In 1970s America the weapons that served well in Korea were suddenly believed obsolete because of the Vietnam war loss. As a result of this what did we do wrong panic, one thing that was thought is that the 5.56 M16 and the 7.62 M60 did not complement each other well, and that it was too logistically flawed to have two different cartridges at squad level. This was wrong, but not the topic of this thread.
In comes the SAW (squad automatic weapon) competition! This was a solely American competition in the 70s to produce a unitary cartridge that would replace both the 5.56 and the 7.62 with a single cartridge. After a grueling testing process, the bullet agreed on was the 6x45mm, which was slightly higher in energy than 5.56 at 2kJ instead of 1.8kJ, but had a much higher momentum which let it fly longer and be effective at similar ranges to a 7.62.
Pic 1 - Brunswick (leeeaaffff) Pic 2 - Ford Aerospace XM234 Pic 3 - Ford Aerospace XM248 Pic 4 - Rodman labs Pic 5 - Maremont There were others, but those are the main.
I am actually more interested in this. Why did they not adopt it?
Chase Rogers
5.56 M855 promised to do the same thing for less weight and money. Of course it lied, but at the time anything looked possible, even a revolver that held 120 bullets.
6x45 was essentially a slightly weaker 6.5mm grendel, which is literally what we're looking at now as the best thing ever.
Figures. I wonder how many of the 6mm intermediates they will ignore before settling on .280? :^) I probably also need to webm that scene from that movie were the man runs screaming past with a flare in his ass
Luke Cooper
...
Liam Diaz
EM-2 and .280 should've not been shafted just to appease the mutts.
Dylan Brooks
Come back when it could shoot not 20MOA.
Parker Jackson
So, we'll see you back in 1951?
Julian Hall
I didn't last 1 min into the vid
Elijah Hernandez
Its a 7mm 30-30 with a spitzer bullet. It doesn't have the range of a .308 and is too heavy & bulky to be used as an intermediate cartridge. We should've gone with .270 Winchester the 7mm-08 you bongs purposed when we rejected the .280.
Back to the topic at hand, is there any advantage to belt fed over magazine fed for a saw? You could just use the magazine change as a pause in a burst anyway. And with the proliferation of reliable 50-60 round stick magazines. Going belt fed just adds weight and cost and someone may want to have a magazine feed option shoehorned in anyway.
Not really, only the meme .280/30 round that came later, and even then, that still only had the same rim diameter as 8mm Kurz.
Jacob Moore
no Instead of 30-60 rounds on tap you have between 100 to "how ever many belts you want to link together". And have to 1. be completely useless while you reload every 30 seconds and 2. reacquire your target each time Like the M249s mag fed option, which from what I've heard works as well as tits on a fly.
Charles Kelly
This, the EM2 was much more accurate than that. It could even manage 14 MOA according to the official test documentation. It was also going to be cheap to manufacture as it was impossible to mass produce and therefore cost nothing.
Brayden Cook
Interdynamics claim the MKR could accept a 200 round magazine:
Not having to do that is part of what made Bren gun teams so fast.
Ryder Adams
Defensive use, while you are limited to 50 - 100 round belts to keep it light while advancing when in a static defensive position it's common to have 400 or even 600 rounds linked and ready to rock. The advantage this offers is if you have multiple targets popping up all over your fire sector and can suppress them all long enough for your assistant to prep plenty of ammo and for arty / air to be called. The worst thing that can possibly happen to an assault is it gets stopped before it gets started and having a fuckton of SAW trigger time off the bat helps make that happen.
Mark my words if the US ditches belt feed SAWs they will be back within 5 years of combat use.
Nicholas Ross
That's still a wide ass fucking rim for an intermediate round.
Matthew Butler
Why not literally just adopt 7.92x33?
William Gomez
You should maybe stop thinking combat is like your videogames.
Blake Gutierrez
5.56 and 7.62 nato were and are both shit.
Michael Hall
Yeah. But the Butthurt Brigade of the US Military was terrified of admitting defeat, terrified of admitting how shit McArthur and his Vietnam era successors were.
Terrified of the vague possibility of Congress doing what it should have done years ago and pushing their shit in.
Kayden Robinson
The Koreans made those neat drums which have been perfected and only need minor readjustment regarding ammo size.
Thomas Perez
Manufacturing standards improve MOA way more than cartridge or firearm design.
MOA is all about repeatability and regularity. If I fire in this direction, how many of my bullets will fall inside a certain circle? Regularity of the projectiles landing zones has almost EVERYTHING to do with regularity in how many propellant grains the production line pours into each casing, or regularity in how much each projectile weighs, or regularity in the rifling or barrel shape of the firearm….. REGULARITY
With good enough regularity you could make a shotgun into a
Christian Edwards
Unless the government punishes severely ammo manufacturers who fail to deliver good results, shitty ammo quality will continue to be a thing and money will continue to be wasted on "super accurate rifles" with unnecessary expensive barrels.
Grayson Bennett
My favourite gun in MW1
Josiah Rivera
Reported.
Jace James
Got a link for that? Would make a simplified SAW much easier. For a aggressive manner it would be excellent, I will note that belt feds are superior for defensive and mounted situations. Mags are just very convenient and keep the jingle down.
Aaron Green
History of American machine guns is comedy gold, I'm telling you.
Brody Gray
It happened in teh 2010 actually. And now Russian develops intermediate cartridge SAW again (RPK-16).
