Comments for Lightweight .50-Caliber: Lethality at half the weight

Lightweight .50-Caliber: Lethality at half the weight

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:30:08 -0600

Oct 02, 2008 BY Debi Dawson, Special to the Castle. FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Army News Service, Oct. 2, 2008) -- As Soldiers training for combat look to lighten their load, they can look forward to the Lightweight .50-Caliber Machine Gun. The LW50, an addition to the Army's arsenal of machine guns at one-half the weight of the M2 .50-Caliber Machine Gun and with 60 percent less recoil, does not require the setting of headspace and timing. The LW50 provides Soldiers with the punch of a .50-caliber machine gun in the footprint of a 7.62mm weapon system, allowing them to bring .50 caliber lethality to the fight in situations where using a light to medium machine gun is the only available option.

Comment from Cannonshop on 2008-10-09

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:58:12 -0600

The barrel CAN be .50 across the grooves, I've seen some custom-works that cut that much meat off. It's the size of the reciever assembly and the suppressor that makes it look too small, along with what appears to be a very "lightweight" barrel contour probably achieved by using expensive, low-bulk alloys. The contour being that thin is kinda disturbing nonetheless-I just sit here imagining a lot of barrel whip with each shot, and there's not a lot of sinking or radiator surface to prevent heat-warping on the barrel in the picture. I suppose a very high Ti-Moly-Manganese blend in the steel might account for it, but... the chemistry would have to be VERY controlled at the point the steel stock is rolled, the hammer-forging processes would have to be very well controlled as well, just to get comparable levels of consistency to the old M-2 HB units.

Exotic and Expensive, in other words. You're not going to get decent performance out of 4350 cut that way, nor 4150 Stainless. Even pre-stressed with the right hammer-forging, you're not looking at a barrel in the pic that's going to last very long in use, and it's going to cost out the ass.

Comment from Grimmy on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:22:00 -0600

Don't yuz guyz know nothing?
That gun obviously has a trans dimensional transference gizmo that displaces the mass of the bullet into someone else's universe while it travels down the barrel.

You'd think yuz never watched SciFi or sommat.

Comment from jsallison on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:48:12 -0600

I've got it! The dude just shot the barrel downrange and that thing sticking out the front is the gas piston, right?

Comment from jsallison on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:45:31 -0600

Kind of looks like an M240 on a bad hair day, sorta.

Comment from jsallison on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:40:55 -0600

I absolutely do not believe that the barrel in the pic is for a .50 cal. 7.62, maybe. Looks like you could almost stick that barrel inside a real .50 barrel.

Comment from Stretch on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:14:37 -0600

But ... But. ..But ... it's not a Browning! Thank Heaven (and face Ogdon) that the Army has ordered 30,000 more M-2s. I like to think my nephew (and his grandchildren) will be using M-2s well into the 22nd Century. Now off to clean my 1911s, Woodsman, M-1894, M-1895 and Auto-5.

Comment from Murdoc on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:14:56 -0600

FWIW, the Army just announced that it was going to buy nearly 30,000 more M2s. It isn't going anywhere.

Comment from Grimmy on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:44:46 -0600

Heartless Libertarian:

First, just making sure.. but I'm not Grim. Grim is Grim Beorn of Grim's Hall.
I'm Grimmy. We're easy to tell apart. Grim is all educated and poeticy. I'm usually foul mouthed and knuckly draggy.

Second:
Yeah, the Army and the Marines are a bit different in TO&E at the infantry level. I think I remember marching past a truck, once.

Comment from Heartless Libertarian on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:37:54 -0600

Good piont Grim. As a (former) Brad/Stryker guy, I always forget about the weapons/AT company in a light battalion. Although, in the Army, they're usually mounted on HMMWVs, IIRC.

Comment from Grimmy on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:39:30 -0600

Speaking as a former grunt that served back when the USMC was training heavy in the maneuver war methods (long humps of several day duration with everything we were going to us carried on our backs), I think this weapon as described is do-able.

Take away the tripod and T%E weight from the 65 lbs listed, and it's not significantly heavier than the Dragon tube or the old M29 base plate or tube. As for ammo weight, such a weapon system would be a battalion level asset as part of the weapons company. The gun would have a team and the team would be configured to include the necessary men to carry sufficient ammo. The ammo carriers would also serve as gun security and replacement crew in the event of casualties.

Also, in gun teams, trading off the load during humps is part of the process, so no one man would be saddled with the heaviest elements of the system for the entire duration.

This isn't something that would be put down into the rifle squads of a line company. So there's not much to the argument that having to hump the heavier rounds would displace rounds carried for the rifleman's use.

