They are CWO5 (Ret) Jeffrey Eby, recently Senior Gunner for the Corps, Major (Ret) Charles Clark III, USMC Infantry Weapons Capabilities Integration Officer at Marine Corps Headquarters, and Gunnery Sergeant (Ret) Robert Reidsma, HK’s M27 IAR Project Manager. In addition to official program documentation, our primary sources of information for this feature include three career Marines, each with detailed knowledge and relevant perspectives. Instead, it is intended to be a close look at how the Marine Corps went about the process of fielding what is hoped will be a worthy successor to the iconic “B.A.R.” – John Moses Browning’s Automatic Rifle. This is, we believe, best left to the Corps’ combat-hardened professionals who have a ‘Devil Dog,’ so to speak, in the fight. IAR because these have long been and are likely to remain an ongoing debate. What follows here contains only brief note of the tactical pros and cons of SAW vs.

Admiration of the combat efficiency of the Soviet-designed RPK was a factor in persistent and growing requests from rank-and-file Marines for a true automatic rifle. Iraqi soldiers aim in their magazine-fed 7.62x39mm RPK light machine guns during the Iraqi Small Arms Weapons Instructor Course taught by the Marines of the 2nd Marine Division Training Center here. More than 400 of these are already in the fight in Afghanistan and full fielding to all of the Corps’ Infantry Battalions and Light Armored Recon units should be complete in 2013. The winning IAR is a lightly modified HK416, beating out dozens of rivals along the way to earn Heckler & Koch an initial contract for as much as $23.6 million to supply up to 6,500 M27s. Fielding of the IAR will significantly enhance the ability of infantrymen to gain and maintain fire superiority, reduce the fighting load and provide them with a more ergonomic and accurate weapons system that can keep up during the assault.” (USMC press statement, June 2011) “After a rigorous testing process, both in garrison and deployed environments, and in-depth consultation with weapons experts through the Corps, the Commandant approved the fielding of the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle. Now, more than a quarter century after the Belgian belt-fed joined the Marines, and a decade after the infantry automatic rifle tests by 2nd Battalion 7th Marine Regiment, the IAR camp has won the argument. This second group has argued long and strenuously for an “Infantry Automatic Rifle” that’s both lighter and simpler than the SAW, with similar combat effectiveness from better accuracy and realistic capability in full auto and sustained fire. Critics say the 5.56mm SAW‘s hefty 20+ pound combat weight slows movement and reliability issues too often degrade the gun’s claimed firepower advantage.

Advocates of belt fed weapons like the M249 admire their relative portability and high volume of fire at critical times in offensive and defensive actions.

While the reasons for this are many and varied, astute observers often cite two main points of contention: Marine Corps’ infantry fire teams have been engaged in often fierce verbal firefights dating back years before this innovative light machine gun entered Leatherneck service soon after the Army adopted FN’s MINIMI in 1984. (Conclusion to AUTOMATIC RIFLE CONCEPT, an unsigned monograph circa 2001, circulated in the USMC Infantry community)įriends and foes of the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in the U.S. While experimentation is still required, the evaluations undertaken by Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, definitively indicate that the Marine Corps should place the M249 into a light machine gun role and add a true automatic rifle to the squad’s inventory. – – –Īs threat forces match the firepower of the current rifle squad, the Marine Corps must maintain the innovative edge for which it is famous. – – – Part One of this article appears in SADJ Volume 4, Number 3.

M27 infantry automatic rifle to