Army Builds New Lightweight .50-Cal Machine Gun

Right. And the Beast recoils hard enough now that it's hard to keep it anchored down!

Machine guns aren't supposed to be "to whom it may concern" weapons: they are supposed to hit what you're firing at with reasonable precision. The .50 as it stands is a good, accurate weapon with devastating terminal energy on the target. Why screw with a working formula?

The army (civilian engineers again plus slimy vendors) tried pushing the XM-307 25mm Objective Crew Served Weapon (OCSW) with a tricky soft-recoil "out of battery" firing system where the barrel and receiver slide forward to fire and then the recoil energy shoves the whole mess back into battery and a nice, leisurely 250 rounds per minute. It fires the 25mm explosive projectile, which is nifty but as with all small warheads, has itty-bitty frags and costs a day's paycheck per round fired. because the barrel and receiver are launched forward on rails, accuracy is limited yet the civilian never-been-shot-at designers have the optical sight right on top of the weapon so the operator can sit up nice and tall behind an already tall weapon. Given how much attention machine gunners get on the battlefield, I hope we have lots of spare machine gunners.

The Browning M2 has been in the inventory all these years because it's powerful, accurate, dependable, cheap to feed (relatively), low to the ground where it should be, and kills effectively further than a mile. Don't ask me how I know that.

We waste zillions of dollars on dead-end systems because we aren't using experienced combat veterans for improving weapon systems design.

"Uh, no. You weren't in the service, were you? For what the .50 was designed for, there is no substitute. If you've ever seen a .50 eat a wall apart or chew a light vehicle into pieces you'd know better."

I certainly defer to your experience. But don't we have highly mobile high explosive systems (bloopers, RPG and more advanced types of the same weapons) which can accomplish these objectives that would be much lighter to haul around? I'm not arguing with you, I'm just asking.

OK, my bust: sorry I wasn't more courteous to you to begin with. I have a short fuze I need to keep under control.

We do have some good direct and indirect fire weapons out there; The Marine Corps has the SMAW (Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon) and the Army has the Karl Gustav recoilless rifle and both have the latest versions of Light Antiarmor Assault Weapon (LAAW). The Mark 19 40mm grenade launchers are serving well and of course, there are the M203 40mm grenade launchers carried under the barrels of some M-16s too. In Afghanistan and Iraq, I've observed that our troops are using TOW and Javelin antitank missiles as direct fire (line of sight) weapons. The antitank rockets and missiles have a lot of punch and the missiles in particular are very precise but the price tag per shot is huge too - about a $150K to a quarter million per trigger pull (they are meant to kill tanks) - so you don't get many of them. You should also have 60mm mortars(Marines), 81mm, and 120mm mortars (Marines and Army) too and they are very, very effective as long as you locate a target well and they'll clear them to be fired for you. They are all wonderful but they all have limitations. Rockets and missiles and mortar rounds are expensive and can be overkill, since anyone standing nearby not involved in the fight will be obliterated too in all likelihood. 40mm grenade launchers are really small mortars and while really good for shaking out hidden enemies in cover, the fragments are small and getting a lethal hit requires a very close hit to make them leak enough.

The .50 shoots very, very flat, penetrates any and all cover, hits exactly where you want it to and scare the blank out of the intended recipients. Because it is accurate and very steady, a good gunner can pinpoint the enemy firing positions and wipe them out without risking anyone on either side of your aiming point. Best of all, it will reach out a mile or more - far further than the missiles and rockets - and still have enough punch left to get bad guys hiding behind walls.

It's a great gun and well worth the trouble of moving them and their ammo cans around.

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