US Army to retire Browning .50 cal for new weapon?

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"EMP making your ammo not fire? What about making it all go off in the depot or next to the guns or in the hold of a ship?"

That's always been a concern with any proximity-fused shell. It was a concern during WW II, and steps were taken to harden the shells against that type of problem after the war.

If the ammo doesn't detonate, then it simply is a kinetic energy round, just like the .50 is now.

The military tests for problems such as these, as the EMP effect has been known since WW II.

Quite frankly, I'd be a lot more concerned about an EMP making the missiles carried by many ships go up.
 
Is Newer Better?

I hope the new gun/ammo work out as well as they say. Just can't help remembering we heard similar claims about when the Army switched over to 9mm. I do agree with the shrinking of the rifle round back in the '60s. So we are batting .500. Has the M60 been replaced with the MAG yet?

FUTURE SGN AD:

25mm smart cartridges. $19,995. per 1,000 round case. Shipping extra. :D
 
According to one aviator I spoke to, during the Falklands war most of the electronics on the Brit carrier had to be turned off to avoid interfering with their Harrier's electronically-fuzed munitions. So I'm not altogether enthusiastic about this super-duper electronic 25mm replacement for the M2. Also, to paraphrase R. E. Heinlein, if you make things really complex, somebody with a club will sneak up behind you and knock you on the head while you're trying to read a display.
2) The equipment will be sold to the militarys of other countries.
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They're generally OK with selling or giving foreigners things that the American people aren't allowed, but not always. At the end of WWII, Harry Truman ordered lots of munitions in the Far East destroyed - things like BRAND NEW P-38 aircraft - rather than let the Nationalist Chinese buy them for cash or gold. He was afraid they might use them against Chairman Mao . . .
 
Too bad the gubmint won't (or can't b/c of the law) sell us those old surplus guns. :(
 
They were manufactured before 1948. There haven't been any new M2's produced since the end of WWII.
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So that makes them C&R eligible! Can you imagine the hysterics that would come from the LIEberal elite if these things were released for sale to the commoners?
 
Could we average Jon & Jan Q. Public-Citizen by the surplus Ma Deuce from the CMP ? ? ? ?




I already know the answer, but hey, I can dream ! ! !
 
The Swiss...

don't phase out their M2 for quite some time. We need it as machine gun on our Leopards and for quite some other vehicles, although we will equip our new APCs with the ueber-evil KBA-D from Oerlikon-Contraves, which is a genuine 25mm, and with a skilled gunner, able to take down a jet fighter (the round has a v0 of 1480 m/s, which means it will also probably toast an MBT from behind at close range with AP ammo).
 
I saw a thing about the new airburst gun on one of the good cable channels.

What I find amusing is how so many people decry the 1911 as "obsolete" yet the supposedly newer, higher tech guns shoot the exact same ammo. Not point a finger at anyone in particular, but you guys should do just a little analysis before lamenting the passing of "Ma Deuce".

The airburst gun has several distinct advantages over a portable .50 machine gun. IIRC, the .50 had to have a crew of 3 or 4 people to deploy. The new gun only needs 2 people.

The airburst rounds can get people in trenches or behind walls or other cover because the rounds can detonate at extremely precise distances. It does not matter how much ammo you have in your machine gun, if they do not sit up, you cannot shoot them.

This changes the tactical situation severely - fox holes and trenched are no longer necessarily safe from small and medium arms fire.

As for the $22/round price, a better measure would be the cost per kill. A .50 BMG round is at least $1.00 and often much more. The crews carry lots and lots of ammo because you miss a lot. The sir burst gun carries much fewer rounds because you do not spray the area with supressive fire - its intended to be more of a precision weapon.

My guess is that you can probably kill more enemy with 10 air burst rounds than you can with 100 rounds of .50 in a serious encounter. I do not know for sure, but that is my guess and I think it is plausible at worst.
 
I will never understand why so many people complain about attempts to update our weapons systems. Yeah, i love the Ma Duece as much as anyone and it will always have a place in American history. But, honestly IF they can make something better then why the heck not? Shouldnt our troops have the best weapons available to them? I wonder if people were saying this sort of thing when we started rifling our muzzle loaders as well?
 
As long as the new weap delivers what it promises I think it's for the better. The M2 is a great weapons but sometimes I think some board members would still have us using flintlocks. ;)
 
' The airburst rounds can get people in trenches or behind walls or other cover because the rounds can detonate at extremely precise distances. It does not matter how much ammo you have in your machine gun, if they do not sit up, you cannot shoot them. '

However if you can't actually see your enemy, how do you know they are behind said trench/wall?

