[Bahamut]

Not the M16, but the IAR (Infantry Automatic Rifle) - that gun has a tight spread for an automatic rifle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M27_Infantry_Automatic_Rifle .

I got to use it as my fire team's machine gunner before getting discharged in what was an unwinnable bureaucracy loop. It was a near total win over the SAW - not only was it more accurate & lighter, but it didn't breakdown anywhere near as much. The interesting shift though is that it sounds like every Marine is going to get an IAR, and not just the machine gunner for a fire team. This could have some ramifications on infantry tactics, since the machine gunner in a traditional fire team (i.e. fulfilling the suppressing firepower role) could switch depending on the scenario and yield some formidable advantages.

[woodman]

It sounds like you never got to use the original SAW barrel. We got issued those stubby paratrooper barrels while in Iraq, which are nice for maneuverability, but it was at the cost of accuracy. The M249 was always a piece of junk when it came to reliability, which is why weapons guys are there with 240s.

So long as the tempo is kept up for flanking maneuvers, and everybody doesn't try to establish a fixing base of fire simultaneously, it sounds like a warrant officer had a really good idea in returning to something resembling the WWII pacific loadout (minus the flamethrowers).

[dingaling]

The irony is that the Minimi ( M249 ) was originally developed by FN as a Baby MAG ( M240 ) to bring GPMG firepower to the squad. It was originally chambered in 7.62x51

It was rechambered in 6x45 and then 5.56x45 for the US SAW competition. It never seemed to adapt well to the smaller rounds, less power for the mechanism.

[woodman]

I think you're right about the lack of power being the biggest contributor to the problems we had - which remained even after they tried to reduce the feature set (emergency magazine-well, user selectable gas tube aperture).

I think it was a poor idea in the first place to push a beltfed machinegun down to the fireteam level. People generally have a misconception about what machineguns are for - while volume of fire certainly figures into effective suppression, accuracy is more important. An effectively employed machinegun should be treated like some kind of sniper shotgun, where you can put 50% of your shots into a vehicle sized target a mile away. You aren't going to be doing that while playing the I'm-up-he-sees-me-I'm-down game.

[dsfyu404ed]

Traditionally giving the individual soldier a giggle switch (aka full auto) has been a wash offensively but a great asset in defensive situations at the expense of burning through a lot more ammo (better to have spent brass than dead bodies though so it's worth it). I don't see what's changed in the last ~70yr that would change that.