h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Try 22 hours.

As far as I'm aware, the LSW is gas cooled. The burns on my right palm from the time I picked the thing up after putting 600 rounds through it and then being shelled testify to that - and I was a signals sergeant for several years.

Ooyah!

WHOOPS!.. stupid mistake. That should have read isn't gas cooled.

(In fact, having taken apart many many LSWs, I can testify to that. They a 'gas mechanism', but all that the gas mechanism does is to reload the weapon after each motion of the working parts in that the weapon can be fired again (on semi-auto) or to reload and release the hammer (on full auto) )...

My sergeant lied to me? Oh, the pain!

Bloody NCOs, all the same....

Wait a minute, I was a lance-jack - but I didn't lie to my underlings!

ah, well. .. I've never lied to mine before. .. we were sufficiently close that the four of us coordinated a quite spectacularly well engineered prank shortly before we all parted ways - we broke into a fairly well secured installation, swapped a union jack for a jolly roger flag, and broke out again, resecuring the building (electronically and physically) afterwards. .. a prank the like of which hitherto never was known..

Sounds like an excellent prank!

It confused the hell out of the gurkha colonel who was supposed to be in charge of security for the site.

Poor man! You evil lot....

Oh, he survived. .. and as far as I know, security for the building still falls under his remit, so he didn't get in trouble for it.

We're gradually replacing the LSW with the FN Minimi now as well. This is not the same as the GPMG, it's smaller. I think our GPMG is currently the FN Mag or Para?

The CWS is used by British Forces. Before I joined my CCF, we were invited to a summer camp in Germany by the Royal Green Jackets, and were issued with SA80s and CWSs for the exercise.

I'm not a fan of the LSW myself, compared to the SA80 it doesn't seem to offer that much of an advantage apart from for fire support, which isn't really my game.

I enjoy 5-hour ambushes

the Clear weapons sight is something the infantry could do with, but its a bit russian in size, take an sa80, add something that can be seen from space that looks like a cross between a scope and the kirsk submarine and mount it on your rifle, you have the CWS. the only time ive seen it in action is with the Yeomanry on sailsbury plain- the yeonmanry are tank scouts and skirmishers who engage the enemy in stripped down landies and cant be arsed to walk anywhere, each landrover crew seems to have an SA80 witha CSW on it as part of the team. I got to fire it with blanks but all i came awy from that experiance with was half an hour of being blind in my right eye where my nightvision was completely lost, i'll take my chances with the good old radioactive susat sight- id rather die of inhaling trylixine gas cause the scope broke over being shot whilst being blind!

Just a thought from my days in the ACF. Don't the British Forces have the minime LMG as well. I seem to remember an infantry section we met having one.

There are at least two other bullpup weapons in use that I can think of, firstly being the French FAMAS, and the German HK G-11. The G-11 uses caseless ammo which has the design advantage that ammo is smaller and cheaper to make (no brass cases) and also more reliable, as no brass case to eject means less holes in the body for dirt etc to get in.

A revolutionary weapon, but so expensive to make that when H & K turned round to the German govt and said 'look what a clever gun we've made', the govt replied 'It _is_ nice, but it's far too expensive, so we're not going to buy it'. H & K go bankrupt and are bought by Royal Ordnance for a song. ho ho.