Can M240's burst length be increased in the future patches?

[JonS]

The MG42 had an amazing ROF but what's the point if you shoot a guy with 300 rnds and then his ticked off buddies overrun your position because your outta ammo.

Sydney Jary is (was?) of the opinion that the uber high ROF of the MG42 contributed Germany's defeat.

[theFightingSeabee]

Hell yeah man. We called it "final protective fire", but I'm extremely pleased to hear that it may be incorporated.

FPF is when the enemy is charging and you need to create a wall of bullets using interlocking fields of grazing fire. A good mg team will set up their tripod so that the maximum right or left pointing position of the mg is in line with your interlocking fire. This is for extremely fast FPF positioning. You do the same with rifles and aiming stakes.

/XXXXXXXXXXX\

This combined with grazing fire creates a wall of lead. You get two .50's "talking" with 3-5 round bursts and the enemy has to go through that to get to the guys in between.

Huntarr,

Great picture. I have quite a few of them saved, but this is one of my favorites.

[mazex]

Well, when I did my military service we used the M240G and on several occasions we fired a full box of 250 bullets in one burst... If I had people storming my position, I would not let go of the trigger. In normal cases it was naturally short 5 round bursts that was practiced...

I remember one occasion a cold winter night when we had eight M240G:s with three barrels each and did 250 round bursts with all MG:s - then switched barrel at the same time the loader switched ammo box. We had those 8 MG running with sqeezed triggers for something like 10 minutes with the short delays for switching belt and barrel. It was a night exercise and ALL the bullets where tracers being fired at an old ruin in the middle of a field. What a sight... The dust cloud from all the hits on the stone building completely obscured it after a while. Why? The regimental budget had not been spent so to avoid getting cuts in it for the next year we had to spend all the ammo we could during a weekend exercise... Besides, it was meant to practice last line defense in the case you had hundreds of russians storming your position screaming "hurraaa". Why belts with only tracers? They are more expensive...

/Mazex

[Lee]

The U.S. military does the same sort of thing. The Navy, for example, will throw things overboard from their ships, just waste it, rather than having to see their budget decreased for the next year (even though they obviously don't really need to spend that much money each year, since they had so much stuff left over).

The branches of the military have this ego thing going on, where they don't like to see their branch of service getting it's budget cut while another branch might get an increase in it's budget. They find that embarrassing, they want all the power, money and the prestige that goes along with it that they can get their hands on. It's really stupid, but that's what goes on.

At least you guys got to do a bunch of shooting, which is great practice for a really intense battle and much more fun than throwing stuff overboard. I wish I could have seen it.

[theFightingSeabee]

We did the same. When we were issued rounds for training, we had to use them. At the end of the exersize, we would blast them all off. We also had night time live fires, pretty damn awesome sight with all tracers. At the same time, we fired off m16s with tracers, m60s, .50 cals, m203s, at4's, claymores, and 60mm mortars (flares only). Best fireworks show I've ever seen. The only thing we didn't fire off that night was our mk19s.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, I've heard some stories from regular Navy guys hanging around doing their normal work, when someone comes up and says "sailor, do you want to use a Mk19 for a few minutes?" Of course the answer always is, "HELL YEAH!". I've never heard this attributed directly to blowing through ammo for budget reasons, but one doesn't have to think hard to see that's the likely reason

Thanks for the correction... Final Protective Fire... always forgetting that middle bit!

Steve

[Huntarr]

[c3k]

Years ago we had carte blanche to fire off any 5.56 ammo. The Sgt. told us that the supply clerk had added an extra zero to the unit's order; 100,000 rds. vice 10,000! So, any time of day, we could saunter over to the 500 meter range and burn off as much as we could stand. The crux was it all had to be gone by the end of the month.

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

Ah, had to dispose of the evidence

Steve