my bad, I meant they don't have a SCHV belt-fed SAW/LMG

I wonder how good/reliable the Surefire 60 is compared to the casket mags they were working on...

Just to be clear, you're a 7.62 NATO proponent, suggesting abandoning 5.56 to go back to 30 cal?

lol

why didn't you write ".22 caliber"?

i'd rather have the ".22" 5.56 than the .30 Carbine round

p.s. the soviets went to an SCHV cartridge for the AK

maybe he's General Milley

Got to hand it to those sneaky fucking Russians. They managed to pull off a very reliable 30 and 40 round magazine while we didn't get a great 30 rounder until halfway through the GWOT and only recently got a very reliable 40 rounder.

Well that's mighty dumb.

Possible. Let's hear his thoughts on completely rearming the US Army purely to fight Russia.

Coffin mags don't work, never have.  Nobody has ever cracked that code.

Magpul abandoned their attempts of making it work, and went to the D60, which is about perfect really.

Problem with mags versus linked is they weigh more and take up space on gear when empty.

Links you just leave, and soft ammo magazines like the SAW nut sack stuff into smaller space when empty, which I like.

Disadvantage is mag changes with linked ammo is slower.

One of the main individual drills I focused on as a SAW gunner was rapid nutsack change so that I could get the gun back into the fight as quickly as possible and regain the fire support for my Squad mates.

As a Fire Team leader or Squad Leader, I instituted rapid nutsack change drills for the SAW gunners without any input from higher.

You need to be able to do it quickly:

In the prone
Kneeling behind cover
While moving (the hardest)

LMGs require studs with exceptional physical conditioning and mettle, not mediocre PT soldiers or Marines.

No, not back to 7.62 NATO, there are many good options already available that fit into the standard AR magazine. Why do they continually piss around with the 5.56 to achieve something it cannot achieve. They're supposed to be the "best and the brightest?", think outside the box a little is all I'm saying.

i still don't understand the reasoning behind the ICSR...is Milley (or one of his current/former inner circle) a .30 cal fanboi?

equipping squad with .30 cal rifles, and ammo and pouches -> weight of squad's gear increases by X -> X divided by LAW weight = number of extra LAWs you could issue out instead of ICSR and related gear

issuing out more LAWs (or any other anti-armor weapon) would have been a far better counter to the Russkies
kill a Russkie BMP or BTR, you fuck up the vehicle and some or all the Russkies inside
that seems more effective and efficient than trying to kill them with .30cal outside of their BMP/BTR...while also having to deal with said BMP/BTR

Jim Sullivan, of Armalite and Ultimax fame, is the one who designed the Surefire coffin mags. The engineering definitely isn't easy but I'm pretty sure he pulled it off.

I have a 60 rounder, never had issues with it but I don't trust it , I did hear that early production models had some issues that were later fixed (mine is early production).

I think the biggest issue with them is the length. The 60 round mag is as long as a 40 rounder, that's not an issue, it actually works out well because with body armor on its near impossible to go magazine monopod prone with a 30 round but easy with 40 rounder or Surefire 60. I took a AR10 rubber Magpul on it and that cushions the bottom well when going prone. But the Surefire 100 is godawful long, holy shit that thing is nearly a foot long and totally impractical for prone.

So 300 Blackout, because that's the only 30 cal that fits in the standard AR magazine.

Don't get me wrong, I think 300 Blackout is a pretty cool caliber, for some roles. I like the idea of using it as SBR and suppressed, capable of switching back and forth with super and subsonics (because silently killing people from inside 250 meters definitely have a place in combat). However, 300 Blackout as a standard infantry caliber, one used not only in carbines that are expected now to engage out to 600 meters but also in SAWs or IAR too, is simply not very practical at all.

Meanwhile, 5.56 chief complaint for the longest time was its poor intermediate barrier penetration. Contrary to internet lore, it usually did well in terminal ballistics (though fleet yaw and reliable fragmentation issues were present). But both the terminal ballistic and intermediate barrier penetration issues were largely fixed between the 62 gr Mk318 SOST, the 70 Gr Brown Tip (a Barnes TSX bullet), or the new M855A1 round. Especially the latter, its quite accurate, has much improved, and is a great solution to issues 5.56 faced in the past.