25mm bullets will only have so much in the way of explosive material, and if the enemy troops in the trench/bunker have done their job properly they will have some sort of cover from aerial explosions, plus could well be wearing flak vests and helmets to further reduce the chance of injury from shrapnel.
Also in a very developed close in urban environment, air-bursting munitions with a flat trajectory won't be that effective.



' I will never understand why so many people complain about attempts to update our weapons systems '

My objections in reality aren't with the weapons themselves. It's the thought process that is seemingly behind these new weapons. As if one weapon system will work 100% of the time, even in the chaotic theatre of combat. It will work exactly as it was designed to because the enemy won't adapt to it or find a way to lessen its impact, and finally it's a new super-uber weapon that will decimate whole armies simply because it's the high-tech brain child of some R&D guy who has never been involved in combat.
 
I agree with the Deadman. New, better weapons are good.

But whenever the military (at least, the Army) acquires a new weapon system, the brass and the pentagon princes always seem say "this will be the answer to all of our problems!" and don't seem to take into account the limitations of the new weapons systems in question. They keep trying to find one weapon that will work all of the time. They replaced the M14 completely with the M16, even though both types of weapons have their place.

A better idea would be to get the 25mm guns AND build some new .50 caliber machine guns. I'm certain there will be uses for both of them.
 
"However if you can't actually see your enemy, how do you know they are behind said trench/wall?"

Uhm...

Maybe because you're taking fire from said location?

That should be a hint, shouldn't it? :)

"25mm bullets will only have so much in the way of explosive material..."

True, but would you want to be standing near one when it goes up? I wouldn't. That little bit of explosive material can still throw out some seriously NASTY chunks of shrapnel. The entire point is to increase potential for lethal effectiveness from requiring a direct hit on the target to the target being in the bursting area. Just like the difference between a rock and a hand grenade.

"and if the enemy troops in the trench/bunker have done their job properly they will have some sort of cover from aerial explosions"

Then the M2 .50 won't be much of a threat to them, either.

But these devices are a little different from simple "aerial explosions." You can hose them into windows, viewing ports, or gun ports. Once they're inside the bunker, that roof won't do the inhabitants much good in protecting them. In fact, it will serve only to concentrate the shock of the rounds going off.

"Plus could well be wearing flak vests and helmets to further reduce the chance of injury from shrapnel."

Yes, further reduce it, but not eliminate it. Face, neck, hands, arms, legs are all generally left uncovered by body armor. That's still a target rich environment.

If body armor were the true panacea to the problem of flying shrapnel, grenades and mortars would have gone out a long time ago.
 
I think it is about time we start seriously comtemplating the effects of "superweapons". While I generally agree that a soldier should be given the best weapons available, I think that actively pursuing better and better weapons in times of relative peace is a dangerous idea.

Why do we need an airbursting shell? So we can kill people who are cowering behind a log or inside a building. I understand that they may be a hostile enemy, but lets look at the implication of this. First, by making our military that much more effective at overpowering lesser armed foes, we will become increasingly more willing to go to war. While it seemed fairly easy to oust Saddam Hussein from power, we have yet to pacify Iraq, and we continue to loose soldiers to guerilla tactics. Winning a war might be fairly easy, but occupation is difficult and expensive. We must never be careless in choosing to go to war. "Super weapons" tend to make us think that we are so vastly superior that we may rush off to war.

If we do field airbursting shells, how long before the technology is captured, reverse engineered, and used against our own troops? Now, when our troops are diving into the trenches, they will find that their own cover is negated? This device further increases the lethality of infantry weapons, which are already incredibly lethal.

Frankly, I think that some lines shouldn't be crossed. While this may not have the same implications of a 20 megaton nuke, I think that there are some similarities in their development. Why the heck do we really need nuclear weapons with multiple warheads totalling 10-20 megaton yield. I agree that they are incredibly effective in their function, but what madman devised that function?

Why do we need an airbursting smart shell, and where will that evolutionary line take us? Will we eventually see semi-intelligent, fire and forget, self-acquiring weapons. Actually, I know that weapon designers are already working on theis sort of thing as far as anti-vehicular missles, but it is absolutely nuts.
 
EMP Question

With all the talk about EMP damaging the rounds, I have to ask:

I've always understood electromagnetic pulses to be extremely difficult to generate without expending large amounts of power. For example, to my understanding, explosions cause minor EMP bursts. Nuclear explosions cause large EMP bursts. Does anyone know of any actual working EMP device that doesn't require an explosion? Would it be transportable?
 
"So we can kill people who are cowering behind a log or inside a building."

Hum...

You know...

I THINK I've heard that something else besides cowering can be done if someone is in a building or behind a log...

Ah. I know.

