What does Jow Forums think of .338 norma machine guns?

Once the most worthless generation in history dies out, then firearms will begin to move beyond the current state of stagnation.

More weight than .308 Win,
with less penetration than .50 BMG

Not sure there is a need for it.

Sig's gun looks cool as well.

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it's a hyper-specific application for the last war: man-packed mountain guns.

338 can perforate level 3 plates at some range, even level 4 inside 300m IIRC, so if every third-world nation starts fielding exos maybe its worth a try. otherwise, the ammo is too heavy for a MG team to provide good suppression.

>Sig's 338 is 6 pounds lighter than GD
Seems to kick a lot though. Probably doesn't have the same recoil mitigation systems as the LWMMG.

youtube.com/watch?v=XFF7pex518o

>he thinks history is a teleological sequence, with only temporary slowdowns and false starts
I've got some bad news for you hombre. Small arms development will be stagnant until materials and power sources advance. It doesn't matter what generation is in control when that happens. Hell, we may even seen a backwards slide in small arms given how absolutely useless they are in a modern conventional fight.

>absolutely useless they are in a modern conventional fight.
Discarded

>Bruh, thanks to the Grendel, we can now ditch two cartridges and replace them with one, simplifying logistics and giving all around improvements to lethality, range, accuracy and armor penetration
>Or, we could replace both calibers with a different caliber each, for only incremental gains in both
>And both rounds will be larger, and heavier, shitting all over logistics
>And we get to dump crap ass military rounds that destroy civilian rifles and further suprress every good new caliber out there

Its fucking stupid/Replace both with the 6/5 Grendel, and enjoy an all around improvement in firepower and lethality for the standard infantry rifles and machine guns

They're important window dressings, sure, but they are still window dressings.
"Good enough" is good enough. Incremental gains in performance are not worth tearing down and rebuilding our entire logistics system as it will not give us a net benefit to warfighting capacity, nor will it increase individual soldier effectiveness or survivability.
Small arms didn't matter in the second world war, despite all the "muh garand" that gets thrown around. Why would they matter now?

Fantastic idea.
more more more

Look, I can have this mentality that what we have now is good enough, and it might well be. But this is not a mentality we want for firearms development and production or we'll fall behind. If production doesn't keep experimenting and maximizing, one day we'll wake up and realize we've lost 30 years of worthwhile firearm development time.

>fine-tuning loads and finger fucking cartridge dimensions will have a meaningful impact on small arms development
Just give me back the adjustable gas block on the m240. Bam, that system is 150% better than it currently is. Keep your shitty, heavy, and expensive MIC brainchild for the dweebs that drool over slightly better performance on the range.

the T&E isn't fixed in that video, 240's jump like that too when they're not locked down.

550 rpm is the perfect ROF for MGs, dunno why you would want to change it.

Destined for same fate as Stoner 63, at most. At least until Level IV armor becomes standard.

this van penetrate armor at close to the max effective range of a 240 and has a dramatic edge on even PKs in range while being about the same weight

Not him, but you should try taking a city/forrest/any broken terrain without heavy use of infantry and get back to me with results. This was 100% true in WW2, and it is even more truthful now with increased urbanization and with proliferation of cheap and powerful anti-tank weapons and manpads. Your air superiority, artillery, armor doesn't mean shit in a city.

See:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994–95)

I'm not referring to the utility of infantry, theyll always have a place, but rather their tools. As long as they're good enough, the capabilities of any unit's small arms do not have a meaningful impact on the outcome of those engagements. Minor improvements to cartridge performance are not substantiative changes to small arms and their utility.

barrel wear and heat. norma is lower mass and gentle on barrels. people are actually starting to use norma in sniper rifles because barrels and load development is expensive and time consuming

>2030
>everyone and their dog has Level IV body armor
>7.62x51 black tip can't even make a dent
What do?

or

>on patrol in mountainous region, get shot at from miles away with DShK
do you:
a)wait for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artillery support/CAS while being blasted
or
b)return fire with your .338 squad machinegun?

It won't be room clearing in Fallujah forever, man

338 norma rip through and through buildings, trees, and armor

Try competing in any historically-themed match with a bolt action and see how fast and efficient you are compared to self-loaders like M1. Better yet, get a bolt gun and try getting follow-up shots on an enemy you missed on the first shot who now opens up on you with his self-loader.

Bolt guns were fucking atrociously obsolete by WW2, that's why Germans rushed so hard to replace them. They only came up with building squads around their MG34s to compensate for the inability of their industry to mass-produce a good self-loading rifle. Soviets only used the piece-of-shit Mosin because they couldn't get SVT40 to work, and they dropped it harder than disco in 1945.

338s ability to defeat modern body armor and its range in a compact package will absolutely be game changers on a future battlefield

>confirmed for not knowing how level iv armor works, nor the maximum effective ranges of heavy or medium machine guns.

