Perhaps some 0300s will comment, but that doesn’t seem like a very robust magazine capacity for a squad weapon.
This doesn’t sound good to me. In fact, this “new” weapon doesn’t sound much better than the full auto M16A1s we used 30 years ago. With a couple of taped-together banana clips we could dish out 50+ 5.56mm rounds very quickly. I remember some nighttime, end-of-exercise “get-rid-of-your-ammo” shoots where the barrel of my rifle actually turned orange.
I’m not sure I get the point of this switch.
Guys thought that it was pretty rad in that it could spray bullets really fast and Lance Corporals acted like they were hot stuff because their rank filled the role of Squad Automatic Rifleman.
Later on, they were happy to make Corporal because they could give the thing to some new Lance Corporal who wanted to be hot stuff.
They jammed a lot. You'd clear it, the SAW would rip off a few dozens rounds, then misfeed again. They made the M60E3 look reliable, and that's saying something. I don't think I ever saw the magazine feed slot work for more than three or four rounds with an M16A2's magazine locked in.
You also sounded like a giant Maraca when you moved around when the high capacity pouch was mounted and loaded with a full belt. Shooga-shooga-shooga... every step you took. Like marbles in a wooden box.
Range shooting out past 550 meters, you felt like you were shooting Styrofoam pellets. With a 7.62 M60E3 or larger, you knew where your rounds were impacting way downrange. With the SAW, sometimes it felt like your rounds were just disappearing in flight somewhere downrange.
When I think of the SAW, I regard it as the gun that looked a hell of a lot cooler than it actually was.