Kind of odd. Back in WW !! the BAR was sort of a mag fed SAW...but a big 30.06 with a lot of range and crunch power. A machine gun with a 30 rd mag and a .22 cal bullet is hardly a boost from a full auto M16 and would seem less of a boost than a SAW with belt feed or some sort of M14 update.
A lot of modern conflicts the troops may not often be 100 yd from the Humvee,Striker or ? that brought them. It's not like humping ammo for 2 weeks in the hills.
Firing from a belt...you can make the hostiles hit the dirt,go to cover...NOT be aimming and shooting. That lets your team aim and shoot and heads as they pop up. You also don't wanna be 20 guys and have 200 hostiles running at you,guns blazing and you have to keep grabbing for magazines.
I'd probably rather see a 7.62 mag fed,added rather than the light SAW deleted. In recent years,the enemy has tended to be semi-pros with AK 47's,and that's a mix that's not too effective beyond 200 yd..if that. If the squad has a weapon that's quite good at 300 yd.....well..that has to be a plus. You also get the ability to punch through whatever the enemy is behind. I would not suggest each squad has a full-on sniper with a bolt action shooting at 800m range, but there's a role for a mid-range marksman. The Russian's Dragunov wasn't designed to be a 800+ meter super sniper,was made to be accurate at 300-500 m. It seems that needs in Iraq have brought the M 14 back into service and some Knight's too. A good aimed kill at 200 m + is handy if the other guys are spraying AK's with more volume than accuracy. It's also nice if one of the enemy has a Dragunov and a good location.
