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The Lone Badger posted:There's also the fact that absolutely everyone knows the quirks of the M2 and how to work around them. This is huge. When my ambulance service replaced our decrepit toughbooks it was a major problem since even though the replacements were better in every way, all the minor problems were completely different so people had major issues troubleshooting under pressure.
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Jul 12, 2021 12:56
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GMС M36 and precursors Queue: Geschützwagen Tiger für 17cm K72 (Sf), Early Early Soviet tank development (MS-1, AN Teplokhod), Career of Semyon Aleksandrovich Ginzburg, AT-1, Object 140, SU-76 frontline impressions, Creation of the IS-3, IS-6, SU-5, Myths of Soviet tank building: 1943-44, IS-2 post-war modifications, Myths of Soviet tank building: end of the Great Patriotic War, Medium Tank T6, RPG-1, Lahti L-39, American tank building plans post-war, German tanks for 1946, HMC M7 Priest, GMC M12, GMC M40/M43, ISU-152, AMR 35 ZT, Soviet post-war tank building plans, T-100Y and SU-14-1, Object 430, Pz.Kpfw.35(t), T-60 tanks in combat, SU-76M modernizations, Panhard 178, 15 cm sFH 13/1 (Sf), 43M Zrínyi, Medium Tank M46, Modernization of the M48 to the M60 standard, German tank building trends at the end of WW2, Pz.Kpfw.III/IV, E-50 and E-75 development, Pre-war and early war British tank building, BT-7M/A-8 trials, Jagdtiger suspension, Light Tank T37, Light Tank T41, T-26-6 (SU-26), Voroshilovets tractor trials, Israeli armour 1948–1982, T-64's composite armour, Evolution of German tank observation devices Available for request (others' articles):  Shashmurin's career T-55 underwater driving equipment T-34 tanks with M-17 engines ISU-152  Oerlikon and Solothurn anti-tank rifles
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Jul 12, 2021 13:53
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copper tipped spears have been military issue at least up to the Middle Kingdom. It is difficult to determine when their use started in military context, but certainly they existed in prehistory.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:24
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Valtonen posted:It is NOT definitely the most jam-free piece of equipment. Especially on a CROWS mount this thing has incredible amount of stoppages and failures to feed. Of all my tank gunneries the most time spent waiting for a tank to get their poo poo together at the ready line was on .50 not firing at test fire point. I'm going to show my age here. I started on M-85s, a piece of junk jammed into that crappy cupola. Given that this is my basis for comparison I will always hold the M2HB in high regard. I don't think I ever got more than 10 rounds through an M-85 without a jam, some of which were so serious that it put the gun out of service for the day until an armorer could tear it apart. In comparison, I think I had a couple of misfires with an M2HB, all of which were fixed by "pull the charging handle, shoot it again." I will admit that I didn't like the fiddliness (it's a word) of setting headspace and timing with a barrel change, especially considering that it is silly to have to use a gauge to do it. I hope the M2A1 does a good job of removing that requirement. Cessna fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 16:28
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Cessna posted:I'm going to show my age here. Oh yea by all accounts the m-85 was horrible and hated for a good reason. The big issue is that it’s literally the only comparison to the m2- further adding to its status as the “venerable” heavy gun that is “not broke so don’t fix it” A vehicle-mounted heavy machinegun gets a LOT of leeway compared to an infantry weapon system so the issues that m2 have get overlooked; and this is what irks me personally a lot on the halo the M2 has. As a comparable example the only reason Russia updated their heavy machinegun was due to the fact that they literally had no domestic production after USSR broke up (NSV production facilities are geographically on part of USSR that became kazakstan) so they had a opportunity to update because they needed a new heavy machinegun plant anyway. So in a gay black hitler scenario where all m2s and their existing supply and logistics just disappeared, the m2a1 would *not* win any competition for a vehicle heavy machinegun at 2021; it’s biggest merit right now is “good enough and already exists” compared to a modern alternative.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:40
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Valtonen posted:Oh yea by all accounts the m-85 was horrible and hated for a good reason. The big issue is that it’s literally the only comparison to the m2- further adding to its status as the “venerable” heavy gun that is “not broke so don’t fix it” Oh, I get your point. No one wants to sink money into replacing the M2 because it works - but it has worked for several decades, and maybe it's time to take a look and see if there are better alternatives. I don't disagree with this at all. (Breaks out in a sweat just thinking of the M85. Brr.)
