That’s pretty clear Ken, that makes a lot of sense IMO.
So in simplistic terms, for a true MG the team (pertaining to the gun at least) exists for the benefit of the gun, and for lighter weapons like BAR and IAR the gun exists for the benefit of the team. I think that is an important conceptual differentiation towards answering some of Jon’s questions. And that may be where the SAW creates a bit of confusion since it is perhaps too little to take on the support role usually associated with at least a MMG/GPMG, and too big and hungry to be much less than that.
Your mentioning the dropping of the bipod on the BAR follows nicely on the previous few posts as well.
The L86 first came out with the bipod fixed to the barrel and had the supporting frame extending from the receiver added to free-float it.
I wonder how much effect adding a pod directly to the barrel has compared to fixing it to the hand guard, with standard rifles like FAL and M16 where the hand guard is itself fixed to the barrel. So the barrel is not really free floating anyway. Would it make much difference here?
JMA, with regards to scopes on rifles. The Brits had to actually change the numbers pertaining to their qualification shoots (I can’t find anything on it in a hurry) when they changed from L1A1 to L85. Every rifleman had suddenly become a marksman. Where the average score with the L1 may have been (and I’m just stabbing here) 50%, it jumped up to somewhere in the eighties. Mind you, lighter recoil would also have played a part in this.
And I think it may have been similar for us ANZACs, but have never seen any text on it.
For shorter range work, well, up to around 200 I think, red-dot sights are great. I’m not sure if there is any hard data on the difference it makes but I’d be surprised if it is not in a few orders of magnitude, certainly regarding snap-shooting at ranges above say 20 or so. Hmmm, I'm sure this too has been discussed elsewhere....
Added later: Just refreshed my memory. A bit on it here and here.
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