Chapter 569 Browning Light Machine Gun

What Arthur didn't expect was that not long after the arms trade with the Philippines, the military factory in Australasia welcomed new guests.

These guests came from East Asia, not far from the island country. Their purpose was very simple, that is, to buy Australasia's arms and weapons, and the corresponding production technology.

East Asia is an extremely large market, and there is a lot of cooperation with Australasia in food, meat, and even arms.

Moreover, the arms trade is beneficial to Australasia, and Arthur naturally couldn't refuse this order that came to his door.

In the end, the guests and Australasia signed an order for up to 300,000 rifles, 100 million rounds of ammunition, 200 heavy machine guns, 150 M1897-75mm artillery, 120 CA-1-37mm machine guns and 15 Krupp 105mm howitzers, and there are also corresponding matching machine gun bullets and shells.

The other party wanted to buy the production line of rifles and bullets. Arthur thought for a long time and sold them the production line of Gew-98 rifles at a price slightly higher than the cost price, as well as the corresponding bullet production line.

In addition, the production line of AS-1898 semi-rifle was already very backward and was an obsolete product in Australasia. Arthur also regarded it as a favor and sold it to the other party at cost price.

This large arms trade earned the Royal Arsenal 2 million Australian dollars, which was a win-win situation for both parties.

In addition to these arms trades, the other party even proposed to buy tanks and aircraft from Australasia, and use these weapons and equipment to re-arm the Australian Armed Division.

The concept of the Australian Armed Division actually appeared more than ten years ago, when the so-called Qing Dynasty had not yet perished.

However, that army only took the weapons and equipment of Australasia, and its soul was still that backward army.

When the other party proposed to rebuild the Australian Armed Division, it was obvious that they wanted to invite military experts from Australasia as guidance to learn the combat capabilities of the Australasia Army.

Arthur was not surprised by this, and was even happy to have a good relationship with this country.

First, it can avoid the sanctions of the river crab god, and second, it can find a reliable market for future economic crises.

Moreover, the expansion plan of the island country will be severely restricted. A stronger opponent can completely delay the island country in Asia.

Besides, Australasia did not suffer any loss in this trade, and it made all the money it should make. Who would refuse a big business?

All the tanks and aircraft sold by Australasia are first-generation products. They are already backward for many generations. There is no sale for Australasia itself, but only endless financial benefits.

Amid the laughter of the crowd, a large order for arms trade was confirmed, which also made the experts of the military factory smile, because they had a large amount of research funds to improve Australasia's weapons.

In March 1922, the test site outside the Royal Military Factory.

This was a weapons test carefully prepared by the Royal Arsenal. Not only did they invite important officials from the military and the Ministry of Defense, but they also invited Arthur to inspect it in person.

The reason for such a big move is that the Royal Arsenal has made a lot of progress in military technology, and the corresponding military weapons have also been improved to a certain extent.

First of all, the machine gun.

Before World War I, the most famous one was the Maxim heavy machine gun, which also played a very good role in World War I.

But the Maxim heavy machine gun requires several people to operate, and it is also a burden for transportation when it is transferred. Overall, it has good performance but is not convenient.

This also gave the experts of the military factory an idea. If the firepower of the machine gun can be retained as much as possible, while reducing the weight of the machine gun, and turning the machine gun into a weapon that can be operated and transported by one or two people, wouldn’t it be possible to greatly reduce the pressure on logistics?

Even such an improved machine gun can be equipped on a large scale. Equipping the machine gun to a single-level combat unit with a squad as the unit can also greatly enhance the firepower of the Australasian army.

Under such a conjecture, military experts began to vigorously develop light machine guns.

Compared with heavy machine guns, light machine guns pay more attention to flexibility and portability, so the concept of the entire machine gun needs to be changed.

First of all, the way of feeding ammunition. Compared with the cloth bag ammunition belt used by heavy machine guns, designing a portable, effective and easy-to-replace magazine is the best choice for light machine guns.

As a famous light weapon shooting expert, Browning conducted a lot of experiments with the support of Arthur, and finally designed a disc magazine specializing in light machine guns. At the cost of slightly affecting the machine gunner's sight, it successfully exchanged for a full 36 rounds of ammunition.

This improved and redesigned light machine gun was named Browning-1 gas-operated light machine gun by the military factory, referred to as BLN-1 machine gun.

Although the ammunition storage capacity is much larger than that of a rifle, compared with a heavy machine gun using an ammunition belt, the ammunition storage capacity of only 36 rounds undoubtedly greatly reduces the firepower of the machine gun.

