You have some cites for this? (Adding mechanical failure and lack of trust in troops).
Do I need to? it’s common sense.
If you have a fully automatic rifle, you simply need an automatic sear to disengage the hammer when the rifle is in battery.
With a burst mechanism, you need the same sear set up, but in addition, you need additional rollers and sears to “keep track” of how many bullets are fired.
ANY extra mechanical complexity on a rifle adds to mechanical failure. Another piece to break. A three round burst mechanism is no exception.
And, anyway, what possible reason would you limit your troops to three round bursts other than not having confidence in their fire discipline? You don’t add any functionality with a three round burst mechanism to a rifle - you only restrict what they can do. (Go all out and waste their ammo.) So you’re trying to compensate for lack of fire discipline with mechanical limitations.
Err… 5.56 has a powerful kick???
I have no problem shooting a short burst from any full auto I’ve tried, and I don’t even have much practice at it. I don’t have trouble holding full auto fire from an m-16 on target (at CQB distances) either, although I realize its not good tactics - in most situations.
I think you need to get some exercise…
That’s what a safety is for.
A question -
I was looking at the pictures of Marines in Aphganistan, and I noticed two things -
-
Those body-armor/web-gear combos they’re wearing look very nice; It’s about time U.S. troops got some decent gear. But what’s with the square canteen?
-
More to the point: I noticed that some troops were carrying FN-MAGs. I had thought that the U.S. military had moved to 5.56 macine guns a long time ago. What gives?
Note: I have no problem with the MAG; it’s an excellent weapon. It’s just that it’s getting a little long in the tooth, and it’s always been pretty heavey - especially now, when their are much lighter alternatives. I can understand why it would be a vehicle-mounted weapon, but why are those guys lugging them around?
What is a SAW? How does it differ from, say, an M-60 or .50 caliber machine gun? Don’t know if I’ve ever seen one.
Easier to ship?
**
Er, we use different machine guns for different purposes. For platoon level fire support, we’ve used the m60. For squad level support, the m249 (minime).
Anyway, after 40 years of toying with the m60, we pretty much gave up on it, and are phasing it out in place of the FN-MAG (M240G).
**
There’s still use on the battlefield for high power, long range, high penetration weapons… just not at the squad level so much.
“SAW” is a generic term for “Squad Automatic Weapon”… it mostly means “light machine gun”, and is a generic term.
However, in the US military, when you say “SAW”, you’re typically refering to a specific machine gun - in this case, the FN Minimi, or m249, which is a 5.56x45 weapon.