mag fuck fuck games, it was absolutely retarded.

You could get 40 brand new m240s in 2 weeks from order to delivery at the unit,
Mags and sarps were on hellacious short supply for quite some time after the "war" kicked off

Same thing in the army,

You are one of the primary targets of enemy recon, and for lack of a better term, skirmishers or non conventional forces operating beyond their own forward lines

It's hard as fuck to hide while moving, and the reason the m109a6 actually exists was to counter both the counter battery and enemy ambush/target ot opportunity factor,

Original intent was for the guns (and their cats) to hit a point and -disperse-,
Basically hide as much as possible and wait for.fire missions,
Shoot them, And than run and hide somewhere else.

How do they like that newer Trijicon scope?

I think belt fed LMG is the way to go, but there are some arguments to be had for a mag fed Automatic Rifle.

But for me, the absurd aspect of the M27 is that it's not even an Automatic Rifle; it's an unmodified HK 416 Assault Rifle with a bipod.

An Automatic Rifle is a magazine fed weapon optimized for full auto fire.

Some aspects of FA optimization:
-Greater magazine capacity then standard

-Reduced ROF for greater FA controllability

-Efforts to reduce or eliminate bolt impact to reduce FA vibration / improve controllability

-Recoil / muzzle climb mitigating compensator

-Heavy barrel and or heat sink to reduce overheating

Examples.

RPK/RPK74: lengthened heavy barrel to reduce overheating/boost velocity, 40/45/75rd magazines, lengthened receiver to reduce ROF to optimal 600rpm for increased controllability.

AUG HBAR: lengthened heavy barrel to reduce overheating / boost velocity + quick change function, 42rd magazines, reduced ROF to ~680rpm to improve controllability, aggressive compensator to drive barrel downward into bipod to minimize muzzle climb.

Colt LSW: Heavy barrel to reduce overheating + heat sink handguard, 100rd Beta C drum mag, hydraulic buffer to reduce ROF to 600-700rpm + hydraulic buffer reduces bolt impact to minimize FA vibration.

Ultimax 100: Heavy barrel to reduce overheating + quick change function, 100rd drum, Constant Recoil impactless bolt system to maximize FA controllability.

The M27 has none of this. It's got a heavy barrel, just as a byproduct of the 416 having a heavy barrel as standard. But there was no effort to get that FA optimized in any way (say tuning it for closer to 600rpm or even a Warcomp to cut recoil), no effort to boost mag capacity, hell it doesn't even have 45/90 selector to make it faster to get into FA, to the point where Geissele developed the 'Gas Pedal' for the Marines bc the 180 was too slow to use against moving targets.

It's not an Automatic Rifle. The Marines are just pure fleeting Assault Rifles.