Helmet camera footage released by what appears to be Ukrainian troops operating with the Georgian Legion near Bakhmut captures a machine gunner suppressing for maneuvering troops.

Fire without maneuver is a waste of ammunition. Maneuver without fire is suicide. This video is a great example of how the combined arms conundrum and maneuver warfare works. You suppress the enemy with medium and heavy machine guns while you drop artillery on them to fix them in place, all while infantrymen maneuver in close to the enemy's position with the intent to destroy them through close combat.

Few notes for the machine gunner here though. First and foremost, lose the optics. They look cool but they're next to useless on that 240. In order for an optic to work appropriately it needs to be something insanely hardy like the Trijicon MDO. Machine guns rattle, like a lot. It's kind of their entire thing. The constant rattling of the machine gun causes ordinary rifle optics to quickly lose their zero, which makes your job as a gunner a lot harder, especially when you don't have a quality assistant gunner to help you get on target. In the absence of a proper MDO, you should default to the iron sights as they'll be more reliable.

Second, the M240 Bravo is a medium machine gun. Keywords here are machine gun. You need to yank the trigger to the rear and pull the buttstock back into your shoulder with the motion. A six to eight round burst also needs to occur. What this gunner is doing is called "milking the trigger." Over time, a milked trigger can fail in several ways. First, it can fail by having the entire operating rod snap which will permanently disable the machine gun. Second, it can cause extensive wear to the weapon's sear which could result in a run-away gun. While everyone likes to joke about how a run-away gun would be fun, you could see how in this specific instance it would be deadly as the gunner isn't following any of the 45 degree offset rules for obvious reasons.

Third, in combat, the machine gun always has priority. If you see a better position to engage the enemy, you need to move the gun to that position and kick whatever rifleman is in it out of the way. As a medium machine gunner, you are the constant backbone of maneuver warfare. If the guys in front of you are shooting and you aren't, there's a large volume of fire that's not being put down range. Move forward and find a way to get your medium machine gun into the fight. It's 750 rounds per minute, find a job for it.

Anyways. I'm going to get off my machine gunner soap box, especially because at the end of the day there are factors I can't account for. I don't know how much ammunition this guy has. I don't know what the exact optic is on his machine gun. I don't know if his front-sight post has fallen out, which is a common problem with the M240. I also don't have the complete picture of what the objective is in this exact video, so I could be Monday morning quarter-backing this guy to death for no reason at all other than because I feel like he's under-utilizing the gun. At the end of the day, props to these dudes for doing their duty and defending their country.