Grendel LMG

[LRRPF52]

The challenges with mag-fed Squad-level Light Support Weapons are:

* Magazine capacity limits situational awareness and the ability to sustain fire. Belt-fed weapons allow the gunner to focus entirely on the TGT and area around the TGT while firing bursts.

* Magazines add a lot of weight and bulk to the SAW/Auto Rifleman's load, especially if you try to address the limited magazine capacity with drums.

* Lack of quick barrel change feature on a weapon intended for higher volume of fire

With drum mags, they are great to have in the gun for your first mag, but then what do you do with them? With links, I just let the links lay where they fall, no issues. With drums, I now need to retain that drum after it's expended, then reload it once I get resupplied with ammo. When I get resupplied with linked ammo, I either pull the 200rd containers from the ammo can and slap one directly onto the gun, or take the linked ammo out and feed it into one of the Cordura nut sacks that attach to the gun, very fast. If there is a metallic drum, you pull the rear plate off, feed the linked ammo in, close the back, and you're ready to go.

Linked ammo in soft ammo bags weighs less than magazine contained ammo.



It helps to better understand some of the challenges if people could see how we employ machine-guns at the Squad level. It's absolutely nothing like the movies, and involves a lot of team work, with SAWs covering specific avenues of approach, manning blocking positions, or setting up in certain positions for ambushes. There is quite a bit of study required to learn Small Unit Tactics to get a better idea of what actually happens.

The driving force behind the current push for IAR in the Marines is more as a DM and limited burst IAR, with more focus on the precision that optics and accurate barrels allow. What gets overlooked between the Marines and the Army are how USMC Infantry Squads are organized. They have 3 Fire Teams, whereas the US Army went full abortion and did a top-down MTO&E that ignored decades of combat lessons learned from junior leaders, and instead decided to structure all of its Infantry Squads around the Bradley Fighting Vehicle crew and soldier compartment limitations, even though none of the Light Infantry, Airborne, or Airmoblie units have Bradleys anywhere close to them. That means a 9-man Rifle Squad, which is really an oversized Fire Team.



A Marine Infantry Rifle Squad looks like a small platoon, and their Infantry Platoons look like small companies. There is a significant advantage in flexibility with the USMC MTO&E because as soon as you take casualties, there are plenty of guys in the trail fire team to either CASEVAC them, or fill in the attrited Team's position and continue the momentum of an attack. They have a Rifle Squad Leader and 3 Fire Teams of 4 men each, for a total of 13 pipe swingers.

The US Army Infantry Squad has no such luck, which is interesting because all of the post-combat (WWII, Korea, Vietnam) AARs that were conducted with combat-experienced junior NCOs and Lieutenants all concluded that 11 men was the bare minimum needed for a capable Infantry Squad. Why the US Army subjects all of its Light, Airmobile, and Airborne forces to the 9-man Bradly Squad has more to do with the ill-conceived "Army of Excellence" initiative of the 1980s and their management of manpower from a top-down approach, rather than building from a Fire Team-up approach as previously done. They didn't care about the Infantry really, since they had so much capability with Armor, Artillery, and Aviation, and figured Infantry was more of an after-thought. Grenada, Panama, Mogadishu, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq would all expose the folly of that thinking.