Comments by "geodkyt" (@geodkyt) on "History of SAW Use in the US Army" video.

  1. I don't think we should overlook the US 6mm SAW program of the late 1960s and early 1970s. That was really the final "kill shot" on the Stoner in Big Army and Big Marine Corps - "Look, the Stoner has some issues (mostly because of compromises to make it 'modular'), and we'll have this much better squad LMG, optimized for longer ranges and better penetration & terminal effects in a few years, so let's just skip the Stoner altogether." The SEALs, being willing to put up with the Stoner idiosyncrasies and limitations in exchange for having a really lightweight belt fed LMG at the small unit level, stayed with the Stoner - after all, they were paid for and in inventory, and provided a capability nothing else currently in inventory. Fast forward a few years, and logisticians point out that adopting the 6mm SAW cartridge for just the squad LMG (the plan to originally make 6x45mm SAW a "universal" cartridge having been dropped, as it was "too beaucoup" for the rifles and "too weak" for the platoon/company GPMG) is going to be a real PITA in terms of keeping troops supplied. It literally shared ammo with *nothing*, nor was there any remaining consideration towards making it a more widely used cartridge for any role other than "squad LMG". (And they weren't wrong...) So, focus shifts back to the idea of a squad LMG in the same caliber as the riflemen are using (even if it is belted), at right about the same time that NATO is getting ready to adopt a new standard rifle cartridge (which ended up being the SS109 family of 5.56x45mm), and FN (who had developed the SS109) already had the Minimi prototypes fairly well vetted (among other things, it had been tested alongside the 6mm SAW candidates, despite not being in the competition formally), ready for adoption barrelled for the new SS109.
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  2. The Stoner was an excellent tech demonstrator, but the key feature it was praised for was its weakest point - the modularity of roles and configurations. Had each member of the Stoner family been developed as separate guns (albeit with integrated design teams to share as many parts as practical without compromising in the futile search for "modularity"), it would have been a much better family of guns. The Ares and later Knight's Armament LAMG are derivations and refinements of the Stoner 63 in beltfed LMG configuration. Most of the issues that SF, the USMC, and Big Army found with the Stoner were all traceable to the modularity and "universal receiver" adding complexity, weirdness, and potentials for problems in field service (especially the longer it spent in the field between maintenance in cantonment conditions). The Minimi (M249) avoided most of these problems, and amusingly enough, its major weak spot is its attempt at "modularity" in having the alternate magazine feed setup (something Israel saw and fixed in their Negev LMG, by giving it an easily switched gas setting specifically intended to slow it down enough to feed reliably from rifle magazines). Assuming we have both guns with good supply of belted 5.56mm ammo, I'd take an M249 (even the early issue ones first fielded in the 80's) over the Stoner, because overall, it's a better gun . But I'd take a Negev with a mag well for whatever pattern the squad riflemen are using over either. And a Knight's Armament LAMG over the Negev.
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  3. Yeah, wasn't going to happen. The Army couldn't afford to change over before the war, and was already locked in by the time the war started. And then immediately after WWII, the Army was rapidly downsized to minimal occupation forces, becayse the theory was if we had to fight another war, the Air Force would just nuke the enemy, and the grunts would move in and acceot the surrender - so why spend money on new infantry weapons when we have literally millions of perfectly good ones (more than we even wanted to pay to store)?
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  4. Note that combat reports from German units on the Eastern Front equipped solely with 7.92x33mm assault rifles (and no squad MG) indicated that the overall firepower of the squad was higher with the assault rifles, compared to a squad with K98s (or even 7.92x57mm semiauto rifles) and a single MG42. That's one of the primary reasons Angry Mustache Man reversed his earlier prohibition on "wasting time and resources" on intermediate caliber assault rifles. US tests in the mid to late 1950s indicated that smaller squads with assault rifles (going back as early as tests with M2 Carbines rebarrelled to .22 bores similar to the Johnson 5.7 cartridge) and no BAR, LMG, or GPMG had more fire and better manuever capability than a full 11 man squad with full power rifles (whether M1 Garands or M14s) and 2x BARs or M60s. However, later experiences showed that having a squad LMG of some sort and every rifleman carrying an intermediate caliber selective fire rifle was even better - you got the best of both worlds, even in cases where you traded max effective ballistic range and terminal effectiveness of the "full power" GPMG for the lighter weight and ammo community with the assault rifles an intermediate caliber LMG brought.
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  5. Sort of. The M249/Minimi was always marginal with rifle magazines, especially if the magazines weren't in perfect condition. The gun cycles too fast when not lifting a belt to reliably feed from an M16 magazine, because the bolt will occasionally try to slam back into battery before the spring and follower have pushed the next round to the appropriate feeding position. It's really just an emergency feed mode. (Note, Israel saw this issue, and accounted for that when they designed their Negev a few years later. Go watch Ian's two videos on the Negev LMG.)
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  6. Most countries that did that didn't view the LMG as a "squad LMG" - they saw it as a more portable "platoon/company MMG", and thus wanted "MMG" ballistic performance out of the gun. Or they were in transition between primary rifle cartridges, and hadn't completed the changeover or yet developed an appropriate lighter caliber LMG (like the US fielding M60s at the squad level in Vietnam and up until the M249 - especially in small recon or special operations units).
