FN Minimi

The FN Minimi is a Belgian light machine gun and squad automatic weapon designed by Ernest Vervier and produced by FN Herstal, entering production in the late 1970s and adopted by the United States military in 1982 under the designation M249. Gas-operated and capable of firing from a disintegrating belt or, in some roles, from a standard rifle magazine, the Minimi was designed to give an infantry squad sustained automatic fire support at a weight a single soldier could carry, most commonly chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO with a heavier 7.62x51mm NATO variant also produced. It has since been adopted by more than seventy countries and manufactured or license-built in several of them, seeing extensive combat use with NATO and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and numerous other conflicts, and it remains one of the most widely fielded squad automatic weapons in the world.