Rampant Coyote said,

True – and as I understand it, suppressive fire is the primary role of the M249 SAW anyway. But then would two of them cause you to be twice as likely to keep your head down?

I was just wondering about the sheer weight you’d shed per second with two of these things. The SAW has a fire rate of 750 – 1000 rounds per minute. So combined, that’s 1500 – 2000 rounds per minute. A single round weighs .43 ounces, or .027 pounds (according to Wikipedia). So that would be 40 – 54 pounds per minute (if you had that much ammo, hah!), or around 3/4ths of a pound per second. Maybe a full pound if you include the ejecting belt links… (Of course, less than a third of it is actual bullet weight hitting things, the rest being case and powder, but still).

Xenovore said,

Quote: “…suppressive fire is the primary role of the M249 SAW anyway…” You are correct, sir! =)

Yeah, weight would be the real issue there — bad enough hauling ammo for one M249, let alone two. But hey, if you could… =)

mk2net said,

Faith in the military: restored.

LateWhiteRabbit said,

Sigh.

I always hate when civilian gamers see videos like this and use them to try and justify “dual-wielding” anything under the sun.

I hate to say it Coyote, but the primary purpose of the M249 SAW is NOT suppressive fire – it is killing dudes. Dudes you can’t kill if you can’t hit them. Suppressive fire is purely secondary.

Soldiers make these sorts of videos for fun and laughs, no Marine or soldier even fires ONE M249 from the hip or anything other than the prone position in real combat.

I say this as a former Marine who used these suckers all the time. They are extremely accurate even at 200 meters if you are using them correctly (IE. in the prone position).

How inaccurate would two SAWs fired in the manner of the video be? At 200 meters I’d stand in front of the soldier and feel comfortable taking a couple of seconds to line up my shot – that’s how inaccurate.

While I am shattering people’s awesome dreams of how movies have taught them weapons work:

-There is no flame or fireball when grenades explode. Sometime there isn’t even any smoke.

-Tables, walls, barrels, car doors, normal doors, etc. will not stop the majority of bullets. By majority I mean anything over what you might let a child use to hunt with.

-You can never dual-wield anything accurately or effectively, be it pistols, or anything besides knives. Knives are the only weapon that using two of at once would make you more effective and deadly.

Dual-wielding guns “causing you to suck” and “getting you killed” all boils down to two things:

Problem 1: Even millimeters of slight movement of a barrel at the firing end can cause the bullet to move several feet away from your target on the other-end, so shooting from the hip or with two weapons shaking in each hand paradoxically means that as long as you keep trying to aim at the enemy, he is probably the safest thing in front of you.

Problem 2: You can only look down the sights of one gun at a time. If you dual-wield a big weapon like the SAW, you can’t even use the sights of one weapon. Even if you dual-wield pistols, and use the sights of one pistol only, you run into Problem 1 above, because that pistol is not as accurate as it would be if you used both hands to steady the weapon.

You’ll find professional marksmen and shooters don’t send a lot of rounds at the enemy. They send a very few, very accurate shots that get the job done.

Let’s do some math. Let’s assume 1 enemy sharpshooter using a single rifle and aiming carefully before each shot is going against someone using 2 SAWs at once. Using Coyote’s 2000 rounds a minute from both SAWs, in the 3 seconds the sharpshooter takes to aim and fire 1 shot, the SAW shooter has sent 100 rounds at the sharpshooter. Now, depending on range, say, 200-300 meters from each other, and assuming that the SAW shooter has a 5% accuracy with the first round(and rapidly decreasing with each shot fired in the same burst), and the sharpshooter has 95% accuracy, keeping in mind that odds aren’t cumulative and each shot from the SAW has 5% or less chance of hitting the target regardless of how many rounds have gone before –

Who would you bet on?

P.S. Yes, I am also the type of fuddy-duddy person who counts shots fired from weapons in movies and then scowls silently to himself when they fail to reload at the appropriate time.

Xenovore said,

@ LateWhiteRabbit: You’re the sort that ruins everyone else’s fun, arntcha. =P

+1 to what skavenhorde said.

And while it is true that the M249 can be quite accurate for a machine gun, it is — like any other machine gun — all about the volume of fire it can put down-range, which is used primarily for… yes, suppressive fire.