The Ameli (abbreviated from the Spanish ''Ametralladora ligera'' or "light machine gun") is a 5.56mm

light machine gun A light machine gun (LMG) is a light-weight machine gun designed to be operated by a single infantryman, with or without an assistant, as an infantry support weapon. LMGs firing cartridges of the same caliber as the other riflemen of the ...

designed for the

Spanish Army The Spanish Army ( es, Ejército de Tierra, lit=Land Army) is the terrestrial army of the Spanish Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is one of the oldest active armies — dating back to the late 15th century. The ...

(''Ejército de Tierra'') by the nationally owned and operated ''Centro de Estudios Técnicos de Materiales Especiales'' (

CETME CETME () is a Spanish government design and development establishment. While being involved in many projects CETME was mostly known for its small arms research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as rese ...

) small arms research institute (founded by the Spanish government in 1950). Development of the weapon began in 1974 under the supervision of Colonel José María Jiménez Alfaro (who would later become the director of CETME).Woźniak, Ryszard: ''Encyklopedia najnowszej broni palnej—tom 1 A-F'', page 140. Bellona, 2001. The Ameli was officially unveiled in 1981 and after undergoing exhaustive military trials was adopted into service in 1982 as the standard squad-level support weapon of the Spanish Army under the designation MG 82.Crawford, Steve: ''Twenty-first Century Small Arms: The World's Great Infantry Weapons'', page 76. Zenith Press, September 2003. The Ameli was manufactured at the Empresa Nacional Santa Bárbara factory (now General Dynamics Santa Bárbara Sistemas) in

A Coruña A Coruña (; es, La Coruña ; historical English: Corunna or The Groyne) is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. A Coruña is the most populated city in Galicia and the second most populated municipality in the autonomous community and ...

until 2013, when the factory was closed.

Design details

Operating mechanism

The Ameli is an

automatic weapon An automatic firearm is an Repeating firearm#Autoloading, auto-loading firearm that continuously Chamber (firearms), chambers and fires Cartridge (firearms), rounds when the trigger (firearms), trigger mechanism is actuated. The action (firearms) ...

that externally resembles the 7.92×57mm Mauser

MG 42 The MG 42 (shortened from German: ''Maschinengewehr 42'', or "machine gun 42") is a German recoil-operated air-cooled general-purpose machine gun used extensively by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS during the second half of World War II. Enterin ...

machine gun of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

but has more in common with the MG 45 and its post-war variant, the

West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

7.62×51mm NATO

MG 3 The MG3 is a small car produced by the Chinese automotive company SAIC. The first generation, marketed as the MG3 SW, is based on the British made Rover Streetwise, which itself was based on the Rover 25, while the second generation, introd ...

. However, unlike the MG 42's roller-locked

short recoil Recoil operation is an operating mechanism used to implement locked breech, autoloading firearms. Recoil operated firearms use the energy of recoil to cycle the action, as opposed to gas operation or blowback operation using the pressure of the ...

operating principle (where the barrel and bolt recoil together a short distance before unlocking), the Ameli uses the

delayed blowback Blowback is a system of operation for self-loading firearms that obtains energy from the motion of the cartridge case as it is pushed to the rear by expanding gas created by the ignition of the propellant charge. Several blowback systems exist ...

method of operation with a fixed barrel and a pair of rollers which retard the rearward movement of the bolt. This mechanism was employed in CETME's Model A, B, C and Model L series of rifles, and also in the

Heckler & Koch G3 The Heckler & Koch G3 (''Gewehr'' 3) is a 7.62×51mm NATO, select-fire battle rifle developed in the 1950s by the German armament manufacturer Heckler & Koch (H&K) in collaboration with the Spanish state-owned design and development agency ...

battle rifle A battle rifle is a service rifle chambered to fire a fully powered cartridge. The term "battle rifle" is a retronym created largely out of a need to better differentiate the intermediate-powered assault rifles (e.g. the StG-44, AK-47, M16 ...

, HK33 assault rifle and MP5 series of submachine guns. Similarities with the 7.62mm Model C and 5.56mm Model L rifles extend to the interchangeability of certain parts. The heart of the operating system is the

bolt The BOLT Browser was a web browser for mobile phones including feature phones and smartphones that can run Java ME applications. The BOLT Browser was offered free of charge to consumers and by license to mobile network operators and handset manuf ...

assembly, which consists of a bolt head, locking piece and two cylindrical rollers, which upon chambering a round, are displaced outwards by angled surfaces in the forward pressing locking piece and into notches in the barrel extension. The geometry of the walls in the barrel extension and the locking piece ensure that once a shot is fired, the bolt head absorbs the recoil impulse from the ignited cartridge through the base of the empty casing and transmits this rearward pressure onto the rollers forcing them out of their sockets and inward at a mechanical disadvantage. The rollers then come into contact with inclined surfaces on the locking piece and propel it backwards at a speed that is approximately 1.5x greater than that of the bolt head, thereby increasing the bolt's

inertia Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law o ...

and providing a delay in the blowback sequence. The relatively short initial rear displacement of the bolt head immediately after firing and the calculated delay eliminate the probability of a premature case extraction from the chamber (beyond the thick-walled base of the chamber) that would result in the spent casing bursting as the breech is opened only after the bullet has exited the barrel and gas pressures inside the bore have dropped to within safe limits.