Is the Surefire 60 equally or less durable than a USGI mag?

Milley is a creature of the Army. Which makes him a salesman. He's got to sell something to get paid. The customer is Congress and the product he is selling is fear. With GWOT funding largely gone, and the Army got really used to that great funding, they need to pimp the Russian threat to get paid and to ensure their brethren get their defense industry jobs after they retire. Milley isn't just pitching 7.62 NATO because Muh Russia, he wants all Army equipment replaced. The same reforms that happened in the 80s, when Reagan turned on the spigot and allowed us to buy new guns, new tanks, new APCs, new arty, new trucks, new uniforms, new helmets, Milley wants to do the same thing again and he thinks Muh Russia is the way to do it.

Depends on which USGI Mag? Black follower, nearly any mag is better than that. Green is okay, much more reliable. Tan are even better, non tilting followers stolen from Magpul. Blue follower optimizing lip and follower to work better positioning the M855A1 round so when the bolt closes and catches the round it doesn't slam its hardened steel point into anything its not supposed to.

The Surefire 60 is relatively untested. I'm not saying its garbage but the trust doesn't seem to be there. They came out only shortly before Magpul 60 rounds did, who surpassed them because their reputation is impeccable and because early Surefire mags got a reputation for not being 100% reliable (which I read they fixed).

IME surefire mags tend to have too much friction to run  reliably with steel or dirty ammunition.

I think they might benefit from a slicker internal coating.

I've had to send one early mag back for replacement. My others have ran well as long as I use new brass ammunition.

So what can the 5.56 not achieve?

durable, not reliable

I meant, how much can they be knocked around, how tough are they

The first time I ever fired the SF60, it FTFeed on me doing magazine monopod prone.

Problem with coffin mags is that once you have a nose-dive FTFeed malf, you're now stuck with a mag full of ammo that you can't use.

If a drum malfs, you pop the back cover and fix it, reload, spring it, return to action.

Single presentation drum mags tend to be very reliable when made by a competent industrial base.

Given the coefficient of friction on Magpul polymers, the D60 is one of the more promising magazines there is of its kind.  It also single presentation feeds from the feed ramp that is least likely to cause a malfunction (the left).

Can't be measured as .30 inches in diameter. I got out some calipers and checked.

Dear God son, you should just stop. Seriously.  You are such a child.

I was a battle captain/planner. The 1st AD went into Najaf in April 2004.  TF 2-37.  Their battalion commander wrote the AAR. 2ACR was in Kufa. They wrote one too.  The uprising of the Mahdi Army happened in early April.

http://www.benning.army.mil/armor/eARMOR/content/issues/2004/NOV_DEC/ArmorNovemberDecember2004webWithList.pdf

The 1AD and the CAV went in mostly mounted, frequently at night, and were using mech forces. Kill ratio was approx 4-5 to 1000.  In many cases the men in black didnt understand what spectre was, didn't know what a UAV was, didnt understand what thermals could do. They died in droves. It was 1AD and 2ACR in the battle of Najaf/Kufa during the April uprising.

I wasnt in country in August so I am pretty sure I know what was going on from the TOC shift work I was pulling, and Im not confused.  Maybe you were trying out for high school baseball and you want to lecture me, you fool, on operations you clearly never heard of. Like I dont know what happened during my own deployments.

As Mattis famously said,

That's true. They didnt bring armor in, either.  They took heavier casualties, didnt clear the city, and called in CAS to mitigate light infantry in the city.  The second order effect of this was unacceptable heavy collateral damage  to the civilians, so the plug got pulled. And then changed the TTPs to something else. More mounted firepower, faster, less collateral damage as less reliant on light infantry and CAS.

Point being that if you believe that pulling SAWs out of platoons increases lethality in MOUT, you are lost. You are embracing a myth.

You are such an arrogant child that when I describe an operation I was TOC shifting in April, you correct me and tell me I don't even know what was going on in my own HQ. Sweet.

How about I tell you what deployments I was on and you can tell me what happened?  Seems to be an added bonus of dealing with you, Mindreader.

