Heckler & Koch set to supply UK machine guns for a decade

The Ministry of Defence intends to award Heckler & Koch a ten-year contract worth around GBP 70 million to supply L7A2 general-purpose machine guns and associated equipment to the British armed forces.

The Ministry of Defence is set to award a contract for the supply of general-purpose machine guns to the British armed forces, according to a transparency notice published on 5 June 2026, the UK Defence Journal understands.

The contract is to go to Heckler & Koch (UK) Limited. It covers the L7A2 general-purpose machine gun and associated ancillaries. It runs for ten years and is valued at around £70 million including VAT, or just under £58.4 million before VAT. The buyer is the Dismounted Close Combat Team at Defence Equipment and Support.

The contract is to be signed no earlier than 29 June 2026 and would run to June 2036. It is an above-threshold contract, and the notice records that a conflicts assessment has been prepared.

The award is being made directly, without competition. The notice sets out why. Heckler & Koch is treated as the only possible supplier on technical grounds, under a single-supplier provision of the Procurement Act 2023.

That position rests on the gun’s history. “H&K upgraded the GPMG System to its current configuration in 2007,” the notice states. This is known as the L7A2 Mid-Life Improvement configuration. The notice describes it as “a materially different technical baseline than the previous configuration, incorporating a number of safety-critical modifications”. As a result, it says, “Only H&K UK therefore has the technical documentation to continue to supply the GPMG System in the L7A2 configuration”.

The L7A2 is the British service version of the FN MAG, a Belgian-designed 7.62mm general-purpose machine gun in use around the world for decades. In British service the weapon is a mainstay of infantry firepower. It is used in a light role carried by troops and mounted on vehicles, aircraft and ships. The “general-purpose” description reflects that flexibility, the same weapon serving across a range of roles.

A transparency notice is the step a contracting authority publishes before making a direct award. It sets out the intended supplier and the grounds for not running a competition, ahead of the contract being signed. The notice for this award lists Heckler & Koch (UK) as a small or medium-sized enterprise, based in Nottingham.