Hungarian army receives Czech-style small arms.

Weapons manufactured by the Czech enterprise Ceska Zbrojovka (CZ) were chosen by the Hungarian Ministry of Defense as standard small arms. On 28 March 2018, the Hungarian Ministry of Defense’s enterprise NM Arsenal signed an agreement with Ceska Zbrojovka worth about 100 million euros, for the organization of production at NM Arsenal of 5.56 mm assault rifles BREN 2, 9mm submachine guns Scorpion EVO 3 and pistols R-07 and R-09 under license and with the assistance of CZ.

Bren 2 assault rifle (Picture source: bmpd.livejournal)

At the first stage it is planned to assemble from the supplied CZ kits with the subsequent localization of serial production. In total, the agreement provides for the possibility for NM Arselan of manufacturing up to 200,000 weapons under CZ license, with the right of export.

At a ceremony held on December 11 in Budapest, Hungarian Defense Minister Benko Tibor said that more than 10,000 weapons of these types had already been made at NM Arsenal and that it is planned to start organizing localized production lines there in the near future. This will allow Hungary to restore competence in the production of automatic weapons. The minister also said that it is planned to organize the production in Hungary of cartridges for the specified types of weapons, and gunpowder.

Although CZ created a new generation of automatic weapons – CZ 805/806/807 – under the BREN brand which is very popular on the world market, but Hungary has become the third state after the Czech Republic and Slovakia to adopt this model family as standard for its army. To date, the Hungarian armed forces used the AK-63 assault rifles - the local variant of the Kalashnikov AKM assault rifle, chambered for 7.62 x 39 mm, produced by the machine-building association Fegyver-és Gépgyártas Részvénytársaság (FEG) in Cepele as the main model of individual automatic weapon. The production of automatic weapons by FEG was lost after 2000. On 11 December 2018, Budap Tibor’s Minister of Defense of Hungary held a ceremony in Budapest in Petarf’s barracks, in Kiskunfeledhaz. The first lots of 5.56mm automatic rifles CZ 806 BREN 2, 9mm submachine guns Scorpion EVO 3 and pistols R-07 and R-09 were delivered to the Hungarian armed forces.