Europeans crave violence but they're very bad at infantry rifles. Curious.
It's always been weird to me that most of the euros never just said " fuck it, home production ak" and instead spent decades making silly guns like the l85 and g36
The Finns actually did, and the Belgians and Swiss sort of did it too - the FNC & SG-550, while not exactly AKs, use the same long-stroke operating system and a similar two-lug rotating bolt (although the SG-550 is built to a significantly higher standard than the AK, so while the underlying mechanics are similar it doesn't really fit into the same category of suitability for mass production). The Swedes use an FNC variant as well.
Even the L85 & G36 are really just home production AR-18s (it's just that the Brits managed to completely fuck up the implementation of what was explicitly designed to be a cheap, simple gun as an alternative to the AR-15, anglo industrial excellence at work). The FAMAS and AUG are probably some of the few actually somewhat original Cold War European rifle designs from after the AK was widely known (the FAL & G3 sort of predate that, since it wasn't until the 50s that the AK was really seen in large numbers - the Belgians would specifically replace the FAL with the FNC, which as I mentioned is close to an AK mechanically).
Europeans crave violence but they're very bad at infantry rifles. Curious.
It's always been weird to me that most of the euros never just said " fuck it, home production ak" and instead spent decades making silly guns like the l85 and g36
The Finns actually did, and the Belgians and Swiss sort of did it too - the FNC & SG-550, while not exactly AKs, use the same long-stroke operating system and a similar two-lug rotating bolt (although the SG-550 is built to a significantly higher standard than the AK, so while the underlying mechanics are similar it doesn't really fit into the same category of suitability for mass production). The Swedes use an FNC variant as well.
Even the L85 & G36 are really just home production AR-18s (it's just that the Brits managed to completely fuck up the implementation of what was explicitly designed to be a cheap, simple gun as an alternative to the AR-15, anglo industrial excellence at work). The FAMAS and AUG are probably some of the few actually somewhat original Cold War European rifle designs from after the AK was widely known (the FAL & G3 sort of predate that, since it wasn't until the 50s that the AK was really seen in large numbers - the Belgians would specifically replace the FAL with the FNC, which as I mentioned is close to an AK mechanically).
Solid european small arms information