Hell in a Handbasket

The US military has had .50 caliber machine guns since 1923.

The first was known as the M1921. It was offered in a variety of configurations, but the design assumed that a water cooled version was going to be the most popular. This was well suited to static trench warfare, but proved to be too cumbersome for the new motorized tactics that were the future.

An improved version was fielded in 1938. The water jacket was discarded, and the barrel was thickened to prevent it from melting under sustained fire. This was known as the M2HB, with "HB" referring to the heavy barrel.

The troops, however, have always just called it the Ma Deuce.

Do you know that the very same design is still being used today, 70 years after US troops first hunkered down behind the spade grips to give the enemy hell? It still works, still does the job very well indeed, but a lot of those old warhorses are starting to wear out after decades of use. Some people think that there might just be room for improvement.

Various attempts have been made over the past ten years to drastically improve Ma Deuce. Efforts tend to concentrate on reducing her weight, since she is a heavy girl that weighs 130 pounds or so. It would be nice if she could slim down to half that.

As this post over at StrategyPage shows, it looks like she won't be any lighter any time soon. The major setback seems to be that a gun which weighs less cannot fire as fast without shaking apart or burning up.

What do I think? I'm just glad that the Powers That Be are going at this with a lot of caution. They seem to think that it would be nice if the weapon could be improved, but they also don't want to saddle the troops with a lemon.

And that is the right attitude to have.