Function: Deter, and if necessary, compel adversaries by enabling individuals and small units to engage targets with accurate, lethal, direct automatic fire.





Description: The M240B is a general-purpose machine gun. It can be mounted on a bipod, tripod, aircraft, or vehicle. The M240B is a belt-fed, air-cooled, gas-operated, fully automatic machine gun that fires from the open bolt position. This reliable 7.62mm machine gun delivers more energy to the target than the smaller caliber M-249 SAW. It is being issued to infantry, armor, combat engineer, special force/rangers, and selected field artillery units that require medium support fires and will replace the ground-mounted M-60 series machine guns currently in use.



Ammunition is fed into the weapon from a 100-round bandoleer containing a disintegrating metallic split-link belt. The gas from firing one round provides the energy for firing the next round. Thus, the gun functions automatically as long as it is supplied with ammunition and the trigger is held to the rear. As the gun is fired, the belt links separate and are ejected from the side. Empty cases are ejected from the bottom of the gun. A spare barrel is issued with each M240B, and barrels can be changed quickly as the weapon has a fixed head space. However, barrels from different weapons should not be interchanged. The bore of the barrel is chromium plated, reducing barrel wear to a minimum.





Entered Army Service: 1997





General Characteristics, M-240B Machine Gun



Manufacturer:

FN Manufacturing (Columbia, SC)





Length:

49 inches





Weight:

27.6 pounds





Weight of tripod-mount M122A1 tripod with/flex-mount, complete:

20 pounds





Maximum Range:

3,725 meters





Maximum Effective Range:

1,100 meters with tripod and T&E





Height of M240B on the tripod mount M122A1:

17.5 inches





Ammunition:

7.62 mm ball, tracer, armor-piercing, blank, dummy. Armor-piercing round is not authorized for training.





Tracer burnout :

900 meters





Rates of fire:

- Sustained: 100 rounds per minute fired in 6-to-9 round bursts and 4-to-5 seconds between bursts (barrel change every 10 minutes).

- Rapid: 200 rounds per minute fired in 10-to-13 round bursts and 2-to-3 seconds between bursts (barrel change every 2 minutes).