I thought: somewhere there must be a photo of John Wayne or Rambo slinging Ma Deuce on his hip, but this is all I could find (Ma, deuce, 50 cal, right?):
Posted on 01/03/2017 11:12:22 AM PST by C19fan
I'm not advocating hanging on to an old system for the sake of nostalgia. My point was that a titanium 50 caliber is going to cost many times what a steel one costs. With limited dollars to spend, that means that fewer units will have heavy machine guns.
Ah, if only CMP could sell this surplus back to us...
I thought: somewhere there must be a photo of John Wayne or Rambo slinging Ma Deuce on his hip, but this is all I could find (Ma, deuce, 50 cal, right?):
My Scout squad had to carry one of these pigs often. One man got the receiver, one man got the tripod, one man got 2 barrels and one poor sucker got the ammo. This was on top of our regular issued weapons and ammo, water for 3 days and a radio with extra batteries and 80 lb. rucks. Not always fun sneaking through the mountains with all this to set up an OP/LP.
Still was better than lugging the Mk19.
You could quite easily sling it over your shoulder and walk around with it, no way could most do that with the ground version.
Our gunboats in Nam had .50 heavy barrels and were twin mounted. They were a pretty good handful to control. If they were 26 pounds lighter each I shudder to think what firing them would be like.
Gotta make it lighter so the women gunners can haul it.
I would always rather have three .50 caliber machine guns at my disposal than only one.
And they’ll cost 7 figures minimum each with all that titanium, Star Wars sights etc.
Guarantee there will never be nearly enough to go around.
The real weight issue with the M2 is that it’s recoil rather than gas operated.
I guess I was spoiled - I was FA. The only moment of common sense I had regarding the military was, “That howitzer gets pulled by a truck. At least I get to ride.”
When we went mech the hardware got really serious. 14 x .50 and 2 x M60, 14x M203 and 90 individual weapons. A tactically dispersed M109 battery is a big perimeter to defend with few personnel. We made up for it with lots of crew-served weapons. Weight wasn’t a consideration.
They won’t pull the issued ones from TOE any time soon - they are still using them. I would guess they still have a fair number of them from the downsizing.
Ma Deuce ain’t going away - the original is still one of the best weapon systems ever. That is especially true in asymmetric warfare where you have more weapon systems mounted on more light vehicles.
The real exciting thing in the future for the .50 is the self-stabilizing system where the gunner can stay safely in the vehicle and put rounds on target with more accuracy (and high definition optics). If the new design incorporates a more heat resistant barrel there is no way anyone can say it is not a major improvement. Changing a hot barrel on these is not a bonus under fire.
Or just become better engineers: reducing the weight of the M2 won't reduce the recoil of the fired bullet one bit and what was a stable, accurate machine gun will bounce all over the place! The Army engineers are wonderful folks but most of them have zero military/operational experience.
Lightening the weapon will reduce the weapon's stability and will require extensive redesign of the weapon's internals (it is a recoil-operated weapon, nicht war?
There is also the problem of heat dissipation since the M2's barrel acts as a huge heat sink during firing and lightening the barrel will also reduce the numbers of rounds fired before the barrel has to be changed - right now, with the steel barrel and stellite lining, it's about 400 rounds fired in short bursts. After that, the barrel blows up!
Anybody remember the goofy M60E3? The army put a skinny barrel on that puppy for "walking fire" (a useless concept, if there ever was one) and within a few bursts, the barrel melted and the rounds exited the side of the barrel!
The M2, as designed by John Moses, is a superb, proven, dependable and incredibly versatile weapon. I have fired well over 200,000 rounds through them over my 27 years on active duty and I am also an experience mechanical engineer - don't fix what ain't broke!
PS - your Caps Lock is stuck - twice.
The weight is what it is, that doesn’t bother me, especially since it’s usually mounted on a vehicle. The worst part of the M2 was the really involved process to correct headspace and timing. If they can just update that part, they can leave the rest as far as I’m concerned.
Sounds like it might be more effective to haul around a 30 caliber machine gun and a 50 caliber Barret sniper rifle for hard targets.
You definitely have more rounds downrange with these than just about anyone I have heard of...... with that said, do you not think an alloy barrel with titanium would be more heat resistant? Especially if they increase surface area?
A lighter barrel with more radiating surface can't get rid of the heat fast enough, because of the very high levels of heat energy developed my the M2 and its cartridge. Early in its life, there was a water-cooled .50 which allowed much longer bursts but it was a really heavy pig and not suitable for light vehicles or infantry support.
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