FARA 83
| FARA 83 | |
|---|---|
| Type | Assault Rifle |
| Place of origin | Argentina |
| Service history | |
| Used by | Argentine Army |
| Production history | |
| Designed | 1981 |
| Specifications | |
| Mass | 3.95 kg |
| Length | 1000 mm, 745 mm with folded stock |
| Barrel length | 452 mm |
| Cartridge | 5.56 x 45 mm |
| Caliber | 5.56 x 45 mm |
| Action | gas operated rotating bolt |
| Rate of fire | 750 round/minute |
| Muzzle velocity | 980 m/s |
| Effective firing range | Effective range 300-500m |
| Feed system | 30 rounds |
The FARA 83, Argentine Republic Automatic Rifle (Spanish: Fusíl Automático República Argentina) or FAA 81, Argentine Automatic Rifle (Spanish: Fusil Automático Argentino) was a rifle locally designed and developed for the Argentine Army in the 1980s.
History
The FAA project started in the middle 80's, when the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional was still in the goverment and it was ordered by the DGFM (General Government Directorate for Military Procurements, or Direccion General de las Fabricaciones Militares) to replace the old FMAP FSL (argentine license-made copy of the FN FAL) still in service with argentine troops. The prototype was made in 1981, but the production didn't started until 1984, wich it continued until 1990.
Problems
By the late 80's, when Carlos Menem became the president of Argentina, the country was undertaking a several economical problems. Also, England had closed his military market to Argentina and prohibited to build modern weapons. This two factors forced Menem to cancel a lot of projects (Condor I, Condor II, FARA 83, SAIA 90, TAM, TR-1700, etc) and forcing DGFM and FMAP to stop the manufacturing and the shipping of the new rifle. The first production roll stopped after 1193 rifles were made, however, another production roll, until 1990, got the FARA-83 back to production; it is unknown how many rifles were made, but the most of the Argentine Armed Forces is still today armed with the FSL-FAL rifle as the main rifle and the FARA 83 as a secondary rifle.
Main Caracteristics
The FARA-83 was a good design, mostly insipred to the HK33 for the working principle and to the israeli Galil for the external look. Features a folding buttstock and tritium sights for aiming in bad light conditions; fits proprietary 30-rounds magazines, very similar to the H&K ones, and has a trigger group for Safe/ Semi-auto/ Full-autofire.