30 STOLL SHORT

Research notes

The 7,62 NATO rifle M58 was adopted by Austria in 1958, but there was a lot of criticism from various parts of the armed forces. They were more impressed by the German M44 assault rifle (7.92x33 KURZ) as well as the Soviet Kalashnikov, which was an “improved” sort of version of the Kurz round. Col. Stoll, who at that stage was a technician in the Austrian Defence Technology Agency, was part of the team that began to develop a new small arms concept in the early 1960’s, that would include a ‘short’ version for an assault carbine to replace the FN-FAL and a ‘long’ for a sniper rifle/machine gun.

The assault carbine for the ‘short’ cartridge was based on the UZI, but with a 30 M1 Carbine barrel. Regular .30 M1 cases were used but with heavier bullets in various configurations (GMCS spitser, semi-pointed and steel). It was possible that these bullets were originally used in HPT rounds for testing and that these were used because it met the specifications for the tests. The arrival of the 5.56 NATO effectively put an end to these experiments.