Wieger StG-940

The Wieger StG-940 was a family of East German assault rifles loosely derived from the Soviet AK-74 and chambered for 5.56x45mm NATO. It was conceived in 1981 under licensing agreements between the Soviet Union and East Germany and produced between 1985 and 1990 at the VEB factory in Wiesa, whose town name gave the brand its name when blended with Germany. The East German Army tested the rifle but never adopted it. It was designed for export, because the state wanted foreign currency in its final years, and its AK-74 pattern was altered to sidestep licence limits on exporting East German-built AK-74 rifles. Variants ran from the fixed-stock StG-941 to the folding-stock StG-942 and short-barrelled StG-943, plus the StG-944 light machine gun. Reported users were the Stasi guards regiment, with India and Peru ordering rifles; about 7,500 went to India and 2,000 to Peru before German unification cancelled the contracts. Factories closed after 1990, working rifles were sold as surplus, and a Romanian semi-automatic clone later appeared in the United States.