Are new M2 machine guns still being produced, or the more than 2 million from ww2 are more than enough? And if new ones are still made, then who are the manufacturers? Just FN?

>>6776 >or the more than 2 million from ww2 are more than enough They still use ones produced BEFORE the war. In 2015 an Army depot got one in for conversion to the A1 standard that turned out to be serial number 324. >Are new M2 machine guns still being produced >And if new ones are still made, then who are the manufacturers? At least as recently as 2010, they were being made by General Dynamics, FN, and US Ordnance.

>>6777 That gun is a terrible idea. You can't use it on a bipod, or at least there is really no point in trying that, so you need a tripod or some other mount for it. And at that point a twin mount could do the same job, but much cheaper, not to mention that you can still use the individual guns separately if you changed your mind about this idea. And the only role a twin MG3 would make any sense is as a door gun for helicopters, which is quite a niche one. Developing a modern lightweight mount for that specific job would be a much more marketable idea, especially if they put in the extra effort to make twin mounts for the FN MAG and the PKM too. And if they really wanted an alternative to a Minigun, then they should have turned it into a Gast-system: as one bolt goes backward from the recoil it slams the other one forward, speeding up the loading cycle, which also means it will make the first one reload faster, therefore the RoF is not only much higher than if you simply bolted the two guns, but the two guns are perfectly synchronized. I have no idea how fast two MG3s with a Gast-system would be exactly, but I wish I could build one such monstrosity just to find it out.

>>6779 Speaking of the MG3, do Germans still use the Gurttrommel

Many moons ago (maybe back at 8chan) someone mentioned that it is possible to make polymer belts that work just like the cloth belts of old, except that they wouldn't swell from water. It turns out such belts were already made back in the 1960s, but for the Mk18 Mod 0 grenade launcher. A polymer belt like that but for rifle cartridges would be significantly lighter than metallic belts, and cheap enough to be disposable. Moreover, during ww2 there was a period of steel shortage when they switched to cloth belts for the M2, and those were 50 round belt segments that could be linked together with a cartridge. For small arms something like 10 round segments would work just fine without being too much of a hindrance. The real problem is that these would be pull-out belts. Now, considering that all Russian machine guns use those, and that neither the M1919 nor the M2 was hindered by them, I think we can all agree that machine guns with pull-out belts work. You could even make something like the German Maxims that were converted to use either cloth belts or the push-through belts of the MG34: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=lq5-VlQyOyI Although even if you designed a new machine gun that can use either polymer pull-out or steel push-through belts, most armies using 7.62 NATO would still have too many machine guns that can only use the latter. But for a PKM such polymer belts might actually be a good upgrade.

Found a small channel dedicated to the Vickers guns and related subjects. https://yewtu.be/channel/UClf4SadYI3MMOowV_D1y-rw

>>6780 Well it makes sence, guntrommel is lighter then the newer box. >>6779 Well it atleast looks good. While I too don't get why they are doing

https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Yu-7.62 >The Yu-7.62 (Ю-7.62) was an aircraft machine gun of Russian origin that boasts an extremely high rate of fire. >Studying the tasks of increasing the rate of fire of weapons, Yurchenko noted that the main problem that significantly affects the rate of fire is that in the classical schemes of operation, the velocity is lost at the extreme points of the shutter stroke. In addition, the increase in the rate of fire with such schemes leads to a significant decrease in the resource of weapons. >Yuriy Yurchenko noticed that in fact this problem was solved already before him, it remains only to realize what was done for the new tasks. Thus, Yurchenko drew attention to the fact that the world's first machine gun Hayram Maximus already carries elements of rapid-fire weapons. Shutter Maxim machine gun crankshaft-type and therefore the speed of its motion varies sinusoidally. With this kind of motion of the shutter, even with an increase in the speed of its movement, its velocity at the beginning and end of the movement is relatively small, and therefore it is possible to rely on smaller inertial force loads on the cartridge, which makes it impossible to destroy or decay it. >Unlike Maxim's machine gun, whose crank parts rotate by an angle of less than 180 degrees, Yurchenko arranged a crank turning as they write on an angle of as much as 350 degrees. This eliminated the impact of moving parts in the extreme rear position. Those. The automation cycle was practically unstressed. At each turn of the crank, a full cycle of automation was performed. The cartridge was accelerated smoothly and the inertial loads on the bullet did not exceed the forces of its pressing into the sleeve and, therefore, there was no decay. Like the machine-gun SHKAS cartridge in the machine gun Yurchenko was not removed from the tape back before being sent to the chamber, but was sent directly forward. >n 1938, Yurchenko presented for testing the version of his machine gun U-7.62 for the cartridge 7.62h54R, in which, in addition to a very simple design, achieved a tremendous rate of fire. The cyclic rate of the Yurchenko machine gun was 5000 rds / min. >The large-caliber version of the Yurchenko-U-12.7 machine gun was presented for testing in 1939, the cyclic rate was 2000 rds / min, weight 24 kg (for comparison, the serial aircraft machine gun with gas engine UB-12.7 weighed 21 kg at a rate of 1000 rounds per minute). But this option was not adopted because of the transverse dimensions. The profile of the machine gun resembled a guitar (the bar is the barrel, the first bulge is the receiver of cartridges, the second is the crank). >Unfortunately, despite all the advantages of the Yurchenko machine gun, he suffered one drawback, which completely "buried" the development of the design two meters into the ground. The fact is, that at that time, there was still no technology for making barrels that could withstand such a high rate of fire. tl;dr Russian engineer was inspired by the Maxim to make a machine gun with a RoF of 5000 rounds/min.

