SHAH ALAM: More LMGs for the Army. Back in 2019, I wrote about the Army issuing a slew of request for bids for light machine guns, mortars, sniper rifles and light anti-tank weapons. We now know that the Army is getting Spanish mortars, Barret and Accuracy International anti-materiel and sniper rifles and LAWs from Serbia and RPGs from Romania.
For more on these go here and here.
A soldier preparing to fire the FN Minimi, the standard belt-fed LMG of the Army. BTDM
Courtesy of another MTO tender we now know that the Army is getting 240 LMGs soon. From the 2019 post:
The number being sought is 240 units. The FN Herstal Minimi is the standard LMG operated by the Army so it will start as the favourite, of course. Cheaper variants from South Korea and Indonesia could be selected instead, if offered of course.
Unfortunately as the MTO tender did not revealed the port of loading for the LMGs, I cannot make a guess from which company we had bought them from. As mentioned above the FN Herstal Minimi will be the favourite. It is unlikely that it will be the newly launched FN Evolys ultra LMG as the order must have been put in early 2020.
It must be noted that the MOF website did not revealed the company that won the tender, only the list of bidders.Eleven bidders qualified for the tender, with prices ranging from RM10.4 million, the lowest and the highest at RM26 million.
A Google search revealed that the cost of one M249 SAW (US designation of the FN Minimi) purchased by the US military was US$4,087 (RM17,167) though it must be noted that they bought them in the thousands.
Even with that caveat,one must feel that the Army new LMG is pricey as even the lowest bid price is already quite steep.
Personally I prefer the Knights Armament Light Assault Machine Gun, which is lighter though it is more of an automatic rifle (due to the lighter barrel) compared to the Minimi.
— Malaysian Defence
In the near future, hopefully we can see FN EVOLYS on the hands of malaysian army infantry.
Not that I have anything against minimi but why did the army move away from HK21? It’s lighter than M240, it’s robust, reliable and both HK2(shoots .308 round) and HK23 (shoots .223 rounds) share very high degree of commonality between them that you could convert one from the other with just a barrel change
No idea really but like many other militaries we also have moved away from the roller locked HK guns apart from the MP5s. AFAIK the Army used to have the HK11s, the magazine fed heavy barrel version of the the G3 known locally as udang galah. The PGA still uses them though
I was under the impression the army had the HK11 but not the HK21. Why we moved to Minimi? Must as well ask why we moved from the M16A1 to the AUG and from High Powers to Glocks and other designs. Natural progression; to something more contemporary, offering certain advantages.
Roller-delayed blowback mechanism apparently didn’t really catch on with the arms making world and only H&K still uses it.
Reply
Currently only the old HK guns like the MP5s are using the roller blow back system. Current HK offerings uses the short stroke gas piston which was popularised by the AR-18s. Other manufacturers did not use the roller blow back system as it is difficult to design one without infringing the HK copyright.
Since we’re on the subject of infantry weapons; has anyone ever seen pics of troops with M-79s, M-20s and Armbrust? All were operated by the army at one stage (the M-79s bought at the same time as the M-16A1s; the M-20 in the 1970’s and Armbrust in the 1980’s) but I’ve never seen any actual pics.
Also, anyone know what snipers and sharpshooters were issued with before the L-96 arrived in the 1990’s? Something else I’ve been trying to confirm with veterans but they can’t provide confirmation : did we get small batches of Lithgow produced SLRs to supplement the Enfield produced ones? It’s seems the “heavy barrels” we had were from Lithgow
AW still retains HK11E as well as the RS. I guess with the new LMG the older Minimi will go to RS first as they’re probably want to rid of HK11E, at least as front line use as the RS already transitioned to BIS and with the reduction in rifle strength they’d probably want higher cap MG to compensate.
That said, mag-fed full cartridge MG like HK11E or even Bren gun and FN-D can still be used for perimeter/outpost security as it’ll release minimi or FN MAG to be use on the frontline.
We no longer have Bren apart from the ones in the museums. I am not sure whether we operate the FN D or not.
@Marhalim I didn’t specifically refer to the Bren gun that were used to be operated by Malaysian army. What I mean these old mag fed MG as a whole, that they still have their uses especially for rear echelon and perimeter/sentry guards behind the front line.
India and nepal still use Bren gun for outpost security whilst we can still see indonesia is still operating FN-D