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2005-10-12 Science & Technology

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Posted by Steve 2005-10-12 09:34|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 ...and I wonder how long it will take them to fix all the inevitable bugs, glitches, misfeeds, etc.

Posted by gromky">gromky 2005-10-12 10:12|| http://communistposters.com/]">[http://communistposters.com/] 2005-10-12 10:12|| Front Page Top

#2 The barrel looks thin. I would be wary of overheating. I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire.

Posted by ed 2005-10-12 10:29|| 2005-10-12 10:29|| Front Page Top

#3 The army doesnât want to build new ones, and wasnât sure it could do without the venerable, and very useful, Ma Deuce

They dumped Browning's 45 too, much to everyone's regret. Sometimes new is not significantly better.

Posted by Thromble Chineting2817 2005-10-12 10:53|| 2005-10-12 10:53|| Front Page Top

#4 I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire.
From the link: Rate of Fire 230 Shots per Minute, Automatic or Semi-Automatic. Slower than Ma Deuce, but better accuracy

Posted by Steve">Steve 2005-10-12 11:50|| 2005-10-12 11:50|| Front Page Top

#5 The .50 cal was designed by those who still had the astouding gunbattles of WWII in their heads. Men who wanted a gun that if it was ever used so hard that it would break down in the field, you needed artillery support anyway.

I remember stories of how German machine gunners had to put handfuls of snow in their water cooled machine guns because the water had boiled out. How company sized units would hold off Division sized Russian units with little but machine guns and Panzerfausts.

And a generation before that, in WWI, how it seemed like those machine guns would never be stilled, and hundreds of thousands of men charged such guns.

As much as we like to think of this as war of the past, future wars may need weapons as durable.

The diminishing return for accuracy is far lower than the diminishing return for durability.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-10-12 12:39|| 2005-10-12 12:39|| Front Page Top

#6 The barrel looks thin. I would be wary of overheating. I wonder what is its sustained rate of fire.

I suspect the materials have improved over the last eighty years.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2005-10-12 12:45|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-10-12 12:45|| Front Page Top

#7 Not impressed.

Posted by Sock Puppet OÂ´ Doom 2005-10-12 16:53|| 2005-10-12 16:53|| Front Page Top

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