Text and photos by Dan Shea
The Partner 2007 military show was the third in what has become an annual presentation by the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Serbia every June. It is presented in cooperation with the major business conglomerate YugoImport-SPDR. SAR was invited, as usual, by the firms of Zastava, Sloboda (see accompanying sidebar), Krusik, and many of the smaller Balkan arms designers who are readers and sometime contributors to these pages. In addition, we had the chance to sit with the new leader at YugoImport, Mr. Nenad Miloradovic. He is a small arms engineer with a strong background in design, and brings a new perspective to this old and powerful company. We had the opportunity to discuss the future of small arms, as well as the mechanics.
All in all, this was a great opportunity to look for new products and to see what was happening in the innovative factories of Serbia. The fact that Serbia is called an “emerging nation” leads to somewhat of a misunderstanding of the capabilities here. The infrastructure is older, but the government has fostered an atmosphere of advancement and many of the factories have added top quality CNC capabilities as well as training up the work forces.
We’ll leave the politics to others, and simply take the readers on a journey through some of the items featured at this third annual trade show.
Milan-Blagojevic-Namenska A.D. had a nice display of their innovative firearm and munition products, primarily in powders. Word is they are very busy right now but are still aggressively looking for customers. www.mbnamenska.com.
| This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V11N9 (June 2008) |
