FEED DEVICE WEIGHT (EMPTY) – 20-round 0.16 kg (5.6 oz), 25-round 0.20 kg (7 oz), 32-round 0.22 kg (7.8 oz)
FEED DEVICE WEIGHT (LOADED) – 20-round 0.41 kg (14.5 oz), 25-round 0.51 kg (1 lb 2 oz), 32-round 0.61 kg (1 lb 5.5 oz)
BASIC AMMUNITION LOAD – One 20-round, Two 32-round magazines (84 rounds)
LOAD WEIGHT – 1.63 kg (3 lb 9.5 oz)
MANUFACTURER – Israel Military Industries (now Israel Weapons Industries), Ramat Hasharon, Israel
STATUS – Out of production in Israel
SERVICE – Special Forces and Law Enforcement commercial sales worldwide
A compact version of the Uzi submachinegun had been envisioned by Uzi Gal since the mid-1950s. Though he built prototypes of his design, the demand for such a weapon wasn’t there, in part due to the high cyclic rate of fire of a shortened design, and the project was shelved.
In the early 1970s, terrorism was on the rise and plane hijackings were relatively common. The most common compact submachine gun that was available to Western forces was the Ingram submachinegun series. In Mid-1976, Hijackers seized an airliner in and flew the aircraft to Entebbe in Uganda. On July 4, 1976, members of the Israeli Special Forces raided the airport and rescued the detainees. The Israeli team had used Ingram Model 11 weapons, one of the most compact submachineguns available. The weapons proved the value of a compact weapon in the very close confines of an aircraft cabin.
By the next year, 1977, design work began to create a weapon as compact as the Ingram Model 11, but one produced in Israel. Engineer Dan Raiz began the work to redo the Uzi and improve the prototype produced by Uzi Gal twenty years earlier. Producing the design to utilize as many standard Uzi components as practical would shorten the development time of the weapon as well as making it more economical to produce.
The receiver and top cover of the standard Uzi were shortened with the bolt also being reduced to fit. Sections of metal were removed to make the final weapon lighter in weight. A new stock was produced, one that folded to the right side of the weapon and would perform double-duty as both a shoulder stock and as a solid front grip when the stock was folded. The shortened and lightened bolt, combined with the shorter receiver, gave the weapon a high cyclic rate of fire. To make the weapon more controllable, two slots were cut diagonally on the right side and top of the barrel near the muzzle to assist in cutting down on climb. A thick rubber buffer was placed inside the rear of the receiver to cut down on the impact of the bolt during recoil.
An initial production run of 100 weapons were in the hands of Israeli special forces beginning in 1978. In 1980, the weapon was placed on the international market as the Mini-Uzi, originally being referred to as the Compact Uzi. Improvements were included in the design in 1982. The modified design had an advertised cyclic rate of fire of about 900 rpm. But this rate of fire could only be produced with some loads of ammunition. This helps account for the Mini-Uzi being listed with various cyclic rates of fire. But for the envisioned purpose, the operators who would use such a weapon would be very highly trained and could apply a high cyclic rate of fire to their advantage in saturating a specific target
In 1985, the same style of closed-bolt system used in the Uzi pistol (and Micro-Uzi) was adapted to the Mini-Uzi. The closed bolt system raised the cyclic rate of fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute or more depending on the ammunition used. This extremely high rate of fire limited the sales of the Mini-Uzi Closed Bolt model in spite of the increased first-round hit capability of the weapon.
A heavy bolt has been developed to lower the cyclic rate of fire of the Mini-Uzi by the manufacturer, but it was not placed on the market. A private manufacturer in the United States has produced a heavy bolt system for the Mini-Uzi that was successful to a limited extent. Instead of the standard bolt weight of 0.54 kg (1 lb 3.2 oz), the heavy bolt weighs in at 0.73 kg (1 lb 9.8 oz). The heavy bolt version fires from an open breech and has a slower cyclic rate of near 800 rpm. The heavy bolt was only made in limited numbers and proved popular with competitive shooters but not law enforcement of the military. Changing the internal workings of the Mini-Uzi in the 2010 time period also aided in reducing the cyclic rate of fire of the newest model to 1050 rpm.
A prototype of the Mini-Uzi was produced chambered for the .45 ACP round in 1985. The magazine capacity of the Uzi in .45 ACP was only 16 rounds in a standard length (32 round) 9mm magazine. Because of the pistol grip being the magazine well, it would have meant a major redesign to make the weapon take a larger (wider) magazine and increase the magazine capacity. The .45 Caliber Mini-Uzi was not placed on the market by the Israeli manufacturer.