Go suck start a box of crayons. I'm out.

I would prefer the AR/SAW to have ammo/mag compatability with the rest of the squad. Be it mag fed or belt fed/mag fed. M855A1 seems sufficient to me, even Mk318 Mod 0 does.

What bothers me about the M27 thing is that it is more of a DMR than an AR. I think having a DMR is a good idea but there should also be an AR. IMO, the M27 isn't quite heavy enough to be an AR and it's too heavy to issue to everyone. They really do need 60 round mags as well.

P&S ModCast 105 - Gun Nerds 7: Squad Support Weapons

Here ya go:

thank you

even though people will be like "TL;DW"

As compared to a supersonic rifle round, and the very noticeable snap that accompanies someone getting hit by the bullet, any subsonic is quiet, regardless of whichever shitty testing you've done on your shitty Youtube channel while upholding the scientific principles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This is worth noting, because watching that at 80M you are correct, those rounds are walking off target in as little as 3-5 rounds with a bipod. At 80M!

No way.

Yeah if you are going to lay prone and be nice confortable.

But with armor and full kit the 20” and no collapsible stock just plain sucks.

I am not sure about the VDV but the current squad automatic for the Motor Rifle Forces- which are all the Russian infantry that are not Airborne or Naval Infantry- is now the 7.62x51mm PKP Pecheneg with PKMS's authorized as an interim substitute. You will still see RPK74s around as they have huge numbers of virtually unused ones left from the Cold War, and Militia and 'C' category divisions will have them for some time to come. But the pair of RPKs are officially as of at least 2013 gone from the BMP and BTR rifle squad in active 'A', with 1 PKP/PKM/S replacing them and the other guy just getting a AK

They have spent the last twenty years fighting more or less the same enemy as us in more or less the same kinds of terrain- and they seem to have come to a completely opposite conclusion issuing a new SAW that is both major caliber and also has neither a quick change barrel- the PKP uses a update of the WWII Lewis guns convection driven air cooling to prevent cook off but no provision for any heat damage to the barrel- or a tripod or pedestal mounting lug. Oddly it also didn't come with any sort of forend to protect the users hand at first, but Russians in Syria have been seen with a vertical hand grip attached with a band around the barrel cooling shroud. Its a weapon designed only to be fired off of its bipod, which is now a front mount like the BAR.

If it were not for the belt feed, in every other respect, such as length, weight, and caliber the PKP is a BAR.

I have not understood what the USMC wanted from the beginning. So the M27 is a better RPK. When the inventor of the RPK is getting rid of theirs. And it does seem to me to be a bit of a back slide to the 1960-1985 era where "automatic riflemen" were just the guys with a double load of magazines for their M14/M16 and a clip on plastic bipod.

Did the Marines or Army EVER test the Negev at all?

All I know.... is if I'm the Dog-face that has to maneuver under a base of fire so I can can close with and destroy my nations enemies

I would prefer a well trained stud using a belt feed...

not some 19 yr old PV-1 fresh out  of OSUT who got stuck carrying the beat up , worn out one that should have been replaced before the kid carrying it was born...

I don't see any measurable difference between the M27

and an M4A1 with SOCOM barrel and a optic... other then a increase in my taxes, and the increase in H&K's EBITDA...

I see the M27 as an excuse to not field a good, well designed SAW or bother to train guys how to use it, maintain it and employ it.

To me, after watching years of GWOT videos, and watching mad minute mag and belt dumps at every TIC without ever bothering to maintain fire discipline... its the Modern Military's answer to limiting rate of fire and forcing troops to not have to burn thru a basic load because they can't be trusted or trained  to apply fire discipline. yet there solution is masked as actually have greater firepower because the fire is more "Aimed". (Wanat and Keating anyone....)

Yet I just watched a video, made by one of the Corps biggest champions of the M27, where they cannot keep all rds on an E type silhouette at 80m's, so they recommend the use of  "Aggressive semi auto" fire... which screams to me..."Then why in the fuck do we need a full auto M27 to begin with????"

I could have achieved the same thing with my 16" Middy with a 1x5 LPV using the mag as a Monopod....

