Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Movie Armaments Group in Toronto
taking a look at a really cool Israeli light machine gun.
And this is actually a pretty darn modern light machine gun. This is of course a Negev.
And these were an outgrowth of the Israeli Defence Forces testing the FN Minimi,
what the US has adopted as the M249 SAW, and deciding that they didn't really like it.
There were a number of problems they had with the gun. And you know, they're things like
the Minimi is set up to feed from magazines, but it's legendarily unreliable in doing so.
And it just had some other little quirks that the Israelis didn't like,
so they figured they could probably come up with a better gun themselves.
And in the late 1980s IMI was tasked with developing a squad automatic, or light, machine gun.
Now this went in development through the mid to late 1980s.
In the early 1990s it was in trials and final development, and it
... was finally adopted by the Israeli military in '96 or '97.
Became standard equipment there, both for the army in general and also Israeli special forces.
And by something like 2002 it was pretty much fully equipped throughout the army.
They actually came out with an additional version just a couple years ago in 2012.
That is this same gun basically scaled up for 7.62 NATO, although without the magazine feed option.
And it is by all reports a fantastic light machine gun.
So, we are gonna go ahead and take it apart today,
and then we're gonna go ahead and take it out to the range and do some shooting tomorrow.
So let's dive right in and start pulling this thing apart and see how it works on the inside.
So what we have here is a light machine gun or squad automatic weapon, depending on how you want to term it.
The standard barrel is what we have equipped on it right now, that is 460mm or 18.1 inches.
They do also now make a commando length barrel, which is a mere 330mm, or 13 inches,
the entry or "Assault Negev".
Like the Minimi, this is designed to either use disintegrating belts, namely the M27 link,
the same link as the Minimi, or rifle box magazines. This is of course set up for the Galil magazine, which is 35 rounds.
There we go, so it'll take those.
They do also make an adapter to allow this to use M16 magazines.
And this is one of the areas that the Minimi has a significant problem.
... They just don't run on magazines, and there's a good reason for it.
When you're firing from a belt you're using a substantial amount of the energy
of the system to actually pull the belt up into the gun.
When you're shooting from magazine you don't have that drag, and so on the Minimi
if you're shooting from a magazine the bolt's going to end up moving backwards much more quickly,
and what tends to happen is the gun is actually cycling faster than the magazine can feed cartridges up into it.
And that's what causes malfunctions.
Well, the Israelis put a gas regulator on the Negev here, three positions,
and position number 1 is specifically for magazine fire.
And what it does is reduce the amount of gas to slow the bolt down
commensurate with the energy that it's not going to be using dragging the belt.
In this setting the gun will fire at 700 to 850 rounds a minute from a magazine.
There is then a number 2 setting, right here, which is intended for that same rate of fire, but from a belt.
So it's a little bit more gas pressure being used.
And then there is a number 3 setting, which is for basically harsh conditions, dirty belt, dirty gun,
that's intended to allow the gun to keep running at that rate of fire when it gets ... fouled.
If you run the gun clean on setting number 3, you're gonna bump the rate of fire up to about 1,000 rounds a minute.
Being a military gun this has only minimal markings. It's LMG Negev, cal 5.56, made by IWI.
And it has a serial number a little farther up front here,
Also, unlike the Minimi, this has a three position selector switch, automatic,
'R' for repetition which is semi-auto, and safe.
Now the reason for semi-auto is primarily for zeroing optics. Because this
is built with a permanently mounted optics rail, and it's ... fixed to the receiver, it is not
on the top cover. So when you open the top cover to load the gun, that's right here, the optic never moves.
Which means you're not going to be losing zero on the optic because of potential play in the pin holding this guy in place.
So, if you're going to have a good optic with a good zero on the gun,
you need a way to actually get that zero. And it's one thing to try and do that with bursts,
it's a lot easier with a semi-auto trigger functionality.
So that's actually the primary reason they put the semi-auto in there.
It does of course have other applications as well. If you want to
hide a Negev in a bunch of riflemen, leaving it on semi-auto is a good way to do that.
We do have dust covers over all of the orifices on the gun.
So that's the belt feed side, obviously.
And then over on the opposite side we have a two-part dust cover
that's going to close up both the link ejection port and the empty case ejection port.
Pop that open and you can see that that's going to work like so.
It just folds up over the top cover when it's not in use.
Side folding stock is standard on these, just like a Galil, pull it down and fold it in like so.
It's going to sit just behind the bolt handle.
There is a spring-loaded carry handle that you can use to, well obviously, carry the gun or to change the barrels.
But it automatically pops over to the side like that when not in use.
The bipod is pretty slick and easy to use. It is held in place just by tension, so.
It serves as an additional part of the handguard when it's folded, and then when you open it up it's going to
spring out, lock in place, set down like that.
