Heckler & Koch MG5
7.62 mm general-purpose machine gun
The Heckler & Koch MG5 (in the development phase also known as the HK121) is a belt-fed 7.62×51mm NATO general-purpose machine gun manufactured by German firearm manufacturer Heckler & Koch.
The MG5 resembles the 5.56×45mm NATO Heckler & Koch MG4 light machine gun. It was adopted into German military service in 2015.
History
Work on the MG5 began, under the HK121 designation, shortly after the development of the MG4 light machine gun that Heckler & Koch initially presented as the HK MG43 at the MILIPOL 2001 trade show in Paris. A prototype of the HK121 was presented to a larger public by Heckler & Koch on the 14th day of the infantry in July 2010 in Hammelburg.
In June 2013, it was announced that Germany was testing and evaluating 65 samples and planned to buy at least 7,114 of the machine guns for the Bundeswehr during 2014–2017, in a deal that over time could grow to 12,733 MG5s.
The MG5 is designed to be modular, was intended to replace the MG3 machine gun that had been in German service since 1959, and started doing so in 2015. According to the Bundeswehr, the MG5 is more accurate than the MG3. The effective range on bipod is therefore greater. The MG5 reduced cyclic rate uses less ammunition and the user can adjust the stock to individual ergonomic preferences.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heckler & Koch MG5” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.