>>6783 >Well it makes sence, guntrommel is lighter then the newer box. That was actually meant to be a question, I just somehow didn't type out the question mark. I'm quite fascinated by them, but they seem to be surprisingly complicated and cumbersome, which is not surprising from something German. Here is a good video that shows all the inns and outs: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BSxiy0bNUP0

Are .338 machine guns really everything they are touted to be? The claim is that due to their better ballistic coefficient the projectiles retain more energy at longer ranges, so after a point they actually have more energy than .50 BMG. But then SLAP projectiles should have even better BC, and they are heavier and faster than any .338 Lapua bullet.

This looks cool, but I'm not sure how well would it work in practice. If the pouch is not attached to the body, then it will sling around way too much.

>>6781 Or just make israeli M1919 links out of plastic, kind of like what LSAT had going on.

>>6781 >But for a PKM such polymer belts might actually be a good upgrade. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=UNHY4D4XPE4

they look cool

>>6786 BC is only better in a relative sense. A 50 BMG has so much more weight and energy that it would overwhelm a slight BC advantage from 338 at any range. Also I think the 50 BMG in even the 650ish grain load has a higher BC anyway. I'm really not sure why 338 machine guns are a thing. All the 338 rounds were designed for extreme range sniping. In a machine gun though that long range potential is mostly meaningless. You'll just melt your barrel faster, and you'll have more power obviously than a 7.62x51 gun but it won't be enough to have anti-material potential like a 50 BMG. IMO 7.62x51 machine guns just make more sense.

>>6791 I think it's a weird cross between the experiences from Afghanistan and the sudden (and unfounded) fear of body armour that can't be penetrated by 7.62 NATO. So they might see it as the next step up from 7.62 that has a smaller footprint than 12.7mm, so you can haul more of it into battle. But if they have the infantry in mind, then maybe finally replacing the M2 with a significantly lighter and more compact machine gun would be better. It's not like they'd want to clear rooms with a .338 machine gun, and the Russians already proved with the Kord that you can make a heavy machine gun light enough to fire it from a bipod, and at that point a single machine gunner can carry it happily. You'd need an ammo bearer regardless of calibre. And it makes even less sense for vehicles, because if you are so hell-bent on it then you can replace the coaxial mg with a 12.7mm one. The AMX-30 had a coax M2 that they later replaced with a 20mm autocannon, and many British tanks had a .50 ranging in addition of a 7.62 mg.

>>6786 A potentially interesting upgrade might be to neck out either of those cartridges, load them with saboted flechettes, and fire them from an unrifled barrel, kind of like what the soviets were going for with pic related, just bigger. With .50 BMG you might be able to increase armour penetration even if you use steel flechettes.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aDXfVEtJtfQ So this is actually a PKM knock-off that can be fed from autistic magazine, and you can also launch rifle grenades with it. Both of those are quite useless features on such a machine gun, but it's the kind of tacticool that I really love.

>>6793 Moreover, if you have a smooth barrel and straight-walled cartridges, you could also fill them with ball bearings or multiple flechettes, and turn it into an automatic shotgun. .50 BMG just happens to be about the size of a 12 gauge shell anyway, except that it can hold a lot more powder and shell, not to mention that it can withstand much higher pressures. I can see it working in urban combat where you can shred infantry at relatively close range. Maybe you could even put a duckbill choke on it, assuming that it does not impact the use of the miniature APFSDS.

