#Negev

In late 2024, Vietnam’s defense industry publicly revealed a locally produced light machine gun (LMG) based on Israel Weapon Industries’ (IWI) Negev design. The 7.62x39mm-chambered variant, commonly referred to in Vietnamese sources as the STrL-7.62 or STrL-7,62VN, represents a further deliberate effort by the country’s armaments sector to modernize squad automatic weapons while preserving logistical commonality with the large stocks of ammunition, AK magazines, and RPD belts that remain in service. “STrL” translates to “medium automatic gun,” as it is intermediately chambered. The new weapon is built at Factory Z111, a state-owned small-arms factory located in Thanh Hoá, south of Hanoi. It produces Vietnam’s licensed and unlicensed production and indigenous derivatives of foreign designs.

This is a continuation of my machine gun series. In 2008, NATO supported Georgia's bid to join the alliance and created a commission to oversee the accession process. Georgia must fulfill several requirements, including modernizing its army and standardizing Western weapons and ammunition. In 2017, the Georgian Ministry of Defense started replacing the Soviet-made PKM general-purpose machine guns with the M240B 7.62x51mm medium machine gun.

The Vietnam Defense Expo 2024 opened on December 19th, 2024. The highlight of the exhibition is the new small arms developed by the General Department of Defence Industry and produced at the Z111 Factory, the biggest and most famous Vietnamese arms manufacturer.

In this episode of TFBTV, James Reeves visits with Miroslav, Sellier & Bellot Ammunition armorer, and Tom, an IWI trainer, to discuss (and shoot!) the IWI Negev light/general purpose machine gun. The IWI Negev NG-5 (“Next Generation”) is a 5.56×45mm NATO light machine gun (“LMG”) developed by Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), formerly Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI). In 2012, IWI introduced the Negev NG-7 7.62×51mm NATO general-purpose machine gun. In this video, Tom of IWI gives James a rundown of the Negev NG-5 and NG-7, and James gets to shoot a Negev NG-7 belt-fed in the Czech Republic with Sellier & Bellot.

Israel’s IWI recently made a significant flex with the posting of a photo of their Negev light machine gun production line. The photo features Negev LMGs for as far as the eye can see. Posted simply with the caption: “Just another day in the office, NEGEV production line”

TFB’s Photo Of The Day is where you can discover the World of firearms through the lens of a camera. Every day we run a few selected pictures with a short story and a credit to the person behind the lens. Today we’re looking at soldiers with the Negev, a light machine gun in 5.56×45 mm, developed by the Israel Weapon Industries (IWI).

Almost a year ago TFB reported that the Indian Army was on a tour to source 16,400 Light Machine Guns. The tour included visits to three (to our knowledge) firearms manufacturers, including  Arsenal in Bulgaria and S&T Motiv in South Korea. The winner has now been announced and the first price goes to Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), in a $118 million deal for 16,479 NEGEV NG7 7.62mm Light Machine Guns (LMG).

In an effort to find a new light machine gun a team of Indian Army and Defense Officials have started a tour to visit firearms manufacturers, including  Arsenal in Bulgaria. The tour then continues to Israel and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), before heading on to South Korea for a visit to S&T Motiv (previously Daewoo Precision Industries).

Rounding out our coverage of Machinegunapalooza 2017 – by which I mean the numerous machine guns of the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting – we have the IWI Negev (5.56mm) and Negev NG-7 light machine guns. These Israeli belt feds are, among production weapons, some of the best-designed machine guns in existence today, incorporating the operating concept of the PKM into a weapon with light overall weight, exceptionally robust construction, and modern features. Also, unlike the PKM, the Negev is select-fire, with a semiautomatic fire setting in addition to fully automatic.