New Hakim Rifle!

The Hakim Rifle the “poor man’s Garand”

The Hakim Rifle is a gas operated semi-automatic rifle. It was originally designed by Sweden and produced as the AG-42 for the Swedish Army and used from 1942 to the 1960's. The tooling and design were later sold to Egypt, and the Hakim was produced there. It began to be replaced in the mid-1960s by the Maadi AK-47 but was stored in military reserve arsenals. In more recent years, it has been observed in use by some Egyptian police units and is very popular with gun collectors. Around 70,000 were made.

At the end of WWII, the Egyptians found themselves in possession of millions of rounds of surplus 7.92 x 57mm Mauser ammunition. Of course there was no lack of K98 Mauser rifles to use this ammo. But one of the things that came out of WWII was the knowledge that the future belonged to the semiautomatic battle rifle. The M1 Garand was at the top of the list, but the U.S. was still tightly wed to their rifle and, they clung to those 5+ million Garands tightly, sharing them with just a few of their close allies. Egypt was not one of them.

AG-42 and Hakim and Rasheed Rifles

So, the Egyptians went shopping for a semiautomatic rifle of their own — one that could use their treasure chest of surplus ammo. They found one in Sweden, where the AG-42 Ljungman was just what they needed. The design was already proven, and chambered the 6.5 x 55mm Swedish Mauser cartridge. The two cartridges were close enough in size that the Swedes were able to convert the action to the slightly larger German round.

Hakim Rifle

The Egyptians wanted a way to adjust the action of their new rifle to accommodate cartridges of different power so they installed a variable gas port. The control for the port is located on top of the upper handguard. The action of the Hakim rifle is quite unique, you slide the bolt cover forward until it catches the bolt, then slide it back to open the bolt. The 10-round box magazine is removable, but it’s not designed to be removed in normal operation. The mag remains in the rifle and gets loaded with stripper clips that fit into a guide on the top of the bolt cover.

The Hakim Rifle is very accurate. It’s almost a legend, with modern gun collectors. It may be the poor man’s Garand, but head to head, the Hakim will outshoot the American rifle, unless the latter has been accurized. The tolerances between all the parts are very tight, as you would expect in a Swedish firearm. But tight tolerances don’t work so well in the desert. In the field, the Hakim gave soldiers fits! They had to keep it dry and scrupulously clean or it would jam. They were produced from 1954 to 1959 at the Maadi arsenal.

When the 1960s arrived, the Egyptians redesigned the Hakim into a much smaller carbine-sized rifle they called the Rasheed. While the design was largely retained, the Rasheed was chambered in 7.62 X 39mm — a cartridge used by the Soviet Bloc, and therefore also available in great numbers.

The amazing model and texture for the Hakim rifle was created by Akshay Kumar. He did a great job in researching the rifle and creating the model and texture. We are very thankful for him for creating and sharing this unique weapon.

The Hakim rifle was exported by our newest team member TUERIX. He did an amazing job with the animation, sounds and mesh optimization. He worked with the SKS animations from the Project Reality which is the gun with the closest action to the Hakim rifle. The was the first time TUERIX worked with stripper clip animations and he nailed it! It turned out great. He really brought this beautiful gun to life! Its a joy to shoot in the game. Here is part of the final animation.

That's it for this update, much more to come in the future.