The Firearm Blog

When I recently blogged about TACOM's efforts to expand the US small arms industrial base, Btr astutely noted that if the government was really interested in expanding the industrial base they would re-open the machine gun registry.

In India the opposite has occurred. The Indian government has a monopoly on the manufacture of civilian arms. Only a limited number of Olympic class shooters are allowed to import guns.

Indian government manufactured "Revolver 32 (7.65 mm x 23)". It costs about US$1366 (excluding taxes).

The consequence of this is that the government factories, which number about 40, can afford to let quality drop because they have a captive market of over 1 billion people. Now even the military are complaining about the monopoly.

The Hindustan Times reports:

“India produces the shoddiest guns in the world and sells them at ridiculously high rates,” says Swaran Singh, who owns an arms repair workshop in Jalandhar. “Every gun which comes out of the factories in Jammu or Bihar or the ordnance factories in Kolkata and Kanpur has a problem,” he says. Guns manufactured by the ordnance are marginally better, adds Singh, who repairs at least 25 new guns manufactured in Indian factories every month.

...

However, private licence-holders aren’t the only ones complaining. Forced to cope with weapons considered virtually obsolete in the international market, armymen are also saying it would be wiser to allow private players to manufacture arms and ammunition. “The government monopoly would break, the quality of weapons would improve and prices would fall,” says an official at the Army Headquarters. Besides producing defective weapons, the ordinance factories also do not meet delivery deadlines, says an official.

Over the years, the army has moved from the 7.62 mm self-loading rifle to the next generation Indian National Small Arms System (INSAS). But this 5.56 mm assault rifle is also known to develop major defects like cold arrest, breakage and cracking of components in strategic areas like the Siachen Glacier, Kargil and other high altitude areas, senior army officials say. Such defects were seen even during the critical Kargil conflict. The government was then forced to allow the import of one lakh AK-47 assault rifles from Romania at a cost of Rs 85 crore.

I highly recommend reading the whole article [ Google Cache Link ] . It gives insight into a unique situation.

Many thanks to Mehul for sending me the link.

Defense Aerospace reports that many of the Walther P1 pistols, which Germany donated to the Afghan police force, have found their way onto the black market. Defense Aerospace reports:

German military pistols are being sold on the black market in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The weapons were sent in 2006 and were intended for local police and army personnel.

Arms dealers in the region told German public radio that hundreds of German weapons were for sale carrying a price tag of over 680 euros a piece ($1,000).

In 2006, the German Defense Ministry shipped 10,000 old Walther-P1 pistols to the Afghan Interior Ministry to equip Afghan police and army. However, both the German government and the responsible US-led security team in Afghanistan reportedly failed to properly monitor the guns' whereabouts.

The US unit said that it only had detailed records of 4,563 pistols out of a total 10,000.

Current and former Afghan soldiers and police officers are said to be among those illegally selling and trafficking the pistols, some of which have ended up in Pakistan's north-west border provinces and neighboring tribal areas.

...

The team of NDR radio reporters who discovered the black market guns said it's not clear exactly how they ended up there.

"Apparently, most of these pistols haven't been stolen, but were simply taken home and sold by former police officers and soldiers after they'd left the service," said Christoph Heinzle, who headed the NDR team. "But corruption and theft cannot be ruled out because neither the Afghan authorities nor the US and German armed forces carry out effective controls to prevent [theft]."

The United States has also come under criticism in the past for losing track of weapons donated to local forces. Short of retina scanning, which is being used to keep track of Iraqi M16 rifles, there is very little that can be done to prevent the end-users stealing the weapons they are issued.

Walther P38 (designated the P1 by the Bundeswehr)

Many thanks to Daniel for the link.

UPDATE: I was wrong. This is the QBZ-95B (The sailors white gloves are covering the barrel).

Earlier this month there was a huge military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of People's Republic of China. I was astounded to see a photo from the event of what appears to be a sub-carbine version of the QBZ-95 being carried by Chinese sailors.

