France places massive order for FN Herstal’s ultralight machine gun

The French Army has placed an order for several thousand FN Evolys machine guns from Belgian manufacturer FN Herstal, marking a major production order for the FN Evolys since the weapon debuted five years ago.

The deal was signed at the Eurosatory defense exhibition in Paris, with French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin and Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken present for the signing, according to FN Herstal. Alice Rufo, France’s Minister Delegate to the Minister for the Armed Forces, toured the company’s stand the day before, where FN Herstal showcased its counter-drone systems alongside the news that it has ramped up production to meet rising demand from European militaries.

The order covers Evolys machine guns in both 5.56mm and 7.62mm calibers, alongside FN Minimi Mk3 light machine guns in 7.62mm and the ammunition to feed them. FN Herstal describes this as an upcoming joint procurement arrangement between France’s DGA defense procurement agency and Belgium’s defence procurement authority, DGMR, though the company has not disclosed a total contract value, a firm delivery schedule, or how many units of each weapon and caliber the order actually breaks down into. Those specifics typically surface later as the formal contract documentation becomes public, and until they do, the numbers attached to this deal remain whatever FN Herstal or the two governments choose to confirm.

The Evolys is the more newsworthy half of that package, and the reason comes down to weight. At roughly 5.5 kilograms (12.1 lb) for the 5.56mm version and 6.2 kilograms (13.7 lb) for the 7.62mm version, the Evolys weighs about 30 percent less than comparable Minimi variants. That’s not a marginal improvement. For an infantryman who already carries body armor, ammunition, water, and a rifle, shaving two and a half kilograms off the squad’s support weapon is the difference between humping it up a hillside and being slowed down by it. FN Herstal achieved the cut by moving the recoil buffer that normally sits in the stock into the weapon’s body instead, a redesign that also let engineers fit the gun with a single continuous Picatinny rail running the length of the receiver, useful for mounting day and night optics together rather than swapping one for the other in the field.

Despite the weight savings, the Evolys doesn’t sacrifice the punch that makes a squad automatic weapon useful in the first place. Both calibers fire from a gas-operated, short-stroke piston system at a cyclic rate of 750 rounds per minute, with the 7.62mm version reaching out to a maximum range of 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) and the 5.56mm to 800 meters (2,625 ft). It feeds from standard NATO ammunition belts, so logistics chains built around existing Minimi and MAG stocks don’t need to change. French special forces received FN Evolys machine guns in 2024, giving the weapon an early French military user and a real-world track record for the broader Army’s order today to draw on, rather than a clean-sheet gamble on unproven hardware.

The Minimi portion of the order tells a different story, one about institutional continuity rather than innovation. France’s military has carried some version of the Minimi since the early 1980s, and the weapon remains in service in more than 75 countries worldwide, including as the U.S. military’s M249 squad automatic weapon. The Mk3 variant in this order weighs about 8.8 kilograms (19.4 lb), considerably heavier than the Evolys, and represents the latest refinement of a design that has now outlasted multiple generations of the soldiers who carry it. Buying new Mk3 units alongside the lighter Evolys suggests France isn’t necessarily moving toward a wholesale swap of one weapon for the other, at least not yet, but is instead expanding its arsenal on two tracks at once, keeping the proven Minimi in production while scaling up the newer design.