FN MAG

Origins

Fabrique Nationale of Herstal began work on a new machine gun in the early 1950s, when NATO settled on the 7.62x51mm cartridge and armies wanted one gun to replace both the light machine gun of the rifle section and the heavier tripod-mounted guns of the support platoon. The German MG 34 and MG 42 had shown in the Second World War that a single belt-fed weapon could fill both roles. FN's chief designer Ernest Vervier, who had also worked on the FN FAL rifle, took that idea and built it around proven parts. The result was the Mitrailleuse d'Appui General, or general-purpose machine gun, shortened to MAG. It went into production in 1958, and Belgium, Sweden and Britain were among the first customers. In Britain it entered service in 1961 as the L7A1, chosen after trials against a belt-fed development of the Bren.

Design & Construction

The MAG is gas-operated with a long-stroke piston under the barrel and fires from an open bolt. Its locking system is the tilting bolt of the Browning Automatic Rifle turned upside down: the rear of the bolt drops into a shoulder in the receiver floor instead of rising into the roof. Turning the lock over left the top of the bolt free for a feed system copied from the MG 42, in which a roller on the bolt carrier drives a swinging arm in the top cover and pulls the belt across in two stages. The receiver is built from stamped steel plates riveted together, with the barrel support and locking shoulder fitted as separate hardened inserts. The barrel changes in seconds using its carrying handle and a latch. A gas regulator with several settings lets the gunner raise the rate of fire from about 650 to about 1,000 rounds a minute as the gun fouls. The infantry model has a bipod, a wooden or plastic butt and weighs about 24 pounds empty; a tripod and a dial sight convert it to the sustained fire role. Coaxial versions have no butt or bipod and are fired by solenoid.

Combat Use

The British L7 has served in every campaign since the 1960s. In the Falklands in 1982 both sides carried it, since Argentina built the MAG under license, and British battalions used tripod-mounted guns to support their night attacks on Mount Longdon and Tumbledown. In Northern Ireland during The Troubles it armed foot patrols and vehicle mounts. Rhodesian and South African forces knew it as the MAG 58, and in the Rhodesian Bush War it was the heavy weapon of Fireforce sticks and a door gun on Alouette helicopters. The United States bought the MAG as the M240 in 1977 for the coaxial mount of the M60A3 and M1 tanks, and in the 1990s the Marines (M240G) and the Army (M240B) adopted a ground version to replace the M60 Machine Gun, whose reliability had never matched the Belgian gun's. The M240B went with infantry platoons through Iraq and Afghanistan, where its reach and steady beaten zone were valued in long-range firefights. Sweden's Ksp 58 was first chambered in 6.5x55mm and later converted to 7.62mm.

Legacy

More than 80 countries have used the MAG, and it has been built under license in Britain, the United States, Sweden, Argentina, India, Israel, Egypt, Singapore, Taiwan and South Africa. Weight is its one real fault. The M60 was lighter, belt-fed 5.56mm guns such as the Minimi took over the section role, and the US M240L with a titanium receiver saves about five pounds. Yet after more than sixty years it remains the standard medium machine gun of most of NATO, and with the FAL it is the best known product of Belgian Arms & Weapons.