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?

>>19323 >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.

>>19326 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.

>>19364 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

>>19388 Well it makes sence, guntrommel is lighter then the newer box. >>19364 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.

>>19917 >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.

>>19432 Or just make israeli M1919 links out of plastic, kind of like what LSAT had going on.

>>19432 >But for a PKM such polymer belts might actually be a good upgrade. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=UNHY4D4XPE4

they look cool

>>20128 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.

>>20447 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.

>>20128 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.

>>20642 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

>>22728 The "ork" part of "Nork" is more applicable with every bit of "technology" from them I see.

>>40971 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60WtGC4ejo GAU-8 30mm

I wish I could collect machine funs.

>>41276 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.