M61 Vulcan ~ best 20mm auto-cannon ever https://youtu.be/Q8s391KTi7I?t=349

>>6794 The "ork" part of "Nork" is more applicable with every bit of "technology" from them I see.

>>6796 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60WtGC4ejo GAU-8 30mm

I wish I could collect machine funs.

>>6798 There was even a prototype SPAAG that had one. I wonder if the wonders of modern technology would allow us to make what is effectively a Goalkeeper on tracks. I mean, the gun is there, but you'd need to add a modern radar and presumably beef up all the motors involved in training it, and that doesn't sound too complicated.

So what would be the best gun for a SPAAG that is meant to be a CIWS on wheels/tracks and shoot down everything from drones to AT missiles? Someone suggested that the Italians had the right idea with a 76.2mm naval gun, but a criticism I've heard that it cannot even carry enough ammo to fire for a minute. Would a 57mm gun have a better balance of firepower and ammo supply?

>>6801 >wouldn't have enough ammo to fire for a minute Is that why so much research is going into microwave and laser weapons? Long term combat effectiveness at the cost of extremely high purchase and upkeep?

>>6801 Lasers. Nothing comes even close, your ammo is infinite. The atmospheric conditions required to make it trully useless are basically impossible. The travel time of the intercepting beam is for all purposes instant, if the sensors detect missile they can hit it 0,000001 seconds later. Other than that I think just sticking surplus flak guns on humvees with glued thermals would be enough to deal with drones.

>>6801 57mm is the least space-efficient option. The shells are too small for proximity HE but massive overkill for contact HE, and you still can't carry much more than a minute's worth of ammo. Also, past 40mm you start to run into major problems with turrets traversing too slowly to react to new threats. There is a limit to how big of a traverse motor you can safely fit into a tank hull, and we're pretty much at that point already. >>6803 AFV-mounted lasers aren't powerful enough to deal with anything faster than a quadcopter. Travel time is completely meaningless.

>>6804 >past 40mm you start to run into major problems with turrets traversing too slowly to react to new threats. So maybe a necked out 35mm really is the answer. https://web.archive.org/web/20211201042331/https://quarryhs.co.uk/MilRel.htm https://yewtu.be/watch?v=U0prcaXEwKU >There is a limit to how big of a traverse motor you can safely fit into a tank hull, and we're pretty much at that point already. Is it due to energy consumption or magnetic fields and whatnot? Or both?

>>6805 >So maybe a necked out 35mm really is the answer. For a conventional SPAAG, probably. For CIWS and drone defense, you'd probably be best off with something like a GAU-19 or even M134. Drones and AGMs don't require much firepower to kill, so the only thing that matters is maximizing the odds of any kind of hit. >Is it due to energy consumption or magnetic fields and whatnot? Or both? It's more that you literally don't have any room to fit a bigger motor. Most SPAAG turrets are stupidly cramped.

>>6806 Are you telling me that a 12 gauge shotgun as described in >>6795 could in theory work, especially if you replaced the shot with flechettes, similar to number 5 in pic related?

>>6807 Sure, but the problem is localizing these fuckers in the first place. Pretty much every hit is enough to destroy control surfaces or otherwise incapacite the drone smaller than predator. Drones are too small to be spotted on radar but they can still have visible heat signature, so just putting .50mm with niggershot and thermals nigger rigged to some trucks might be enough to protect your logistics for a while. Of course you want to have high top armor on these vehicles to prevent drone strikes, which kind of defeats the point of just putting it on any normal humvee, since you have a huge unarmored hole cut right into it. Clearly the answer lies in sponsons. And it would be most likely too slow to deal with suicide drones, unless gunners reflexes are stellar. Still, these need to be coordinated via another scouting drone for max effect so removing it might still be worthwhile. And of course this is just poverty option, you could make it work entirelly automatically on platforms specially designed for these tasks with jamming capabilities and integrated drone detection system. Personally I would rather seek to use all these obsolate FLAK guns. I heard Romania still has large stockpile. There will never again be a better use of these.

>>6808 Wouldn't LIDARs work perfectly fine for spotting small drones?

