HMS Lancaster Gets Equipped with Heavy Machine Guns

Effective at ranges of up to 2,000 metres, the 50 cal heavy machine gun bullets can penetrate light armour and plastics such as RIB speed boats, providing the warship with an extra layer of defense By Joseph Macey / 15 Feb 2021

Discover Leading Defense Technology Solutions

Discover cutting-edge solutions from leading global suppliers
SUPPLIER SPOTLIGHT
HMS_Lancasters_50_cal_heavy_machine_gun
Follow DA

The Portsmouth based warship HMS Lancaster has been fitted with heavy machine-guns to fend off small, fast-attack craft guns, tested for the first time off the British South Coast.

After a hectic 2020, the ship began this year undergoing maintenance before resuming her place in the Fleet’s order of battle.

The .50 calibre gun has long been a favourite of the Royal Marines, for example on WMIK Land Rovers, and for aircrew whereby it’s fitted to the Fleet Air Arm’s Wildcat and Merlin helicopters when they are providing air surveillance.

But for close-protection, ships either rely on the lighter general purpose machine gun (GPMG), sometimes the Minigun (a manually operated Gatling gun) and, as a last resort, standard issue SA80 rifles.

As the name suggests the .50 heavy machine gun, generally known as the ’50 cal’ or HMG (heavy machine gun) spews out half inch/12.7mm diameter shells at 500 to 600 rounds per minute.

Effective at ranges up to about 2,000 metres, its bullets can penetrate light armour and will tear through plastics such as RIB speed boats.

Posted by Joseph Macey Connect & Contact

Latest Articles

Practical Methods for Balancing UAV Propellers Safely & Effectively

Tyto Robotics discusses the ways to add and remove materials from drone propellers, considering advantages and disadvantages of various products and techniques

Jul 11, 2025
Military-Grade Tethered Drone Systems for Surveillance & Security Missions

DPI UAV Systems (Dragonfly Pictures) is a developer of advanced tethered drone systems for military, government and security applications. As...

Jul 11, 2025
Modular Chassis Design Enhances Deployment Flexibility for Defense Systems

LCR Embedded Systems explains how modular chassis design supports rapid deployment and cost-effective packaging for rugged embedded systems using open standards like VPX and SOSA

Jul 10, 2025
MilDef to Supply Rugged IT Equipment for Norway’s Defense Digitization

MilDef has secured a major contract with Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to supply rugged IT equipment supporting Norway’s defense digitization efforts

Jul 10, 2025
Tethered Drone Technologies for Mission-Critical Defense & Security Applications

Defense Advancement showcases Elistair's tethered drone solutions for mission-critical defense and security applications

Jul 10, 2025
New Oscilloquartz Optical Cesium Clocks Enhance Network Timing Precision

Adtran is expanding its Oscilloquartz portfolio with the new OSA 3200 SP and OSA 3250 ePRC optical cesium models, providing improved holdover and simplified maintenance for telecom, data center, utility, and defense networks

Jul 09, 2025

Featured Content

New Oscilloquartz Optical Cesium Clocks Enhance Network Timing Precision

Adtran is expanding its Oscilloquartz portfolio with the new OSA 3200 SP and OSA 3250 ePRC optical cesium models, providing improved holdover and simplified maintenance for telecom, data center, utility, and defense networks

Jul 09, 2025
Teledyne FLIR OEM Whitepaper: Synthetic Data Generation for AI Object Detection

Read Teledyne FLIR OEM’s whitepaper on AIMMGen™, a defense-oriented synthetic data and AI model generation pipeline tailored to Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) and object classification tasks

Jul 03, 2025
Galvion’s Production Hub in Poland Now Open & Operational

Galvion's new Production Hub in Poland has formally opened through a large ceremony held at the Gdansk facility with factory tours, demonstrations, and live models of helmets

Jun 30, 2025
Advancing Defense Capability Through Strategic Collaboration Defense Advancement works with major OEMs to foster collaboration and increase engagement with SMEs, to accelerate innovation and drive defense capabilities forward.