The barrel change mechanism is pretty slick here. So to do that
you have to open the top cover, and then you just squeeze this button together,
and that releases the barrel.
Installing a new barrel is even easier because you don't have to push anything.
You just set the barrel in there, snap it back in place, and it's good to go.
And it can lock in there whether the bolt is forward or back, it doesn't care.
Unlike the Minimi, where the bolt has to be cocked open.
Unlike most belt feds today, the feed system on this is not based on the MG42 and its lineage.
It is instead based on the post-war Czech guns, so the vz. 52, 57 and 59.
So when I pull the bolt back, it's going to engage these two pawls inward,
right there, that pulls a round into the feedway, and then they're going to
(there we go, bolts locked open), and when I drop the bolt they cycle ... to the left. They will snap
under the next cartridge and then when the bolt comes back they're going to come back again,
right there, like that,
to pull the next cartridge in. You then have stop pawls in the top cover up here.
For disassembly we'll start with the barrel. So I have to lift the top cover, and then
pull the barrel out.
Next up, we are going to fold the stock.
And there is a catch right here. Push that catch in, and you can lift the whole stock plate off the back of the receiver.
(I should've dropped the bolt first.)
Push that in, this slides up,
and off the gun.
Now I can remove the recoil springs and the buffer. To do that I push this in and then up, and then let it out,
like so.
We have a very long pair of very small in diameter recoil springs,
and this big neoprene buffer. One of the design fundamentals of the Negev
is to avoid a high velocity impact between the bolt carrier and the end of the receiver at end of travel.
So, apparently, almost like the Ultimax, this comes pretty close to, like,
Stoner's sort of constant recoil, or Sullivan's constant recoil system,
where there is plenty of travel for the bolt to decelerate to a stop without impacting the back of the gun.
And that is a big part of what makes it an extremely nice smooth shooting gun.
Anyway, with that out we can then hold down the trigger to depress the sear, and
pop out the bolt and bolt carrier system.
This is a short recoil type of action, it has a very stubby little gas piston up there,
but a very typical system. We have a gas block on the barrel, taps gas into
that, like so.
Like the AK, ... this is all a one-piece system,
there is no linkage or connection between the gas piston and the bolt carrier, it's all monolithic.
The bolt itself is basically a modified Galil bolt. It's very much like an AK pattern of bolt.
... It has a fixed firing pin ... held in the back of the carrier,
so when the bolt rotates, as soon as it's fully locked that firing pin is exposed and fires the gun.
So ... the whole gun fires from an open bolt.
And one other detail that is different than on the Minimi is the bolt is positively retained in the bolt carrier.
So on the Minimi, if you try to put the bolt and carrier in without the barrel in place, it's possible to
accidentally drop the bolt into the front of the Minimi receiver when it comes loose of the carrier.
That can't happen on here because of this locking pin.
So if I want to take the bolt out, I can just use a cartridge
(this is a dummy cartridge here), lift that up, and then I can rotate the bolt under it.
And then the bolt comes out. You can see the firing pin and the firing pin spring.
And then there is the bolt itself.
Extractor right there, slot for a big ejector.
And putting this on is as simple as putting it in there,
and then I just have to lift that up slightly, and snaps back in.
One other thing I can show you here is removal of the fire control group.
This has a cross pin right here that pushes out. This one is really stiff. So I'm going to tap it with a hammer.
Then we can go ahead and pull... Oh man, that is really stiff.
Pull that pin out, and then the trigger group
comes off, and perhaps the one thing that seems less than ideal on this gun
is that the trigger guard comes off at the same time.
If we look inside the fire control group, in full-auto it just drops the sear.
In semi-auto it drops the sear but lifts this a little bit higher.
When the bolt rides over that, it's going to reset the sear so it only fires once.
And then in .... safe the sear goes nowhere.
And then there is the opening on the bottom of the receiver for the fire control group.
Not a whole lot going on there.
I should point out here, on the Galil mag version of this, the Israeli version,
there are three little dust covers here that close up the magazine opening when you're not using it.
However, there is also an M16 STANAG magazine adapter that can be put in to replace the Galil parts.
So that allows a standard AR mag to be used, with the magazine release right here.
You'll notice the paddle mag release is simply not there, the pin that would
... hold it and it's spring in place are now holding this assembly in place.
I can also show you on this one, this being an Israeli military gun it has Hebrew selector markings,
where the export guns are the ones marked with Latin characters 'A', 'S' and 'R'.
Just from handling this cold on the table here, taking it apart, understanding how it works.
I can certainly see where this thing's reputation is coming from. It is simple, it is effective.
Everything in here just looks like it's really well thought out.
So I'm pretty excited about getting this out to the range tomorrow to see how it actually handles.
You should definitely stick around for that.
And I would like to give a big thanks to Movie Armament Group for giving me the chance
to play with this thing, tear it all the way down and show it to you guys.
Thanks for watching.