On 23 December 2024 the German government confirmed that 200 Heckler & Koch MG4 5.56x45mm machine guns had been delivered as aid to Ukraine. In this video we'll examine some of the first sightings of the guns and share some of the opinions of the combatants using them.

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Vaclav Holek's first machine gun design for the Czech military was the Praga I, built in 1922 and based heavily on the Vickers/Maxim system. However, it became clear that the military wanted something lighter and more portable, and so the next year he heavily updated the design to this, the Praga...

Today we are taking a look at three different pieces of kit developed to carry Degtyarev DP pan magazines. These mags are really inconveniently shaped, and traditional magazine pouches just don't work for them. Instead, the Soviets initially fielded a stamped steel can that held three pans. This ...

The Degtyarev DP (aka DP-27) was the subject of a bunch of experimentation during the 1930s, but none of the trialed modifications were actually adopted. It was only in 1944, after several years of combat experience, that the design was updated to correct a number of shortcomings. Specifically:

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The S2-200 was developed by Louis Stange at the Rheinmetall company in Germany in the late 1920s. Because Germany was not allowed to be doing this sort of arms development at the time, Rheinmetall bought a controlling stake in the Swiss firm Solothurn AG, to make the product deniably Swiss. The g...

When Czechoslovakia began looking for new small arms in the early 1920s, one of the things they were interested in was a "samostřil" - something akin to the automatic rifle in English. A select-fire weapon intended to be fired from the shoulder or hip - heavier than a basic rifle but lighter than...

A look at Kalashnikov Concern's latest iteration of their 5.45x39mm light machine gun - the RPL-20.

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In 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista ordered some 35,000 FAL rifles from FN, including both regular infantry rifles have heavy-barreled FALO light machine guns. Before any of them could arrive, however, Batista fled the country and his guns were delivered to Fidel Castro beginning in July 19...

The first squad automatic weapon used by the US Army was the French Mle 1915 Chauchat, which was the primary LMG or automatic rifle for troops in the American Expeditionary Force in World War One. At that time, the Chauchat was a company-level weapon assigned where the company commander thought b...

When Heckler & Koch produced the iconic G3 rifle, it was intended to be a parts of a complete small arms package. The G3 was the infantry rifle, and it was paired with the MP% submachine gun and the HK21 light machine gun for a complete set of weapons with the same manual of arms and disassembly/...

When the US entered World War One, the country had a grand total of 1,453 machine guns, split between 4 different models. This was not a useful inventory to equip even a single division headed for France, and so the US had to look to France for automatic weapons. In June 1917 Springfield Armory t...

Several patents were taken out on the BAR during World War One, but they were all kept unpublished and secret during the war. Just days after the Armistice, Colt patent attorney CJ Ehbets wrote to the US Patent Office requesting release of the secrecy restrictions. They responded just two days la...

Today I am at the range with one of DSA's mini-RPDs. The RPD is a nearly 80-year-old design (doesn't that make you feel old!) and a really good candidate for modernization. DSA made a whole bunch of improvements - new dual-spring recoil system, fluted barrel, solidly fitted handguard with a nice ...

The Chauchat is a machine gun with a reputation for being unreliable - a reputation that is only partially deserved. But what the Chauchat does completely deserve is its reputation for being notoriously difficult to shoot well. The grip design, stock design, sight placement, trigger, and the dyna...

Since September we've begun to see substantial number of Heckler & Koch MG5s with Ukrainian special operations teams, predominantly those under GUR direction. The MG5 is one of the newest machine guns to see service in Ukraine and according to official German source only 100 have been transferred...

The Madsen LMG is generally considered an extremely complex and confusing system - but is it really? Today we are taking one apart to see just how it actually works. Because in fact, it's a very unusual system, but not really any more complicated than any other easy self-loading action.

During World War Two, the South African military used a lot of .303 caliber Bren guns. When 7.62mm NATO became the standard cartridge after the wa,r the Bren guns were put into storage, as converting them to the new rimless cartridge was a fairly complicated process. Instead, they purchased new F...

The Madsen LMG was first introduced in 1902, and it is still in use with police forces in Brazil today. The Madsen was not very popular with major European armies, but it sold extensively in South America, with Brazil acquiring batches in 1932, 1935, and 1949. These were converted to 7.62mm NATO ...

The Portative was an attempt by the Hotchkiss company to make a light machine gun companion to their heavy model (which had found significant commercial success). The Portative used the same feed strips, albeit loaded upside down, and the same gas piston operation, but a very different locking sy...

FN played a role in the production of Polish wz.28 BARs, and in the process obtained a copy of the technical package for the weapon, and converted it to metric measurements. Under the supervision of Dieudonne Saive, this was used as the basis for FN's own BAR production, called the Modelé 30. Pro...

In this video we talk to Danny Michael, curator of the Cody Firearms Museum, about the mysterious Burton Machine Rifle - our own research into the rifle and how it links to the republishing of some important, out of print volumes of the ARMAX journal.

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In this video Matt takes a look at the extremely rare Maxim-Tokarev Light Machine Gun. Less than 10,000 of these early Soviet light machine guns are believed to have been made. They were quickly replaced by the DP-28 but saw action during the Spanish and Chinese Civil Wars. Matt stumbled across t...

In this episode Vic takes a look at the Singaporean Ultimax 100 Mk3, a magazine-fed light machine gun. Designed by Jim Sullivan, of M16 and Ruger Mini-14 fame, the Ultimax has been in continuous production since the early 1980s. Check out our website https://armourersbench.com/2018/02/03/ultimax-...

In this episode Vic examines an interesting Browning Automatic Rifle, chambered in .303 and built off a Colt M1925 receiver, of a similar pattern to those tested by the British Army during the 1920s.

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