As outlandish as it seems (I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't cower before the US military), they also could fire back.

"How long before the technology is captured, reverse engineered, and used against us?"

And that should be a consideration, why?

Prior to the 1870 Franco-German War, the French developed a nifty little piece of kit called the Millatreuse. It was a multi-barreled quick firing gun sort of like the Requa Battery Gun of Civil War fame.

The big difference was that it was VERY fast to fire and reload, and it was very, very accurate.

It is believed by some that it could have turned the tide in the French favor at the battle of Sedan, and possibly the entire war.

Yet, the French didn't use it.

Why?

Because they were afraid that the Germans would capture one, learn its secrets, and employ it against the French.

Not developing something out of fear that your enemy might capture the technology is, well, kind of dumb. It's a total reversal of the way the thinking should be conducted.


During World War II this fear almost kept proximity fused airburst antipersonnel artillery shells out of the European Theater.

It's interesting to conjecture how much longer it would have taken to beat back the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944 without those shells.

Use of those shells against German army units was directly responsible for allowing the Americans to punch a huge hole through the side of the Bulge, and their continued use helped ensure that any pockets of German resistance were thoroughly softened before they were rolled over.

Finally, we get to the truly salient point...

"Now, when our troops are diving into the trenches, they will find that their own cover is negated?"

I hate to tell you this, but that advantage had been largely negated by the American Civil War with the development of Shrapnel shells and the first truly effective time fuses.
 
Grey, you have the counter in the flip-side of your own argument.

MIRV technology and independantly targeted warheads are not currently "bigger" in the 10-20 Megaton range.

The largest actively deployed nuke in the US arsenal is only about 110 kilotons, and most are 1-10 kilotons. Not much more than the fatman and little boy used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way back in WWII.

The yields were getting ever bigger in the 1950's and 60's to compensate for a lack of accuracy and making sure that enemy targets would be destroyed. Now because precision guidance technology, less destructive nukes could be used, with less colateral damage and less worldwide fallout.

Not to say nuclear war is ever a good idea, but one today may well be less devastating to the world as a whole than one using Fusion bombs in the late 50's would have been.

The same would be true for precision airbursting munitions. If enemies/rebels/terrorists are holed up in a building, and hiding from machinegun fire, our current option is to level the entire building with armor, arty, or air support. Cover fire, and manuver into the building for CQB in anything under extrordinary circumstances (i.e. POW's or critical intel) is just suicidal and dumb.

But what if there's non combatants in the building? Or the loss of the building is detrimental to the civilian infrastructure?

Range-fuzed mini-shells like this give our military options so we're not allways swatting flies with sledgehammers. Going to war is a huge expense, monetarily, politically, and a risk to our servicemen and women's lives. Wether or not an enemy is "easy" enough certainly factors into such decisions, but our weapon systems are only a small part of that. Something like a crew-served OICW gives us flexibility once we commit, but won't decide if we commit.
 
Yeah, I know that some weapons are kept from use because people don't want it to fall into enemy hands, and its usually a silly argument.

In WWI, the US didn't want to release the brand new BAR to our troops, as it was feared that such a fine weapon would fall into enemy hands. So, we got that POS french LMG that I refuse to mention by name.

But this is an entirely new technology, and a dangerous one at that. Don't get me wrong, I am a advocate of firearms and I have a fair collection. I just think that the evolution of some weapons are going too far.

I can see the use for such a weapon as this airbursting shell, but it scares me. I know that it can strike hostiles behind cover, in a trench, in a building, in a vehicle, behind a tree, etc... But it worries me that such weapons are being devised. I remeber watching the news during the war in Afghanistan. I remeber watching some story about how a unmanned CIA drone released a hellfire missle and destroyed a vehicle whose occupants included "a tall man" who may have been Bin Laden. But, oops, it appears that it wasn't him at all, so a tall man got his butt smoked by a missle attack. This is the kind of mentality I fear with weapons development.

Technology makes things increasingly easy, increasingly removed from reprisal, increasingly careless. If a gunman is shooting from a window, do troops start blasting airburst shells into various windows that may contain civilians. The technology has increased the lethality of our weapons, but that means we have to be more responsible in their use. Unfortunately we often see the opposite.

And, should this technology start a new arms race, how long before it is employed against us. The Chinese will probably start manufacturing something along these lines, or the French, which means it will be sold on the world market. Which means we will have to build something even more effective.

Why the heck do our weapons need to be two or three generations more advanced than anyone elses, which just forces them to try to keep up that much harder...

