AAD 08: Vektor SS77 Compact

Steve Johnson
by Steve Johnson

The Africa Aerospace and Defense 2008 held in Cape Town, South Africa has just finished. Denel Land Systems, a South African firm, launched the new SS77 Compact.


The only photo I could find.

UPDATE: prion @ MP.net posted this photo:

The compact version of the 7.62mm NATO machine gun features a telescopic stock, foregrip with bipod, picatinny rail and gas regulator. The gun is 150mm (6″) shorter and 2 kg (4.4 lbs) lighter than the full sized SS77.

The full size SS77 can be converted to the 5.56mm Mini SS and presumably the compact version can be as well.

Developed in the 1970s during the arms embargo which forced the South Africa to develop its own arms industry. The machine gun is used by South Africa, Philippines, Malaysia and Jordan. It was pulled from Service by the South African Defense Force during the 90s due to reliability problems. The problems were fixed in part by reducing the rate of fire from 900 rpm to 800 rpm and the gun reentered service in 2003.


Mini SS 5.56mm. Click to expand.
Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson

I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!

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 2 comments
  • Lance Lance on Sep 19, 2009

    Looks like a MAG-58 and a Isreali Galie merged together.

  • Jack Luz Jack Luz on Feb 24, 2010

    This machine gun incorporates lessons and improvements over other machine gun designs. This is a machine gun done right. The M-249 SAW and the FN MAG could not hold a candle to this one.

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