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| Science & Technology |
| Successor to Ma Deuce Field Tested |
| 2005-10-12 |
| October 12, 2005: The replacement (the XM-312) for the eighty year old, .50 caliber (12.7mm) M-2 (âMa Deuceâ) machine-gun is now undergoing field testing. Originally, this was going to be the M-307, designed so it could fire either the computer controlled 25mm âsmart shellâ of the XM-25, or (by changing the barrel and receiver), .50 caliber ammo. The troops will begin getting the XM312 in 2008, or sooner. The M-2, nicknamed âMa Deuceâ by the troops, has been around so long because it was very good at what it did. Accurate, reliable, rugged and easy to use, many of the M-2s currently in use are decades old, and finally wearing out. The army doesnât want to build new ones, and wasnât sure it could do without the venerable, and very useful, Ma Deuce. So it ended up going ahead with the plan to build a new .50 caliber machine-gun (the XM312). Actually, the new âMa Deuceâ is basically the XM307, but without the ability to fire 25mm rounds. The XM312 weighs 36 pounds (compared to 50 for the M-2), even with the addition of the electronic fire control stuff from the XM307. The fire control system, especially the range finder, makes the XM312 much more accurate with first shot hits, than the M-2. American troops have been testing the XM312 in the United States and Germany, and have also reacted favorably to the lighter weight of the XM-312. The lighter XM312 will be easier for infantry to manhandle into position (along with its tripod mount.) |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #7 Not impressed. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-10-12 16:53 |
| #6 The barrel looks thin. I would be wary of overheating. I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire. I suspect the materials have improved over the last eighty years. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-10-12 12:45 |
| #5 The .50 cal was designed by those who still had the astouding gunbattles of WWII in their heads. Men who wanted a gun that if it was ever used so hard that it would break down in the field, you needed artillery support anyway. I remember stories of how German machine gunners had to put handfuls of snow in their water cooled machine guns because the water had boiled out. How company sized units would hold off Division sized Russian units with little but machine guns and Panzerfausts. And a generation before that, in WWI, how it seemed like those machine guns would never be stilled, and hundreds of thousands of men charged such guns. As much as we like to think of this as war of the past, future wars may need weapons as durable. The diminishing return for accuracy is far lower than the diminishing return for durability. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-12 12:39 |
| #4 I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire. From the link: Rate of Fire 230 Shots per Minute, Automatic or Semi-Automatic. Slower than Ma Deuce, but better accuracy |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-10-12 11:50 |
| #3 The army doesnât want to build new ones, and wasnât sure it could do without the venerable, and very useful, Ma Deuce They dumped Browning's 45 too, much to everyone's regret. Sometimes new is not significantly better. |
| Posted by: Thromble Chineting2817 2005-10-12 10:53 |
| #2 The barrel looks thin. I would be wary of overheating. I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-10-12 10:29 |
| #1 ...and I wonder how long it will take them to fix all the inevitable bugs, glitches, misfeeds, etc. |
| Posted by: gromky 2005-10-12 10:12 |