#M240B

The number of internet users worldwide will soon reach the five billion mark. Great photos can spread like wildfire, but the story and the necessary context sometimes gets left behind. Not in TFB’s  Photo Of The Day, where we will always accompany the images with a background and credits to the maker – Sgt. Hannah Hawkins in this case.

The number of internet users worldwide will soon reach the 5-billion mark. Our world has never been so connected. Great photos can spread like wildfire, but the story and the necessary context sometimes gets left behind. But not in TFB’s  Photo Of The Day, we will always accompany the images with a background and credits to the maker. Above we have a 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment machine gun team that reloads their M240B machine gun during the last battle of Combined Resolve XVI. Combined Resolve XVI was a multinational training exercise conducted at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Hohenfels, in Germany, in December 2021.

Photo Of The Day and the  173rd Airborne Brigade is back with some more images. We’re looking at platoon exercise evaluations in the Hohenfels Training Area (Germany) where The Rock and the 8e RPIMa from France spent some time together. The training was a part of Exercise Rock Topside II, taking place at the Joint Multinational Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany. Above we have a HK416F with an EOTech sight. Yellow means it’s been configured for training.

Another day another Photo Of The Day: This collection comes from the  173rd Airborne Brigade where U.S. Army paratroopers assigned to Able Company, 2nd Infantry Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, can be seen laying down suppressive fire while assaulting an objective. This happened during the African Lion 21 exercise, on the Grier Labouie Airbase, Morocco, June 10, 2021.

If you have a taste and interest in firearms and soldiering, this is where you’ll find some of the greatest photographers in the world on the subject. Let TFB’s Photo Of The Day be your daily guide and leisure. Above we have U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Dillon, a machine gunner with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, holding security with an M240B machine gun. The event is a tactics exercise for Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) in 2019. The Marines, a part of Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, maneuvered and assaulted an objective as a company for the exercise.

Below you can see the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon being disassembled at the Lightning Academy Gym, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

Freezing Cold in our Photo Of The Day as paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, U.S. Army Alaska, fire an M2 machine gun. The location is the Grezelka range, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska and the pictures were taken in 2019.

Photo Of The Day – The location is the Pacific Ocean and we’re on-board the USS Chancellorsville looking at the muzzle flash from a .50 BMG Machine Gun.

Photo Of The Day – We are looking at an M240 Bravo medium machine gun in action.

Photo Of The Day and we take a look at the exercise during Eager Lion 2019 in Jordan.

We look at US Marines operating a vehicle-mounted M2 machine gun on a range during Exercise Fuji Viper.

We have already seen the 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype brought out by Textron for the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, but TFB also got an up close and personal look at Textron’s cased telescoped machine guns. Textron has two different cased telescoped belt fed weapons in testing right now: A 5.56mm CT light machine gun, and a 7.62mm CT medium or general purpose machine gun.

At the 2017 Association of the US Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting, Textron System displayed for the very first time their firing 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype. Previously, only non-firing mockups had been shown to the public, but after successful tests this summer the real thing was brought out to show at the conference, where TFB got its first look at the weapon.

After World War II, the UK sought to modernize its small arms, many of which were based on designs originating from before the First World War. For its medium machine gun, the British were still using the reliable but increasingly obsolete Vickers water cooled gun in .303 caliber. With the adoption of the 7.62 NATO by the UK, trials were held to select a new air-cooled general purpose machine gun, which resulted in the adoption of the excellent Belgian MAG. In these trials, however, was tested a belt-fed variant of the magazine-fed Bren gun, called the X11E4. This gun is the subject of an article over at The Armourer’s Bench, as well as an accompanying TAB video, embedded below:

The Georgian Ministry of Defense has released statements and even staged a demonstration wherein the land component of the Georgian Armed Forces will replace the 7.62x54R PKM medium machine guns with FN Herstal 7.62x51mm NATO M240Bs. This will be a gradual replacement over the next year or so as PKMs become switched out with M240Bs within the infantry and mechanized forces of the Republic of Georgia. Because the announcement specifically mentions “U.S. made” M240Bs, we’ve taken that to possibly mean that this purchase is either through Foreign Military Sales programs or that these are at least M240Bs previously in use by the U.S. Army and were replaced by M240Ls in active Army service.