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The only weapon we still have that shoots the .308 is the M240, which is one of the best weapons we have ever issued.

That will come as a great surprise to Army, Navy and Marine snipers, all of whom use 7,62mm boltguns and semiautos of slightly different specs, but all chambered for the 7,62 NATO cartridge.

There are also still quite a few M60Ds still in use as helicopter doorguns, preferred for that role by some though not me. And my local National Guard infantry unit still carries the M60; last time they went to the field their armorer came a-scrounging my way to see if I had a couple of extra combination tool wrenches and cleaning rod handles he could borrow or trade from me. I fixed him up.

Sorry, should have said standard infantry weapon. Yeah, we have sniper rifles, and they have, as I mentioned, issue a bunch of issue-grade M14s to the Stryker units, and will probably continue to do so.

I am very surprized than an NG infantry unit still has M60s. All the units in MA and NY have M240s. We borrowed a bunch of them to plus up when we went over back in mid-2002 so they had 'em then, too.

I don't know that there is a door gun retrofit of the M240 yet. The 82nd was flying UH-60As with steam gages and M60Ds in Afghanistan, but they were trying to put max blade time on them from about 11/02 because they had the word they were getting new helicopters on RTB, which would have been circa May 03. The medevac chopper from the CA guard was a UH60Q with FLIR and all that but was (as far as I could see in patient mode) unarmed.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F