FN FAL The FN FAL ( Fabrique Nationale Fusil Automatique Leger - National Factory , Light Automatic Rifle ) Is an assault rifle originally designed and produced by the company Belgian Fabrique Nationale in Helstal . History . The FN FAL ( Light Automatic Rifle ) is one of the drawings rifle military ' s most famous and used in the world , developed by Belgian company Fabrique Nationale , Is manufactured by at least 10 countries , including Brazil and Jamaica . His days of service are up , but it is still widely used in many parts of the world , mainly in Brazil . The history of the FAL began circa 1946 , when FN began to develop a new assault rifle . Using cartridge Intermediate German 7 . 92 X33mm . The project was led by team " Dieudonne Saive , " at the same time worked on the rifle SAFN - 49 . Therefore not surprising that both are mechanically very similar . In late 1940 the engineers Belgians were in the England and began using the 208 British cartridge ( 7 , 43 x43mm ) that is also an intermediate cartridge , but for further development . In 1950 the Belgian and British engineers have created a prototype format bullpup EM - 2 assault rifles were tested by these U . S . Army These prototype very impressed the Americans , but the idea of using an intermediate cartridge was not very well understood by Americans , who were still using semi - automatic rifles , the M1 Garand in caliber 6 . 30 and . 308 Winchester and insisted that the NATO defaults to the high power cartridge T65 / 7 . 62 x51mm similar to . 308 in 1953 - 1954 . The FN FAL modified because of this standardization , the first PA ' s were ready at 7 . 62 Belgium in 1953 , but Belgium was not the first country to adopt the FAL rifle as standard the country that approved it was probably the Canada With slight modifications on the name C1 , in 1955 Canadians began to produce the rifles C1 and C2 , the latter a heavy barrel version , known in Brazil as FAP in 1957 the English army followed the Canadian example and adopted the FAL L1A1 with the name , which were usually supplied with optical sights 4x . Next was the Austria on behalf Stg . 58 manufactured by Steyr . The FAL was adopted by Brazilian army in 1964 . Various versions of FAL were also adopted in Turkey , Australia , Israel , South Africa , West Germany and several other countries . The success of the FAL could be further improved if the FN had sold the production rights of the FAL for western Germany , where he was known as G - 1 , but FN has rejected the request , so that Germany bought out CETME Spanish With some modifications to Heckler & Koch created the HK G3 , The most notable rival of FAL . Techinical Description . The only deficiency is that the FAL in Firefox automatically , because the shots are spread much , but regardless , the FAL rifles is one of most well - known , reliable and precise , it is somewhat sensitive to sand thin and dust . But it is a great weapon . The only countries still producing the FAL is Brazil that are manufactured by Imbel on code M964 and surprisingly the USA where a number of private companies produce different versions and kit newly manufactured parts , the majority of SCA ' s are limited to fire semi - automatic and available only for the civilian market . The FAL is operated gas , has a switch to fire from three positions : safety , semi - automatic and fully automatic fire . It is powered by the charger and uses a piston allocated above the gas pipe . The piston has its own spring recovery . After shooting the gas pushes the piston makes a quick tap on the transporter bolt , The rest of the operation is given only by inertia . The whole bolt , also has a gas regulator so it can be easily adapted to different environmental conditions , or to launch grenades nozzle securely . The system uses a locking bolt head locking tumbler with that slope back to the breech in the box that was made initially in steel wrought . But in 1973 began to test various types of metal fabrication in the breech of the box in order to reduce the production cost and weight , but manufacturing was attached to steel machined because of its tilting system that touches the case of breech . Variants . During the time the FAL was produced in several versions , however there are four basic configurations of the FAL :