Fedorov Avtomat

The Fedorov Avtomat is a select-fire infantry rifle designed by Vladimir Fyodorov in 1915 and counted among the first operational automatic rifles. It works by short recoil with a locked breech and fires from a closed bolt, using a curved 25-round detachable magazine. Fyodorov first built it for his own rimless 6.5 mm cartridge, but production switched to the Japanese 6.5x50mmSR Arisaka round because large stocks of that ammunition had been bought by Russia. Only about 3,200 were made, most at the Kovrov Arsenal in the early 1920s. The rifle saw limited use in World War I, more in the Russian Civil War, and was brought back out of storage for the Winter War against Finland. It was complex to build and hard to clean, and the barrel overheated quickly, yet it was much lighter than the Chauchat or the Browning Automatic Rifle. Some writers call it an ancestor of the assault rifle.