#Sullivan

The Charted Industries of Singapore Ultimax is one of the most renowned light machine guns in the world, yet has never really been adopted to the full extent of what it was capable of. The only real military it served was the Singaporean Armed Forces. It was used by multiple other countries and agencies, but not in a full-service adoption.

Knight’s Armament Company has announced a new very light weight belt fed light machine gun – which they have appropriately termed the Stoner X-LMG (for “Extra Light Machine Gun). The new weapon is based on the previous Knight’s LMG, itself a development of the ARES, Inc (unrelated to ARES Defense, now called FightLite Industries) Stoner 86 LMG which itself descended from the famous Stoner 63 Light Machine Gun. Like those weapons, the new Stoner X-LMG is a 5.56mm caliber weapon, but unlike those it achieves a virtually unheard of light weight of just 8.6 pounds, unloaded. The release of the X-LMG was announced via IHS Jane’s, as well as – oddly enough – Turkish gear outlet Öztekin. From IHS Jane’s:

In this 201-level post on the devices and mechanisms that automatic firearms use to do their work, we’ll be discussing a distinction between two very similar types of gas systems. These are what’s commonly known as the “Ljungmann-type” gas system (called so after a Swede, even though in reality a Frenchman invented it decades earlier) and “Stoner-type” gas system. Both are forms of what’s called “direct impingement”, a term which has two different meanings, one of which we’ll discuss today