Here is a question for you folks ... what ever happened to the development of caseless ammo? This would lighten the load or allow for more ammo to be carried.
Something like used in the ficticious M41A.
I would figure that the problems of storage conditions and time would have been figured out by now.
Doesn't work. For cased rounds, the case removes most of the heat very quickly by ejecting the hot case. For caseless rounds, tremendous heat stays in the chamber, which cannot dissapate that heat fast enough for reliable long-burst full-auto use.