David Crane of Defense Review has an outstanding write up of the next gen magazine for the Infantry Automatic Rifle.
This is a must have if this system is going to work. I'm still not convinced and STILL believe that this is a boutique purchase to satisfy a small segment of Marine Corps leadership.
The Gunners are getting their way.
PS.
First. The drop test that they performed was silly. If it works then we'll know when its tested out at 29 Palms with the boys from the 7th Marine Regiment.
Second. I can tell you what's going to happen operationally with this weapon once it hits the fleet. Officer, SNCO's and Squad leaders are going to scoop them up and take the tracer rounds from their boys. They're going to use this to mark targets for their Marines or as a way for them to apply suppressive fire themselves at targets of opportunity. I guarantee SAWs will still be humped and this will be used in ways that are not being thought of at Headquarters Marine Corps.
More Info on the IAR can be found here.
Not sure I buy the IAR thing for anything but urban terrain or similar (ship boardings come to mind).
ReplyDeleteMy opinion: the LMG should still be the base of fire for the Marine fire team, and hence, the squad. I'm an aviation guy though, I could easily be way off base.
It does say only 4,100 are being bought right now. Maybe they are intended for special purposes only.
Ever since the 100 round C-Mags I'm hating double drums on rifles/carbines.
ReplyDeleteThey're big, bulky and awkward to shoot. Your whole stance and posture gets twisted silly trying to reach around to the forward grip/handguard, especially when you're also wearing a vest.
Then try to carry additional double-drum mags in an easy to reach and afast reload set-up. Or quickly change your rapidly overheating barrel on what is essentially a rifle chassis.
So IARs will mostly use 30-rnd mags and loose the essential volume of fire support role within the squads.
Agreed on the M249 SAW/Minimi - shorten that one to the rightly popular 'para' version instead of getting new IARs.
Also, the whole shift about 'taking back the half kilometre' by including 7.62mm long rifles will also put pressure to beef up the supporting SAWs to either 7.62 or an intermediate (6.8mm) round in the near future.
So any heavy investment in the IAR should be limited to special jobs (VBSS, CQB) and not army/corps wide.