re: #45 Dark_Falcon

The MAG is a far better weapon than any post WWII machine gun the US came up with. I know you think the M-60 was eventually fixed. Perhaps, but I never carried a pig that was worth the weight and didn’t fall apart quickly… The MAG is a fairly heavy monster and many currently don’t like that but the insane reliability that comes with that weight more than makes up for it in my book. It can talk as long as a properly set up M2 and that’s saying a lot.

Rumor was, back in the early 80’s, that the Soviet PKM which was tested alongside the MAG as a M-73/219 replacement actually won the testing. The Army wasn’t quite willing to go that far afield for a new MG and they “massaged” the numbers till the MAG came out a bit better.

That was probably a good idea as changing the 7.62 Russian Rimmed to 7.62 Nato would have probably resulted in as big a mess as the 8mm Lebel to .30-06 Chauchat or the .30-06 version of the MG-42 that ordinance built without changing the dimensions appropriately.