I want one!
Posted on 10/04/2008 7:44:47 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Alliant Techsystems, an aerospace and defense firm commonly known as ATK, will team up with FN Manufacturing LLC on a $54.5 million contract from the U.S. Army to produce Mk19 Mod-3 grenade machine guns.
Minneapolis-based ATK (NYSE: ATK) will perform barrel manufacture, gun assembly and test operations at the Mesa ordnance facility it acquired from Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) six years ago. FN Manufacturing will provide gun sub-assemblies.
The Mk19 will be the first crew-served weapon produced by ATK, which currently manufactures 25mm through 40mm variants of its Bushmaster cannons that serve as the primary guns on Bradley fighting vehicles and the Apache attack helicopter manufactured by Boeing in Mesa. ATK sells the cannons in more than 30 countries.
FN Manufacturing is a subsidiary of FN Herstal and part of the Herstal Group of Belgium, which also includes U.S. firearms firms Browning and Winchester. FN specializes in small arms for the U.S, military and small-arms markets.
ATK employs more than 17,000 people across 21 states, and last year reported more than $4.6 billion in revenue.
I want one!
Bet it`d impress the heck out of any evil
doers downrange from that bad boy.
That weapons gotta be a real task to haul
around not to mention the ammo guys loads
and tripod
Baddest thing I ever fired was a quad 50 and that
thing scared the ***t outta me
Not to mention these things draw fire
Your right they do draw fire and for some reason the Army still does not buy gun shields for anything. It took a long time to even get them for mechanized stuff.
I can understand drawing fire, especially if I were tasked to take a flanking position.
Makes you kind of wonder if this could be remotely operated or worked unmanned.
It is heavy and piss poor on mobility, unless it i vehicle mounted. The MK19 is not a stand alone weapon but it does wonders a a force enhancer. BTW, it will only draw fire from those you missed.
It would be vehicle mounted on the offense, and tripod mounted for base defense. Infantry are not generally going to try humping those on foot for any distance.
However, after running an MP platoon through my makeshift demolitions range in Kuwait, they repaid me by letting me rock-n-roll on one of their MK19's with the 'live stuff' on one of their ranges. Holy sheep dip Batman . . . that was fun!
We turned old Iraqi tanks into smoldering hunks of swiss cheese with MK19's and M2's. Ahhhhhh . . . the good old days.
Thats something I never understood either,a shield,even
a small one for these crewed weapons seems like common
sense.
You`re so exposed operating them unless its a very well
planned position
I know the cav units had shields for the M-2 and M-60 on their M-113s in Vietnam. It was long ago, so my memory may be off. I think they were made in-country.
>Your right they do draw fire and for some reason the Army still does not buy gun shields for anything.<
The people who authorized their use have never been behind one in a combat situation. They can’t imagine why on earth it would draw fire from enemy forces.
I like to have killed myself hitting my head on the ceiling in one of those things standing up too quick,I do
think I remember some with the 60s with shields.And some on
the 2 1/2 ton gunships escorting convoys,in-country mfg,bet
your right
were you surprised to find out those APCs were made
of aluminum,I know I was.Unpleasntly surprised
I wasn't too concerned about the whole aluminum thing until I found out that the M-113 APCs could MELT.
Then you need to chat with *these folks.*
They're moving into a larger shop facility, and the price for one of their civilian-legal Mk19s ain't cheap. But if you're serious, they CAN be had.
Yeah, I've got sources on ammo, too.... But I tend more toward jeep mounts than a ground mount.
As a tank gunner at Ft Knox in the late 1960s, I was once tasked with putting on an impressive display of tracers bouncing off the side of one of the earlier M59 [steel armor, but no better protection] personnel carriers as part of a firepower display for visiting West Point cadets. Trouble was, the .30 Browning we used as a co-ax machinegun just chewed right through the side...and right out the other side.
We finally got the job done, by digging a ditch with a dozer-blade equipped tank, then dropping the far-side track of the target vehicle into the ditch, which slanted its *armor* at about a 45º angle. That, plus a loading of all-tracer instead of the usual mix of 1 tracer and 5 rounds of ball, let us bounce tracers away into the dusk, about 3000 of them, in cheery little 30-round bursts.
The idea was for the impressive display of what a tank could do- that was their intro- was to tip the scales for some of them to pick Armor as their commissioning branch. The close of the demo was a shoot by a 5-tank platoon, *just like the ones they'd get to be leading as a newly minted *butterbar* armor Second Lieutenant.
We got to talk to them after the shootemup, and most of them weren't all that impressed. But after showing them all the effort it had taken for us to keep from sawing our targets in half, they seemed a whole lot less interested in becoming Mech Infantry platoon leaders. Yeah, we got a couple of good ones out of the deal....
Part of the idea behind the aluminum armor of the M113 series was to allow it to float, the US Army not having any vehicle in its inventory that was amphibious since the WWII DUKW amphib 2½-ton truck was phased out of the system [[and we STILL don't have one!] The sacrifice in protection that resulted was made clear to me when one of our M577 *highboy* command post vehicles in the field suffered a hole through its side when an overenthusiastic crewman was chopping down surrounding trees with an axe for concealment. The gash was about as long as the axe blade was wide, and on the outside, about a half-inch in width. Inside it was only an eighth of an inch or so, though inside the darkened interior it as cheerfully let light stream in as it would have let in water had they tried to swim the thing.
Neither was I real thrilled about the gas tank arrangement in the M113, a plastic bag *bladder* full of gasoline behind the driver inside the aluminum *armor* wall of the vehicle. The old M113 *Bucket* personnel carriers left a lot to be desired....
Indeed. The first ones were made locally, later ones built back in the states and Korea once their usefulness was proven.
At first, the tracks belonging to the cavs that had the gun shields and other useful additions were known as A-Cav tracks to differentiate them from our *slick* Infantry and Combat Engineer haulers. Later the gun shields started turning up on all sorts of things, including convoy trucks and MP vehicles.
Official version of what an M113 was supposed to look like:
ACAV M113 with gun shields and extra M60 MGs fitted in back, 1966
Instant gun truck!
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