The Gun Counter

A bullpup conversion of the Pecheneg (PKM replacement in the light role) machinegun.

Wow! Offhand!

I never got to try the PKM as a GPMG. I shot a semi-auto version and really liked it. It's the lightest of all the great 20th Century GPMGs at about 17 pounds, but still too heavy for offhand. It looks like they must have shaved a few pounds off as well as shortening it.

It takes the 7.62x54R cartridge, so recoil must be stout, which makes the demonstration even more impressive.

My impressions of GPMGs are as follows:

1. PKM in 7.62x54R at 16.5 pounds: Essentially an AK47 turned upside-down. Light and handy. In semi-auto, reliability was flawless (However, it is much easier to get flawless reliability in SA than in FA). I never got to try in FA.
2. MG3 in 7.62 NATO at 23 pounds: Parts compatible with the MG42. Same legendary flawless reliability. Almost as fast.
3. M240/MAG58 in 7.62 NATO at 27 pounds: Essentially an M1919 Browning with a QCB. Heaviest of the GPMGs, but rock-solid reliable. I never had one jam on me.
4. L4A1/Bren in 7.62 NATO at 23 pounds: The old Czech VZ 26 upgraded to .303 then upgraded to 7.62 NATO. Solid and reliable, but more of a SAW than a GPMG because of the lack of belt feed.
5. HK21 in 7.62 NATO at 17 pounds: Belt fed version of the legendary G3 assault rifle. A lesson in why a rock-solid reliable magazine fed design will not necessarily be a rock-solid reliable belt fed design. HK fixed the reliability problems with the HK21E, but at the cost of boosting the weight to over 20 pounds. More expensive and more complex than the MG3, which is why the Germans stuck with the MG3.
6. M60 in 7.62 NATO at 23 pounds: Abortive mating of great German GPMG design with American incompetence. The only GPMG to have the gas piston and bipod attached to the barrel. The only GPMG with less than flawless reliability.

IMHO, once we get past the basic requirements of a GPMG, reliability trumps everything else.

The M60 is not a bad gun, but it had a number of design flaws. Given how well the other GPMG designs evolved over the 20th Century, the number of flaws and less than flawless reliability are inexcusable. The US spends half of the total world expenditures for weapons and war fighting, yet it took us 50 years to go back to a weapon designed by Belgians in the 1950s?

D5CAV wrote:The M60 is not a bad gun, but it had a number of design flaws. Given how well the other GPMG designs evolved over the 20th Century, the number of flaws and less than flawless reliability are inexcusable. The US spends half of the total world expenditures for weapons and war fighting, yet it took us 50 years to go back to a weapon designed by Belgians in the 1950s?

After you conquer the known world, and physics too, getting past the "Not Invented Here" bias is a bitch that doesn't really slap you in the back of the head until after about 8 years of brutal guerrilla war in the jungle.

And until someone sees an MG3 or MG42 firing full-auto, they can't begin to appreciate why the Germans almost conquered all of Europe, twice.

"M60 Machine gun: Medium weight, bipod/tripod mounted, belt fed, bolt action, medium machine gun"

Aesop wrote:

D5CAV wrote:The M60 is not a bad gun, but it had a number of design flaws. Given how well the other GPMG designs evolved over the 20th Century, the number of flaws and less than flawless reliability are inexcusable. The US spends half of the total world expenditures for weapons and war fighting, yet it took us 50 years to go back to a weapon designed by Belgians in the 1950s?

After you conquer the known world, and physics too, getting past the "Not Invented Here" bias is a bitch that doesn't really slap you in the back of the head until after about 8 years of brutal guerrilla war in the jungle.

And until someone sees an MG3 or MG42 firing full-auto, they can't begin to appreciate why the Germans almost conquered all of Europe, twice.

The biggest flaw with the M60 was that it was an attempt to make a non-metric MG42. American engineers have a long and proud history of ruining everything by screwing up metric-to-standard conversions.

Jericho941 wrote:

Aesop wrote:

D5CAV wrote:The M60 is not a bad gun, but it had a number of design flaws. Given how well the other GPMG designs evolved over the 20th Century, the number of flaws and less than flawless reliability are inexcusable. The US spends half of the total world expenditures for weapons and war fighting, yet it took us 50 years to go back to a weapon designed by Belgians in the 1950s?

After you conquer the known world, and physics too, getting past the "Not Invented Here" bias is a bitch that doesn't really slap you in the back of the head until after about 8 years of brutal guerrilla war in the jungle.

And until someone sees an MG3 or MG42 firing full-auto, they can't begin to appreciate why the Germans almost conquered all of Europe, twice.

The biggest flaw with the M60 was that it was an attempt to make a non-metric MG42. American engineers have a long and proud history of ruining everything by screwing up metric-to-standard conversions.

My understanding is its the bastard child of the BREN and an MG42. MG42 cross feed, Brno barrel and op rod.
For that matter I thought the MG240 was gas operated as well.(i.e. not like a 1919)

slowpoke wrote:My understanding is its the bastard child of the BREN and an MG42. MG42 cross feed, Brno barrel and op rod.
For that matter I thought the MG240 was gas operated as well.(i.e. not like a 1919)

The Bren barrel is more like the M240 barrel. The gas piston is left on the gun.

The other parent of the M60 was the German FG42. The FG42 was more of a SAW, like the M1918 Browning, without a QCB.

Neither the BREN nor the MG42 had the gas piston and bipod attached to the QCB. Only American engineers could think of that one.

Whoops! Fat fingered the keys. M1918, not M1919. FN had made a version of the M1918 Browning with a QCB, which would have given the BREN a run for the money, but the US never adopted it. This was the FN Model 30D: http://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-m ... del-d-bar/

The MAG58 was an evolution of the FN Model 30D design with a belt feed mechanism. All are based on a long-stroke gas piston design.

D5CAV wrote:The US spends half of the total world expenditures for weapons and war fighting, yet it took us 50 years to go back to a weapon designed by Belgians in the 1950s?

Because they're are only so many ways to make a mechanical belt fed work, and once you find a good one, why fuck with it?

And the M240 had it's start back in 1958. The M16 was first adopted in 1962.

Honestly, it's probably the best of the bunch. The M60E4, probably the best of the series, had to undergo a major redesign to attain a decent level or reliability, and it's still not as good. The MG3 still has too high a fire rate, over a thousand rounds a minute. I'm not even going to get into the Russian stuff..

HTRN wrote:The MG3 still has too high a fire rate, over a thousand rounds a minute.

Why is this a bad thing?

The biggest problem with a high rate of fire is lack of reliability. The faster the bullets are going through the feed mechanism, the higher the likelihood of a jam. The Germans figured out how to get high rate of fire, and make it very reliable.

I like a high rate of fire. If I pull the trigger, I want as many bullets as possible to go out as closely as possible to each other - that's the whole point of a MG. A high rate of fire puts as many bullets as possible at the point I want the bullets to go at the time I want the bullets to get there.

I can always release the trigger if I want to save ammo.

I like the m240B's variable rate mechanism.