Last year, the German armed forces announced they would purchase Heckler and Koch’s MG-5 machine gun to finally replace a World War II-era weapon. The new machine gun should put the Bundeswehr’s existing weapons to shame—and make up for past failures.

“Its main feature is that it is much more accurate than its predecessor,” German army colonel Christian Brandes told U.S. Army reporters at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona during testing of the new gun on Oct. 14.

The predecessor Brandes was referring to is the MG-3. That aging weapon is essentially just an upgrade of a machine gun Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht started using in 1942. The MG-5 will replace the MG-3 as well as some of the German army’s less aged, but somewhat inadequate, MG-4s.

The new gun comes with NATO-standard rails for attaching advanced scopes, lasers and other gadgets. The MG-3 lacks these features and can only mount one type of sight at a time.

The new MG-5 is also four inches shorter than the MG-3. As a result, “this machine gun can also be fired while standing, which wasn’t possible with the old one,” Brandes said.

On the other hand, the new machine gun spews 200 to 500 fewer bullets per minute than the MG-3 does. During World War II, American troops dubbed the original MG-42—the MG-3’s predecessor—“Hitler’s buzzsaw” because of its blistering rate of fire.

The new weapon’s most important feature is one it actually shares with the MG-3. It fires the same powerful 7.62-millemeter round. The Germans’ decision to stick with the bigger round for the MG-5 was influenced “considerably” by lessons from Afghanistan, Anthony Williams, editor of IHS’s Jane’s annual volume on ammunition, told War Is Boring.