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  7. The military did thoroughly evaluate the Stoner 63, multiple times. The Marines even fielded it in combat trials in a rifle battalion for an extended fielding. The Army tested it multiple times for line infantry. Both found it unsuitable for general issue for maintenance and complexity reasons. US Special Forces (who weren't dealing with 19 year old conscription PFCs - even the guys with the shortest SF skill training requirement - the weapons sergeants - were highly skilled gunsmiths and armorers, and experienced, intelligent, extremely well trained NCOs) tested the Stoner on multiple occasions, and found it unsuited for general issue, for maintainability and logistics reasons. US Navy SEALs used it becayse they faced an entirely different environment of use, highly focused on short (by comparison) duration, intense missions, where the guns would always be in basically "armorer refurbished to factory stabdards" cases, and they were willing to deal with the Stoner quirks in exchange for a lightweight 5.56x45mm belt fed LMG. I mean, they're only really alternate choices when they adopted it were the M60 (gun and ammo too heavy) or similar GPMGs, RPDs (nonstandard caliber and sourced & supported through captured enemy weapons primarily), or a BAR or other similar vintage LMG/automatic rifle. The Stoner fit a very specific niche use case that they really needed to fill, and had no real competition for that niche among Western designs. They kept using it after the war becayse they had the guns and spare parts in inventory, and had already figured out how to train around the quirks (and a guy who can do SCUBA combat insertions, small unit parachute assaults, and demolitions underwater or on land, is probably mentally flexible and detail oriented enough to handle a few gun quirks). The Ultimax is an excellent gun... if you have a reliable high capacity magazine that matches it (and preferably matches the magwell pattern and feed requirements of the standard rifle in the same squad). Unfortunately, that doesn't hold true for STANAG versions of the Ultimax, at least not until the Magpul drums were developed. At which point, the Negev with a STANAG adapter had long been available. Now, if you're willing to accept a non-stabdard magazine, the Ultimax is fantastic... but it isn't that much more of a stretch to jump to belted ammo, and buy the Knight's Armament LAMG (which shares the best feature of the Ultimax - constant recoil).
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  8. Yes, if only because the super low priority "the MG42 we have at home" program would have been able to succeed converting actual MG42 receivers to the US caliber. Basically, the US would have done what West Germany did after the war with the MG1, MG2, and MG3, and we would have basically adopted the MG3 (but "Made in America, F*** yeah!" [Insert eagle screech]) before West Germany did. Good chance we would have managed to jam it down NATO's throat, along with the US cartridge, as the standard NATO GPMG. After all, there was a large discussion within the establishments if the Western Allies (aside from France, naturally) near and at the end of WWII as to standardizing on either. 30-06 or 7.92x57mm Mauser, alliance wide. Britain was holding out hope for 7.92mm until rather late (when they switched gears towards an intermediate cartridge), as they were already using 7.92mm in Besa MGs in their tanks. The Benelux nations ended up adopting .30-06 due to their huge stocks (relative to army size) of US rifles and MGs, prior to the adoption of 7.62x51mm NATO. And pretty much everyone from 1943 until the mid 1950s was impressed by the MG42.
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  9. The M15, while adopted, was declared obsolescent and production cancelled before it was even fielded (the Army found out it didn't perform any better in the automatic rifle role than an M14 with a clip on bipod, but it was heavier and more expensive). As for fielding squad LMGs in a squad where every rifleman has an assault rifle, it's simple - the "go faster" setting on the rifle is really intended to allow it to do "SMG stuff" at close range, not "LMG stuff" at medium and long range. Even the best assault rifles are way less accurate and controllable in full auto than a 10-15 lbs LMG or dedicated automatic rifle. Even with a bipod on the rifle. As they taught us in the US Army, if thebtarget is farther than 50m away, your chance of hitting it is higher, and you will likely hit it faster, with aimed semiauto fire from a rifle. Whereas a LMG can reliably and effectively engage targets with bursts out to hundreds of meters. True LMGs are also capable of more sustained fire than a rifle (even an "automatic rifle" like a BAR, RPK, or M27 IAR), for those situations where you are suppressing an enemy from using an entire large patch of dirt by tossing rounds into it at close and unpredictable intervals.
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  10. The available data suggest that cynical commenters (like myself) were 100% correct when we opined the true reason for the USMC adopting the M27 IAR, back when they announced their decision. In 2010 or, we said it was to get the HK416 "snuck in the back door" as a rifle, because at the time the HK416 was being widely hailed as the "M4 Killer" and trainloads of paper and power Roland's worth of electors were extolling the vast superiority of the "modern" short stroke gas system (taken from WWII Russia, via the 1960s AR18) and the HK rifle over the "obsolete, Vietnam era trash" M4. After all, once it was officially adopted (for any general issue purpose) and had an NSN and wasn't designated a "special purpose unit only" weapon, they could just routinely adopt it at large. Sort of how the M16 "snuck into service" or the adoption of the Magpul PMag. Lo and behold, by 2017, the USMC announced they intended to standardize the M27 within the rifle squad and eliminate all M16s and M4s in rifle squads, retaining the lighter, handier M4 at the rifle platoon and higher, and "non-infantry" Marines. 😉
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  11. I'd rather have an MG42/59 (AKA MG3), or any other a number of modern post-Cold War 7.62x51mm GPMGs than any Ameli (even a theoretical 7.62x51mm "upgun"). The Ameli was a cool looking gun that frankly never lived up to the hype (albeit due to QC issues, mostly). MG5, Mk48, M60E6, etc.
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