Hitting the usual war movies while barbecuing and I keep seeing the Browning Automatic Rifle in all these films and it got me to wondering.
Is the M27 IAR a good idea but wrapped in the wrong rifle round?
The M240 is a beast of a weapon on patrol and is often left behind because of it. But imagine if you were able to lay down precision automatic rifle fire at the ranges that a 7.62mm round is capable of.
A new built Browning Automatic Rifle type weapon, married with modified C-Mags or Surefire 60 round mags all wrapped with the 7.62mm round could actually be a game changer. Why this was never considered is beyond me...and if it was but got rejected makes me wonder why.
Modern materials should make it rather easy to get this weapon below the 15 pound mark (empty) and if it was also fired open bolt and had a heavy barrel we should get similar performance but with much greater hitting power than we are with the M27.
The Marine Corps should at least study the concept.
It's already been tried:
ReplyDelete-- FALO, heavy barrel full auto version of the FAL
-- M15 (cancelled) and M14A1
-- arguably the FG42
They're just not controllable enough to get accurate fire at any range. There's too much recoil from the full power round. People wound up either replacing them with LMGs, which were too heavy, or eventually Minimis.
Johnson's M1941/M1944 were possibly the most practical full power ARs, but they were marked by both an emphasis on semi-auto fire as the primary employment and very low rates of fire.
Nowadays if you want a longer range AR, something in 6.5mm Grendel seems like the way to go: all the the long range firepower with more controllable full automatic fire.
welll i wouldn't mind tuning down this mythical modern BAR. that's one of the reasons why they took full auto away from the M-16 family. lack of accuracy. if you could get it where you're firing full automatic and pumping out say 200 rounds a minute then you might have something.
ReplyDeleteas far as recoil is concerned you can play all kinds of games with springs and buffers.
NOT Beta. Beta is SHIT! Huge shit. I would definitely use a modified ARMATAC though. Reliable, hi-cap, beastly.
ReplyDeleteIt would definitely be on an M-14 platform if anything though. AS much as I'd love to see a BAR come back...
I'm good with using an M-14 platform for this. all i'd insist on is seeing a proper heavy barrel and firing from an open bolt but its doable.
ReplyDeleteThe M-14 was never a successful full-auto weapon, for reasons already mentioned here. They were so problematic on full-auto that Uncle Sam eventually stopped issuing select-fire weapons as general issue rifles. The FAL may have been worse.
ReplyDeletea modern M-14 might be able to solve some of those issues. its about the round not the platform. whatever works.
ReplyDelete