3 Commando Brigade

SIG are German.

Switzerland

SIG stands for: Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft annd their company seat is still in Switzerland. However most of their shares are owned by some rich dude fom new zealand.

SIG Sauer are German as far as I was aware. SIG being Swiss and Sauer & Sohn being German. SIG Sauer came into being due to Swiss manufacturing law.

Aaaaaaaannnnnd new problems ahead.

One of the new standard machine guns, the MG5 has the problem that it can not be mounted on vehicles because it does not fit on the german gun carriages. The costs to fix this are estimated at about 50 million €uros. This is not the only problem with the MG5. H&K already work further on the MG5 because in enviroments with a fair ammount of salt in the air (or salty water) the MG5 can easily corrode.

MG5


So another self goal for another "big project" for the Bundeswehr and H&K.

problem is it shoots too fast....

So they burn too much ammo - non standard remember as they're holding 5.56 as the primary.

So the original brief was to provide a reliable 500 rpm not 900-1200 rpm.

It's a logistics issue....

No offence Null but there is a lot of myth involved in that post. The only thing the M60 had in common with the MG42 (apart from that it fired bullets down a barrel) was the belt feed, which wasn't an exact copy but a modified version of it....which was also common to many designs of the time,

M60 was not a good gun in practise. High rate of fire meant overheated barrels and lots of Spent Ammo that has to be replaced. Changing Barrels was impossible without a special asbestos glove (when they remembered to ship with the weapon) and to top off the Design genius, the front sight is attached to the barrel so when Clintus did finally wrestle his red hot barrel out the receiver and replace it with a shiny new one... His gun was completely out of zero...

I love the M60 - as it was my childhood poster MG... 

But it's a shiite MG...

The newly delivered Danish modified E6 version looks to have improved on many of these design hiccups though

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-da ... 529e46421c

All the stuff is part of a initiative of the Bundeswehr which is called "Infanterist der Zukunft" (IdZ) and is about modernisation of the troops. After the second world war the Bundeswehr was created a force for the defense of germany and not for anything offensive. The situation has changed a lot after the end of the cold war and this also means that the equipment should reflect that.

The problem with the MG3 is that is is not very flexible and unless it is mounted in a vehicle, you will need two people to operate it and it is relatively heavy. It weights 10,5 Kg without ammo and a tripod mount. With the mount you have to carry 27.5 Kg around. The MG4 weights only 7,35 Kg. The MG3 has a very high rate of fire (up to 1300 rounds per minute) and this is also not very flexible in the modern conflicts that the Bundeswehr is acting. The MG4 by the way is by far not a slow firing gun and it can fire up to 890 rounds per minute.

The german army is still using the MG3 mounted on vehicles and the irony is that the MG5 that should replace it on vehicles doesnt fit on the mounting systems that are used on german vehicles. This is another prime example of the major "f**k ups" that have happened in the last 5 years with major projects for the Bundeswehr. One if the main issues is that the minister of defense in germany does not get placed there because he has competence in this field. Until all those failed projects the minister of defense was a very chill position to have and it was very good to get yourself into the position to go for chancellor or another high position. Before 9/11 it was pretty much impossible to make mistakes in this position since you only had to visit some troops in your own country, shake some hands and smile a lot. This weakness was used by big companies like H&K and Rheinmetall to sell them their stuff.

Interesting insight.... My perception of working with Germans is that this just sounds remarkable... They're normally so Process perfect.... Not infallible after all eh

It shows how much of a impact the weapons lobby in germany has. Especially in a combination with a minister which has no real competence this can lead to situations like we have now. There are not much experts in the office of defense and the few experts there got told to shut up and rather to listen what the big weapon developers say.