Army, Marines rate weapon success (M16A2/A4; M4; M9)

Stars and Stripes, European Edition ^ | Sunday, July 13, 2003 | Mark Oliva

[The KG9 Kid]

Seems to me that if the info on your link is correct, the only real difference between an M60E3 and a Mk43 is the feed tray cover and ammo can plate.

That Mk43 is an M60E3 with a shorty barrel and an open vortex flash hider (salad fork), a steel feed tray cover with a MILSTD 1913 rail, and what looks like a new can hanger. However, they report that they went back to the M60E3 gas port and birdcage flash hider, so now it's more M60E3 than Mk43.

That thing almost certainly began life as an Echo 3. That must have been a PIP 'upgrade'. After reviewing what you linked to, I stand firmly behind what I wrote originally. ;]

It is undoubtably still a huge piece of poop: The trigger group flex plate fastener is still easily knocked off eitherdropping the entire trigger housing group into the bush on night patrol or causing a 'runaway gun' in a firing position, heats barrels to cigarette cherry red after 100 rounds rapid fire, slamming the feed tray cover down when the bolt is already forward bends or breaks the delicate roll pins and springs which will seize up the cam path action permanently, the plastic buffer housing group is probably still crack-prone, and I'm sure that the Mk43 is still the sideways-ejecting link-jamming POS the M60 series always has been.

I am familiar with the M60. They are doody.

The M240 is a real GPMG designed around the famous Browning action that served us impeccably in WWI and WWII.

[tracer]

H & K bump....

[logic]

The Miller case was complete B.S. in the first place. It was shortly after WWI where the sawed off shotgun was about the favorite weapon in those trenches. The case was remanded to the lower court to convict the man who was already dead. The part about no military purpose was because he was already dead so he didn't show up to counter the prosecutors claim that a 'shotgun with a barrel length of less than 18 inches' had no military purpose. If even his lawyer had shown up it could only have ended 180 from what we have today.

P.S. I carry a 1911 clone. even in the sloppy military style tolerances I can group about 3" at 50ft. More than accurate enough to stop an assailant at 10-15 feet. Any further away than that and it's not self defence anymore, it's murder. (that's what rifles are for.....)

[Britton J Wingfield]

Funny, 2 weeks ago I let a friend fire my bushmaster for the first time. He'd never fired an AR type rifle before.

He fired a couple of shots, then turned around with a perplexed look on his face and yelled "it sounds all springy!"

[harpseal]

The US Navy at one time had a 6mm rifle as stadard issue instead of the Krag. It was a straight pull but they gave it up to go with the .30-o6 round. It was an excellent round with an excellent rifle. I believe it was the L:ee Metord but I could be wrong.

[tortoise]

62 gr. is too fast and simply punches holes. 55 gr would be even faster, but is more lethal because it's unstable and tumbles on striking the target (because it's lighter?). 77 gr is slower and gives greater knockdown.

Oy. That is a lot of urban legend and misunderstanding to fit into one sentence.

Without really addressing all the issues, the lethality of very high velocity bullets is from explosive fragmentation, which is generally triggered when the jacket is breached e.g. from yawing and tumbling in a target. All bullets will tumble when they hit a person, even the .50, but only certain ones have enough rotational potential energy to explosively fragment. For cartridges capable of explosive fragmentation (a function of caliber and velocity mostly), lighter bullets will be more lethal and heavier bullets will be less lethal. All a 77gr .223 will get you is better long range accuracy and performance at the expense of lethality at 200m or less. It should be pointed out that explosive fragmentation is a pretty large lethality multiplier, which is why .223 is remarkably lethal at less than 200m compared to most .30 cartridges (c.f. DC sniper). To get the same short-range terminal profile in a .30, you'd need something approximation a .300WM.

And there is effectively no such thing as "knockdown power" in a bullet. I think Sir Isaac Newton established that a few centuries ago.