Wellthatescalatedquickly.jpg

Wow a battle captain/planner, only the most elite of infantry officers get assigned to such roles.

Let's play a game called chronological order, CAPT Macro.

- 1st Battle of Fallujah started on April 4th. Not planned on that day. Not rehearsed on that day. It kicked off zero dark thirty morning on that day.
- Same day, Apr Motherfucking 4th, upon hearing of major operation in Fallujah kicking off and taking advantage of the rest of Sunni national uprising following the Abu Ghraib incident, Al Sadr calls the Madhi Army to war and the Shi'a Uprising starts. This is the conflict which Najaf kicked off. Remember, this starts AFTER Fallujah asssault starts.
- On April 22, TF 2-37 Iron Dukes, 1-1 AD, assume control of Najaf operations, replacing 3-1 ID. Who reported this? The literal editor of Armor journal.

"On 22 April 2004, Task Force (TF) 2d Battalion, 37th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, the ‘Iron Dukes,’ assumed mission from 3d Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, in the holy city of An Najaf, Iraq. The enemy, known as Muqtada’s militia, controlled An Najaf and neighboring Al Kufa. The  mission statement appeared simple: destroy the militia and restore order to An Najaf/Kufa to allow transition of authority to a legitimate Iraqi government; and, on order, transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi security forces (ISF)."
Source

So how the fucking shit did the Marines assaulting Fallujah using lessons learned from Army forces in Najaf as you earlier mentioned when the Shi'a Uprising didn't even start until they were already assaulting Fallujah? I was a Soldier, I know what the Army had and didn't have in Iraq. They didn't have time machines.

2-37 was in Sadr city from April 4-10, after the Shi'a Uprising started, after Fallujah started, and they didn't back to Najaf until April 22. And when they did get into Najaf one battalion didn't clear shit, they held down the city down as best they could. It wasn't until Operation Pacific Thrust that the city was essentially cleared in the large scale clearing operation involving the infantry tank cooperation you were rambling about before without realizing that the Marines had tanks too, just not as many as an Army Mechanized infantry/tank task force (duh).

Again, you revealing you know shit about anything that happened outside your sector. Actually, since you don't even know the date of the Shi'a uprising and when your own unit went to Najaf after the uprising you don't appear to know what was happening inside your own sector. And as a battle captain, I'd actually rate that as common enough to be SOP.

Marines did bring armor. They have these things in the USMC called "Tank battalions." They belong to an infantry division. 1st MarDiv possessed 1st Tank Battalion and its three companies of M1A1 tanks were broken down into platoons and attached to the Marine infantry battalions. Then there are these things called LAV-25, you might have heard of them too, two battalions of them were attached. And then there are these things called AAVs, there were five companies of those and they have light armor and 50 cal and MK19 turrets, not heavy armor but they can still provide support. And there are these things called attack helicopters, and the Marines had them too. And there are these things called jets, and some were Marines and some were Air Force and some Navy, and they supported them too. All in this very old timey tactic you might have heard called "combined arms."

The civilian casualty reports for Vigilant Resolve were bullshit. A few buildings got tagged by JDAMs or tank rounds early on and Al Jazeera took the bodies, staged them and video'd them, moved them to different locations, video'd them, moved them again and video'd them, and then reported on the news that the Marines had killed thousands, hinting at tens of thousands, when it was in probably not even a hundred yet. It was bullshit. They were even taking headshot Iraqi insurgent corpses, canoe'd by USMC snipers and infantry with ACOGs and reporting on television that the Marines were executing prisoners. It was an IO victory that was not the responsibility of 1st MarDiv to win, that's a bit outsider their lane. And I'm glad you bring up Mattis, he fucking warned LtGen Conway and he warned Rumsfeld and the rest of Bush and Co. that exactly that would happen, that some innocents would die, shit would get wrecked, press would flip and they'd all blame the Marines; Mattis wanted to go in with intel driven raids to nab those responsible for the Blackwater incident but Bush wanted to make a big splash to show Hadji couldn't kill American private security contractors and get away with it. And just like Mattis warned, the exact thing occurred, nobody had a counter for the free press reporting lies, the rest of Sunni went into revolt, Al Sadr starts a Shi'a uprising, and Iraqi is up in flames.

