Hi,
“You are missing a bolt in your magazine”, they said. In mandatory draft this phrase is equivalent to get Sabbath (meaning to stay in the base during the weekend, instead of spending it at home). “No, I have exactly 29 bolts. Look” And I pushed down the bolts, as I did to check during my 3 years in mandatory dradt and 10 years in military reserve.
“Yes, you are missing a bolt” they said with a smile. “The army decided to have 30 bolts in an a magazine”. That makes completely sense: The magazine is designed to have 30 bolts, each ammunition box has 30 bolts – why on earth you would use only 29 bolts?
The reason, unlike other issues in the army, has sense behind it. Like most of the IDF equipment, the magazines we used are surpluses from the US army, (from Vietnam war, Korean war or even WWII) or magazines used by hundreds of soldier before.
In order to keep the spring in the magazines, and prevent bolts to fall off, we used only 29 bolts in a magazine. But now we got a box of new magazines, and as it seems, the IDF has now many of those new magazines – so it been decided to move to 30 bolts 
.
Other things change as well – The charge explosives are different. I did not take into mind till now. Mostly because we only see those as blue equipment (meaning for training only), and I have seen new charges and than newer without the chance to use any of those. But this training it was different we did got the new stuff to blow up
A magazine with 29 bolts, and the way of checking it
The 30 bolt box and last unused bolt, as thing used to be
A new magazine with 30 bolts, makes sense – although it is an army