Although it is easy to carry, it is far behind the role of heavy machine guns in positional warfare, and did not meet Browning's expectation of taking into account the firepower of heavy machine guns.

Therefore, on this basis, Browning further improved the ammunition feeding method and developed a light machine gun that used a belt-fed ammunition feed, and named it the BLN-2 machine gun.

From the appearance, there is not much difference, except that the disc-type magazine is cancelled and the ammunition belt is used for feeding.

The ammunition belt can bring about earth-shaking changes in the firepower of the BLN-2 machine gun, and the firepower can far exceed that of the BLN-1 machine gun.

The only drawback is that because it is still a light machine gun design overall, if it is fired for a long time, the barrel will be too hot, and even the entire machine gun will explode.

However, it is the task of heavy machine guns to deal with enemy strafing for a long time and a large area, and to suppress the firepower of the entire army. Light machine guns are mainly responsible for the firepower output of small-scale troops, and generally there will be no long-term strafing.

It is impossible to completely replace heavy machine guns with light machine guns. These two machine gun designs have their own application scenarios, but there is no doubt that they can greatly enrich the weapons system of Australasia.

The first test today is the test of these two new machine guns.

In fact, it is better to say that it is a display to Arthur and senior military officials than a test.

Because the performance of these two machine guns had been extensively tested during the military factory test, and it was guaranteed that there would be basically no problems, so the military officials and Arthur were formally invited to watch.

Otherwise, Arthur would not have come to watch an unnecessary test for a machine gun that had not been tested.

After watching the entire machine gun test, including Arthur, the advantages and disadvantages of the two new machine guns were very clear.

The overall design of the BLN-1 machine gun is very light, and the weight is even maintained below ten kilograms, so a soldier can easily carry it.

But the disadvantages are also very clear, because there are only 36 rounds of ammunition, which means that after a burst of rapid shooting, the magazine must be replaced.

In combat, machine guns are very powerful and reliable sources of firepower. The interruption of machine gun firepower caused by magazine replacement is a serious problem in combat.

Minister Raul also gave his own advice, which is to try to match magazines with different ammunition capacities to avoid the enemy's prediction of machine gun magazine replacement after experience.

Of course, this point still requires the machine gunner to make certain changes according to the actual situation. In some cases, it is not the best situation to change the magazine after the bullets are used up.

Although doing so will reduce the pressure on logistics, for war, it will make it easier for the enemy to predict the time to change the magazine.

Making the time to change the magazine uncertain will prevent the enemy from easily predicting the time to change the magazine, and the existence of the machine gun will also make the enemy feel daunted.

After all, as long as it is unclear whether there are bullets, the enemy has bullets. In addition to fire suppression, the deterrent power of the machine gun is also very important.

The BLN-2 machine gun has significantly improved this shortcoming. The belt-type ammunition supply method greatly reduces the need for the BLN-2 machine gun to change magazines, and the firepower is not easily interrupted.

However, long-term strafing is a burden for the design of light machine guns. Although it has a belt-type ammunition supply design, it is still necessary to remind the machine gunner using this machine gun not to strafing for a long time, and try to adopt a point-fire method.

Although the belt-type ammunition supply enhances the firepower of the light machine gun, the portability of the entire machine gun is also greatly reduced.

Generally speaking, these two types of machine guns and heavy machine guns can be regarded as light machine guns, medium machine guns and heavy machine guns respectively.

The designs of these three types of machine guns are different in their application fields, but they can all play a vital role.

Minister Arthur and Raul, including many senior military officials, are still very satisfied with the performance of these two new machine guns.

In particular, the portability of light machine guns means that machine guns can be equipped to combat units based on squads, greatly enhancing the firepower of the Australasian army.

In particular, when some heavy machine guns are not easy to carry, equipping a large number of light machine guns can ensure that the firepower of the army will not be greatly reduced, and in some cases can completely control the situation of the war.

If some raids in World War I could carry a large number of light machine guns, it would also be possible to minimize the casualties of the army.

Moreover, light machine guns are easier to equip on airplanes, tanks and cars as a secondary weapon option for these weapons.

After confirming that both machine guns can be mass-produced, Minister Raul made a prompt decision to equip the Australasian army with light weapons in squads, and immediately began large-scale light machine gun procurement, striving to strengthen the firepower of the Australasian army in the shortest possible time.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Defense has just obtained a sum of 47 million Australian dollars from Arthur, and there is no problem in placing the order for this light machine gun, and Minister Raul has no regrets.

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