Photo originally from O.cn via. MP.net

To the best of my knowledge the existence of this weapon has never been reported. The barrel is definetly shorter than the 14.5" of the QBZ-95B (Carbine) that was developed for use in the Navy. I suspect the sub-carbine / PDW has a 10" or 11" barrel.

QBZ-95B Carbine. Photo from Wikipedia.

Has anyone here heard of a QBZ-95 PDW?

Thanks to Caleb for sending me the link to the Chinese parade photos.

A leaked US Army report about the Battle of Wanat criticizes the reliability of the M4. On July 13, 2008 200 Taliban fighters attacked 48 US and 24 Afghan troops. Outnumbered 2.7 to 1 the M4 Carbines, which the troops were carrying, could not function reliably under the sustained fire they were required to put downrange. Fox News reports:

The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions.

...

"My weapon was overheating,” McKaig said, according to Cubbison’s report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn’t charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."

Snowflakes In Hell, via Michael Bane's blog, correctly points out that assault rifles are not machine guns:

No assault rifle is going to stand up to sustained automatic fire. They aren’t machine guns, and even a machine gun needs to have its barrel changed out if it’s been firing a lot.

The M4 has a very short 14.5" barrel and a relatively lightweight barrel profile. This allows the barrel to heat up much faster than a longer and heavier rifle or machine gun barrel. When the barrel of a closed-bolt gun gets very hot, cook-offs,when a round is ignited from the heat in the chamber, become a significant problem ... not to mention the fact that a soldier cannot fire a gun that is to hot to hold!

The Marines have been criticized by many for their plans to introduce an Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR) into the mix of weapons issued to their troops. The IAR is not intended to replace the SAW but would be deployed alongside it, giving some riflemen a light weight weapon that can sustain automatic fire.

FN IAR. Switches from closed-bolt to open-bolt when automatically when barrel temperature increases.

The Army would do well to look into the concept.

At the end of last year the Marines announced they were awarding contracts for the development of IAR prototypes to Colt, H&K and FN. Since then I have heard nothing about the IAR.

There are discussions about the M4 failure at Wanat over at Snowflakes In Hell, via Michael Bane's blog and SaysUncle.

Many thanks to Jerry, Caedis, Lee and Lance for emailing me links about this story.

Stupidity and poor intel knows no limits. The Sydney Morning Herald reports ...

Somali pirates attempted to storm the French navy's 18,000-tonne flagship in the Indian Ocean after mistaking it for a cargo vessel, the French military says.

The crew of La Somme, a 160-metre command vessel and fuel tanker, easily saw off the brazen night-time assault by lightly armed fighters on two lightweight skiffs and captured five pirates, a spokesman said.

"The pirates, who because of the darkness took the French ship for a commercial vessel, were on board two vessels and opened fire with Kalashnikovs," Admiral Christophe Prazuck said in Paris.

A friendly word of advice from The Firearm Blog.

From what I can make out, it appears that the Czech Army may be planning to replace their well known Vz. 58 assault rifles.

Vz. 58 rifle

All the articles I have read were very badly written and incredibly confusing. The Czech news website Ceskenoviny.cz , for example, seems to be confused by the different between a pistol and a rifle.

The new arms will replace machine guns 58 based on the Soviet-made Kalashnikovs AK 47, Pravo writes.

...

"It was originally said that only special units will get offensive handguns. The whole military could be rearmed for two billion crowns," Seda told Pravo.

It writes that the military also plans to spend 3.49 billion crowns on the purchase of light armoured vehicles. Next year 418 million crowns are to be spent on the purchase and a greater part in 2013 and 2014.

Earlier this year I covered the launch of the CZ S805 rifle, which was developed in conjunction with the Czech Army. I guess that this will be the replacement.

CZ S805. ⓒ Adamicz. Used with Permission.

This was rumored and denied by founder Kevin Brittingham ( at least that is what I was told ) but the deal closed on 2 October and suppressor manufacturer AAC is now a division of Remington Military Products Division (MPD).

