Quote Originally Posted by Vojnik View Post
Regarding the USMC's IAR...isn't this roughly the same concept as the British Army's LSW? Or for that matter, the RPK or Browning Automatic Rifle?

Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm open to ideas, but I'm not sure I can see the benefit of a 5.56mm light support weapon firing from 30-round magazines instead of a belt-fed weapon.
The quote listed below is one of mine from a different forum, so don't mind the odd grammar. The foot stomp is that the M27 should not be compared to the M249 SAW. It is absolutely aimed at filling the automatic rifle role in the fireteam, but the standard response for employment is not automatic fire, or even bursts for that matter, unless a specific type of target (generally massed individual tgts) presents itself.

During the course of the conversations I had with the assembled Gunners, something formed in my mind that I think was on the tip of my tongue through the 13 pages of this thread, but I just could never really articulate (Chris or somebody else might have, but I don't recall ). In the process of the experimentation, requirements development, testing, etc., the Marine Corps was not in a pursuit for a replacement for the SAW, although a lot of headlines were churned out that made people think so. That's where the whole discussion gets bogged down and twisted...what the Corps has been trying to do is field a weapon suitable to equip the billet that exists in the fireteam (AR rifleman), and also serves (doctrinally) as the asst. tm ldr - an automatic rifle. The SAW is not and never will be an AR, but rather a LMG, and although there are still acolytes to the power of belt-fed suppression, we seem to be moving forward smartly.
People point to the Brit LSW and the Diemaco LSW, decry them as failures, and look at the M27 to as a copy of the LSW concept and presume that it will fail. There is a considerable amount of empirical data accumulated through testing and experimentation, and now combat operations, to demonstrate that the M27 is better than the SAW at the team level.

Can some guys rock the SAW well? Absolutely, and I think I was one of them, but when you look at maintenance, training, and other employment issues like mobility, they point to a need for the M27 and a movement of the SAW back to the role of the light machine gun where it should have never left.

Think of it as less a LSW, and more of a precision, lightweight rifle with the capability to engage select targets with controlled automatic fire when necessary. If the unit wants a full-time lead slinger at the squad level, then they need to send the emma gees.