This weapon scares me the way non-lethal weapons do... It makes it to easy to get into a war, because the perceived consequences are significantly lower. With less-than-lethals, you aren't really killing anybody, so "no harm, no foul". With this airburst thing, it will reduce American casualties by more quickly and effectively suppressing (killing) opposition, so hey "no harm <to us>, no problem." Dangerous.

I am no pacifist, but I believe that war is the most serious undertaking that a man, or country, can undertake. Lives are lost, destiny changed, and everything hangs in the balance. When determining whether to go to war, a country must weigh its convictions against its possible losses. Increasingly effective weapons, or more accurately the efficacy gap between the enemies' weapons and ours, reduces the danger that we are exposed to. So, if our potential losses are lowered, then the threshold level of our convictions can and will also be lowered. Like in Vietnam.

This technology is one of many that further trivializes warfare. Like Stealth, nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, unmanned fighters and tanks, smart bombs, and so on.
 
War should never be clean, and it should never be precise. That is why we try to avoid it at all costs.

But, if the cause is great enough, and our convictions strong enough, then let it be bloody, let it be dirty, let it be horrible, lest we grow apathetic to it.

If we become too powerful, we risk overstepping our bounds. I know that the great majority of people on this board regard themselves as patriots. And I know that the great majority of us fear a police state, and the loss of rights and subjugation of the people, but this is where these types of weapons are heading, only on a global scale.
 
Sorry Grey, gotta disagree.

If we don't build more effective weapons of war, somebody else will. It has always been that way. It is the nature of man.

As for war being bloody and nasty, no amount of technology will ever change that. War will always come down to a man with a gun controlling a piece of ground. If that is the case I want weapons that will whoop our enemies, quicker the better. The more of our guys who come home the better.

By your argument we should all carry knives instead of guns, that way we are guarenteed that self defense will be dirty and hard, and we will be discouraged from fighting unless we have to. No thanks. I'll stick with my .45 for CCW. :)

Police state mentality is a result of a lust for power and a desire to control others. It has been around since man was beating each other with sticks, it didn't go away when bronze showed up, nor with the invention of steel, or the arrow. It never will go away.

Why do we feel the need to stay a generation ahead of everybody else? Because every time we get complacent, we lose a lot more people than we need to. The trench fighting of WWI was unexpected, WWII caught us with our pants down. We fought Korea with left over WWII stocks. Every time we lost more people than we would have if we had been more ready then our enemy.

If we back off from developing some kinds of weapons because they are too terrible, then I promise you that a bunch of generals in some other country will throw a party.

As for throwing a bunch of these 25mm shells through the windows of a building with civillians in it, the net result isn't much different than bringing up an Abrahms. Blowed up is blowed up. It makes about as much sense as the ban on hollow point ammunition. You can get torn to pieces or burned to death, but heaven forbid you are shot with expanding ammunition. :p
 
Mike Irwin, you are right. I shouldn't complain about the U.S. Army replacing its .50 cal mg's. As that might mean a surplus of cheap .50 cal mg's for the Australian Army to buy. :p

We could debate the pro's and con's of any weapon system for hours on end, but Nightcrawler reiterated the main point that I was trying to make.


' But whenever the military (at least, the Army) acquires a new weapon system, the brass and the pentagon princes always seem say "this will be the answer to all of our problems!" and don't seem to take into account the limitations of the new weapons systems in question. They keep trying to find one weapon that will work all of the time. They replaced the M14 completely with the M16, even though both types of weapons have their place.

A better idea would be to get the 25mm guns AND build some new .50 caliber machine guns. I'm certain there will be uses for both of them. '
 
"But this is an entirely new technology, and a dangerous one at that."

NOT TRUE.

As I described in at least two separate entries in this thread, this technology is nothing more than a continuing extension of proximity fusing, which first saw successful deployment in World War II.


Your argument, however heartfelt, isn't a new one, either.

It's been document back at least to Byzantine times, when Greek Fire was felt to be a weapon so terrible that it would make warfare obsolete.

The same was thought about the gastrapides (sp?), the crossbow, the English long bow, the Gatling Gun (Dr. Richard Gatling's sole purpose of development was to make a weapon that would make future wars unfightable), the rifled musket, the repeating rifle, the Maxim gun, battleships, poison gas, the air plane, and nuclear weapons, just to name a few.

Yet, none of those inventions, over the course of what, 2,500 years or more?, has done anything to lessen the severity of, or prevent people from starting, wars.

The simple fact of the matter is that as long as there are two humans on this planet, they will war on each other.

Man, for all of his pretensions to nobility, art, grace, and culture, all wrapped up in a thin veneer of moralistic religious justification, is nothing more than a savage with no redemptive properties at all.

Let him find newer, and better, and faster, ways with which to kill himself. It's of no consequence in the end.
 
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