BeltFeds LLC 5.56×45mm NATO Conversion Kit for the M60 GPMG

[Christopher Wang]

During the mid-2010s, BeltFeds LLC ( https://beltfeds.com/ ) advertised the 5.56×45mm NATO conversion kit for the M60 GPMG. The below YouTube video dated September 14, 2015, shows a short-barreled M60 machine gun being tested with the 5.56×45mm conversion kit installed:

Despite online interests, nothing came out of it and the conversion kit quietly disappeared from BeltFeds' website. As of August 2023, BeltFeds LLC is still in business providing parts and accessories for the M60 and other machine guns.

 

[Rickshaw]

The M60 was and is a piece of rubbish. I used one for 10 years in the Australian Army. It was chosen as a political decision in 1960 and was replaced in 1987 by the GPMG which defeated it back in 1960, the L7 FN-MAG GPMG. It often had stoppages, it's trigger group often broke free and fell off and it was replaced in the end because the frames kept cracking as SFMGs.

It was replaced for about 2 years by the Vickers MMG until the Army woke up to how expensive the ammunition was because it had sold all the filling plant to India back in the middle of the 1960s. I knew one of the WOs who was recalled to the Infantry Centre at Singleton to rewrite the training pamphlets for the Vickers, he had been one of the last soldiers to undergo training on it way back in 1959.