Man portable vs. team (Destiny)

by Durandal, Thursday, August 13, 2015, 16:59 (3488 days ago) @ bluerunner

I thought traditionally the heavy machine guns fired larger ammunition and were heavier, requiring a person to carry the gun, another for the tripod, and a third for extra ammo and barrels at minimum.

Light machine guns used smaller calibers, lighter materials and so forth so as to be portable by a two man team, one for the gun and one for extra ammunition.

The larger guns had better range and could fire longer before overheating, often because they had additional cooling systems like water jackets. LMGs would have a detachable barrel so you could switch out the hot one and let it cool. There was an advantage in using the same caliber ammunition as your riflemen in your LMG, your squad could share ammo back and forth as needed.

I think the break point for caliber was at the 20 mm size and up things become an auto-cannon, heavy MGs use anything larger then your common infantry calibers (7.62, 5.54, etc) and LMGs are matched to your infantry.

Given that the ammo on the Destiny MGs looks like it would not fit in an auto rifle, I would guess that they fall in the HMG category.