Ammo for the Marine Corps .50 caliber is getting a whole lot lighter

[rangerrebew]

Ammo for the Marine Corps .50 caliber is getting a whole lot lighter
By: Todd South   1 day ago

One of the first polymer case ammunition rounds for wide production in the Marine Corps will be for its heavy duty machine gun, the venerable M2 .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun.

The Marine Corps recently announced its intent to sole source a company to build polymer casings for .50 caliber ammunition, the largest direct fire, bullet projectile in the ground combat arsenal and a mainstay of machine gunning for nearly a century.

Your next belt of .50-caliber ammunition could weigh 10 to 20 pounds less than it does now.

By: Todd South

MAC LLC, a company out of Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, is the company that will likely receive the sole source contract unless another company can show they meet the requirements and can do a better job before the federal deadline in a couple of weeks to deliver an estimated quantity of 2.4 million cartridges for the Corps over three years.


https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/04/02/ammo-for-the-marine-corps-50-caliber-is-getting-a-whole-lot-lighter/

[Elderberry]

It doesn't say whether the M2 will have to be modified in order to fire the polymer cased ammo.

the new cartridge must meet the same ballistics requirements and lethality of the M33 projectile in service now.

An ongoing Army program to build the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle, a parallel project to replace both the M4/M16 carbine/rifle and the Squad Automatic Weapon, is taking on submissions with polymer cased-telescoped ammunition.

One such version is the Textron Systems offering. Textron has spent years building a polymer-cased ammunition and essentially redesigned a weapon system around the new round.