Again, agreed and... Didn't I just say that? I must be losing it or pissed.....

Anyone do the range shoot at vogelsang,where you would shoot across the lake at the targets on the other bank...I think it was beneath the hill with the eagle supposebly marked out in trees on it?( might be wrong,memory is crap now )

Anyway,I reckon that lake was a good 500 yards across and it was the first time I had ever fired a LMG/Bren.Got told to feel the trigger to get single shots by the instructor as he wanted to show how accurate it was.....and it was damn accurate,got most the targets down that I could only just barely see through the leaf sight...or maybe just luck.

Tried it with a bipod GPMG and being a little skinny thing back I just about managed to get all the rounds flying in the rough direction of the far bank.

#edited to say,nothing wrong with the GPMG....I was just too little to control the thing on my first shoot#

Fuck me ragged. Are you on drugs? How can a machine gun be too accurate to be considered a machine gun? I have worked with machine guns for twenty years. I would give my back teeth to have a machine gun which is that accurate my men could pick of individual targets at 800m with a short burst. At that range no matter what the MG it is the skill of the firer, the right weather elements and a bit of luck to hit a target with a 2-3rnd burst.

Your probably right, again agreed but that is not the role a LMG (not an L4 but a Light MachineGun) was designed for, that's the crux of the discussion, if not a little off topic but still entertaining.

Strapped to a Cheiftain the GPMG was like a fecking hose!

Don't agree with me to any point - I was taking the piss!

So what was a LMG designed for? I was under the impression it was to kill the enemy at a greater range. Are people telling me it was binned because it was too good at killing the enemy at long ranges?


Fucking mongs honest!

The LSW is a different bag of fish when we have weapon systems such as the GPMG and the minimi that can out perform it. So why have it?

Maybe it was considered unsporting? "I say Smythe; knock your machine gunners off for the afternoon, the enemy are dropping like flies - terribly bad form what!"

I cannot believe you are that ill informed FFS you are just on a wind up. I'm not biting so there. You know full well the LMG role is to supress while the section (or whatever) gets closer to do the gory bit. look a little bigger than what you think you know. Now behave. Out.

What I think I know! I've probably been in more firefights than you've been in the NAAFI. Are you saying the LSW or LMG needs to be quite inaccurate to be able to do its job properly or needs to be accurate to do its job properly?

BREN was originally intended to be fielded with a X3 scope, the same one that ended up on the No.4 (T)
Nothing new under the sun.....

In my experience the LMG was accurate, which leads to the myth of it being a "sniper rifle". This was a facet of the round employed, along with the construction of the weapon.
(It certainly could be used by a COMPETENT gunner, to place rounds in a VERY small area)

The relative low rate of cyclic fire on the LMG, made it simple to fire "single round bursts", with the "burst' hitting exactly the desired location.

The LMG could usefully engage targets out to 800m by ANY trained gunner. This is true with any 7.62mm weapon. Even an SLR , with the SUIT could and WAS used at ranges out to 800m, although the norm was said to be 600m aimed deliberate fire.

However :-
As a magazine fed weapon, apart from its relatively low cyclic rate of fire, the LMG was not in the same league as the GPMG in respect to its fire supression ability in fire and manouevre. The GMPG was essential to generate the cover fire need to F&M against the enemy.

The LMG was not as suited to generate sufficient weight of fire, due to the issues raised above, to allow sections to move under its cover alone. This was why it was superceeded/ replaced by the GPMG (which is a fantastic section/platoon MG IMHO)The LSW was a redux of the LMG concept, which is why 24 [sic?] after its introduction we are "chatting" about its "merits".

If you think the LSW has weight issues, then you would Shi'ite at a "Light Machine Gun" (I seem to recall 27lb was its all up weight in action)
I still have unresolved anger issues with the comedian who was allowed to call the LMG "Light".

I personally found the LSW to be an inferior Section weapon, compared to the GPMG. As mentioned by others above, as it shared the basic issue of not being a Belt fed weapon. However the LSW, L85 combination, generated considerably greater weight of fire, than the LMG/ SLR combo'.

Since I left the army, it seems to me, that sections and platoons ahve made considerable strides in improving their direct fire generation capability. If the LSW was part of a section that contains a belt fed support weapon, then I would assume it would have a viable role as an additional hammer in the tool box.

All this pommy talk of LSW's confuses me.

We have an LSW, it's called the F89 Minimi - the real meaty version with proper butt and barrel - treated as a light machine gun.

Can be comfortably fired standing out to 100m, can shoot out to 600 prone on the bipod.

Bringing Mag58 back into the section as well now.

Are you chaps saying the British Army has no organic belt-fed capability at the section level?

