The Roles and Weapons with the Squad

[Kiwigrunt]

Sustained Infantry use of small arms induces more stresses than does the use of the same weapon by SOF elements. That's true in several respects. Add the fact that decreased weigh in most weapons has historically led to reliability issues...

Yup. I’d say it is likely that the durability of the Mk48 will be similar to that of the 5.56 variants we know.

What gets me about this move is the fact that (with the light 240) the army platoon will have two different 7.62 guns with weights that are not all that much different (too lazy to look into exact weights now).

So the large USMC platoon will end up with no organic 7.62 guns while the smaller army platoon will end up with 8 x 7.62 guns. I doubt that either of these two extremes is going to prove satisfactory.