7.62mm Lightweight Machine Gun Unveiled by Knight’s Armament Company

[Zarvan]

On the heels of the re-naming of their Stoner LMG as the Lightweight Assault Machine Gun (LAMG), Knight’s Armament company has introduced a scaled-up version of the same weapon in the 7.62x51mm caliber, with provision for other calibers should they be requested. The new machine gun is patterned after the Stoner LMG/LAMG, and features the same short top cover and fixed receiver rail of its smaller cousin. The other components, such as the barrel, feed tray, etc, are all scaled up to fit the larger caliber, resulting in a heavier unloaded weight of approximately 12.5lbs – still far, far lighter than an M240 or other traditional Western 7.62mm belt fed machine guns. According to KAC representatives, the new weapon does not yet have an official name, but “Medium Assault Machine Gun sounds as good as anything.”



The “weapon” being shown off at the show was actually a 3D printed sintered aluminum weight simulating mockup, but according to Trey Knight firing examples do exist, though they are currently “at a very early stage of development.” That Knight’s would develop a lightweight 7.62mm machine gun is not entirely surprising. Current preference appears to be shifting away from 5.56mm belt feds in favor of either magazine-fed automatic rifles or 7.62mm belt fed machine guns.

Also present was a similar weight simulator for the LAMG :



http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...achine-gun-unveiled-knights-armament-company/

 

[Zarvan]

Company offers lighter, more versatile cartridge, machine guns and carbine

Textron Systems met with media members, including Army Times, at the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting & Exposition to showcase their new cartridge and weapon system. (Courtesy photo)

The company that developed both weapons and cartridges to reduce soldier load by about 40 percent now has machine guns in both 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm and a new carbine that fires a round never used across the U.S. military.

Textron Systems met with media members, including Army Times, at the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting & Exposition to showcase their new cartridge and weapon system.

The company began development on a polymer, cased telescope cartridge in 5.56 mm in 2004. Through design work and research, they built the cartridge, which is shorter, lighter and more versatile than current brass cartridge casings.

Research in polymer casings has been going on in the commercial sector for decades. A chief problem has been heat. Past casings melted or had cook-off concerns under the extreme heat of rapid firings. To resolve that problem, Textron Systems researchers built the bullet and weapon in concert, creating a system that moves the chamber to the barrel, reducing heat exposure.


That design also helped jamming problems in previous attempts at polymer casings by using the next round to push out the spent cartridge rather than use an extractor method that is common to most current firearms systems.

The company expects to demonstrate its 7.62 mm machine gun and round at the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment in November.

Click here for complete coverage from the AUSA annual meeting.

Another development is near demonstration phase to meet a few of the outcomes of the recently completed Small Arms Ammunition Configuration Study. That study aims to reinvent small arms with new bullet technology and advanced capabilities to first create the Next Generation Squad Weapon.

Sign up for the Army Times Daily News Roundup
Don't miss the top Army stories, delivered each afternoon
Textron’s effort is a 6.5 mm carbine, an “intermediate caliber” that has the range and lethality of the 7.62 mm but in a smaller, lighter configuration than many current 5.56 mm rifles.

The entire approach that started work on the cartridge was focused on reducing weight.

By comparison, a current M249 Squad Automatic Weapon with 1,000 rounds of brass-case 5.56 mm ammunition weighs 48.9 pounds. Textron’s 5.56 mm machine gun with the same number of rounds weighs 28.5 pounds.

The M240L machine gun with 1,000 rounds of brass-case, 7.62 mm weighs 72.4 pounds. The Textron 7.62 mm configuration weighs in at 45.3 pounds.

Textron Unmanned Systems Program Manager Paul Shipley said that in recent tests the 5.56 mm machine gun had no round cook offs when put under the same strain that resulted in M249 cook offs.

Testing is still underway on the intermediate caliber carbine, but that weapon has yet to experience round cook offs either, Shipley said.


https://www.armytimes.com/news/your...versatile-cartridge-machine-guns-and-carbine/