Frag Out! Magazine

BROŃ - FIREARMS Leszek Erenfeicht Photos: Česka Zbrojovka, Author's Archives The end of the first decade of the new millenium saw Czechs and Slovaks as the Last of Mohicans in the Unified Europe: the only country with own rifle creative possibility to use 7.62 mm caliber for the main battle long arm. The Sa-58 (Samopal vzor 58) rifle, the mainstay of the Czechoslovakian People's Army (Ceskoslov- enska lidova armada, the CSLA) has been in use since the early 1960s, when Czechoslovakia became the only Warsaw Pact country not to introduce a clone of Kalashnikov's AK/AKM series. Despite superficial likeness, the Sa-58 had nothing in common with the AKM except for age and a cartridge. The receiver was machined, while in the AKM, the 1959 replacement of the original AK, receiver was stamped of sheet-metal. It was a striker-fired rifle vs. hammer-fired in AKM, had a short-stroke piston, as opposed to a long-stroked Russian piston, it was fitted with a bolt hold-open device operated by a magazine follower, which the AKM never had, and the locking was accomplished by a tilting wedge, not rotary bolt. Even the muzzle thread is different, and the Czech cleaning rod has female socket, where Russian brush needs a male thread! Yet there are still some – let's put it mildly – 'non-RKIs enough' around, who refer to the Sa-58 as 'the Czech AK-47' (as if misusing the prototype 'AK-47' moniker for a mass-produced AK wasn't enough abuse). The choice of the name for the brand new Czech modular battle rifle has set the expectations really high. Bren, the Czech LMG designed for the British on the eve of World War 2 lives forever as a paragon of perfection: an infallible machinegun reliable to the point of indestructibility. Will the new Czeska Zbrojovka's Bren live up to that proud moniker? The choice of the name for the brand new Czech modular battle rifle has set the expectations really high. Bren, the Czech LMG designed for the British on the eve of World War 2 lives forever as a paragon of perfection: an infallible machinegun reliable to the point of indestructibility. Will the new Czeska Zbrojovka's Bren live up to that proud moniker? Old Name, New Gun: TheCZ 805 BRENModular Rifle

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