The Galil was the result of a program to replace the FAL in Israeli service after its somewhat disappointing performance in the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel found that while the FAL had shown reliability problems in the desert, AK rifles ran just fine despite often being badly neglected. In an ini...

The Valmet M71 was introduced as a commercial export rifle in 1971, and was the first AK available on the commercial market in the United States and Europe. It was offered in both .223 and 7.62x39mm calibers, because the 7.62x39mm cartridge was rare and expensive at the time outside of Finland an...