50 caliber heavy machine gun he had equipped with a telescopic sight. During the Vietnam War, Carlos Hathcock set the record for a long-distance shot at 7,382 ft (2,250 m) with a. 50 caliber machine gun, are accurate enough to engage targets at great distances. Many heavy machine guns, such as the Browning M2. A common aiming system for direct fire is to alternate solid ("ball") rounds and tracer ammunition rounds (usually one tracer round for every four ball rounds), so shooters can see the trajectory and "walk" the fire into the target, and direct the fire of other soldiers. Machine guns usually have simple iron sights, though the use of optics is becoming more common.
A general-purpose machine gun is usually a lightweight medium machine gun that can either be used with a bipod and drum in the light machine gun role or a tripod and belt feed in the medium machine gun role. The heavy machine gun is a term originating in World War I to describe heavyweight medium machine guns and persisted into World War II with Japanese Hotchkiss M1914 clones today, however, it is used to refer to automatic weapons with a caliber of at least. Medium machine guns use full-sized rifle rounds and are designed to be used from fixed positions mounted on a tripod. Light machine guns are designed to provide mobile fire support to a squad and are typically air-cooled weapons fitted with a box magazine or drum and a bipod they may use full-size rifle rounds, but modern examples often use intermediate rounds. Medium and heavy machine guns are either mounted on a tripod or on a vehicle when carried on foot, the machine gun and associated equipment (tripod, ammunition, spare barrels) require additional crew members. They also usually have either a barrel cooling system, slow-heating heavyweight barrel, or removable barrels which allow a hot barrel to be replaced.Īlthough subdivided into " light", " medium", " heavy" or " general-purpose", even the lightest machine guns tend to be substantially larger and heavier than standard infantry arms. Because they become very hot, the great majority of designs fire from an open bolt, to permit air cooling from the breech between bursts. Some machine guns have in practice sustained fire almost continuously for hours other automatic weapons overheat after less than a minute of use.
They are commonly mounted on fast attack vehicles such as technicals to provide heavy mobile firepower, armored vehicles such as tanks for engaging targets too small to justify the use of the primary weaponry or too fast to effectively engage with it, and on aircraft as defensive armament or for strafing ground targets, though on fighter aircraft true machine guns have mostly been supplanted by large-caliber rotary guns. Machine guns are used against infantry, low-flying aircraft, small boats and lightly/un armored land vehicles, and can provide suppressive fire (either directly or indirectly) or enforce area denial over a sector of land with grazing fire. Nowadays, the term is restricted to relatively heavy crew-served weapons, able to provide continuous or frequent bursts of automatic fire for as long as ammunition feeding is replete. Unlike semi-automatic firearms, which require one trigger pull per round fired, a machine gun is designed to continue firing for as long as the trigger is held down. Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns, medium machine guns, heavy machine guns, general purpose machine guns and squad automatic weapons.Ī vehicle with a Sumitomo M2 heavy machine gun mounted at the rear Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges and thus are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.Īs a class of military kinetic projectile weapon, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoils. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower, and are not considered true machine guns. 50 caliber M2 machine gun: John Browning's design has been one of the longest-serving and most successful machine gun designsĪ machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges.
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