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From: bxr307@csc1.anu.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Secondary Armament
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.020633.1450@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 20 Jun 91 02:06:33 GMT
References: <1991Jun14.080001.19997@amd.com>, <1991Jun19.011717.13143@cbnews.cb.att.com>
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From: bxr307@csc1.anu.edu.au
In article <1991Jun19.011717.13143@cbnews.cb.att.com>, ab3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Allan Bourdius) writes:
> 
> The loader's and coaxial MG's on the M1 series are M240 7.62mm of
> Belgian design and manufacture.  (They are pretty much scaled up
> versions of the M249 SAW)  

	Err, methinks you have that the other way around.  The US M240 is
in fact the FN-MAG58 GPMG.  It was adopted after the M60e3 was proven to
be such a dog.  In trials the US Army found that the FN-MAG58 was _so_
reliable that the only way they could get a stoppage was to pour sand into
it, whereas the M60 suffered a meantime between stoppages of only some
5-7,000 rounds.  They also found the M60 tended to fall to pieces after about
70-100,000 rounds whereas the FN-MAG58 only had some cracking evident in
the reciever.
	The M249 is a slightly modified version of the FN-Minimi LMG and that is
in turn basically a scaled down FN-MAG58.


-- 
Brian Ross
	"If we got it so wrong in the Middle East yesterday, what makes
you think we are going to get it right this time?"
	Arthur Schlesinger