This would be something at battalion level, part of a weapons company. And weapons company is all about carrying heavy a**ed support weapons. I did it for years. In mountain training, jungle training, desert training, urban training and even, on occasion, in training in terrain that didn't totally suck. But I suspect that last bit was due to some training officer not reading the map properly.

Comment from Cannonshop on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:22:14 -0600

It looks... fragile.
REALLY fragile.
Anyone else ever had to stick washers under the buffer of a sixty because the reciever had stretched? this looks like it's going to have THAT problem with use.

and the whippy barrel's kind of a head-scratcher too. The whole point of the HB on the M2HB is that it doesn't deform as much when you fire, so your shots will scatter less with use, and it can dump more heat without warping.

I see a stack of disadvantages here-and could someone tell me if the weight issues on an armored Humvee really require that you shave off fifty pounds somewhere? Or on, say, an MBT? It might be okay as a door-gunner's weapon on a medium Utility helicopter (weight actually IS an issue on a chopper, right?) but just looking at the picture I see a bunch of complicated bits that can fail through normal use-and-abuse.

Comment from XBradTC on 2008-10-08

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:14:24 -0600

If we're just gonna mount it on a Humvee, why replace the M2? Even if we're talking mounting on a tripod in a perimeter, why bother replacing the gun that we know works?

Comment from GunTrash on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:34:50 -0600

High tech stuff, but am I the only one that thinks that flash suppressor is old school. As in Lee-Enfield No. 5 Jungle Carbine from WWII? :-)

Comment from Rivrdog on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:10:58 -0600

I wonder why putting a 3-round burst option on a Barrett M82, and reconfiguring the receiver for linked-belt ops, wouldn't have saved the Army a ton o'cash? The Barrett looks like it could handle some upgrade in firing rate.

Comment from BillT on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:38:48 -0600

I can see an aircraft application for it, but my hunch is it'll still be limited due to recoil. The airflow would help cool off that dinky little barrel, though...

Comment from Heartless Libertarian on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:49:24 -0600

In a COIN fight in an Iraq-type environment, most likely the vehicles - HMMWVs, MRAPs, or their successors - would most likely be carrying the ammo.

In a place like Afghanistan, where the terrain forces a large number of dismounted ops, I see this weapon being a lot less useful, for the reasons noted - weight of the ammo - as well as the fact that, since it can only be fired from a tripod, it's not as useful in a running gun fight as a weapon like the M240 or M249 that can be fired from a bipod as well as a tripod.

In a conventional fight, where you can set up your MGs on the SBF when attacking, or dug in in the defense, this gun would be great, although the ammo issue would lessen the utility in the offensive role.

And I thought they were making stuff up talking about the Mk211 AP-HE-I round on Sarah Connor Chronicles last night.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:58:02 -0600

I'll send along your observations to PEO-Soldier and see what we get for a response.

Comment from XBradTC on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:42:37 -0600

I second the concerns about the durability of the weapon, the thin looking barrel, and of course, the weight of the weapon.

I know that there's a quick change barrel program out there for the M2, which would solve a lot of issues with the M2 (though setting headspace is easier than adjusting timing).

Comment from Blake Kirk on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:54:33 -0600

The article doesn't explain how the light units are going to carry the ammo to feed the lightweight .50 cal. The same ammo can that holds 860 rounds of 5.56mm ball will hold precisely 100 rounds of .50 cal MG 4+1. When I was a tanker, we didn't really worry about the ammo weight because the tank was desgned for all that. But in the light infantry, I've seen missions where every man in a rifle company, the Old Man and Top included, moved out carrying at least one extra belt of 7.62mm 4+1 and at least one mortar round, in addition to what they were humping for personal use.

Our guys who have their boots in the mud are carrying way, WAY too much load as it is. It is not helping things to come up with systems that will encourage commanders to add yet more weight to the load.

Comment from JamesLee on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:04:15 -0600

Used to work with the 50s on my ship, and I had the luxury of the "soft mounts," which made them very nice for firing. And since I'm a bit a of a small guy, I always had trouble carrying one unless the barrel was out.

This one looks nice, my only question is the barrel itself. The M2 barrel would get very hot very quickly, and this barrel looks very thin. Some sort of alloy, stand up to the heat better?

Comment from Pogue on 2008-10-07

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:40:33 -0600

As much as it pains me to say it, the M-2 is an old school machinegun and requires a different kind of care and feeding than the newer systems. A lighter weight system, particularly if it is of simpler design is a welcome improvement, but I have serious concerns about the durability of a system that is half the weight of the Ma Deuce. I'd also like to see the Mk19 get this kind of treatment - even though it's not nearing its 100th birthday like Mr Brownings design, the lube requirements are pretty finicky - LSA/LAW (the old military weapons lubricants - not widly in use anymore) are a lot harder to find now compared to back in the day...