The Galil is a family of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i small arms designed by Yisrael Galil and Yaacov Lior in the late 1960s and produced by Israel Military Industries Ltd

Israel Military Industries

Israel Weapons Industries , formerly the "Magen" division of the Israel Military Industries Ltd. is an Israeli firearms manufacturer. In 2005, the Small Arms Division of IMI was privatized....

 (now Israel Weapon Industries Ltd) of Ramat HaSharon

Ramat Hasharon

Ramat HaSharon is a city located on Israel's central coastal strip in the south of the Sharon region, bordering Tel Aviv to the south and Herzliya and Kibbutz Glil Yam to the north. It is part of the Tel Aviv District, within Gush Dan metropolitan area...

. The weapon system consists of a line chambered for the intermediate 5.56x45mm NATO

5.56x45mm NATO

5.56×45mm NATO is a rifle cartridge developed in the United States and originally chambered in the M16 rifle. Under STANAG 4172, it is a standard cartridge for NATO forces as well as many non-NATO countries. It is derived from, but not identical to, the .223 Remington cartridge...

 caliber with either the M193 or SS109 ball cartridge and several models designed for use with the 7.62x51mm NATO rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 round. It is named after one of its inventors, Yisrael Galil.

There are four basic configurations of the Galil: the standard rifle-length AR (Assault Rifle), a carbine

Carbine

A carbine , from French carabine, is a longarm similar to but shorter than a rifle or musket. Many carbines are shortened versions of full rifles, firing the same ammunition at a lower velocity due to a shorter barrel length....

 variant known as the SAR (Short Assault Rifle), a compact MAR (Micro Assault Rifle) version, and an ARM (Assault Rifle and Machine gun) light machine gun

Light machine gun

A light machine gun is a machine gun designed to be employed by an individual soldier, with or without an assistant, as an infantry support weapon. Light machine guns are often used as squad automatic weapons.-Characteristics:...

.
The Galil’s design is optimized for operation in arid conditions and is based on the Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 RK 62

Rk 62

The Rk 62 is an assault rifle manufactured by Valmet and Sako. It is the standard issue infantry weapon of the Finnish Defence Forces....

, which itself was derived from the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 AK-47

AK-47

The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...

 assault rifle

Assault rifle

An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles are the standard infantry weapons in most modern armies...

.