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December 23, 2003
After half a century, the Israeli armed forces are replacing the 9mm Uzi submachinegun and their current assault rifles with a bullpup 5.56mm assault rifle. The bullpup design, which places the ammo magazine behind the pistol grip and trigger, makes for a shorter and lighter weapon. The new Israeli weapon, the Tavor, comes in three sizes; regular (28.4 inches long, 8 pounds), commando (25.2 inches, 7.8 pounds) and mini (19 inches, 7.1 pounds). The Tavor will also replace the Galil and M-16 assault rifle. The Tavor has a rail on top, for mounting all manner of sights (as it becoming popular, mainly because it makes the weapon so much more effective.)
The standard Uzi was 25.6 inches long and weighed 8.8 pounds with a 25 round magazine. The Uzi was designed for reliability and low cost manufacture. It was not very accurate and would sometimes fire by itself if you dropped it. Some 1.5 million Uzis were manufactured over the last half century and the weapon's reputation increased every time Israel won a war using it. But, like it's World War II predecessors, it was considered a crude weapon. Tavor attempts to answer the many complaints leveled against Uzi, the Galil and the M-16 (which Israel has used a lot because it got so many of them cheap from the United States).
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