 Additionally, Israeli forces experienced repeated jamming of the FAL due to heavy sand and dust ingress endemic to Middle Eastern desert warfare, requiring repeated field-stripping and cleaning of the rifle, sometimes while under fire.During the later stages of the Yom Kippur War, it was noted that some Israeli soldiers had informally exchanged their FALs for the far more reliable Soviet Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles taken from dead and captured Arab soldiers.Though the IDF evaluated a few modified FAL rifles with 'sand clearance' slots in the bolt carrier and receiver (which were already part of the Commonwealth L1A1/C1A1 design), malfunction rates did not significantly improve.