CZ Yearbook 2019 /eng

78 | | 79 FROM THE CZ 805 BREN TO THE CZ BREN 2 The saga of CZ assault rifles Following a protracted and demanding tender, the elite French anti-terrorist unit GIGN confirmed what many experts had already known – Česká zbrojovka a.s. has once again put itself amongst the global elite and its latest products are among the best in the world. This is an especially impressive feat when one considers that devel- opment of the BREN platform began just one decade ago. Although Česká zbrojovka a.s. was founded in 1936 with the main focus on the manufac- ture of cutting-edge aircraft machine guns, after the end of World War II it refocused on the production of basic individ- ual weapons. In particular, the company’s submachine guns and assault rifles represented the absolute top in their cate- gory worldwide and were sup- plied in large numbers both to local armed forces as well as those abroad. Names like Ško- rpion and vz. 58 are alive and admired even today. Things got complicated in the 1980s. The development of the new LADA weapon system in modern 5.46×39 cal. was tak- ing so long (despite just being an improved clone of the Sovi- et AK system) that by the time it was completed, the Czecho- slovakian Communist regime had come to an end. The rea- sonably good LADA guns were quickly modif ied to comply with the western style 5.56×45 cal., however, in the new po- litical and economic situation, the heavily reduced national army just wasn’t interested anymore. And since one could purchase piles of unused AKs abroad for next to nothing, there was no demand f rom outside the country either. CZ had to focus primarily on civil- ian production. A new era With the end of the Cold War came an expectation of world peace. Contrary to that came 9/11 which opened up a new era of global asymmetric conflicts and terrorist attacks. The Czech Republic had always been con- sidered an exceptionally peace- ful region, but even this small country could not ignore the severe worsening of global se- curity. As an active member of NATO, Czech Republic’s profes- sionalized army takes its peace- keeping missions seriously and actively participates when called upon for efforts abroad. Though once a firearms manu- facturingpowerhouse, the 1990s saw lacklustre guidance from Czech politicians when it came to domestic arms factories. Such inattention threatened to send the country down the same road as France – an ex-arms in- dustry superpower reduced to reliance on foreign purchases to provide for basic armament. At best, it could hope to manu- facture firearms designed else- where and to build them do- mestically under license. However, the situation in CZ changed in 2006 when a new general director was appointed, bringing with him a new vision. Ing. Lubomír Kovařík, MBA, who in 2018 became the President of the international CZ Group holding, was aiming high. First and foremost was to ensure that CZwould be the supplier of personal automatic firearms for the Czech armed forces. The new BREN Straightaway in 2006, the com- pany began working on a new weapon series, originally des- ignated CZ 805 in compliance with their system of terminolo- gy, whereby each sector starts with a designated hundred (e.g. for rimfire rifles it is CZ 4XX, rifles CZ 5XX etc.). But then, under the terms of the acquisition of perspective parts of Zbrojovka Brno, Česká zbrojovka also ac- quired a set of their trademarks. Amongst them was a famous name that immediately caught the attention of the marketing experts: BREN. It is common knowledge that this is the name of a light ma- chine gun developed by Zbro- jovka Brno in the f irst half of the 1930s for Great Britain and that it is considered to be the most successful model of its category to date. One can imagine what hap- pened next. On the one hand there was a highly-renowned trademark whose ownership only makes sense if used on a high-quality product. On the other hand, there was a new family of modern automatic The light machine gun developed by Zbrojovka Brno in the 1930s for the British Army was orig- inally called the ZGB model 33 (the ZGB stood for Zbrojovka Great Britain, the number 1933 the year of manufacture). This is the name stated in the licence agreement dated May 1935. Soon though, it was decided to use a more attractive name, BREN. It is an acronym made up of the initial letters of the city of Brno where the gun was primarily made, and the London borough of Enfield, the location of the Royal Small Arms Factory which carried out the testing and subse- subsequently mass produced the guns. The meaning of BREN Historical photo of the BREN machine gun from Brno