And before you get all high and might about civilian casualties, fighting in the Najaf in '04 led to a sizable portion of the city damaged and a shitload of civilian casualties too. Not that you would have noticed it from the TOC, but I'm sure the guys who knew how to kick in doors using SAWs did.

And what type of US Army combat arms officer seriously believes that infantry isn't the main effort in MOUT and that armor wins it? You trying out for general rank for the Syrian Arab Army?

Questionably reliable and heavy bullet hoses are not what wins close range engagements in MOUT, they are a liability up close in fact. They don't win medium range engagements either, those can be done just as easily with aimed rifle fire, semi or auto. And they sure as shit aren't winning long range, in MOUT those are dominated by DMs, snipers, and Javelins gunners, who have the optics and precision weapons necessary to see and engage very well hid targets mostly hidden by cover. Nope, in MOUT, high explosive rules supreme, not bullets. Nobody needs to be spraying entire belts in MOUT, they aren't going to be doing anything but ruining the exterior paint jobs on reinforced barriers and nothing else or shooting the sky. That's a fact with 5.56 and with 7.62. Where they only shine is catching dudes crossing street corners but even then rifle fire still does that better often. Regardless of a SAW or an IAR the enemy will still almost always be found positioned inside prepared loopholes build into walls, popping heads up over roof ledges, shooting from inside windows or doors, or peaking out from corners of buildings and walls. So when you're talking about suppressig or killing in MOUT you're talking about hitting or scaring the shit out of those fools, and they aren't being scared because the exterior of every house in the neighborhood catches a few bullets from a widely fired SAW gunner who no NCO is controlling. Everyone of those enemy positions is best dealt with by either precision semi auto or very short bursts with full auto, or better yet with HE weaponry that can either blow the wall up, penetrate into the structure and then detonate, hit the dead space, or get inside their OODA Loop by a big violent explosion happening inside crap yourself distances.

You proved you have no clue what happened in Fallujah, you didn't know when the Shi'a uprising started that led to Najaf falling, and I'll correct you every day of the week because you're wrong.

My deployment was too micro for you. It was all just combat leadership, small unit tactics, weapons emplacement stuff. The stuff you think doesn't win wars. No doubt you'd find it all quite shallow and pedantic, nothing to compare to the airconditioned awesomeness of those rocking powerpoint slides and storyboards you impressed the S-3 with.

I was never fond of the SAW. Open bolt is a recipe for Ka-chunk, followed by pops, if not outright having to re-seat the belt, upon initiating contact. That guy running across the street? He gone now. That "fire superiority" you were supposed to help establish? Hol' on a minute fam, lemme reseat my belt. Blew my load after a minute or two? Yeah, I'm gonna be finger fucking this reload during night fires bc some random link dropped its ass into the barrel extension lulz. It's a fucking joke. And that shit isn't a 1/100 random occurrence, ITS A GODDAMN CERTAINTY, IT. WILL. HAPPEN.

As someone who was a trained shooter prior to the mil, it always felt like a detriment carrying one. "Here's a heavy piece of inaccurate shit that weighs 3 times as much as the rest of your teams' guns with 5x the ammo, try to keep up lol, oh and by the way, we're counting on your wild inaccuracy to suppress the enemy" Thanks, Doctrine-man, guess just shooting what I'm aiming at was too easy.

All the other stuff is just shitty NCO's tbh. Fire discipline was never an issue if your TL is worth a damn or the gunner's not a cherry. Big reason why I was on the SAW for so long (well that and I was a shitbag e4), our PLT actually subscribed to the idea that the guy next to TL in seniority carries the SAW, and TBH, I'd rather I carry it than some new kid who's gonna have no idea how to clear malfs or get it going after it takes a massive steaming 3-coiled shit. Speaking of such shits, that's the only time you're gonna change the barrel. If you find yourself changing barrels, with fire discipline properly applied, you're gonna be done with your combat load. So why the spare barrel? Well, if you find yourself battling the double-feed spawn of Satan's asshole, you'll try your Gerber first. And if Gerber don't work, then there's Mr Spare Barrel! Glad he finally found his purpose, because it sure as shit wasn't to swap during fire.

