Georgian armed forces will replace Kalashnikov machine guns with US-produced M240 machine guns meeting NATO standards, the press service of the Georgian Defense Ministry said Monday in a statement.

“Defence Minister Levan Izoria, head of the General Staff Maj. Gen. Vladimer Chachibaia and US Ambassador to Georgia Ian Kelly will attend the demonstration of US-produced M240 machine guns on the shooting range of the JTEC. Beginning tomorrow, PK machine guns will be gradually replaced in service of the Georgian army by US analogs M240, meeting NATO standards,” the statement reads.

The M240 is a belt-fed, air-cooled, gas-operated, fully automatic machine gun that fires from the open bolt position. This 7.62mm machine gun is being issued to infantry, armor, combat engineer, special force/rangers, and selected field artillery units that require medium support fires and replaced the ground-mounted M-60 series machine guns currently in use.