Now you may say they don’t exist in airsoft, and you are right. However there are a many mad scientist working in their garages to make this happen, some of them work here at Regiment Airsoft When we succeed with a better more robust model we will pass along some of that belt feed goodness.
It would be great to see an airsoft version of the Mk19 belt fed grenade launcher or its more modern equivalent like the Mk47 and the Russian AGS 17.
For the mad scientist out there who wants to give it a try it should be simple enough, someone has already done half of the work and made a reproduction of the MK19, “only” $4200 plus mount, cradle and shipping.
To give you inspiration on how to set up the internal workings of the automatic airsoft grenade launcher here is the training manual for the MK19
After you have engineered the internals and installed them the ammo shouldn’t be a problem either. Its already commercially available at only $50ea and at a maximum rate of fire of 350 rounds a minute (if we are going to take the real steel as a guide) it should only cost about $17500 to set up the airsoft mk19 to run for a minute, plus green gas, balls and/ or rubber bullets plus the ammo cans to haul it all around.
Some of you more astute readers may say the 40MM grenades used in an real steel M203 and MK14 are different, the MK14 rounds are longer. This is true. Ill give a pass on two things, one using standard 40MM airsoft shells and two not having a disintegrating belt. Disintegrating belts come apart after firing and it would be a hassle cleaning up all the shells. But you would need to make some sore of automatic gas filling, ball loading device to recharge all the shells after use. Reloading would take forever otherwise.
The Belt feed automatic airsoft grenade launcher would have an disadvantage and that being bulk and weight. Both the ammo and system. This is easily overcome by a crew to carry and feed the beast or a more realistic possibility of making it a defensive system part of a attack and defend game.
Here is a video of a real MK19 in action.
More Videos available on the Airsoft Video HQ Youtube page