Frag Out! Magazine

However, what was modern in the 1960s, in 1970s proved to be ex- pensive and non-modifiable. As early as 1977 a program was thus start- ed to design a modern replacement, chambered for the smaller caliber bullet. In 1977 Miloslav Fisher of the Brno's General Machine-Building Plants R&D Center (Vyzkumne vyvojovy ustav zavodu vseobecneho strojirenstvi) or VVU-ZVS (also known as the Prototypa Brno) started the 'Lada S' study, to examine the possibility of re-arming the CSLA with a domestically designed and manufactured rifle, chambered for the Sovi- et 5.45 mm round. Several years of research and preparations resulted in green-lighting the design in 1984. The study's cover name, Lada (a pop- ular Slovakian female first name) became the cover name of the whole program, led by Bohumil Novotny. It aimed at creating the three gun 'family' of unified design small arms, consisting of a subcarbine with 185 mm long barrel, an automatic rifle with 382 mm barrel and a 577-mm barrelled Light Support Weapon. The similarity of the concept to the AK-74 family consisting of AKS-74U, AKS-74 and RPKS-74 was not at all accidental. The new Czechoslovak rifles were downright Kalashnikovian in both idea and detail. The only points different were the stiffer, slide-on / slide-off receiver cover, peep- style battle-sights, and the Galil-style thumb-operated safety-selector lever, but devoid of the AK-trademark long selector lever / cocking slot cover. The design was ready by the end of 1985, prototypes were manufac- tured and tested in 1986. After many failures and recoveries the third generation of these was finally approved for production in November 1989. The new rifle was then running perfect, which sadly cannot be said for the state that commissioned it. In 1989 the Communist Bloc un- dermined by Gorbachev's glasnost from one side, and Polish Commu- nists sharing power with Solidarnosc opposition movement from the other, started to fall apart in a rapid 'domino November and early December came eral days of demonstrations, the Communist relinquished power in what became known As of February 1990, the Lada system but nobody was interested in it any longer. gram did not involved production of the opposed to the Polish one), conversion logical solution – more so as the country's & Bellot in Vlasim, was already making style FMJ and JSP bullets. At first there was talk of ordering 300 held to choose the system integrator and by Czeska Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod (CZUB), arms maker, was given priority due to al small-arms manufacture, including the machine pistol manufacture for the CSLA. But the Army was penniless, and state Czecho-Slovakia, after what came down was now on the verge of separation, with extremists on either side of the national war' was the only one fought there, and what was dubbed the Velvet Divorce. In Arrested Development Lada: The Little

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