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Jul 12, 2021 16:45
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A shame the US can't just license the Kord then :yoba:
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Jul 12, 2021 16:46
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Cessna posted:Oh, I get your point. No one wants to sink money into replacing the M2 because it works - but it has worked for several decades, and maybe it's time to take a look and see if there are better alternatives. This is kind of small_arms.txt right now. How many design competitions have their been fishing for a successor for the M16/M4 family? How many have lead to wide adoption by a major military? The m249 has been in service since the early 80s, and frankly the M9 could have kept on trucking if they'd wanted it to. The basic technology of throwing chunks of lead and copper at people using gunpowder has matured to the point that we're just not seeing the kinds of evolutionary leaps that require refitting everything to keep up. I don't doubt that all the poo poo that's being used today will get phased out eventually, but I suspect it will be in favor of a fairly radical redesign. Don't know what that might be, everyone thought it was going to be caseless ammo and that didn't really pan out (at least for small arms). Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 16:59
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Yeah the M16/M4 is an especially interesting one (though I am a complete layman and mostly know what I know because of Ian McCollum), because the HK416 seems to be an extant, understood, in production, common ammunition, and an improvement over the M4, but the improvements are so marginal that it's still not worth spending money on replacing the inventory. Although didn't I just read something about the US (NATO?) adopting a new standard small arms round in a new calibre?
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Jul 12, 2021 17:05
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Although didn't I just read something about the US (NATO?) adopting a new standard small arms round in a new calibre? Kind of. NATO just finished blessing FN's 5.7x28mm as a new NATO caliber (alongside 5.56x45, 7.62x51, 12.7x99 and 9x19). That just means that they've agreed on a single standard so that you're guaranteed interoperability between mags, guns, and ammo. So hypothetically if poo poo Is Going Down a bunch of American soldiers can grab a crate of French 5.56 and load it into some Canadian STANAGs for their US-produced M4s and it will all work fine. I doubt 5.7 is going to be widely adopted any time soon. It' might get some niche use in PDWs for e.g. helicopter pilots, but I doubt we'll see it as a standard issue thing. Might be more useful for the European NATO partners? Do many of them issue P90s for anything? National police forces maybe? Might ease production if both France and Germany are using them for counter-terrorism stuff?  It's kind of a silly round TBH. It's main thing is providing the body-armor defeating power of a rifle round in a pistol caliber package, via a bottlenecked cartridge that's fairly zippy and special penetrators.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:15
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The tack the US tried to take at least twice for an M2 replacement wasn't a HMG, but instead a multipurpose crew-served weapon that fired bigass (25-30mm) shells that did cool things like airburst and were very expensive and never really worked quite right. They also tried at least once to develop a lightweight HMG that succeeded in being light but was a pretty big downgrade in firepower. They ended up just doing a comprehensive rebuild of the M2 as the M2A1 which was really well received. Most service machine guns and rifles are similarly ancient...it is just really hard to meaningfully improve on mid-20th century designs as long as we're still using chemical propellants and cartridges and so on.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:16
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Yep they are using a new 6.8 mm round.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:20
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PittTheElder posted:Although didn't I just read something about the US (NATO?) adopting a new standard small arms round in a new calibre? I don't know how close we are to a replacement for 5.56 for the average soldier. I've heard there's a new 6.8x51 for the supposed m249 replacement, and .300 and .338 norma magnums for SOCOM stuff. I don't know if those are 100% in the pipeline or in trials stuff; I'm definitely not an expert on US military future things.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:23
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To give an idea of what NATO standardization means, the Swiss rifle is the SG 550 (a nice gun that's basically what happens when a country of watchmakers decide to take a stab at overhauling the AK). The round that it's chambered in is known in Switzerland as 5,6mm Gw Pat 90 (GP 90 for short). It's basically 5.56. You can shoot 5.56 NATO out of swiss SG 550s, and you can shoot GP 90 out of any AR in 556. HOWEVER, it's not a NATO round. It's functionally identical, but there are some minor differences and that particular flavor of ammo isn't blessed as a NATO bullet (which is politically expedient for the Swiss, while still allowing them to use NATO stockpiles in the event of space aliens or whatever) You can really see this with 9mm. There are a few different NATO standard 9mm loadings, but there are a million and a half non-NATO ones.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:23
