These Marines are Military Police stationed on Okinawa (would Marines say aboard Okinawa?):

A Marine MP crew lets rip with an M240B. USMC photo by LCPL Brandon Suhr.

A Marine MP crew lets rip with an M249. USMC photo by LCPL Brandon Suhr.

CORRECTION: The MG in the picture above is a 5.56mm M249. We originally misidentified it — following the original PR — as an M240. Yeah, that’s a pretty embarrassing screw-up, and for the Marine photog in question, but he’s just a Lance and we’re supposed to be the freaking weapons experts around here… d’oh!  The article below has been thoroughly edited, extended and corrected. Added content is underlined. We will now beat our face, and then beat our boots just for Airborne variety. -Eds.

Marine MPs on Oki recently trained with crew-served weapons, including (among others) the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, being supplanted in the Marine rifle squad by the M27 IAR, and the excellent M240, the infantry company’s all-purpose MG.

The M249 is the US variation on the FN Minimi. Unlike its bigger brother, there are some more significant changes in the design between the US and original version. The Marines have never been thrilled with it as a squad automatic weapon, preferring a true, magazine-fed auto rifle. The issues with the M24 which they finally adopted in the form of the M27 — a Marine-spec HK416 — in 2010. Selection and procurement of the M27 took five years of RDT&E beginning with several (primarily) commercial, off the shelf ARs. For a while at least, infantry companies equipped with the M27 will also have 9 M249s available, but the IAR is a better fit for Marine infantry doctrine and is getting good reviews from field Marines. For one thing, it’s a lot lighter than the 22-lb. M249.

The M240 is the US version of the venerable, proven and excellent all-round FN-MAG general purpose machine gun, which the US finally adopted to correct the 1950s error that rejected this weapon in favor of the inferior M60. The name MAG stands for Mitrailleuse À Gaz, “Gas-Operated MG” in the gun’s native Walloon (French). There are several versions, but the current M240B is somewhat typical of current ground forces weapons. It’s light, for a 7.62mm MG. (There’s even a lighter, titanium-receiver version, the M240L, which has a shorter service life). It’s very reliable.  Before the 240B, the Marines converted tank guns as the M240G. (In the armor world, the reliable 240 was a quantum leap in reliability over the alternatives that preceded or competed with it, including a dreadful tanker version of the M60 and the Rube Goldberg M37). The Army never used the 240G; it’s never been as tight with a taxpayer dollar as its Marine brethren.

The M240, in all its versions, is actually a great-grandson of John Moses Browning. To make the MAG, Browning’s Belgian co-worker and protégé, Dieudonné Saive, took the tipping bolt and op-rod of the BAR and flipped it over so that, instead of locking into a recess in the top of the receiver, it locked into the bottom — freeing the top for a belt-feed mechanism which Saive, no casual reinventor of wheels, lifted from the German MG-42. The MAG was a great success; even nations that passed on the companion FAL rifle bought MAGs. Even the US finally climbed on board the MAG train.

The US belt is a "disintegrating" type, made of individual links that come apart when the cartridge is pushed out.

The US standard belt is a “disintegrating” type, made of individual links that come apart when the cartridge is pushed out. This is a belt

The US made one error when converting the MAG to the 240. They eliminated the satin-chromed interior of the gun, which added strength and durability and makes a Belgian-made MAG a joy to clean. But other than that, it’s the good old MAG; parts interchange, and have the same Nato Stock Numbers. It’s never happened yet, but if we need a part, we can get it from the Danes or Brits, or vice versa. It will even feed NATO’s other standard belt, the nondisintegrating, reusable type used by German machine guns and preferred by Germany and Italy. If it’s NATO ammo in a belt, the MAG will eat it without a murmur.

There was a time when MPs didn’t do a lot of heavy weapons training, and support and service-support troops in general never took up these weapons. As the press release from which we lifted these great photos makes clear, today’s MPs train with the full spectrum of crew-served guns: M249, M240, M2HB, and Mk19. Not just MPs; this is increasingly common for even service-support troops, who might find themselves on a gun on an FOB’s perimeter wall or a truck’s weapons station, and it’s as true for the Army and other services which deploy to Derkaderkastan as it is for these Marines.