“We welcome Kevin and his team of engineers and designers on board,” commented Theodore (Ted) Torbeck, CEO of Remington and its parent, Freedom Group, Inc. “With the acquisition of AAC, we can enhance our research and development capabilities and deliver a more competitive product to the end user; further strengthening Remington’s position in the domestic and international markets.”

I think there will be many changes to AAC in the future. They have a unique company culture and I wonder if it will survive the Remington takeover.

AAC Advertisement.

Remington is owned by The Freedom Group, which is the firearm division of Cerberus Capital Management.

The Freedom Group's subsidiaries

UPDATE:

Jason from ACC has just posted this on the ACC blog ...

The crew that you know will still be here doing what we do. AAC is still AAC, but we will be moving into a brand new much larger space, and have access to more R&D and production resources than ever. We are really excited about what the future holds.

Don’t worry, we will continue to make cans for guns from every manufacturer and their various models- and stock and delivery issues will soon be a thing of the past! More news soon.

Surefire are attempting to carve out a new niche with their two new "tactical" suppressors. These tiny suppressors only add a few inches to an M4 Carbine or Colt Commando. Gear Scout reports:

Surefire snuck out two new 5.56mm suppressors at Modern Day Marine Expo. The Mini and the Micro are stubby little suckers that add barely 3.6 and 2.6 inches to a weapon’s muzzle but cut down weapon signature and improve unit communication.

There is nothing magical about suppressors and they are bound to the same laws of physics as everything else. While suppressor manufactures are continuously tweaking their cans in order to maximize the sound reduction vs. weight / size ratio, ultimately if you shrink a suppressor you will reduce its effectiveness.

I doubt these will be sold to civilians. I cannot think of a single good reason why a civilian would want to purchase one of these particular suppressors, when a suppressor a few inches longer will give much better performance.

UPDATE: I may have come across as anti-suppressor. I am not. I own two and hope to buy a third within a year. They are incredibly useful and there is no reason why civilian sales should be restricted. But these particular suppressors are tiny - smaller than my .22 Rimfire suppressor - the sound reduction would be minimal. I would call it a "sound reducer" rather than a "sound suppressor". What I meant to say is that I cannot think why a civilian would pay for these particular suppressors.

Many thanks to Jesse for the link.

While watching a video of the MetalStorm 3GL 40mm Grenade Launcher I was blown away by the incredible technology¹ that these Australians have developed. I have blogged about the 3GL before, but I had not imagined it worked so well in practice. The video is worth 1000 words ...

The MetalStorm technology allows multiple rounds to be loaded into, and fired from, a single barrel. This makes a much more compact weapon than competing MGL² systems such as the Milkor. The weapon has been designed to be within the same tolerances as the M203/M320 and so achieves similar range, velocity & accuracy. It makes use of standard 40x46mm grenade warheads which are inserted into the MetalStorm 'tail assembly'. This would make the system much more attractive to nations which currently use the standard 40x46mm rounds.

The grenades are fired electronically as fast as the trigger can be pull and the barrel is capable of 720 rounds per minute! I asked Mark, MetalStorm's armorer, about battery life and he told me that the 2xAA batteries is uses will last as long as the barrel does.

What really impressed me was how fast it could be reloaded. In the video you see the operator remove the rifle's magazine when reloading - this was for safety and it not required in the field.

In its stand-alone configuration (not attached to a rifle and with its own stock) it weighs 5 lbs - less than half the weight of the 11 lb Milkor MGL!

Milkor MGL / M32

MetalStorm have also been working on a bullpup version of the 3GL. Aside from the shorter overall length, it allows the system to be used with rifles, such as the AK variants, which require the magazines to be rocked into place. The pistol grip of the non-bullpup version would get in the way during magazine changes,

3GL Bullpup. It is tiny!

As I said before, I am very impressed with this weapon. It offers a lot of power in a very small package.

Many thanks to David for answering my questions and providing photos and videos for the blog.

Last week the Polish Army sighed a contact for over 5000 new modernized wz. 96 Beryl assault rifles and Mini Beryl carbines. The updated rifle features a telescopic buttstock, quad picatinny rails, new pistol grip and forgrip design and nifty semi-transparent magazines.

