SIG MG 710-3

The SIG MG 710-3 is a Swiss general-purpose machine gun chambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. It was designed and built by the Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft, known as SIG and later Swiss Arms, as a commercial export product, because the Swiss Army had already standardised on the 7.5 mm MG 51. Work began in 1955 under the name Model 55, which became the SIG MG 710 in 1957, and the design drew on the German MG 45, a late Second World War development of the MG 42. Earlier variants used the 6.5x55mm and 7.92x57mm Mauser rounds, and the final NATO version was ready by the mid-1960s. It is belt fed, air cooled and fires from an open bolt using roller-delayed blowback, with a quick-change barrel. As of 2010 it served with the armed forces of Bolivia, Brunei, Chile and Liberia, but never with Switzerland itself.