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The military industry of Egypt produces defense and security products including small arms, armored vehicles, and naval vessels for the Egyptian Armed Forces. Equipment is also exported. Egypt has co-production agreements with several countries, including the United States and France. [1] [2]
Near the end of World War II, Egypt came into possession of a large quantity and variety of armaments left behind by Nazi Germany, [3] including large stockpiles of 8mm Mauser ammunition that had been manufactured by several Axis countries. The Egyptian government decided to manufacture a semi-automatic battle rifle and purchased the tooling and plans for the Swedish Automatgevär m/42 (Ag m/42) rifle, and re-engineered it to use the 8mm Mauser cartridges and a gas adjustment valve. The resulting Hakim Rifle was manufactured and fielded from the early 1950s until c. 1961. Egypt also briefly manufactured another re-engineered Ag ms/42, chambered for the 7.62×39mm Soviet cartridge, called the Rasheed Carbine. These guns were replaced in the 1960s by the Maadi AK-47, a licensed copy of the AK-47.
During the late 1950s, Egypt built the Jabal Hamzah ballistic missile test and launch facility to test-fire and to experiment with the domestically built Al Zafir and Al Kahir SRBMs. [4]
Egypt was involved in supplying the Central Intelligence Agency with various weapons for Operation Cyclone during the Soviet–Afghan War. CIA Officer Gust Avrakotos set up a deal with Egyptian Defense Minister Abd al-Halim Abu Ghazala for Egypt to manufacture .303 ammunition for the hundreds of thousands of Lee–Enfield rifles that it supplied to the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. Congressman Charlie Wilson helped lower political barriers for the deals to go through. [5]
The military industry in Egypt is organised across the following organisations: [6]
The Egypt Defence Expo (EDEX) is held in Cairo every two years. [7]
The StG 44 is a German assault rifle developed during World War II by Hugo Schmeisser. It is also known by its early designations as the MP 43 and MP 44. The StG 44 was an improvement of an earlier design, the Maschinenkarabiner 42(H).
The Karabiner 98 kurz, often abbreviated Karabiner 98k, Kar98k or K98k and also sometimes incorrectly referred to as a K98, is a bolt-action rifle chambered for the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge. It was adopted on 21 June 1935 as the standard service rifle by the German Wehrmacht. It was one of the final developments in the long line of Mauser military rifles.
The Chauchat was the standard light machine gun or "machine rifle" of the French Army during World War I (1914–18). Its official designation was "Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG". Beginning in June 1916, it was placed into regular service with French infantry, where the troops called it the FM Chauchat, after Colonel Louis Chauchat, the main contributor to its design. The Chauchat in 8mm Lebel was also extensively used in 1917–18 by the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.), where it was officially designated as the "Automatic Rifle, Model 1915 (Chauchat)". A total of 262,000 Chauchats were manufactured between December 1915 and November 1918, including 244,000 chambered for the 8mm Lebel service cartridge, making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of World War I. The armies of eight other nations—Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Serbia—also used the Chauchat machine rifle in fairly large numbers during and after World War I.
The SKS is a semi-automatic rifle designed by Soviet small arms designer Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov in 1945.
The Lebel Model 1886 rifle also known as the "Fusil Mle 1886 M93", after a bolt modification was added in 1893, is an 8 mm bolt-action infantry rifle that entered service in the French Army in 1887. It is a repeating rifle that can hold eight rounds in its fore-stock tube magazine, one round in the elevator plus one round in the chamber; equaling a total of ten rounds held. The Lebel rifle has the distinction of being the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. The new propellant powder, "Poudre B," was nitrocellulose-based and had been invented in 1884 by French chemist Paul Vieille. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolas Lebel contributed a flat nosed 8 mm full metal jacket bullet. Twelve years later, in 1898, a solid brass pointed (spitzer) and boat-tail bullet called "Balle D" was retained for all 8mm Lebel ammunition. Each case was protected against accidental percussion inside the tube magazine by a primer cover and by a circular groove around the primer cup which caught the tip of the following pointed bullet. Featuring an oversized bolt with front locking lugs and a massive receiver, the Lebel rifle was a durable design capable of long range performance. In spite of early obsolete features, such as its tube magazine and the shape of 8mm Lebel rimmed ammunition, the Lebel rifle remained the basic weapon of French infantry during World War I (1914–1918). Altogether, 3.45 million Lebel rifles were produced by the three French state factories between 1887 and 1916.
The Hakim Rifle is a gas operated semi-automatic rifle. It was originally designed by Sweden and produced as the Ag m/42 for the Swedish Army. The tooling and design were later sold to Egypt, and the Hakim was produced there during the 1950s and early 1960s. It was replaced in the mid-1960s by the Maadi AK-47 but was stored in military reserve arsenals. In more recent years, it has been observed in use by some Egyptian police units. Around 70,000 were made.