I have no idea why you all talk about all these retarded solutions when the issue of defeating drones, missiles and pretty much any ballistic threat was already solved years ago. 35mm is the sweet spot of for this role. It's big enough to make an effective canister-like shell (AHEAD ammunition) and fast enough to fill the air with thousands of small tungsten balls with just a single burst. You do not defeat missiles or drones by hitting them directly. You just shoot near them and let the fragments do the rest. The GAU-19 and the M134 are dogshit choices for defeating these threats, because they don't have airbust rounds. >>6804 >57mm >too small >turret traverse speed What in the absolute fuck am I reading. Is this really /k/?

>>6809 Of course, but the problem is, you will be trying to catch 300$ lawnmover with wings with 300 bilion$ machine, and you need to cover the entire frontline on several layers to make sure they will not go through. You can do it with jamming up untill they get drones which operate on AI. You cannot have just one detector feeding data to multiple interception platforms since it will be jammed. Or you can have cheap as shit m2 shooting niggershot serving as point defense on some humvees. So the question is: how ghetto we can go?

>>6805 Looking at that straight-walled 50mm cartridge, I cannot help but wonder if it would be possible to make a split-breech rotary machine gun that fires it. The main problem is that cases tend to split, but if you made such a straight case out of a modern steel alloy, then maybe that problem would disappear. You could even make the walls a tad thicker than normal and play with the powder charge a bit to make it perform just the same.

>>6809 >>6811 How about locating them with sounds? Drones have pretty district sounds, and a simple computer with a pair of microphones shouldn't break the bank.

>>6813 It would need some good directional mic's but it can be done. The U.S. tested some microphone systems that could detect the location of a sniper based on the sound of the shot, and they were quite good IIRC.

Wouldnt spamming antimaterial rifles be very effective in Africa? even .50 can fuck up anything they have in there. >>6813 Interesting idea but making a silent glider or maybe even baloon drone should be very easy.

>>6814 Looks like there are multiple systems out there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator#Acoustic >>6815 > a silent glider or maybe even baloon drone should be very easy. But then those wouldn't be as manoeuvrable as a drone that has its own motors, not to mention that even a relatively mild wind could ground them. Besides, potentially cockblocking at least 99% of currently available drones sounds like a good starting point to me.

M61A1 20mm Vulcan gun like the ones on the F-16

I wonder how well would aluminium barrel shrouds would work as a cooling solution. The only example I know (other than the Lewis gun with its forced air cooling) is the Chauchat, where it did not work, because as the aluminium expanded against the receiver it froze the barrel in place, and that is not a brilliant thing in a recoil operated weapon. But in theory you could make a straight and featureless barrel and then put an extruded aluminium shroud with lots of cooling fins on it, and in theory it should not affect the ballistics of the barrel (other than adding extra weight), unlike cooling fins that are machined directly into the barrel.

>>6818 And what would the use case be? NATO would bitch about it making swapping barrels harder, russians already have pretty lightweight lmg, planes dont really need to worry about weight of machineguns anymore. Burger enthusiasts will bitch about 1000$ receiver made out of coke cans.

>>6819 >And what would the use case be? Tacticool salt rifles nowadays either have pencil barrels or rather thick ones. A thin barrel with extra aluminium on it could be the third way.

>>6819 >And what would the use case be? Yeah exactly. Imagine an aluminum barrel for super lightness and cooling performance and a space age chrome-tungsten alloy liner inside for strength. Or just two or three much cheaper and easy to make barrels you can swap out when it wears out faster due to higher temperature.

>>6821 simply put the fatigue limit of aluminum is far too low to be worth the price in a military service weapon. no matter what liner you give it to provide strength to the rifling the barrel will eventually inevitably fail. especially in the roll of an automatic weapon.

>>6821 >>6822 To be fair, the original post is about taking a steel barrel that would work on its own, and putting an aluminium sleeve on it, just like the Chauchat, which uses a Lebel barrel with an aluminium sleeve. Although the different expansion rates of steel and aluminium might cause problems, but I envision it as a whole lot of aluminium fins with a connecting ring around halfway across their length. As the heat is transferred from the barrel the fins would expand both away and towards the barrel, hopefully in a somehow controlled manner that might even add some extra rigidity to the whole thing.

>>6821 I think you dont understand the issue here correctly: Its not an aluminium barrel but a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud for heat dissipation. Such a shroud together with barrel should weight less then alternative barrel while still retaining properties required to operate correctly. I doubt you will be able to manage that, at least without incorporating the shroud with other elements like handguard and so on. Which is probably not the best of ideas. Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch and there is already preexisting infrastructure for creating competing kinds of barrels. I just dont see it man. Not enough upsides. Unless you go full KelTec of course and make something like *snorts coke* full aluminium foldable bullpup carbine chambered in 6.5 creedmore with electric operated ignitation system and carbon fiber barrel.

