Galil

From The D Archives

The Galil is one of the standard assault rifles used by the Israel Defense Forces. It was designed by Yisrael Galili, and bears his name. It is a variant on the AK-47 assault rifle design. It uses 5.56 mm NATO or 7.62mm NATO ammunition, like an M16, but is easier to manufacture like the Russian AK-47.

The Galil project began after the Six-Day War, and the design was selected by the IDF from two competing designs. The winner was based on the Finnish Rk 62 (itself a locally improved and further developed variant of the AK-47). The first rifles began to arrive in 1974, after the Yom Kippur War. The Galil was designed to be a domestically produced main battle rifle for the IDF, taking the best features of other rifles, such as the M16 and AK-47, and putting them into one rifle. That rifle could be adapted to any number of tasks. The result was the IMI Galil. The Galil was used by Israeli infantry during the Lebanon War in 1982; but towards the mid-1980s, it was determined to be less than optimal.