A mean looking rifle! I like the magazine. Photo by REMOV.

REMOV told me that included into he contract is a set of four camo paints and paint thinner. This apparently means the rifle was officially adopted into the Polish Army!

Many thanks to REMOV for the photo and the information for this post.

Colt have won a contract worth $126 million to manufacturer the FN designed M240B machine gun, the standard medium caliber machine gun of the Army and Marines.

Colt Defense, LLC., West Hartford, Conn., was awarded on Sept. 25, 2009 a $32,143,048 firm-fixed-price contract for M240B machine guns. Work is to be performed in Hartford, Conn., with an estimated completion date of Oct. 31, 2015. Bid solicitation was open to the Firms in the U.S. and Canada with two bids received. TACOM-RI, CCTA-AR-SA, Rock Island, Ill., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-09-D-0175).

Daniel Watters, an expert on military procurement, told me that the military have been trying to maintain, or expand, the small arms production industrial base by procuring from second sources.

A mounted M240B

A big thank you to Daniel Watters for the info.

The legendary Daniel Watters has unearthed compelling evidence that the Marine MEU(SOC) M1911 pistol has now been given the official designation "M45 Close Quarters Combat Pistol".

A Marine fired the MEU(SOC)

Two documents ¹, recently posted on Navy.mil, provide information about the procurement of slide assemblies for the M45. Unlike previous documents these do not refer to the MEU(SOC) designation and refer only to the "M45 Close Quarters Combat Pistol".

Note the reliability requirements.

Many thanks to Daniel for the information.

I was incredibly surprised to open an email a few days ago and see photos of the mythical Australian F88T Austeyr. Quite a long time ago I had scoured the internet searching in vain for photos of this gun.

The F88T Austeyr

Note the subcaliber magazine insert - the only giveaway that it is chambered in .22 LR

Almost no information about this rifle is available online. This is very surprising because the rifle is currently in service with a major defense force.

The F88T Austeyr was developed by ADI Limited (now known as Thales Australia). It is, as far as I know, the only variant of the Steyr AUG chambered in .22 Long rifle. A page on the, now offline, ADI website described the weapon as:

ADI has developed a .22 calibre training rifle for use by the Australian Army. The weapon provides an economical training alternative, with very low ammunition cost, which can be used in environmentally sensitive training areas and indoor areas for special force training with reduced risk to trainees and instructors.

This paragraph sums up just about all the information available online! Because of the lack of information I was convinced that very few of these had ever been built, but I stumbled across the minutes of a meeting from an Australian Air Force conference where they discussed an order of 200 F88T's which were going to be used for cadet training. Presumably there are more than 200 in existence.

Australian cadets also train with .22 single shot bolt actions rifles.

I do not have any technical information about the gun. Most .22 semi-automatics share similar features. The gas system will be non-functional because a .22 LR cannot generate enough case to cycle an action. The action will be a standard blowback system. The barrel is probably the same as the regular Austeyr. While this is not optimal for accuracy I can't imagine it would have been worth the cost of producing dedicated .22 Long Rifle barrels.

I am sure that the owners of the civilian Steyr AUG SA, which went on sale this year, would love to have a .22LR conversion kit. Realistically, a third-party American firm is much more likely to develop a conversion kit than Steyr is too either develop their own or license the design from Thales Australia.

Many thanks to Jon for the photos.

Korean firm Dong In Optical specializes in red dot sights for machine guns, miniguns, grenade launchers and auto-cannons.

The Model DCL100 Red Dot Sight (below) is designed specifically for the FN Minimi / M249 and FN MAG / M240 light machine guns. It is seen here mounted on the Minimi Para, FN's short 13.7" barreled, collapsible stocked, machine gun.

DCL100 mounted on the FN Minimi Para.

The larger Model DCL110 designed for .50 heavy machine guns and 20mm cannons

I have an overwhelming desire to mount one of these on a Ruger 10/22

A big thanks to Groot Mamba for the photos.