The Browning M2HB .50 calibre machine gun is a truly remarkable weapon, being first produced in the 1930s and still in production and widespread use today - it is one of the longest serving of all weapons, and has been used by an impressive array of countries besides the United States. Since it is still in service at the time of writing, it is naturally perfectly appropriate for the 1990 target period of the Hot War range, as for many others. It has been beautifully produced and highly detailed, with as close a representation of the real thing as you could possibly expect from a model of this scale. Our only concern was with the tripod, where the front leg looks to be somewhat longer than it should be.

The gun may have a very wide range of potential uses in many conflicts, but the crew are of course specifically suitable for the 1990 era. They all wear the PASGT and ALICE webbing, and everything here is authentic. Two of the figures are of course the gunner and the No.2 feeding the belt, while the third figure is simply watching the effect of the firing, and so is something of a welcome but unrelated bonus. Our picture shows both the models on their own bases as provided by Zvezda, but since this is primarily a game piece the figures can also be grouped together like this on a single base, which also looks good.

All the figures come in multiple parts, and assembly is a bit slow but certainly makes the poses entirely natural. The sculpting is excellent as always, and of course no flash etc., so these match the top quality of the rest of this range. Certainly a very necessary component for any US army of the last decade of the twentieth century, and a really well done model too.