Your Pro Citizen Newsletter 46 - The Medium Support Weapon (MSW) Part Two; Weekly Discount Code

The Medium Support Weapon (MSW) is an option, it is “A” way of adding reasonable capability to a Citizen group. I am not suggesting rolling with FALs across your entire group to get a larger, more capable caliber. The 5.56 carbine is still the standard for our formations for scouts and riflemen.

For the Pro Citizen the MSW provides the terminal ballistic capabilities of a medium machine gun or General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). The MSW in our formations is a .308 (or comparable) magazine fed rifle, capable of being fitted with a drum magazine, a magnified optic, and has a lightweight bipod. The MSW provides an enhanced suppressive capability (by precision, extended range, and/or somewhat increased volume) at max effective range of the chosen round; typically around 1,000 meters for this cartridge. It is not a machine gun, nor does it pretend to serve in the machine gun / GPMG role. We aren’t fooling ourselves; we are simply referring to it as MSW to differentiate it from the standard carbines in a formation. You can call it whatever you like, the intent here is to differentiate the capabilities so we can plan and train for them in our formations. The MSW (as defined here) can be added as a very capable system to enhance the squad’s firepower through the addition of a larger caliber and a bit more capable round. In the templated organization from the CM-2 Recon manual the MSW resides in one of the fire teams with an LSW in the other. You can roll any way you want to but I would not recommend having more than one in a rifle squad size element due to the ammo burden and weight tradeoffs. Adding a second and having two in the HQ Team of a “heavy squad” might be the right answer.

I’ll say it one more time, these are not belt fed / automatic rifleman roles. We cannot replace or replicate the capability of a belt fed M240B with a magazine fed gun. This is NOT the intent of having this role and weapon setup. The MSW is a bit more capable of providing suppression through precision or volume (albeit very limited) versus the typical AR in the squad. Adding true belt-fed machineguns to a unit is always the better solution.

In addition to duties and responsibilities of any other team member the MSW gunners are responsible for understanding their system and a complete grasp of external ballistics to include wind calls, holdovers, and multiple round engagements as well as:

Mission Essential Skills for an MSW (obviously this is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you a basic place to start when building standards for your MSW gunners):

• hit a standard IPSC size steel silhouette at 800 meters (MSW) during daylight (specific standards, hit percentages, engagement scenarios, and conditions are established by your unit).

• hit a standard IPSC size silhouette at PID distance during limited visibility.

• manage rates of fire in accordance with the weapon capability and ammo conservation requirements.

The Gun

We contacted Red Right LLC and they graciously supplied us with a RECCE M.A.R. demo upper (unfortunately, we had to return it to them after the trials!). I wanted to keep this as realistic and attainable as possible for a “normal” member of the community. This is not an inexpensive proposition; it adds up quickly. We have seen groups pool money to purchase components (the upper), that is definitely a good course of action if your group is agreeable to it. We “built” ours with an inexpensive PSA lower, a Magpul bipod, and a Primary Arms 5x with an offset Holosun. Yeah, about as inexpensive as I would want to try this with. RRH sent us the upper that already had a 1-10 optic on it, so we just rolled with that for the trials. In retrospect I wish we would have used the 5X, after running it we found that a fixed power would have been more appropriate for how we see an MSW being employed.

A binary trigger is close to being a mandatory item for the MSW. Trying to achieve the volume of fire from a magazine fed gun is tough enough, fighting a semi trigger essentially doubles the challenge. We had some issues with the Franklin trigger, a subsequent range session after a gas adjustment straightened it right out.

The Upper

The RECCE MAR is a beast, if leaps far beyond the AR-10 heavy barrel upper. We had zero issues with keeping the system cool, it gave no indications of overheating with back to back high rate of fire magazine expenditures.

Conclusion/Recommendation

With a heavy duty upper, the binary trigger, and proper training the MSW concept is quickly becoming a reality across the community. Groups should explore the potential of adding the capability to their formations. You may ask yourself what can it do that a 5.56 can’t? Why would you add one? The range extension and terminal ballistic performance of the .308 may be something that is of value to your situation. The added suppressive capability is unquestionable, especially with a properly built and accessorized system. Having an MSW in the support element / SBF would be worthy of consideration. As far as the specific hardware, the RRH upper is an incredible piece of hardware. Plenty accurate and it performed well above what we thought it would do. We were both surprised at just how tight the cone of fire held at 100 yards with very few rounds going over the target during high volume strings. The gun stayed where it was supposed to and was a pleasure to shoot. I have no reservations with recommending their uppers. The MSW is…and I can’t believe I am going to use this term…it is another tool in your toolbox.

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