At various stages we have had

LMG (Mag fed. Bren .303 then 7.62)
then
GMPG (Belt 7.62)
then
LSW (Mag fed. 5.56. Paras stuck with GPMG(?))
now
LMG ( Belt 5.56. Minimi)

So yes, we do have belt fed at section level. Again.

No, that would be the ability to switch it to "Rounds" rather than "Automatic" - in contrast to the L7 GPMG which has no selector. Although we had a RASAM-winning GPMG gunner in our unit who was quite capable of making a GPMG fire single shot / double tap...


I will be the first to admit that no-one has ever shot at me for real, nor do I know how what current thinking is on the employment of light-role GPMG - although I felt surgically attached to the damn' thing any time I went to the School of Infantry - skinny STAB with gun must seem like a laugh X)

Here's a question for all those who have problems with magazines versus belts: if you don't have a No.2 on the gun (from the 1980s onwards), how many rounds does the light-role GPMG typically have fitted to the gun?

You could use that metallic 50-round GPMG magazine that spent its life on the armoury shelves, you might occasionally see a 58 pattern water-bottle used as an improvised magazine (see the BBC film "Contact"), but mostly it was a free-running belt. Of less than 50 rounds, because with that much or more it got tangled in everything.

So: How do you store belts of 50-ish rounds of 7.62 around your ammo pouches? given that you wouldn't tend to start clipping belts together during a fight, and you haven't got a No.2 to do it for you, you're limited to belts of about 40 to 50 rounds tops; and it's certainly faster to change magazines than to c*** gun, top cover open, align new belt, close top cover, carry on. With the advantage that you can actually change magazines on the move. Or standing up.

The advantage of the No.2 is that the No.1 on the gun concentrates on firing it, the No.2 concentrates on keeping it fed. Gun goes into action with a 20-round belt, by the time that belt is empty the No.2 has joined the No.1 and has the next belt ready. All of this "but you get a guaranteed stoppage every 30 rounds with the LSW" stuff misses the point that you had exactly the same thing with a GPMG, if you don't have a No.2.

Oh - and yes, I know the Minimi has 100-rd and 200-rd box magazines. But an equivalent 200-round magazine of 7.62 would be a rather big and heavy beast, and a 100-rd magazine of 7.62 would be roughly the same weight as a 200rd magazine of 5.56.

A question of Fallschirmjager - if your unit hasn't used LSW for 7 years, how come you think it's crap? Genuinely asking.

This debate about support weapons vs individual, bag vs belt, LSW vs Minimi is hardly new and to me stems from muddy thinking. We should base doctrine on what's actually happening not WW2 or some vague ideas about what should work.

Indeed, it's interesting to see how the "cult of the rifle" predominates in peacetime yet is invariably swept away once the shooting starts. (See Falklands, AFG etc for examples) It's probably unfair, but perhaps not excessively, to accuse the SASC of still living in 1913 when the aimed rifle shot was all that could possibly be desired.

Another point is the way the emphasis swings between support and individual weapons as the agent of destruction. The Sovs always saw support weapons as the killers - hence their ops in AFG pushed the AGS-17, Podnos 82mm mortars, NSV 12.7mm MG, RPO thermobaric rockets and so on down to platooon and section level. This stems from their experiences in WW2 when support weapons ruled the battlefield.

Indeed, just read up on the early days in Normandy before the British Army relearnt what it knew in WW1 - it is sobering indeed how quickly massed German MG42 fire at long range into pre-surveyed beaten zones could smash a Bn attack, and how little the Bren could do to help. By the end of WW2 casualties in the infantry were such that most units could do little more than escort the FOO from shell crater to shell crater.

But frankly, so what. What counts is what works now, today, on the ground. What I pick up from those out there is that in AFG the infantry need to apply precise firepower at point targets and use supporting fires (airpower, GMLRS etc) to make bigger bangs. If the LSW brings nothing to the party then we should bin it and not force it on units to make use of it to avoid embarassment at having bought it in the first place.

Yes, if we suddenly encounter North Korean human waves or a resurgent 3 Shock Army we'll need to go back to a big beaten zone but until then ... let's use what works for us now.

I agree completely with your contention about experience proving the need for a section/ platoon to be able to generate great weights of fire. Along with a sustained focus in many quarters of aimed deliberate fire as an ideal to be sought.
"Winning the battle for fire superiority" is hardly a new concept in the FSR's. It is perhaps sad, that over a period of decades the British Army has been issued with automatic weapons (fine as they certainly have been in many respects) that were/ are lacking in this CRITICAL respect.

The Bren/LMG was conceptually behind the MG42, much less the GPMG/ Minimi in these terms.

It would be my contention, that the LSW has a role as an adjunct to a belt-fed weapon within the section, not as its alternative. In that the LSW has certain tactical advantages not shared by the L85. As in turn the GPMG/ Minimi concept has over the LSW.