The key to proficiency is practice. These Marines are getting there.

The key to proficiency is practice. These Marines are getting there.

This wasn’t always the case. In the 1980s it wasn’t unusual for a roomful of soldier, even NCO, students to contain exactly zero who knew how to load, unload, and maintain the crew-served guns of the day, the M60 and M2HB. The peacetime services (especially the Army) tend to elevate other priorities over combat skills — until the next war happens, and you have a 507th Maintenance Company that shows you why even rear-echelon techs and clerks need to have firepower and the skills to make it run.

Now if they only could get out from under the small minds fixated on safety glow belts…

This entry was posted in Crew-Served, Machine Guns on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

8 thoughts on “Marines Let ’em Rip

Visiting 0311

Alas, the top picture is a gun crew firing a M249 SAW, not a M240B. The picture is also mislabeled on the linked website. Perhaps LCpl Suhr & Public Affairs should get some gun time…

SF, Sgt V

Hognose Post author

Embarrassing error on my part, Marine. Will correct caption.

What’s really weird is I have a lot of time on both guns, and a little on the Mk 18 (7.62 version of the SAW) and I ought to have caught that. In the Army, we do pushups for brain-dead errors like this….

…and aren’t all Public Affairs Marines riflemen first? (He asked a genuine rifleman, innocently….)

george

I am pretty sure that is an M249… The 240B has a larger, fixed bipod and different geometry.

They are not using the typical 200 round drum, but that really isn’t necessary anyway.

Hognose Post author

Yep, you and McThag also caught the error pre-correction. Thanks to all of you for keeping us on the straight and narrow.

McThag

The green tipped bullets are a dead give-away.

Medic09

Good ol’ MAG. For a little guy like me (just about 135 lbs in those days) it was a pretty hefty weapon. On patrols, our MAGist carried it like a rifle at ready, on a sling; and would swing it into use. “Crew served” only meant someone else was carrying extra ammo, in addition to the belts the Magist had folded into his pouches, the extra on his back, and the spare barrel. A mission was started with a canvas ‘drum’. Actually operation was strictly one-man as I remember it. My best buddy, Sgt. Danny Haas, was killed operating his against terrorists in S. Lebanon. He was always proud (little but stocky guy) of being able to swing it up into position, using the forward motion of the swing to help pull back the charging handle and cocking it to fire on the move.

The MAG has a much longer effective range than the M16 or Galil variants. A really good MAGist could ‘snipe’ with it (sort of) by gently feathering the trigger to squeeze off a single shot. It wasn’t so accurate as the rifles/carbines; but it had good effect nonetheless.

We had MAGs everywhere. On APC, tanks, jeeps and patrol trucks, on foot patrols. Although we had 50-round magazines available for the Galil; nobody used the 5.56 option except on rare, fast and light missions. The MAG was on every infantry mission of just about every sort; and the MAGist was everybody’s favorite soldier.

Although we still trained on .30 and .50 cal, I only saw them occasionally on tanks and APCs. The MAG was ubiquitous, especially in infantry units of all sorts. I was glad to see the US adopt it. Good move. Now why’d they remove that nice chromed interior?

mostly cajun

I started out in tanks in 1968 with the M48. the coax MG was the M37. Far from being a ‘Rube Goldberg’ ,it was a Browning, a modified M1919, in .30-06. Adapted for turret service meant adding a solenoid to allow it to be fired electrically, and adding an extension of the charging handle, a concession to its mounting location. Like any other 1919, it was reliable.

Witht he advent of the M-60 series tanks, the M-37 disappeared, replaced by the Rube Goldberg M73 and later the M-219, probably the worst MGs the Army has used since the Chauchat in WW I. It had a couple of pluses: Shorter receiver that took up less space in the tank turret, and a quick-change barrel. It had minuses, all summed up in the fact that ti was almost impossible to keep working. Hardly a firing string went by without a stoppage.

MC

Aesop

For the Record,

The correct Marine terminology re: Okinawa is “sentenced to”.

And hey, check out that spiffy ACOG atop the SAW!

That is all.