About 4 months ago I mentioned that the Corps was looking at a magazine fed automatic rifle to replace the belt fed M249 SAW.

At the time, I wondered if this was intended simply to replace one M16/M4 in the fire team with something that was full auto, and it’s not.

The Marine Corps has awarded 3 contracts to investigate a replacement.

They are looking for a lighter (12 lb as opposed to 17 lb) magazine fed weapon without a quick change barrel.

Seeing as how the barrel cannot get as hot, because you cannot quickly swap it, and that the firing time is less, as a 30 round mag is a lot less than a 200 round belt.

It seems to me that it’s going back to the concept of the BAR, which was a great weapon (John Browning was an artist), but was never able to find a particularly good application in service. It was too big, too heavy, and did not fire enough rounds to suppress the enemy.

While the successor, in 5.56 should be lighter, it still will not throw enough rounds down range.

It will also be costlier than the obvious solution: Give that one guy in the fire team the Canadian M-16, which does do full auto.