In the early sixties the Swedish soldiers personal armament consisted of submachinegun m/45, Autoloading rifle m/42 or the m/96 Mauser. Most of the rest of the western world had already mostly replaced SMG:s and autoloaders with a new concept - the assault rifle, a weapon with the SMG:s rate of fire and the rifles range and precision. The first assault rifle, Sturmgewehr 44, was developed and manufactured in Germany during world war 2. It was from that weapon that the young engineer Michael Kalashnikov developed his famous assault rifle, the Kalashnikov model 47 (Ak 47). The Germans had during the last months of the war designed an improved version of the StG 44 called StG 45M but when the war ended the plant was destroyed and the engineers fled abroad. Some engineers under the supervision