[Darksheare]

The only thing I liked the 60 for was breaking rocks at the target range, which it did well.
Quite well.
The rocks that always sat behind the targets where my unit qualified with the 60 were slaughtered by the 60.
'Course, the 60 was good against light armored targets.. when it wasn't jamming.
Or misfiring.
Or having the feedtray go bizzak and jam up.
Or the advance crudding up and jamming.....

[Darksheare]

He was commenting on the 'boink' sound in the stock?
I was always told I was 'hearing things' or 'crazy'..
*chuckle*
'Course, I was in an artillery unit after all.
One's hearing deteriorates rather quickly in that kind of evironment even with earplugs.

[harpseal]

In RVN the stoner was carried more often than even the chopped M60 but both were often used.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Yeah, he was hearing the buffer mechanism. I don't ever hear it myself, but more than a few people tell me they can hear it.

[The KG9 Kid]

"... Too damn heavy. SEALs traditionally "chopped" their M-60s down to a 15 pound package, with total reliabity."

You were a SEAL, I was a Marine 0331.

SEALs want to carry around light arms and support MGs in the jungle for three days, Marines want a rugged GPMG that sits solid as a rock using a sturdy tripod up on the high ground near the ammo cases with a range card.

These two roles cannot be solved with one GPMG, and the M60 was finally found unsuitable for USMC issue. Only took 30 years to figure it out. If the SEALs still like them, well, they're friggin' crazy. :-D

If it were up to me, the basic Marine GPMG would run 1200 rounds per minute. Water-cooled when deployed in a fixed position, and air-cooled when mobile. Add a sturdy 3x scope to it, and remove all tracer ammo. Now *that* is a machinegun.

[The KG9 Kid]

That AR-15 'Boom-Schwing!' drives me crazy.

[The KG9 Kid]

I always wonder how things might have been with the Stoner system. Four guns in one. Learn one, you learned them all.

Sadly, the Army ruined that one for us. The Marines wanted the Stoner badly.

[Darksheare]

I've had some people who did hear it tell me that after awhile they didn't notice it.
I never did get used to hearing my weapon go 'boink' when I fired it.
Kinda made me chuckle once in awhile.
It's supposed to be serious business, and the weapon is supposed to be intimidating, but you're firing at the targets with a weapon that goes 'boink'...
So the thought running through my head was always, "I'm supposed to kill the enemy, not be 'boinking' them to death."
Then my dear sister intrudes over my shoulder and half-jokingly says "Clinton would be 'boinking' someone to death.."

Pardon me while I go make my dear sister's life 'interesting'... the same way she's made life interesting for me..

[Travis McGee]

MP5SD's are very underpowered, since they use a ported barrel to drop standard grain bullets subsonic. Mostly they are great for dogs and streetlights. Against people, they are iffy.

There are 10mm versions the feds use (MP-5/10) that have special subsonic heavy bullets, fired through an external can suppressor.

[Travis McGee]

Not all troops get trucks and cargo boxes that follow them around with a total loadout! (Can you imagine that??)

[Travis McGee]

LOL! Love your 1911 comments!

[mbynack]

You are mad. The 7.62x39 is ballistically inferior to the 5.56x45 just about anyway you slice it, but particularly at longer ranges. The AK-47 has a shorter effective range than the M16. Bullet diameter doesn't tell you much about the ballistic performance. The 7.62mm bullet is actually an inferior selection for the .308 case; you'd be better off with 6.5mm +/- 0.5mm.

The ballistic performance of a round isn't a good indicator of how well it works against an animal. Just because a round doesn't drop as much at a given range doesn't make it superior. If it did, grizzly hunters would be using the 223. The point that I was trying to make was that the 7.62 retains more energy because the bullet is heavier.

[Travis McGee]

Eugene Stoner was one heck of a firearm designer!

[Travis McGee]

If you were a SEAL, I was a Marine 0331.

Great to meet a Marine 0331, whatever that is.

BUD/S class 105, 1979. Creds by freepmail if you would like, then you can tell me about recon school.