Add this to "your guns dirty, that's why it fucked up" No, lemme pop open the tray and show you THE MISSING FEEDER PAWL! Jesus the gun is a fucking nightmare. Maybe it was cool back when it was introduced, but honestly, you can get much more work done with a true automatic rifle. Anyone who says otherwise is reading too much machine gun theory manuals and trying to pseudo inject the 240 into the squad. It doesn't fucking belong there, keep em in weapons squad.

Why does the IDF use the Negev with magazines and the 35cm barrel in cities then? It may be more reliable than the FN Minmi it was developed from (or maybe not, doesn't seem that anyone in the US tried to find out which is odd since the US taxpayer largely paid for its development), but they don't seem to worry if it has a open bolt action. That was not something they could engineer out, but they gave it a normal mag well and added the MAG's adjustable gas block, with a setting just for magazine use. Oh and the feeder pawls don't come out, that was one thing they did point out, that they changed the design of.

Why do they keep changing the bullets?

Progress

But nothing progresses

55-62-77?

M855A1 is a huge progression from M855.

So if we use your whole why do they change bullets thing then .30 cal must suck to huh? Because you know they are adopting M80A1 as well, replacing M80.

"During the tests which led to its adoption, 29 different XM249s had more than 500,000 rounds fired through them."

They tested the fuck out of the M249. It's a good fucking MG. Stop bullshitting about it's reliability not being good.

You guys had shitty Armorers and NCOs of previous generations not making sure those SAWs were getting new parts when they needed them.

that's my understanding too, the M249s suck because they are old and worn.  Typical Army small-arms maintenance philosophy: "Fuck maintenance. Run it until it breaks, then keep using it and tell Snuffy he's running it wrong, then finally buy a new one."

And the M27 bolt life averages around 9,000-9,500, same as the M4A1 which is in comparison to that of 50,000+ of the M249.

Also worth noting is the M27 costs $2,500-$3,000, the M249 costs $4,000, and the M4A1 costs $678. For what you get the M27 is a complete rip off, same life cycle as the M4A1 for the cost of the M249 basically.

How often does the M249 fail to fire? I'm not talking the beat to shit made in 1800's ones, but a maintained one?

The reliability of the M249 far exceeds that of the M4A1 and practically every general issue rifle in the history of rifles, yet no one here is scared their M4A1 won't fire.

The M4A1 has a MRBS of around 3,600 I believe vs the 23,400 of the M249.

Look at the amount of springs in the feed tray cover and tell me when each needs to be replaced. You don't know, I don't know, 11B NCOs don't know, SAW gunners definitely don't know, and I bet most armorers don't know, especially since the company armorer whose job it is to know this is nearly always the poor bastard 11B assigned to a job they hate, which is 98% serial number accountability and little else. The complexity of the design is why these are machine guns.

Yeah, it's an Army procurement problem. They don't think about that stuff. There should be some kind of system in place to periodically go into detailed PMs on these guns. Like a unit sends them out to some advanced armorer unit or something.

I just think that if you had a worn out machine gun..... It sucked, because it was worn out and needed new parts. It didn't suck, because it was a bad design.

MRBS of a well-maintained SAW isn't really relevant anymore, because there aren't very many well-maintained examples around nowadays. I'd be a lot more interested in averaged MRBS figures for beat-to-shit 249s, because that's what guys are actually stuck with.

You're comparing apples to oranges with the failure-to-fire argument. An M4 fires from a closed bolt; barring bad ammo or the FCG getting completely fucked up, it WILL fire with a round properly chambered. An M249 fires from an open bolt; the probability of a first-round FTF is a lot higher.

Hell, maybe we should look at a closed-bolt 249 derivative. I'm not convinced that the IAR is the answer, but the 249 as it stands now sure isn't!

I've personally been fiddling with what amounts to a revived, modernized Colt LMG, and it's not a bad system. It has yet to be tested in field problems or extended courses of fire, though.