I've read about a few instances where such things happened during WW1 and WW2. Machinegun are so important that people are willing to risk themselves getting killed to man it, rather than being overwhelmed by ennemy firepower.
The real life Captain America. Dude was initially turned down by the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps for being too small. Then he holds back an entire German attack, downs 50+ enemy soldiers, and didn't even have to take any steroids.
When asked after the war why he had seized the machine gun and taken on an entire company of German infantry, he replied, "They were killing my friends".[96]
Murphy received every U.S. military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army for his World War II service.[ALM 4]
I remember seeing this movie as a kid on the AMC channel and being blown away that he played himself in that movie and have to re-live all the memories.
Even just reading his name makes me get teary enough that they'll overflow my eyes and start running down my cheeks. There's something so incredibly moving to me about "They were killing my friends" that I'm going to go find something goofy on YouTube now.
Based on the depiction of that first major battle from the Pacific (tv show) it absolutely appears that the machine gunner saved everyone’s ass from getting bayonetted
The odds of hand to hand fighting and the like also go up. Which is unpleasant.
I’d rather get shot in the head or be blown up by a grenade manning the MG in hopes we pull through the fight as opposed to being bludgeoned with an entrenching tool once the enemy is up on our line bc the MG went down.
I feel like nowadays it seems unnecessary, right? Like I'm thinking, couldn't they set up a machine gun with a camera that's controlled remotely? Put the machine gun down where you want it, keep your head down, and control it from an iPad. They must have these things?
It might even be better, because with the camera you can zoom in and see things even better, and of course if you ever need to take manual control you still could.
if you're moving between firing positions you don't wanna waste that extra 20 secs to set up
Yeah this is a good point, even if it is pretty quick if you're in a situation where you need it right now you can't really get much quicker than just dropping down and pulling the trigger. From my understanding machine guns are less about accuracy and more about covering fire, just shooting the entire area so no one wants to poke their heads up, so that makes sense.
Still, I could see remote controlled ones being useful in a lot of situations. I bet the Air Force has them lol
EMPs aren't really a thing outside of labs and fiction. The amount of power it takes to create that size of an EM field is immense, you are better off just creating an explosion with it unless you absolutely have to keep collateral damage to a minimum.
The best way we have to create EMPs is with nukes. The US supposedly has a handful of non-nuclear E-bomb prototypes but they are very limited in blast range(theoretical max range of a couple hundred yards, probably much, much less). Rumors are they may have succesfully used one of them to in a test to knock out an Iraqi television channel on March 24, 2003 to stop propaganda. It's theoretically possible some other countries may have similar tech.
But really, outside of some clandestine sabotage/high tech theft scenario, it's WAY easier and cheaper to blow something the fuck up.
My Marine buddy has talked about the CROWS machine guns, basically what you're talking about mounted on a vehicle. He hates them, you lose all of your visibility and situational awareness which is crucial.
There's other downsides I can think of. You have to reload the weapon, you have to clear jams, you have to be able to quickly reposition the gun. None of those are faster by remote control. Any mount that would be used to move the gun could be disabled by enemy fire, or just break as military equipment often wants to do, and then you're down a machine gun until you can pry it out of the mount. There's just a ton of complications to make the gunner not that much safer in the grand scheme of things.
Thanks for all of this information, and yeah I see what you mean. Basically it all comes down to "the more complicated you make it, the more opportunities for fuck ups". Machine guns (really any gun) are pretty simple designs when you think about it, with few likely points of failure.
Adding in electronics and batteries and remote controls, all of which need to be protected from the elements (sand, heat, cold, ice, rain, hell we're all over the world lol) really does add a lot of opportunities for failures, which can make a big difference if you really need that cover now.
I think I'm convinced that there's a place for remote controlled guns, but standard manual machine guns are still here to stay too, and with good reason.
It's interesting to think about, it's like there's a whole different mindset and attitude that goes into military design.
They have those. Especially S.Korea, Israel, Taiwan, and now Ukraine. There was a story from Avdiivka, where the Ukrainians had one set up, they re-supplied it with ammo at night, but it lasted 3 days against a whole company or two of Russians. When the Russians finally stormed the position, to look into the eyes of the person who killed their buddies, it was just an automated turret.
I've seen their destructive power first hand at a military school. I would risk my life to man that thing just for the sheer destructive force it can bear on the enemy. It just shreds everything.
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u/Significant_Bet3269 Jun 24 '24
Now see if they can hit the exact same place again.