Which weapon is recoil-operated, air-cooled, belt-fed, crew-served 0.50 caliber heavy machine gun?

• A. M2
• B. M60
• C. M240
• D. M2HB

Answer: (A)

The weapon described is the M2 Browning family, a .50 caliber heavy machine gun. Its operating cycle is recoil-operated: the barrel and bolt recoil together a short distance, then unlock to extract the spent cartridge and chamber a new one. It is air-cooled, so there’s no liquid cooling system to manage heat, and it feeds ammunition from a belt, not a magazine. It’s designed to be crew-served because of its size and weight, requiring a team to operate and maintain it in the field. The M2HB is simply the heavy-barrel variant of the same system, but the classic designation most people recognize for this description is the M2. The other guns listed are 7.62 mm and use different operating cycles, so they don’t fit the stated characteristics.