The 7×57mm Mauser is a first-generation smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It was developed by Paul Mauser of the Mauser company in 1892 and adopted as a military cartridge by Spain in 1893. It was subsequently adopted by several other countries as the standard military cartridge, and although now obsolete as a military cartridge, it remains in widespread international use as a sporting round. The 7×57 Mauser was a popular stalking cartridge and sporting rifles in this chambering were made by the famous British riflemakers, such as John Rigby, Holland and Holland, Westley Richards and others. British cartridge nomenclature designated caliber in inches, and the cartridge was known as the .275 bore after the measurement of a 7 mm rifle's bore across the lands. The cartridge is sometimes erroneously referred to as the ".275 Rigby", However, the original John Rigby & Sons never referred to the cartridge by that name, nor did any of UK gun trade; the Rigby association is a misconception attributed to modern American gun writers.
The Model 35 antitank rifle was a Polish 7.9 mm anti-tank rifle used by the Polish Army during the 1939 invasion of Poland. It was designated model 35 for its design year, 1935: It was also known by its codename "Uruguay", after the country and by the name of its designer, Józef Maroszek.
The 6.8mm Remington Special Purpose Cartridge is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate rifle cartridge that was developed by Remington Arms in collaboration with members of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and United States Special Operations Command to possibly replace the 5.56 NATO cartridge in short barreled rifles (SBR) and carbines. Based on the .30 Remington cartridge, it is midway between the 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×51mm NATO in bore diameter. It uses the same diameter bullet as the .270 Winchester hunting cartridge.
The 7.92×57mm Mauser is a rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. The 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge was adopted by the German Empire in 1903–1905, and was the German service cartridge in both World Wars. In its prime, the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge was one of the world's most popular military cartridges. In the 21st century it is still a popular sport and hunting cartridge that is factory-produced in Europe and the United States.
The Zastava M76 is a military semi-automatic designated marksman rifle developed and manufactured by Zastava Arms.
The Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) is a major firearms and a defence contractor headquartered in Wah Cantt, Punjab, Pakistan. Described as "the largest defence industrial complex under the Ministry of Defence Production, producing conventional arms and ammunition to the international standards" by the Government of Pakistan.
The 6.5mm Grendel is an intermediate cartridge jointly designed by British-American armorer Bill Alexander, competitive shooter Arne Brennan and Lapua ballistician Janne Pohjoispää, as a low-recoil, high-precision rifle cartridge specifically for the AR-15 platform at medium/long range. It is an improved variation of the 6.5mm PPC.
Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), consisting of the Indian Ordnance Factories, now known as Directorate of Ordnance, was an organisation, under the Department of Defence Production (DDP) of Ministry of Defence (MoD), Government of India.
An intermediate cartridge is a rifle/carbine cartridge that has significantly greater power than a pistol cartridge but still has a reduced muzzle energy compared to fully powered cartridges, and therefore is regarded as being "intermediate" between traditional rifle and handgun cartridges.
The evolution of German military rifles is a history of common and diverse paths followed by the separate German states, until the mid-19th century when Prussia emerged as the dominant state within Germany and the nation was unified. This article discusses rifled shoulder arms developed in or for the military of the states that later became Germany; it excludes firearms of the Austrian Empire, except where they were used substantially by German troops.
An assault rifle is a select fire rifle that uses an intermediate-rifle cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles were first put into mass production and accepted into widespread service during World War II. The first assault rifle to see major usage was the German StG 44, a development of the earlier Mkb 42. While immediately after World War II, NATO countries were equipped with battle rifles, the development of the M16 rifle during the Vietnam War prompted the adoption of assault rifles by the rest of NATO. By the end of the 20th century, assault rifles had become the standard weapon in most of the world's armies, replacing full-powered rifles and submachine guns in most roles. The two most successful modern assault rifles are the AK-47 and the M16 designs and their derivatives.
The 7.92×33mm Kurz is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate rifle cartridge developed in Nazi Germany prior to and during World War II, specifically intended for development of the Sturmgewehr 44. The ammunition is also referred to as 7.9mm Kurz, 7.9 Kurz, 7.9mmK, or 8×33 Polte. The round was developed as a compromise between the longer 7.92×57mm full-power rifle cartridge and the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge.
The 7.62×39mm round is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate cartridge of Soviet origin. The cartridge is widely used due to the worldwide proliferation of Russian SKS and AK-47 pattern rifles, as well as RPD and RPK light machine guns.
The Mannlicher M1893 is a bolt-action rifle that was the standard service rifle of the Kingdom of Romania from 1893 to 1938. The rifle and its 1892 predecessor were the first repeating rifles to be widely issued in the Romanian military. It was later replaced by the Czechoslovak-designed Vz. 24 as the standard service rifle.