>>6824 >Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch and there is already preexisting infrastructure for creating competing kinds of barrels. Why not cast ZAMAC then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluton_(complex) A sad example of swords to ploughshares.

bump

>>6824 >Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch You can just extrude it, push it on to the barrel from the front until a wider area machined into the barrel stops it, and then keep it place with the muzzle device. >I just dont see it man. Not enough upsides. I am just shooting ideas that grind my gears, so...

How2make automatic potato gun?

>>6828 >I am just shooting ideas that grind my gears, so... Yeah. Thats just how creative process works, we can refine this concept via critique and further brainstorming >>6829 Just use that machine for throwing tenis balls.

>>6829 Think rotary canon anon. Use a small propane tank for combustion. >>6830 >Just use that machine for throwing tenis balls. I don't think that would work. Potatoes are too inconsistent in shape and occasionally in firmness for that to be feasible. Small gourds, pumpkins or apples might work in one though.

>>6824 >but a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud for heat dissipation. Isn't that the same thing as an aluminium barrel with a steel liner?? >full aluminium foldable bullpup carbine Reality aside, what's the absolute minimum weight you'd want an automatic salt rifle to have? Say it's chambered .308 NATO, nothing crazy. At some point too little weight is going to feel weird to handle, also you'll want some mass to dampen the vibration.

>>6824 >a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud The problem with that is differential heat expansion of the two metals. Aluminum has thermal expansion coefficient of roughly 21-24 1x10^-6 meters per centigrade, while steel is 10-12 1x10^-6 meters per Centigrade. It's why the experimental AR-10 barrel blew up during U.S. trials but to be fair, that also used layers of steel in the aluminum sleeve aside from the steel barrel liner which exacerbated the issue. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-expansion-coefficients-d_95.html

>>6831 >I don't think that would work. Potatoes are too inconsistent in shape and occasionally in firmness for that to be feasible. Small gourds, pumpkins or apples might work in one though. Its just pressure operated launcher, as long as the size of the barrel is wide enough to fit the projectile and projectiles weight is not too big. Accuracy would be ass but hey its you that wanted to launch potatoes, you can always cut them into more aerodynamic shapes. >>6832 >Isn't that the same thing as an aluminium barrel with a steel liner?? No. One is additional, the other is integrated. >Reality aside, what's the absolute minimum weight you'd want an automatic salt rifle to have? That is a really good question. >>6833 Exactly.

>>6833 >>6834 Instead of fiddling with aluminum what about one of the types of brass instead? >>6818 Personally What I would suggest ti to go back to the raygun aesthetic and put fins and flutes in barrels to act as passive heat sinks. That's expensive and complicates milling though.

>>6835 >what about one of the types of brass instead? I'm fairly certain brass is heavy enough that there is no point in using it over steel, and different thermal expression is still an issue. With better heat treatments the main issue with pencil barrels being inaccurate when hot is mostly resolved. Other than that, switching to a more efficient propellant would work better by burning cooler as heat is the major killer of barrels. There is an experimental 5.56 round that uses 1/2 the powder and is straight walled. And while looking for that I found a neat paper on folded cartridges https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2005/smallarms/wednesday/sadowski.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA039156.pdf

>>6836 I think may be you could have two thin strips of T5 ally fins that go up a third of either side of the barrel... and you could hold them there with some graphene-mixed contact cement. The question for me is not whether they'd expand thermally or fall off or anything but whether they would do anything at all to the performance of a gun to be noticeable enough during field testing.

>>6836 >There is an experimental 5.56 round that uses 1/2 the powder and is straight walled. So, .22 carbine?

>>6838 >So, .22 carbine? It retained the same power as 5.56x45 and you could fit 55 of those rounds in a standard 30 round mag IIRC. You could also design a P90 like magazine system for it, shame it wasn't expanded further on. I think the powder it used was too expensive to make, but that issue would likely go away when mass producing and gaining expertise.

>>6840 I know, but it genuinely looks like some scaled down .30 carbine to 5.56mm, even if the development process was quite different. Also, now I want to see a tiny revolver chambered for that experimental cartridge.

So what's the deal with 6.8mm Common? It looks like this will go nowhere.