At the end of the War of Independence in July 1949, IDF Chief of Staff Yaakov Dori convened an expert committee and assigned it to choose a new submachine gun for the IDF to replace the old British Stan, which was defined as "unreliable" due to the firing stops and the many bullet emissions that accompanied its operation.
The committee selected two Israeli weapons that were under development at the time: the first was the Uzi, developed by Uzi Gal, a Munich native who immigrated to Kibbutz Yagur at the age of 13 and developed weapons from his youth, until he was caught by the British in 1946, at the age of 23, and sent to serve seven years (shortened) in Acre Prison. The second tool was called the K-12 and was developed by engineer Haim Kara, who was head of the weapons development section of the Science Corps.
In a comparative examination of the two weapons, to which several additional submachine guns of European manufacture were added, the Uzi outperformed all its competitors due to its small dimensions and light weight. Added to this was the fact that it consisted of a small number of parts, and its production and maintenance costs were extremely low.
For further testing, the IDF ordered an experimental series of 100 copies of the submachine gun, and the test was successfully completed at the end of May 1953. Therefore, the Uzi was declared the IDF's next submachine gun, and a first series of 5,000 units was ordered, which included improvements to the weapons in accordance with the many tests it underwent during three years of exercise.
Since then, some 10 million units of the Uzi have been produced and sold worldwide in various models, and its inventor, Uzi Gal, was the first to win the Israel Defense Prize in 1958. He died in 2002 at the age of 78.
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