Even highly trained Navy Seals would have a difficult time running a full auto weapon for 10 minutes straightUh, no. I'm pretty sure that any good E-4 could run a full auto weapon for ten minutes, especially if he had twenty of them prepped and ready to go, as this bozo evidently did.
Such weapon systems are brutal on the operator. They require tremendous strength, stamina and expert troubleshooting to keep running. Full-auto weapons overheat and jam. They demand incredible strength to keep aimed on target. They require expert reloading and weapons clearing in the case of jamThey're really not that hard to run, if it jams, you drop it and get another, which was the plan that the Vegas bozo relied on. This guy didn't intend to clear jams.
... system in the sustained, effective manner that we witnessed, especially when shooting from an elevated position which throws off all the ranging of the weapon system.This one really gets me. I've trained machine gunners, and firing from an elevated position is always recommended, if possible. As far as "effective" fire, he was't really that effective. From all I can understand, he was firing at a crowd of thousands from well withing the effective range of his systems.
I trained my gunners to get 100% target coverage with a 100 round belt. Any of my gunners could do that. Thankfully, the bozo was neither trained or effective. With a target like that, fully half should have been wounded, and many more than 58 killed. Any of the gunners I trained would have tripled the body count.
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It would be easy, especially with a water-cooled belt-fed on a tripod. Like, say, a Vickers.
" Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without a failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun
My degree is in history, but by my math that's 10,000 rounds per barrel. Since the Vickers doesn't boast a quick-change barrel, I'm going to assume they only changed the barrel out when it was completely done.
Now, that's with full, trained crews to feed them, which this guy didn't have. But if he'd bothered to link up enough ammo, and for the 10-12 minutes he was actually shooting, he could have gone full cyclic (450-500 rpm) and still sent roughly 5,000 rounds into the crowd
That's 5,000 rounds of .303, which has far, far more energy than the .223, and would have been aimed and controlled.
And buying a Vickers, with tripod and T&E, plus 10,000 rounds of ammo would have been easily within this guy's reach.
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