Features

The Ameli fires from an

open bolt A firearm is said to fire from an open bolt if, when ready to fire, the bolt and working parts are held to the rear of the receiver, with no round in the chamber. When the trigger is actuated, the bolt travels forward, feeds a cartridge from t ...

and uses a striker firing mechanism (in which the bolt and internally channeled firing pin perform the role of a striker). The trigger mechanism permits fully automatic fire only but the rate of fire can be adjusted by using bolts of varying weight, like in the MG 3. The lighter bolts will produce the maximum rate of fire (1,200 rounds/min) while a heavier bolt results in a rate of fire of approximately 850–900 rounds/min. The weapon features a cross-bolt type

safety Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings There are two slightly di ...

that disables the sear when pressed into the "safe" position. The machine gun is fed from an open-link disintegrating M27 ammunition belt that can be strung loosely from the feed tray or placed inside a 100 or 200-round disposable plastic container, which is then clipped to the left side of the receiver. This ammunition container has a transparent rear wall that allows the gunner to monitor ammunition levels visually. Belt movement is carried out by a pawl-type feeding mechanism, which was modeled on the MG 42's feed system. Spent cartridge casings are ejected downward through a chute in the receiver. The quick-change type air-cooled barrel is equipped with a slotted

flash suppressor A flash suppressor, also known as a flash guard, flash eliminator, flash hider, or flash cone, is a muzzle device attached to the muzzle of a rifle that reduces its visible signature while firing by cooling or dispersing the burning gases that ...

. The barrel has a chrome-lined bore with 6 right-hand grooves and a 178 mm (1:7 in)

rifling In firearms, rifling is machining helical grooves into the internal (bore) surface of a gun's barrel for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting to stabilize ...

twist rate that is optimized for use with heavier SS109 5.56×45mm NATO rounds. A barrel with a 305 mm (1:12 in) twist rate designed specifically to stabilize the lightweight M193 cartridge is also available. The chamber portion of the barrel has flutes that assist in the extraction sequence; once gas pressure in the bore drops to a safe level, recycled gases fill the flutes surrounding the cartridge casing, loosening the case from the chamber walls while residual pressure in the barrel forces it back to be ejected downward and forward. A fixed carrying handle is positioned above the barrel near the chamber, and aids in barrel changes when the barrel becomes too hot; the barrel can be removed and replaced in 5 seconds. The Ameli is fitted with a

molded Molding (American English) or moulding ( British and Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is the process of manufacturing by shaping liquid or pliable raw material using a rigid frame called a mold or matrix. This itself may ha ...

polymer A polymer (; Greek ''poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic and ...

stock,

bipod A bipod is a V-shaped portable attachment that helps support and steady a device, usually a weapon such as a long gun or a mortar. The term comes from the Latin prefix ''bi-'' and Greek root ''pod'', meaning "two" and "foot" respectively. Bip ...

and

iron sight Iron sights are a system of physical alignment markers (usually made of metallic material) used as a sighting device to assist the accurate aiming of ranged weapons (such as a firearm, airgun, crossbow or even compound bow), or less commonl ...

s that consist of a forward post and a rear aperture sight contained in the carry handle assembly with 300, 600, 800 and 1,000 m range settings. The weapon's design makes extensive use of

sheet metal Sheet metal is metal formed into thin, flat pieces, usually by an industrial process. Sheet metal is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Thicknesses can vary significantly; ex ...

stampings; both the receiver, barrel shroud and trigger housing are fabricated from steel pressings and then

welded Welding is a fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by using high heat to melt the parts together and allowing them to cool, causing fusion. Welding is distinct from lower temperature techniques such as braz ...

. The quick-detach bipod has a height adjustment feature and is mounted to the perforated barrel heat shroud at the muzzle end. The light machine gun can be deployed with the bipod, on a vehicle mount or on a static tripod mount.

Users

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PASKAL The Pasukan Khas Laut (''Naval Special Warfare Forces,'' Jawi script, Jawi: ), commonly abbreviated to PASKAL, is the principal special operations force of the Royal Malaysian Navy. PASKAL's task is to conduct small-unit maritime military ope ...

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References

Bibliography