>>3694564From a purely a visual standpoint I don't think he is incorrect.
The 96 had an oiler build into the magazine loader.
Conceptually speaking, the hopper makes sense if you approach it from the time period and not at the personal user level, but trying to supply them.
It is a relatively early design, basically any sort of man portable automatic weapon was a drastic increase of firepower.
Magazines, if designed and produced well are obviously better for sustained fire, but expensive and many designs suffered from either poor design or quality control.
With the hopper system, you don't have to add anything supply wise, and everyone is able to provide ammunition for the machine gun. Since it's built in, the likely hood of damage is less as opposed to dented magazines or bent feed lips.
Obviously in retrospect it wasn't a good idea given how much machining time that was required for that sort of system, the limited sustained fire capability, having a lot of weight biased to one side,how vulnerable it is to elements etc.
The mechanics of the Breda can't really be defended in the same manor given it was 8-10 years later and a lot of successful designs came out that could've been observed by the Italians. The clip loading can make sense in a way, but the rest of the operating mechanism is really just makes you ask why did they do it like that?
None of that was to say it's better than the 96 or 99, just to give context because most people see things that were developmental dead ends or failures purely from a modern perspective of that looks dumb and no one uses it anymore so whoever made it must have just been dumb.
Kinda like Japanese tanks being a running gag because yes, they were shitty vs most any tank faced faced, but they were using stuff designed in the late 20's or early 30's meant to be transported to islands and were used against the chinese or whoever who basically had no armored vehicles at all.
