A&K M249 SAW MKII Field Performance review.

Alright, today we had our skirmish in Casper. An excellent turn out. Great area to skirmish in.

I used my M249 All day. The Terrain was extremely wet and lush underbrush thickets and tree's. Slightly hilly with ravines running through the area.

First off I highly recommend getting a good fitting sling for your SAW. I made my own and love it. Sits just right and works like a charm. One of the other guys had the MkI and kept commenting on how much he wished he had a Sling on his SAW.

Battery life. Simply put I was concerned that the 8.4v 1100 Mah battery would die half way through the day. Nope. Come the drop dead time it was still going strong. Very impressive.

Function and Functionality. Simply put. NO issues what so ever. No jams, utilizing Crosman .20 gram bb's. Consistent feed rate from the Box Mag. One thing that is a must do, simply take some duct tape and tape off the battery/gear box area of the box mag. BB's can and will get into that area from the feed system and cause jams or mis-feeds. I did this to mine as soon as I received it and glad that I did.

Performance, Rate of Fire and Accuracy. Again wow.. I had reserved thoughts on this. This M249 Held its own against AEG's shooting at 400 FPS and higher hitting out to 150 feet. I was picking people off with solid hits at 100 feet, at roughly 340 FPS, and they stated they could feel the impact and heard the bb's whizzing by their heads.

This weapon system is an excellent suppression system. I saw it first hand, Some one who has an understanding of what a support weapon is supposed to be used for and a squad backing them that knows how to work with a Support Gunner, will greatly benefit in their skirmishing and operations.

We had one situation where two operators from the opposite force where behind a hedgerow and popping up and pinning our team down. I was able to not only pin them down from 150 feet but keep them from returning fire by applying three to five round burst at the top of the bushes in their general area,I was not attempting to actually hit them but the focus was to keep their heads down so my squad could, allowing my squad to flank them on the right hand side and not only take them out but make a kill shot on one of the winning objectives.

Over all. WELL WORTH THE MONEY! The A&K M249 MKII is a stable effect system and I highly recommend it to any one who has experience with heavy weapons and knows how to properly deploy in a support gunner position. One thing to note is that it does grow heavy over time but well worth it.

Being a SAW Gunner, unless your setting up an Ambush, you will not be getting a lot of kills with this system if utilized properly. You should be focusing on keeping the enemy's head down while your team flanks them, or Advances on their position. It works. I did it all day today. Just having one SAW on the field DRASTICALLY Changes the the method and style of skirmish. Every one on the field was impressed with the Weapon and how it was utilized.

Semper Fi, and Carry on!
Lex
Death Dealers Airsoft.