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Armacham posted:Yep they are using a new 6.8 mm round. Have they actually adopted 6.8? As far as I can tell that's still in the testing/certification process. I don't think there's officially a 6.8 NATO yet, just 6.8 SPC.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:Have they actually adopted 6.8? As far as I can tell that's still in the testing/certification process. I don't think there's officially a 6.8 NATO yet, just 6.8 SPC. They haven’t even settled on what the “6.8” round actually is. Each submission for the NGSW has its on take on the round that goes with their rifle and SAW. Sig has a hybrid metal case, GD has a polymer case that looks like a normal cartridge and Textron has a polymer telescoping round.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:39
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glynnenstein posted:I don't know how close we are to a replacement for 5.56 for the average soldier. I've heard there's a new 6.8x51 for the supposed m249 replacement, and .300 and .338 norma magnums for SOCOM stuff. I don't know if those are 100% in the pipeline or in trials stuff; I'm definitely not an expert on US military future things. I don't know what the official goings on with NATO are, but the thing to remember is that NATO caliber designation has to do with interoperability between the members of the alliance. Militaries in NATO can and do use non-NATO calibers for stuff, just with the understanding that they're not going to be able to swipe a crate of it from an ally if need be. For example, I don't think .45 ACP was ever adopted as a NATO caliber (the NATO standard pistol was 9mm from the get go iirc), but that didn't keep the US from using it for quite a while after NATO standardization was a thing. The 1911A1 only got retired in the 80s. By the same token, .30-06 and .30 carbine weren't ever NATO standardized calibers, but plenty of NATO partners got a poo poo load of old guns from the US in those calibers and just used the American ammo specs for making their own, well after the major NATO calibers were standardized and most of the major small arms were in them (Greek .30-06 was made at least into the 70s, for example, maybe later I don't have the exact date). You've even got a few examples of NATO partners re-chambering older guns into American calibers for a kind of pseudo-NATO interoperability, without actually using a true NATO standard caliber. The best example of that is all the WW2 German K98ks that Norway inherited when the Germans up there surrendered. A bunch of those were folded into the Norwegian military and reserves, and a bunch were re-chambered to .30-06 because it's what the Americans were on at the time. Which is to say that if SOCOM wants to field some bizarre caliber that no other military uses, they can just use it and supply their own ammo. When it comes to standardization SOCOM plays by some fundamentally different rules, but they also don't have the same expectations of being able to use someone else's ammo as your typical infantry division.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:40
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To what extent is there actually room for improvement in military small arms anyway? They already seem (from my not-extremely educated perspective) to be accurate, reliable, and more than sufficiently lethal, or at least extremely in the realm of diminishing returns there. Like, you could concievably increase the projectile's muzzle velocity, for example, but is that going to meaningfully improve the weapon's contribution to achieving tactical and operational objectives? They also seem to take minimal training to achieve meaningful efficacy. Wouldn't future improvements be instead on the manufacturing and logistics side? Or another way of phrasing the question: what is it that current small arms can't do or can't do well that users/stakeholders wish they could?
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Jul 12, 2021 17:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Have they actually adopted 6.8? As far as I can tell that's still in the testing/certification process. I don't think there's officially a 6.8 NATO yet, just 6.8 SPC. Yeah what kill me now said. All the candidates are some sort of 6.8 mm round. The contract is for the rifle as well as the ammunition, I believe. Although I'm sure the ammo production will be licensed out.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:56
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CommonShore posted:To what extent is there actually room for improvement in military small arms anyway? They already seem (from my not-extremely educated perspective) to be accurate, reliable, and more than sufficiently lethal, or at least extremely in the realm of diminishing returns there. Like, you could concievably increase the projectile's muzzle velocity, for example, but is that going to meaningfully improve the weapon's contribution to achieving tactical and operational objectives? They also seem to take minimal training to achieve meaningful efficacy. Wouldn't future improvements be instead on the manufacturing and logistics side? I believe most of the current concerns revolve around issues of optimizing effective range, and with defeating body armor as it becomes ubiquitous.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:04
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 CASELESS AMMUNITION
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Jul 12, 2021 18:06
