Estonia buys new 5.56 and 7.62 mm rifles from LMT

UAWIRE on the news that Estonia has chosen LMT to deliver their new rifle:

Estonia will become the second country after New Zealand to use automatic weapons produced by the American company Lewis as the primary firearm of its armed forces. The first batch will cost €22 million, but the contract also envisages further purchases, the news outlet Err.ee reports.¹

Although until now, the Estonian Defense Forces and Estonian Defense League (Kaitseliit in Estonian) have primarily used Israeli Galil automatic rifles and Swedish AK-4s, in the coming years they will switch to weapons produced by the US-based Lewis Machine & Tool Company.

LMT will deliver both 5.56 and 7.62 mm rifles, and the first batch consists of 16,000 rifles. It is not only new weapons for the military but also for Estonia’s law enforcement agencies.

New Zealand has experienced problems with the quality of their LMT rifles, so I hope that these issues are sorted out before Estonia receives theirs.