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No, I'm pretty sure they were from the same unit my father was in actually. I called him to see if he had watched it but he didn't see it yet. There is a Navy Special Boat Team there so I'd be 99% that's who it was.
Anyone watch "Sons of Guns" Wednesday night? I'm kind of confused. The project they took was to develop a way to mount 2 M-16s onto a boat, and have them capable of sustained fully automatic fire. The project was for the "Brown Water Navy" (I'll get into the reason for the quotes in a second).
What they wound up doing was converting the M-16s to water cooled by wrapping copper tubing around the barrel and gas tube underneath the handguard and hooking it to a small pump that pumped water through continuously.
The system worked but my question was simply - why? I would think the Navy would have access to 5.56mm Squad Automatic Weapons that are designed for this type of setup. Add to this the fact that M-16 is a magazine fed weapon and, even with a 100 round drum, you have less than 10 seconds of ammo at full blast. With a SAW, being belt fed you can just hook on another belt and go as long as you want, though you may need a water-cooled system to avoid barrel changes.
They did the same thing with an M-16 connected to a remote system for a "security contractor" that was, once again, magazine fed.
The second part that confused me was that these guys did not look at all like they were in the Navy. Something about them looked wrong. I was starting to wonder if they were some sort of militia or something. Is the "Brown Water Navy" something different than the regular Navy? I know there was a Brown Water Navy in Vietnam and I would assume they are still around but has some other group taken this name?
Something was just wierd.
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No, I'm pretty sure they were from the same unit my father was in actually. I called him to see if he had watched it but he didn't see it yet. There is a Navy Special Boat Team there so I'd be 99% that's who it was.
That could be who they were. It just seemed wierd since a) the COs fatigues didn't look right somehow (and the guy who came into the shop wasn't wearing any and b) I'm surprised a unit would be allowed to purchase a weapon system like this on their own.
The fatigues (or lack thereof) could be explained as the guy trying to keep a low profile.
I still don't get why you would use two M-16s instead of belt-fed machine guns but there could be a reason I'm not seeing. I thought maybe they didn't have room for ammo boxes but this system had two .50 caliber boxes with it - one held the pump and served as a water tank and the other housed the battery. Of course on a production unit this could be located remotely I suppose (and the battery could be ditched and the system could run on the boat's electrical system).
Yea, I was kind of thinking the same thing. I know when I saw my dad's unit do demos on family day they had m60's? I think mounted on each side of their PBR's. I was really young but I'm sure that's what they were. I know that's a different round but as you said they could just use a SAW?Originally Posted by SC Tiger
Your Airborne Daddy
you would be surprised how much freedom JSOC has in sourcing weapon/weapon systems for use in their operations....
Do you what jsoc is? All the code words fail me.
This is true.
Also, I missed the show, but just watched the vids on the website and the LT said at the end that he "could only recommend, but will do [his] best to support you"...
I missed that part.
It could also be that this was done as either a 1) "Let's see what you can do" test, or 2) They had another weapon system in mind for this but it wasn't available.
could be for the simple reason as to use the same ammo... why take some of this ammo and some of that, when you can just take a bunch of one ammo... again i'm just taking a guess...
"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." (Winston Churchill).
@ Spear
Joint Special Operations Command
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
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