Type 58 assault rifle (NVA) of North Vietnam forces between 1964 and 1975. It was used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the militia Basij of Iran against the Army and the Republican Guard of Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). In Nicaragua the Sandinista Popular Army used Type 58 weapons against the Contras in the Sandinista Revolution (1980–90). Type 58 assault rifle The Type 58 is an assault rifle made in North Korea derived from the Soviet AK-47 designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It uses a 7.62×39mm cartridge. It is the longest version of the rifle at 890 mm, while the AK-47
AK-47 In 1974, the Soviets began replacing their AK-47 and AKM rifles with a newer design, the AK-74, which uses 5.45×39mm ammunition. This new rifle and cartridge had only started to be manufactured in Eastern European nations when the Soviet Union collapsed, drastically slowing production of the AK-74 and other weapons of the former Soviet bloc. The AK-47 was designed to be a simple, reliable fully automatic rifle that could be manufactured quickly and cheaply, using mass production methods that were state of the art in the Soviet Union during the late 1940s. The AK-47 uses a long stroke gas system