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CommonShore posted:To what extent is there actually room for improvement in military small arms anyway? They already seem (from my not-extremely educated perspective) to be accurate, reliable, and more than sufficiently lethal, or at least extremely in the realm of diminishing returns there. Like, you could concievably increase the projectile's muzzle velocity, for example, but is that going to meaningfully improve the weapon's contribution to achieving tactical and operational objectives? They also seem to take minimal training to achieve meaningful efficacy. Wouldn't future improvements be instead on the manufacturing and logistics side? Armor penetration The wide proliferation of personal body armor by peer level nations has made rounds like 5.56 and 5.45 less then ideal. The new NGSW programs main goal is to create a round and guns that can defeat armor at combat ranges without dramatically increasing the weapon and ammo weight. A bigger bullet at higher velocity is how they are trying to achieve that goal.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:08
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glynnenstein posted:I believe most of the current concerns revolve around issues of optimizing effective range, and with defeating body armor as it becomes ubiquitous. You're seeing a lot of movement on this front with the development of new loads for existing calibers. M855A1 addresses body armor and performance out of shorter barreled guns like the M4, for example. In addition to this, a major focus in ammo design is always decreasing the weight of the ammo so that soldiers can carry more and, ideally, more can be packed into a magazine. If there was some kind of revolution in propellents, for example, that let you get 5.56x45 performance out of a 5.7x28 case that would be pretty significant. Not as huge as the shift from ~.30 cal to ~.20 cal projectiles and rifle to intermediate length cartridges, but certainly at least in the ballpark of the move from .30-06 to 7.62 NATO. Even if the individual soldier doesn't end up carrying more, when you're talking about shipping millions of rounds across the globe ounces add up to pounds add up to tons. Same story with caseless ammo. One of the best ways to reduce the weight of cartridges would be to chuck the metal case all together. That's still elusive, though. The H&K G11 was a dead-end, but it's an interesting look at an attempt to fundamentally change how rifles work.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:13
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What does the 6.8mm proposals bring that something like 6.5mm creedmoor doesn’t?
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Jul 12, 2021 18:13
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Isn't 6.8 just an updated 6.72? Edit: I'm dumb, it's 7.62. disregard or laugh at my stupidity Edit edit: I'm gonna laugh if it ends up as an update to the ww1 6.5mm cartridges. Dance Officer fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 18:16
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Cyrano4747 posted:The H&K G11 was a dead-end, but it's an interesting look at an attempt to fundamentally change how rifles work. It’s my understanding that the G11 was extremely close to production and issuance, and was only stopped by the financial requirements and change of priorities brought on by reunification. It’s a super-interesting what-if. Would W. Germany have stood alone with their space-magic rifle, or would it have influenced other NATO designs?
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Jul 12, 2021 18:17
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creedmoor is a lovely cartridge for fighting wars, it's extremely long and it's heavily necked which makes for all kinds of reliability and storage / handling issues edit: in contrast 6.8 SPC is exactly the same OAL as the 5.56x45 which makes a litany of logistical and equipment tasks much, much easier KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 18:17
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For years now we've been sort of wondering what a post-ballistic small arms world might look like. I'm not sure if we're any closer to realizing this than we were 10 years ago, but the implications for maneuver warfare when almost every round is smart/guided/adaptable are pretty crazy. Like, that messes with the most basic of competencies...fire and maneuver, cover, etc etc. Or maybe we'll head The Expanse direction and just keep making firearms, occasionally adding more barrels.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:19
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:creedmoor is a lovely cartridge for fighting wars, it's extremely long and it's heavily necked which makes for all kinds of reliability and storage / handling issues They're also chasing different types of performance. 6.8 is a true intermediate cartridge, basically chasing 5.56, while 6.5 is on the chunkier end of that scale and is optimized for long range shooting - horning in on 7.62's game.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:They're also chasing different types of performance. 6.8 is a true intermediate cartridge, basically chasing 5.56, while 6.5 is on the chunkier end of that scale and is optimized for long range shooting - horning in on 7.62's game. true
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Jul 12, 2021 18:23
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MrYenko posted:It’s my understanding that the G11 was extremely close to production and issuance, and was only stopped by the financial requirements and change of priorities brought on by reunification. It’s a super-interesting what-if. Would W. Germany have stood alone with their space-magic rifle, or would it have influenced other NATO designs? It had a lot of bad problems with heat dissipation and, iirc, fouling. Maybe they could have worked it out if the cold war had continued and money had kept flowing at them but it's been a pretty difficult problem. Basically burning gunpowder to be a propellent creates a lot of heat. Shell casings act as disposable heat sinks. When the brass gets chucked out of the gun it's hot enough to burn you, and that's heat that the gun no longer has to worry about. That heat didn't really have anywhere to go but the chamber of the gun in the G11, which lead to reliability problems and, if it got hot enough, premature cook offs of chambered rounds. That's not good.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:23