At any level, the commander must, in order to be able to influence the battle. That is in part, to have the ability to generate sufficient firepower. To state the obvious, Fire is what makes Manoeuvre possible. If that organic base of fire is not made available, then the commander (whether that be section, platoon, company etc) is forced to rely on non organic assets to generate the fires needed to close with the enemy.

Anything that can add to the mix, is per se to be desired.

From this position, it is not an either or case. But a demonstrable need for both forms of weapon, in the same way that the IW has had and will continue to have a place too.

i think i saw about 2 lsw in the whole time i spent in afghan,

its front heavy, doesn't fit a bayonet, crap as a rifle and crap as a support weapon, crap to patrol with, crap to clear buildings with.

It doesn't really bring much to the party.

i''d rather have 2 lmg's and 6 iw's (2 with UGL) anyday than 4 iw's, 2 lmg's and 2 lsw's

Its called a crow cannon for a reason

To be fair, one of the aims of the LSW was to lessen the load of the infantry section. A recurring theme from the Falklands was ammunition resupply; a section weapon which was intended to encourage killing rather than suppression, and rapid single shots rather than automatic fire, was an attempt to address that.


You could argue that the "Rifle Company as a FOO's bodyguard" is a sensible response to the German "Rifle section as ammo bearers for the MG42" approach. It doesn't need to be casualty-driven.

Anyway, which side won? The side of Teutonic initiative, Hugo Boss uniforms, and plentiful MGs, or the side with the all-arms approach, on-call air support and very effective indirect fire?


Agreed - but if the reason for its failure is in the training rather than the weapon itself, how do we avoid making the same mistake again? (Didn't we both contribute to a thread on the failings in unit Skill-at-Arm training, using LSW and weapon cleaning as examples?)


So; you're a systems engineer who keeps mentioning POSIWID. Looking at the infantry section, isn't the need then to make fire support "easy"?

Should we be pushing FIST to integrate a laser ranger, compass, inclinometer, GPS, and Bluetooth to allow everyone in the rifle section to indicate a target? If an iPod can carry all of the necessary building blocks except the laser, then fitting it inside a rifle sight should be do-able. None of your fancy "HUD on a helmet", or broadcasting pictures, just the observer grid/bearing/range and the resulting target grid.

The reverse is also true; that sight can also indicate to a commander or MFC/FOO what a rifleman is squawking - "that grid, there". - just an aim left/right/up/down to steer you to the right place, and an O to mark the target area once you're looking at it.

The role of the MFC / FOO / FAC remains that of coordinating all of these requests - except that we use technology to bypass any "identify the target location, calculate a GR for it, pass the GR by voice, wait for the FOO party to plot it and adjust fire themselves or not". Yes, I know that with a slick team these things take only a minute or two - but we're not far away from GPS-guided rounds being very affordable indeed (i.e. not much more than an existing fuze assembly), so could we reduce that to not much more than time of flight? Or at least use it to avoid cockups in grid references?

Screw all of the wonderful plans for using technology in formation and unit C4I systems, how about using it at the lowest level?

Gravelbelly - you're quite right about devolving this sort of capability. I can - and with my tongue only partly in my cheek - recommend the "Hammers Slammers" books by David Drake as a good place to start writing the URD.

However, this is not a technological problem, it's a cultural and attitudinal problem. The Army doesn't think networked yet, we're still far too parochial and tribal. We also have problems acknowledging that hard work, bravery and cracking on are meaningless if we're going in the wrong direction. The constant stream of UORs that don't talk to each other, certain capbadges hanging on for grim life to certain capabilities, lamentable provision of IT kit and bandwidth - I'm a mazed we perform as well as we do.

One last thing, I see all-arms in Normandy as something that arrived criminally late in response to horrendous infantry casualties, rather than something planned pre-invasion. It's also sobering to note how histories of the period end with the all-arms orbats being dismantled as peace arived as part of the return to "proper soldiering". That was of course the case in 1918 as well, which caused the problem in the first place. The BEF in 1940 - "all the gear and no idea" ?

[quote="Gravelbelly"]
don't have a No.2 on the gun (from the 1980s onwards), how many rounds does the light-role GPMG typically have fitted to the gun?

So: How do you store belts of 50-ish rounds of 7.62 around your ammo pouches? given that you wouldn't tend to start clipping belts together during a fight, and you haven't got a No.2 to do it for you, you're limited to belts of about 40 to 50 rounds tops; and it's certainly faster to change magazines than to c*** gun, top cover open, align new belt, close top cover, carry on. With the advantage that you can actually change magazines on the move. Or standing up.
quote]

Rucksack SAS, 600 rds, belt emerges from the bergen over the right hand shoulder of the #2. Give it whompo, mate...