No, it doesn't disintegrate after a single shot. Not the modern one, anyway. Educate yourself.

well but on the other hand in thirty years we all would want a world with *less* firearms rather than with *more developed* firearms

You're comparing apples and oranges. Manual vs. automatic action is completely different than slightly better ammunition.
>338s ability to defeat modern body armor and its range in a compact package will absolutely be game changers on a future battlefield
You're overestimating how much of an obstacle body armor is in regards to machine guns. If an MG is engaging point targets, you'd better believe that at least some of the rounds from any given burst are landing outside of the armor coverage area.

The future is 6.5 caseless in literally everything.

See
When machine gunners are engaging point targets, they tend to hit them several times, and in different places.

Maybe. But efficiency of suppressive fire from a 240 will severely drop when the enemy knows a single round will just bounce off their plates.

You're bullet weighs too fucking much to replace 5.56 in mass quantities, it won't pen armor half as well because it's slow as fuck out of a 14.5" barrel, and it's not going to be 123gr bullets when you have to go all copper.

Let if fucking die, dude. If you're dead set on the 6.X bullets, embrace the 6.8 magnum caseless their working on.

Expensive ass ammo for accuracy through volume

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>haha silly NATO with their obsolete 7.62x51, over the top boys! Our armor is literally untouchable by their gpmg!
Nice bait.

Everyone just goes back to maces abd picks like at the height of plate armour.

It is though. It fact 3+ is untouchable to 7.62x51, unless the bullets are fucking molybdenum. Good luck with equipping an army with those.

> suppressive fire
> single round
Hey Sarge, I think we just found our new point man!

>This is the boomer mentality that stops firearms from advancing.
What stops firearms from advancing is lack of improvements signifcant enough to justify all the money, time, logistics, etc. involved in phasing the existing designs out. Saying that

>7.62 NATO and 5.56, also 9mm are all obsolete calibers
perfectly shows how you don't understand this or what "obsolete" means. No one gives a shit if your special snowflake gun/caliber/whatever i 5% better at something, call us back when it has major advantages over what's currently in use that would justify the hassle of adopting it.

Quad plates covers about 20% of the body max. That's not enough to prevent being suppressed.

There's also dispersion, which people who have never used MGs in real life seem incapable of understanding. For every round that hits your front plate, you're going to catch at least 2 somewhere else. Plates are good for stopping chance pop shots or a couple rounds in CQB from people too slow or untrained to do headshots reliably. They can stop MG rounds, but as a doctrine, they're only useful against rifles.

you can get a similar bullet profile to the 123 using hardened steel and copper base like m855a1. Supposedly AP ammunition has been tested with 6.5 grendel and it works.
A CT variant of something like 100 grains at 3000 fps would probably do pretty well. Or better yet for even lesser recoil and weight, an 80 grain 6mm at 3000 fps would be tits.

>Oh haha just got hit by 7.62 nato

It's still going to fuck your day up, huge bruises, potentially knocked down, combat effectiveness is hugely reduced for 20 seconds or so while you struggle to get your bearings. Meanwhile the MG is still firing and you get capped again while in a daze.

THIS. Finally someone with sense.
You're the kind of guy that would build WW2 battleships and fleets of A10's in [current year].

Epic gun, would be cheating with good optic. Wish i could buy two.

You may not even notice you're hit if your adrenaline is going, and it's not going to take another 20 seconds for the gunner to kill you. It will be some of the other bullets in the same initial 6 to 9 round burst that do.

> hey guys our soldiers are carrying too much weight, better develop caseless
>also DOD hey lets develop machineguns that use drastically heavier ammo than .308, which we replaced with 5.56 because it was too heavy to carry a lot of, and uses an even heavier gun than the .308 GPMG that was already too heavy

Soldiers can't even hit anything accurately past 300 meters, so we better invest in guns to shoot out to a mile through plates now instead of just developing a new SAW that is lighter.

>Soldiers can't even hit anything accurately past 300 meters
Because they have shitty rounds.
>wants lighter gun
Weakling. You're the LCD that drags everyone down.

338 is lighter than 240B

I imagine the first thought in any soldiers mind that is carrying 90 pounds of equipment is, yeah I want my gun to be heavier so I'm not a weakling.

GPMGs can hit stuff out to 800m off a bipod. A M240 can do about 1200m with a tripod, maybe 17-1800m with a expert gunner in good conditions.

But without the tripod, nobody is going that far whatever the cartridge. Against the stereotypical PKM behind hard cover who doesn't care about actually hitting shit, it's going to take a lot of rounds to get him at the momemnt he pokes out, even if you know where he is.

The gun is 3-6lb lighter depending on the models. But 7.62 belts are about 6.5lb per 100 rnds while 338 is about 13lb.
Since the average ammo load is about 800 rounds, often more, the 338 system as a whole is actually much heavier.

