For political reasons, India decided to adopt the 7.62mm NATO cartridge when it needed to replace its No1 MkIII SMLE bolt action rifles with a modern self-loader. They chose the FN FAL as the rifle […]
Chartered Industries of Singapore was founded in 1967, and started making M16 rifles under license in 1970. These were sold to the Singaporean military as well as Thailand. To get out of their licensing agreement […]
The Falkland Islands Defense Force is a small organization independent of the British military, run directly by the Falkland Islands government. When it decided to update its small arms form the L1A1 SLR (aka British […]
The first iteration of the iconic German Sturmgewehr was developed by Haenel starting in 1938. It was a select-fire rifle chambered for the short 8x33mm cartridge, developed by the Polte company. It used a long-stroke […]
The Krása project (which translates as “beauty”, but is also a shortening of “short assault rifle” – “KRÁtký SAmopal”) is a fascinating piece of Czech small arms development. In 1976, the Czechoslovakian military requested development […]
When Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, it was initially armed with a wide variety of miscellaneous small arms. They clearly needed a primary standardized rifle for the new armed forces. […]
In 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista ordered some 35,000 FAL rifles from FN, including both regular infantry rifles have heavy-barreled FALO light machine guns. Before any of them could arrive, however, Batista fled the country […]
From the Mauser bolt action to the AK and AR, all new military rifles take time to perfect. With the Bren 3, CZ is now on the third iteration of the Bren platform, having gone […]
The SR-3 Vikhr is mechanically based on the AS-VAL and VSS Vintorez rifles, but built to be a very compact personal defensive weapon instead of a silenced rifle. Still chambered for 9×39, the Vikhr is […]
Starting in 1960, China ran a program to develop an infantry rifle that would combine the accuracy of the SKS with the firepower of the AK. The result was the Type 63, which used the […]
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