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The latest addition to the infantryman's fighting arsenal is a machinegun that will greatly improve the platoon's ability to provide sustained suppressive fires on the enemy. This weapon is the M240B 7.62mm medium machinegun.
While the M60 machinegun has served the force well for more than 36 years, recent field experiences show that it is becoming more and more costly to maintain and is spending more time in maintenance shops than in training areas. Truly, the time has come to find an improved medium machinegun and place the M60 in the machinegun "hall-of-fame" with the M1917 .30 caliber and the Browning automatic rifle.
The search for this improved machinegun goes back to the early 1980s when the M60's "aging" was beginning to show. Coincidentally, the Army was fielding the M249 squad automatic weapon, the replacement for the M16AI in the automatic rifle role. The M249 had a longer range than the M16A1 and an increased firing rate, which made it comparable in some respects to the M60.
During this decade, the M60 went through several modifications and variations in both the Army and the Marine Corps. The end result was that in 1989, the Chief of Staff of the Army directed that the M249 light machinegun (LMG-composed of the M249 automatic rifle mounted on the standard M122 tripod with a traverse and elevation mechanism--replace all of the ground-mounted M60s in the Army.
The...