Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "The Economy of the Soviet Union" video.
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@ajohnymous5699 This is Leindybeige-tier reasoning. The 1200 RPM in itself is the waste. For a defensive position? Sure, there's something to be said about high RPM when you can hunker down and have cases of ammo stacked to the ceiling of your bunker. You're not gonna hit the "same place". A mass produced weapon firing mass produced ammo will rarely be accurate enough to do it - even in modern days the US armed forces has accepted batches of ammo that got 6 MOA. The weapon and ammo's own inherent mechanical inaccuracies combined with the shifting of the weapon on its pivot is enough to stop it from hitting the same spot. Unfortunately I can't find the link anymore but there was a big fuss in the mid-2000s where the US Army accepted a batch of M855 ammo that was outside the required parameters. The more accurate your weapon is, the more you can deal with inconsistencies in the ammunition, to a degree. This is important for wartime production.
"Its the same reason birdshot is effective, you point in a general area and something is bound to hit a target or, in the case with the MG 42" - birdshot is effective because you're trying to hit a small, fast moving target or even multiple targets in a flock. A machine gun isn't meant for the same purpose.
"Precision is the job of the rifle" - Unfortunately, the average conscript can't get precision out of a rifle. Which is fine, because if you test most milsurp rifles very rarely do you find a precise one. The machine gun, however, is a greater casualty producer than riflemen and needs to be accurate enough.
"If the MG34 and MG42 were precise weapons, then they wouldn't make use of the higher ROF and would just fire in 3-5 rd. bursts like the Czech and British LMG examples I used" - That's the difference between a machine gunner and an automatic rifleman. You can use longer bursts on crew-served, belt-fed weapons over individual mag-fed automatic rifles.
"Being able to spray bullets like that is also advantageous as you don't need to worry about windage since you're hitting a general area and being off by a bit won't affect the guns performance." - but that's the problem. You have the inconsistency between every single round of ammunition, the weapon's inherent accuracy, all the factors that deflect bullets from its trajectory, the weapon's own recoil shifting the point of aim after every single firing... All those things already give you a beaten zone. If you add inaccuracy to the mix you simply stop being able to use the machine gun effectively. Inaccuracy doesn't compensate for windage, it simply creates a less dense beaten zone further away from your point of aim. If you have windage issues, your assistant gunner or a forward observer will simply call for it and you adjust before letting off a new burst.
"The idea that weapons are only good if they're precise is a Western misconception, primarily American." - I'm sorry but that has to be a joke considering that even Asian and Middle Eastern fighters exploit a machine gun's ability to engage point targets out to greater ranges than a rifle. There have been machine gun vs machine gun battles across hills in Afghanistan where the relative precision of machine guns allowed both sides to engage each other in ways rifles wouldn't allow. There are a multitude of uses for a machine gun both as a casualty producer by being able to cut down point targets running for cover at a distance, or even being used as an indirect fire weapon where the beaten zone is large enough through sheer distance, normal weapon dispersion and its recoil within the tripod.
"You are arguing from a POV likely rooted in a Western perspective on how a gun should be in order to do their job, while I'm stating facts from a historical perspective." - No man, I am arguing from the POV of machine gun doctrine itself and the requirements of a weapon that will be used to engage targets much farther away than a rifleman can.
If you have an inaccurate weapon, you can't hit shit further away. Say, if you are trying to hit man sized targets with a 6 MOA weapon at 1000 yards, you're gonna have your shots land roughly in a 60 inch circle. That's close enough for government work. A couple of bursts and statistically you're probably gonna hit. Conversely, if you use the same weapon to fire at a target 200 yards away... the shots will land in a 12 inch circle. The bullets will all land all inside a target the size of a soldier's chest. That's not the "birdshot to mow down multiple people" effect you think matters.
If you really had a weapon that acted as a combat shotgun at 200-300 yards... you wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of a barn at 1000 yards.
To describe the reality of combat and how important machine gun fire is to deal with point targets or to serve as indirect fire weapons at ranges as long as 2-3km as some kind of Western misconception makes no sense considering how effective the non-Western PK machine gun is at 1000 meters when manned by competent non-Western gunners.
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@ajohnymous5699 "automatic rifles dont come with a standard bi-pod" - Depends entirely on the model.
"Pinning enemy personnel down was also a viable tactic" - Which needs accurate fire. There's estimated distances by caliber of how close you need to hit to make people afraid and get to cover. You'd be surprised how close you need to hit.
"When you say you're "citing machinegun doctrine" that is more or less true of the modern machinegun" - the basis of machine gun doctrine is still mostly based on WWI gunnery.
"You're talking about Afghanistan and duels between machinegunners using fairly modern machineguns with smaller army groups" - Makes no difference.
"The technology was different, the combat scenarios were different, these nations lacked the experience with these weapons on a modern battlefield at this time outside of WW1 and the only things cemented in what a machinegun should do is support infantry with automatic fire" - and the way you achieve that support is by delivering more killing potential than rifles and accurate suppressive fire that actually makes people go to cover and stay there. Not with "birdshot" logic. No changes in technology or combat scenarios really make a difference on what you need to ask from a machine gun.
"If machinegun doctrine was standardized as you had implied by "knowing machinegun doctrine",you wouldn't have these fundamentally different designs working in tandem" - the US armed forces have the 240, 249 SAW and M27 IAR - USMC - working in tandem. They're not breaking machine gun doctrine by doing it so I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here.
"several hundred to a thousand for modern assault rifles in box mags" - I wanna meet the absolute madlad running with a thousand rounds on his back. A thousand rounds divided by 30 round mags is a little over 33 magazines. Even assuming half is carried in mags and another half in belts, that would be still 16 mags and 500 rounds in belts which in terms of bulk isn't even feasible. That's over TWELVE KILOS in cartridges alone, not counting actual magazines and links.
"you say that MGs are better suited than rifles at long range engagements. For the sake of people reading our exchanges and for my own sake, could you elaborate on this?" - Because MGs are crew served weapons. First of all, the weight alone makes the weapon gain less velocity from recoil so there's less of a jerk to spoil accuracy. Second, the machine gunner will mostly be using the bipod which is a much more stable firing position than the average rifleman can get from the prone or even barricade position. Third, bursts from a stable firing gun increase hit rates on point targets. Fourth, you get a better situational awareness because your assistant gunner can act as a spotter. There's a reason why assault rifles exist, the average rifleman can't score good hits at distance, so we gave them 5.56/5.45/5.8 weapons. The machine gun gets full rifle calibers because it can actually smack people at the range where rifle calibers have the energy advantage over intermediate ones.
"Because I'm sure some people may read this and think "well if thats the case, why didn't we slap sniper scopes on MGs instead of rifles?"" - Well, the Americans did. The M2 was used with scopes in Korea and Carlos Hathcock famously used one in Vietnam to score the longest sniper kill until 2002. The MG42 Laffette tripod also had an optics mount and the Austrian armed forces used a modernized MG42 in a tripod mount with a periscope. Obviously the point wasn't using the MG42 as a sniping weapon, but it reinforces the idea that long range performance is expected from machine gunners.
"Their effective ranges should be similar if theyre using the same cartridges in a ballistic sense" - in a strictly ballistic sense? A full caliber rifle should have the same ballistic range as a machine gun firing the same cartridge. The issue is that using a rifle in combat at long range is extremely difficult. Thus effective range from a rifle is hampered, especially since higher recoil negatively impacts marksmanship. You can expect killing potential out of a machine gun at ranges where riflemen have a hard time scoring hits.
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