>get lighter infantry rifles
>prioritize newer lighter gesr for average infantryman
>give MG at least two ammo bearers
>reap benefits of being able to out range everyone and shoot through cover and armor at the limits of enemy's effective range

1000 meters is pretty close to as far as a m80 ball out of an m240 can effectively be pushed before going subsonic and losing stability m8

I never said the gun couldn't, but is some retard that got a 32 on the asvab and only fired a gun in boot really going to be hitting anyone at any extended range on a two way live fire in some sandbox where they can't even see where they are getting shot just because they have a bigger boolit going further?
>*gets canceled like every single weapons program since the 1980's due to cost and not being any major improvement over the m4*
pssh, nothing personal kid

GMPGs have an important role, but it's not killing people behind hard cover. That's for HE.

can it be shot in semi auto? it would be very useful if you werent carrying a tripod and wanted to shoot 1000+ meters

6.5 Grendel is retarded because it needs to be as short as 5.56 for compatibility

No shit. It still pokes holes.

When the opposition is that far away, that's all it takes. They're not going to maneuver and they're not going to get medevaced, and range and shock stops them from returning effective fire. They sit and bleed out.

>AP ammunition has been tested with 6.5 grendel
DOA, bruv. Majority of tungsten deposits are locates in China. Tungsten small arms ammo is a thing of the past.

> 100 grains at 3000 fps
Last PON I saw for the NGSAR was a 120gr 6.8 copper bullet going 3400fps out of a 16" barrel. That should tell you where they want to go.

>Majority of tungsten deposits are locates in China
Pls give tungsten china so we can have cool stuff. I dont study AP bullets like I should but Im curious if anyone knows of other good cheap materials we could use. Tungsten not being an option and hardened steel being less than ideal, I hope it's not what were stuck with.
>Last PON I saw for the NGSAR was a 120gr 6.8 copper bullet going 3400fps out of a 16" barrel. That should tell you where they want to go.
I saw the same but it sounds like too much recoil to me. It would likely be close to battle rifle tier since that sounds almost exactly like a 270. Watching people shoot grendel, I can already see a noticeable increase.

idea is that fire would be much more accurate and lethal at those ranges rather than being on the outer limits of the caliber.
If GD's 338 gets special forces use, we'll find out if it's worthwhile. Im seeing the potential personally.

.338 Norma magnum SPMG is based and redpilled

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I wouldn't be surprised if SF are already testing it.

IMO replacing the squad and platoon belt feds with a composite-cased 6.5 is a better move for mainstream army.

too bad we cancelled the XM25 OICW and I doubt the Raytheon Pike is going anywhere

The laser-guided 2km range Carl Gustav is the answer.

Pic related BTW weighs less than a single belt of 7.62, or 2 belts of 338.

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>no understanding of technological development
When the status quo works fine without any competition, of course you will meet stagnation. A catalyst must be formed for true progression

There's no way 81mm maaws can reach 2km

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..338 Norma is meant to fulfill the role of a .50BMG rather than a 7.62

wrong again

.338 Norma magnum machine guns were meant to fill the gap between heavy machine guns (.50bmg) and general purpose machine guns (.308)

Mounting a .338 norma chambered machine gun in the place of a .50 gives you similar range and a lot more ammo

Youre probably right but I still would like to see both first.
Something like a SAW in 6.5 CT somewhere in weight/speed between a grendel and CM is what youre thinking of?

squad mobility and ease of deploying as well

we're not talking about replacing stationary .50 weapons with .338NM

stop poisoning the well

not him but Ive heard of guys hauling M2s into the mountains and setting them up on tripods so thats what I was thinking he meant

.338 GPMG are a solution looking for a problem

ITT: boomers being boomers and vehemently resisting any change like they always do

>do you:
>a)wait for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artillery support/CAS while being blasted
>or
>b)return fire with your .338 squad machinegun?

c)use your 60mm knee mortar or carl gustav

Replacing M2s in vehicles with a .338 makes sense

>It fact 3+ is untouchable to 7.62x51
>all 7.62x51 is M80 ball

Learn2 steel core or M80A1.

338 is powerful but not 50cal powerful and ammunition isnt enough of a problem to really justify that unless we start moving to cute baby tanks like the euros have.

Not if you want to stop SVBIEDs

>less effective range and punch
>vehicle mounting negates weight concerns

How is it a good idea to replace M2A1 with a .338 MG?

No doubt its less powerful but it offers similar range. Im not saying its the right direction to go in, just that its the argument being made for it

>>vehicle mounting negates weight concerns
Ammunition has weight constraints

Not in a vehicle.

Friendly reminder that the benchmark is an M240 firing M80A1 EPR and an M2 firing M8 API.

Especially in light vehicles.

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It does. Even if a vehicle could take infinite weight (it can't, especially if it's a Humvee or something), the space for ammunition bulk is very much limited. That said, 338 does not have enough anti-materiel power to replace a .50 on a vehicle, but it can definitely improve upon a 240 a great deal.

I'd like one. Looks badass.

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ASSUMING two things:

1. that the gun is similar in weight or lighter than the current M240
2. that the polymer ammo is similar in weight or lighter than the current non polymer 7.62

Why not just replace the M240 with either the GD or Sig 338 MG?

>Looks badass.
It does. 8.5/10 aesthetics, maybe even 9/10.

It looks like a PKT tbqh