Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
Perhaps the differentiator will be the type of war being fought.
Each one is different and different equipment, organizations and techniques are required and developed and what works is employed. Then comes peace and / or the budget people who cannot stand chaos (which is what war mostly happens to be...) and they attempt to impose order by defining a limited and limiting TOE. Those are usually designed for the last war and generally are biased toward cheap as opposed to effective.
I genuinely believe that if there are those who believe that machine guns should be pooled at platoon and company level then is it not better to create an additional machine gun section or platoon as applicable? Are there still true believers in the effectiveness of indirect machine gun fire out there?
I'd vote for the Platoon, separate section at a minimum IF -- big if -- a decent LMG (which the Minimi / M249 is not), preferably magazine fed were available for the rifle platoons. As there are none out there in common use today, the GPMG has logically become the preferred substitute. They work, they're just too heavy and require too much maintenance. Lighter belt feds like the Minimi and Mk 46 or 48 will work for in and out SOF like ops but aren't rugged enough to be beat up in line infantry combat for weeks on end.

The PKM is probably the best one out there right now with the Vektor VS 77 and the 5.56 version being a close second. The MAG is one of the more reliable jobs out there but the price for that reliability is excessive weight. All belt feds suffer from a weak link (pun intended), the belt and misaligned ammo plus twigs and leaves. That plus maintenance and weight. That and mostly weight...

As for indirect fire; almost never needed or useful in the offense or for any kind of assault. No one in the west other than Argentina has had to consistently defend fixed positions (not necessarily a defensive line, just any static defended position) since Korea. After we do that again and we will someday, somewhere, then the utility of indirect fire with MGs -- a lost art due to that lack of need to defend -- may become apparent to those who have not applied it...