Development Yugoslavia's defense industry started planning the development and production of a new self-loading rifle design during the 1950s, namely to replace the bolt-action
Zastava M48 then in service with the
Yugoslav People's Army. Aside from this preliminary production run, however, no SKS carbines were produced at the Kragujevac facility again until 1964, when the weapon type finally entered serialized mass production. At the time, most of the M59/66s were either warehoused or in limited service with
territorial defense units. Even in the southern African theater, the weapon's basic design was considered quite dated by the peak of the war in the 1980s; however, PLAN retained the M59/66 due to its lack of equivalent weapons capable of launching rifle grenades. PLAN insurgents made effective use of rifle grenades fired from M59/66s against light armoured South African military vehicles, namely the
Casspir. The insurgents loaded their M59/66s with the M60 anti-tank variant as well as the more slender M60 AP1 anti-personnel rifle grenade. The
Republic of Macedonia Army used the M59/66 during the
2001 NLA insurgency. Throughout the early and mid 2000s, the M59/66 remained the standard issue rifle of Macedonian rear echelon units and artillery crews. ==Description==