Military.com Video
 

Fairly decent footage of a M240B (7.62 mm NATO) medium machine gun firing from the back ramp of a Chinook. A couple times he gets the barrel hot, it should be changed every 500 rounds in this type of environment. When clean and fresh the M240 series will fire 600 rounds per minute, with a sustained ROF of 300 RPM, and barrel swap every two minutes. A proficient gunner can "hot" swap a barrel in about 5 seconds.

http://shock.military.com/Shock/vide...78&ESRC=dod.nl

Re: Military.com Video
 

What is he shooting at?

Isn't that kind of indiscriminate pumping of bullets at the world unconscionable?

And how much lead just got dumped into the earth?

That was a lesson for me -- I was surprised how disgusted I was by everything in the video. The white-hot barrel was cool, I guess, but I really don't know why anyone has any excuse justifying that kind of gunfire.

Re: Military.com Video
 

I couldnt distinguish what he was firing at either (if anything). Though I can assure you I'd love to be shooting it lol.

Re: Military.com Video
 

These are "short" Chinooks, they are light in color, and the uniform of the gunner is not Army issue. Therefore, they are Marines. It appears they are on a gunnery range, due to the white sand (desert sand is not white) and trees (look like pines to me) in the distance, as well as patches of grass. I would SWAG that to be either Cherry Point or Camp Lejune, both of which are N.C.

The tracers going out from the second bird make me think they are firing a series of dismounted target arrays. At one point, you can see a hill just behind the main bird, there were the tracers are laying in the sand. I see three silhouettes there, and two more again on the edge when the second bird lays in tracer fire that sticks to the ground.

Actually that looked pretty well placed to me. When the big bad wolf comes a calling, do you want a guy who can use his weapon, or one that can draw a weapon with state of the art equipment?

Trace amounts. That was ball ammo, the earth friendly made only in America, with a thick copper jacket, and trace amounts of lead melted with other metals type.

If that scares you, you should see what a tank crew does on a qualification run.

Re: Military.com Video
 

It's not fright. It's just a sickening at the thought of waste. The environmentalist in me as well as the conservationist/economist in me doesn't like such waste. I know the response: a good military needs training. I'd bow to that if we, like, had any real competitors when it comes to military skill. But we don't. We can shoot down targets from 100 miles away better than anyone ever in history. What flummoxes us these days is hidden enemies yelling LALALALALA before the pull the plug on their homemade bombs -- and these sorts of military manuevers don't really get us combat ready for that. I'm just not a fan of bread & circus of any sort.

Re: Military.com Video
 

We took on the mission in the Balkans in order to learn from the Brits on how to conduct proper urban operations. They have years of experience keeping the Irish in line, and always had a outfit in the Balkans working with US troops to teach, coach, mentor.

That entire TCM has failed...Iran is rattling their nuclear saber...NK has unleashed it's nuclear saber, and openly denied that the torpedo fired from one of its subs and traced by two other military nations did not hit and sink the SK patrol boat... Egypt has allowed free airspace for a out and in bound flight of special aircraft from and to Israel...And we are bickering about a tea party, a mosque, and who's at fault for the oil spill. I hope you know of a good basket weaver.

Re: Military.com Video
 

Is there a market for basket weaving? Im willing to learn.

Re: Military.com Video
 

The military does indeed have to train. Granted, this is not our military in link but.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...WORDS=monolith