I had the opportunity to fire one of these on several occasions, on one of which I made the attempt to shoulder fire it (as if it was an oversize M-16).  I can report that it is possible ( of course I weighed a solid 190 lbs at the time), but forget about accuracy, no matter what you do that barrel is riding up to the sky. It was bad-ass fun, the smell of cordite and the North Carolina pines under a bright blue sky, it more than made up for all the bullshit.

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Spy Rigging
A rope designed to be hung from a helicopter to which Marines have been attached for the purpose of inserting them into or extracting them from dense jungle or other places where helicopters can not land.
(synonym)  Sometimes called Dope on a Rope.

I’m on the bottom left, about 200 feet up.

This was definitely a fun way to to pass a day of training on a god forsaken, freezing, rock strewn mess of a beach , but not as much fun as rappelling from a CH-64 Sea Knight.

I confess to being a little nervous my first time up, but that was basically a well warranted lack of confidence in the reliability of the equipment we were using.

Needless to say a catastrophic failure of say….the (already fatigued) D-Clip holding me to the rigging…would have been slightly life changing.
 

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