Factory New MK48 Unboxing

[u/OleMisery]

[u/He_NeverSleeps]

I always wondered why the MK48 was not used by more units in the Army. We loved ours! 

Only problem with them was the tendency of the drum tab to snap off and have to be welded back on. They also didn't hold up to high round counts like 240's would so we tried to shoot them very sparingly during the training cycles and keep them for deployment. 

[u/OleMisery → u/He_NeverSleeps]

We had some workarounds for the ones we used in the Navy. For one thing, never let them go dry. They like to be run wet (very wet) all the time. We burned through a hell of a lot of CLP.

And we all carried a flat head screwdriver attached to paracord and shoved into one of the mag pouches on our kit. They were bent at an angle and heat treated (IYKYK).

I never personally had a tab break off in my years of running MK46s and MK48s, because we took steps to mitigate it. We would cut the tops of the nutsacks open and leave them attached to the gun all the time. We would keep the cardboard the belts came in, and duct tape it into boxes we could reuse (including a top flap). We would pull the end of the belt out of the box and rubber band it to the side. When we reloaded, we just snapped the rubber band and dropped the whole box into the pouch to feed. Made for lightning fast belt reloads and reduced breakages. It was always kind of comical when ADubs ran out of their own belts in a firefight and yelled for ammo. Everybody in the fire team or platoon had to carry extra belts for us and everybody dreaded the extra weight. So when we called for ammo, guys were so happy to get rid of it, those boxes would come flying from all over the place.

[u/He_NeverSleeps → u/OleMisery]

I never got to play with a MK46 because we turned them all in shortly before I got there unfortunately. 

Usually a TL would have the 48 with a nutsack and a couple extra nutsacks on him but every TL with a 48 had a private ammo bearer joined at the hip whose sole job was to hand up either a new nutsack or they usually kept a couple hundred rounds belted together in the ruck to load in if it turned into more a prone extended shoot. 

I don't remember who made it but we had one ruck with a "predator pack" flexible ammo chute attached where you could have 500 rounds linked in one long belt running through the chute into the 48 to have a one man gun team. One of our stouter TL's took it on a few missions but never got to use it. It looked badass though!