M240G Live Firing
Lance Cpl. Kody Stallard, a landing support specialist with Combat Logistics Battalion 31, fires an M240G medium machine gun during live-fire training at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, March 12, 2019. Stallard, a native of Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, graduated from Conneaut Senior High School in June 2017 before enlisting the same month. CLB-31 provides security, logistics, and transportation as the Logistics Combat Element for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. The 31st MEU, the Marine Corps’ only continuously forward-deployed MEU partnering with the U.S. Navy’s Amphibious Squadron 11, provides a flexible and lethal force ready to perform a wide range of military operations as the premier crisis response force in the Indo-Pacific region.
Military Units Featured
US Marine Corps
31st Marine Expeditionary Unit
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (31st MEU) is one of seven Marine Expeditionary Units in existence in the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Expeditionary Unit is a Marine Air Ground Task Force with a strength of about 2,200 Marines and sailors. The 31st MEU consists of a company-sized command element, a battalion landing team (BLT), (an infantry battalion reinforced with artillery, amphibious vehicle and other attachments), a medium tiltrotor squadron (reinforced), (which includes detachments of short take-off, vertical landing airplanes and heavy, light, and attack helicopters), and a combat logistics battalion. The 31st MEU is based at Camp Hansen, Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler, Okinawa, Japan. The 31st MEU is the only permanently forward-deployed MEU, and provides a flexible and lethal force ready to perform a wide range of military operations as the premier crisis response force in the Indo-Pacific region.
Combat Logistics Battalion 31 (CLB-31)
Combat Logistics Battalion 31 (CLB-31) provides security, logistics, and transportation as the Logistics Combat Element for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Marine Corps’ only continuously forward-deployed MEU.
Military Equipment Featured
Machine Gun, Caliber 7.62 mm, M240
M240G medium machine gun, officially the Machine Gun, Caliber 7.62 mm, M240, is the US military designation for the FN MAG (“Mitrailleuse A Gaz,” Gas operated machine gun; alternatively, “Mitrailleuse d’Appui General,” machine gun, support, general) a family of belt-fed, gas-operated medium machine guns that chamber the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. The M240G is the ground version of the original M240 or M240E1, 7.62 mm medium class weapon designed as a coaxial/pintle-mounted machine gun for tanks and LAVs. The M240G can be modified for ground use by the installation of an “infantry modification kit” (a flash suppressor, front sight, carrying handle for the barrel, a buttstock, infantry length pistol grip, bipod, and rear sight assembly).
Photographer
Official Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Harrison C. Rakhshani.