Though it has its roots in fighting Soviets in World War II, the Panzerfaust 3 antitank rocket is now being used against the Russians again — in Ukraine.
North Korea’s first truly indigenous handgun design, the Type 70 is nevertheless an interesting conglomeration of features from other countries’ guns, combined in a simple, effective firearm.
Miroslav Rybář originally had security forces in mind when he conceived the Skorpion VZ 61 in 1959, but it was readily accepted by the Czechoslovakian army for use by low-ranking staff, vehicle crewmen and special forces.
At the start of WW2, New Zealand had a limited amount of modern weaponry for its regular troops and, in the event that Britain would not be able to supply it, it needed a means of arming its Home Guard.
While the North Vietnamese did not have a full-fledged weapons industry, they did have the engineering capacity to create a submachine gun for the fight to come by combining elements of the Type 50 with those of the French MAT-49, large stocks of which they had also acquired in the course of their just-concluded conflict.
While it never achieved its original goal as the mainstay longarm of the IDF, the Galil and the many variants derived from it found their way into 25 other armies and numerous police forces throughout the world. A good many are still in use and still popular with its users.
Variations on the FN appeared all over the world and were heavily engage in brushfire wars of the late 20th century from the Malayan Emergency to the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya to the Rhodesian war to India vs. Pakistan conflicts and numerous Middle Eastern conflicts, where sand proved to be a major Achilles’ heel for the FN until measures were taken to protect its mechanism from jamming.
The unprepossessing STEN gun was produced at half the price of an American M3 “grease gun” and some 20 times less than a Thompson submachine gun during World War II.