"US Army Builds New Lightweight .50-Cal Machine Gun" Topic

"The Army is creating a new, lightweight version of its iconic .50-cal machine gun designed to better enable Soldiers to destroy enemies, protect convoys, mount weapons on vehicles, attack targets on the move and transport between missions.
The new weapon, engineered to be 20-to-30 percent lighter than the existing M2, will be made of durable, but lighter weight titanium, Army officials said.
The emerging lightweight .50-cal, described as still in its infancy stage, still needs to be built, riveted and tested.
The parts for the titanium prototypes will be built at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. and then go to Anniston Army Depot, Ala., for riveting and further construction…"

Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

A US Army M60 gunner had a basic load of weapon and 500 rounds.

I pity the poor SOB that has to carry this "new, lighter weapon" AND 500 rounds of 50 cal ammo….cuz they ain't gonna be able to make the bullets any lighter!

The photo shows a M240 MG being fed by a 7.62mm belt with spent 7.62 brass lying on the ground. To Murphy's point look at the relative size of the 7.62 to 50 cal ammo:

[URL=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/fatcat/media/P1170083.jpg.html]

firing from a bipod is somewhat missing the point of a .50 cal in the first place. This is silly.

A 30% weight decrease of an 80lb weapon (w/o tirpod) is still nearly 59lbs – I hated humping the M-60 at just over 23lbs

Not 'man portable' in IMHO

Glanced over the article. It says that the new .50 will be 60 lbs. So they are not looking to make a weapon like the picture in this post shows. That is the first picture in the article but it is a .30 caliber gun. There is nothing wrong with this post. It is just a tendency of news articles to have pictures that have nothing to do with the story. Also it would be difficult for there to be a picture of a new gun, the story states that Army has not yet built the prototype. They are getting ready to put one together for testing.

Given the non-military nature of most journalists today, we're lucky they got US troops at all. Of course, it's an article about the US Army and their pictures show Marines and Navy, but I guess that level of detail is too much to ask.

On the gun itself, lighter is better for infantry, but the M2 is a powerful enough weapon that it made our 12.5-ton M113A3 rock back and forth when fired from the cupola. Making it a third lighter will make the recoil far more pronounced, even if mounted on the 45-pound tripod, which in turn makes it even less accurate for sustained fire. Those 3-to-5 rounds bursts will be even more wildly off-target.

So I guess the question in my mind is this: even at 60 pounds, you have a heavy weapon that is too heavy for most light infantry, so it will likely be mounted on vehicles. Is it worth reducing the weapon's accuracy and effectiveness for those rare occasions when light infantry will be humping it through the bush, when they already have the M240? I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

My guess the titanium will drive up the cost of the weapon, so the manufacturers will make more money selling a weapon of dubious extra value to the grunt. This is the nature of arms manufacturers from the day they started producing arms.

What is wrong with John Browning's design?

They tried this before and to get it to work, they had to reduce the firing rate. Troops hated it and it proceed no further.