WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- International small-arms contracts usually don’t make the big headlines the way seven-figure, heavy weapons system sales of main battle tanks, warships or combat aircraft do. But they can be of equal or greater importance. The announcement earlier this month by Russia’s Izhevsk Manufacturing Plant in the Urals of its new deal to build two new factories to manufacture arms and ammunition in Venezuela is a case in point.

Not only were no top-dollar, high-profile items like anti-aircraft missiles or fighter-bombers involved, but the guns in question weren’t even new ones. IMP has undertaken to build a plant to manufacture under license the famous Kalashnikov, or AK-47 assault rifle for the Venezuelan government. The announcement was even made at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the gun’s design.

The AK-47, like the old U.S. Army Jeep and the Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, is an example of a weapons system design that never grows old because it is virtually impossible to improve on it. The gun itself was the perfected product of a long line of previous rifles, most notably the U.S. Army's beloved Garand M-1 and the Wehrmacht's SturmGevehr StG44 during World War II. And variants or knockoffs of it have abounded, most ably the Israeli Army’s Galil assault rifle.

IMP announced last week it would construct two separate factories in Venezuela, one to make the AK-47s and the other to provide ammunition for the weapons, RIA Novosti reported. Both plants are scheduled to be completed by 2010, the report said.

The Izhevsk Mechanical Plant has already manufactured and supplied 100,000 AK-103 assault rifles to Venezuela under an earlier contract and signed a new contract licensing production of Kalashnikov rifles with the nation, RIA Novosti said.