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Just to add to 6.8 chat - the really interesting thing about it is that by opening up the diameter of the projectile a bit you're able to get a significantly heavier bullet in there. This matters a lot when you're talking about performance against armor. All things being equal (same material etc) heavier bullets are longer, and there's only so long you can make a .223 round until it won't fit in the magazine. That's setting aside things like how they fly - we're just talking getting it in one end of the gun and out the other. 5.56 tops out (for guns that take STANAGs at least) in the ~77gr ballpark. Maybe you could go a little heavier, but 77 is about the heaviest you'll regularly see. Meanwhile 6.8 SPC gets into the 100 range easily, and I think you can do a load closer to 130 grains and still fit it into an AR's mag well. Edit: a 55gr and a 77gr bullet in 5.56 next to each other for the non-TFR folks to get an idea of what I’m taking about with bullet length. Both of those can go in the same cartridge with different powder loads.  Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 18:28
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:creedmoor is a lovely cartridge for fighting wars, it's extremely long and it's heavily necked which makes for all kinds of reliability and storage / handling issues I figured it was something like that. 6.5mm was like magic when I was shooting it but I was also doing it from a bolt action that I completely baby, not a semi auto that had been dragged through muck.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:33
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bewbies posted:For years now we've been sort of wondering what a post-ballistic small arms world might look like. I'm not sure if we're any closer to realizing this than we were 10 years ago, but the implications for maneuver warfare when almost every round is smart/guided/adaptable are pretty crazy. Like, that messes with the most basic of competencies...fire and maneuver, cover, etc etc. We'll invent laser guns and start calling guns "slug throwers"
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Jul 12, 2021 18:50
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zoux posted:We'll invent laser guns and start calling guns "slug throwers"
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Jul 12, 2021 19:52
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Cyrano4747 posted:Basically burning gunpowder to be a propellent creates a lot of heat. Shell casings act as disposable heat sinks. When the brass gets chucked out of the gun it's hot enough to burn you, and that's heat that the gun no longer has to worry about. Do you know how this works with the new 6.8mm rounds with polymer casings? Does the case absorb enough heat to be basically the same as a brass cartridge? Or is it somewhere in the middle between brass and caseless?
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Jul 12, 2021 19:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:"Learn a trade, Join the <insert service here>" has been a thing for quite a while, going back to at least the 40s. There's also a lot of throwing your soldiers into the dumpster after they've served, up to 2021.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:57
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I figured it was something like that. 6.5mm was like magic when I was shooting it but I was also doing it from a bolt action that I completely baby, not a semi auto that had been dragged through muck. The 6.8 that is being developed for the NGSW saw replacement and rifle is supposedly actually aiming to be much more powerful than the 6.5 creedmoor and nothing like the 6.8SPC. Sig claims it's approximate to the .270 WSM round in ballistic performance, so like 3000+fps for a 140ish grain bullet. That sounds kinda wacky to me given that it might cook barrels and have substantial recoil, but that's what I've read.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:08
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PittTheElder posted:Do you know how this works with the new 6.8mm rounds with polymer casings? Does the case absorb enough heat to be basically the same as a brass cartridge? Or is it somewhere in the middle between brass and caseless? The polymer case is an insulator and doesn’t transfer the heat to the chamber in the first place Textrons entry is actually a pretty neat design all around https://youtu.be/pYqEJsMLg_g kill me now fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 20:13
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PittTheElder posted:Do you know how this works with the new 6.8mm rounds with polymer casings? Does the case absorb enough heat to be basically the same as a brass cartridge? Or is it somewhere in the middle between brass and caseless? Dunno. I've heard that it's good enough for semi auto, at least. Polymer cases have been "just around the corner" for years though. I remember seeing a guy at a range with some kind of poly-cased 5.56 (it had a brass head but the rest was polymer - similar to how a shotgun shell is built) back in 2008. I don't remember the details about it, if it was a limited run or small test lot or what, but he seemed kinda proud to have it. Either way, it seemed OK-ish, but the fact that I haven't seen it since then tells me it had issues. Fake edit: googling around it looks like it was NATEC poly cased ammo. That article is about problems that people were having with case separation, losing necks in the chamber, etc. and the company is apparently out of business so I guess it wasn't quite up to snuff.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:18
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