The side expansion chambers will be to accommodate the blast of the cannon's muzzle brake.

I know what you are thinking: "WTF!".It was build to reduce noise to communities nearby. The vehicle pictured is the M109G 155mm self-propelled howitzer.

Many thanks to Sven for emailing it to me.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mark for these images of another German tank suppressor.

UPDATE: Daniel found a US patent that German defense firm Rheinmetall GmbH has on the design of cannon silencers.

Bonus style points for iPhone

You know someone is serious about shooting when the total cost of their spotting scopes are more than your car.

Yep it's a 6 inch objective and 50x (crazy wide field of view)

the other is a WW2 rangefinder that goes out to 20,000 yards!

More photos here.

By the way, who can tell me how "Cheytac" is pronounced? I have always said "shay tac" ("shay" as in "Che Guevara").

Hat Tip: SayUncle

The bottom photo shows the heat sink (the long tube), the suppressor (the short tube) and the barrels.

The Carbon Fiber heat shield tube attaches to the threads in the back of the barrel (by the receiver) and the front of the tube has 4 metal protrusions to keep the tube aligned. These protrusions are touching the barrel also working as an effective stabilizer for the barrel's harmonics and the extended tube is also working as a flash hider when the suppressor is not attached. The major benefit of the system is that the suppressor is attached to the threads inside the tube and stays 2 inches away from the barrel, not adding ANY weight to the muzzle (the weight is transferred to the thread near the receiver) so there is NO POINT OF IMPACT CHANGE.

16" and 14.5" AR-15

This design does not come cheap with prices starting at $2500!

Big thank you to Jesse for the link.

“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 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.

I once saw a suppressed semi-auto 12 gauge shotgun on display at a gun store. I remember being very impressed by the size of the can.

Unlike most videos on YouTube the sound on this video is very clear and you can distinctively hear that a lot of the noise is caused by the bolt itself, rather than the escaping gas.

One of the reasons I love my suppressed .22 bolt gun is that there is no noise from the action other than the firing pin smashing the case rim.

Thanks to Max for the link.

The specs are:
Weight: 8.6 OZ (244gm)
Length: 7.9” (201mm)
Diameter: 1.38” (35mm)
Finish: GunKote, T3 HARD COAT& SCARMOR
Sound Reduction: 35-38dB

The business end of the Ti-RANT

Of course the high-end construction and technology comes at a price. AAC will be selling it for $1195 shipped. That is about $300 more than the Evo 9.

More info at AAC

A piston operated gun will reduce the dirt that enters the rifle compared to a direct gas impingement gun (AR-15). When you add a suppressor, I think it makes little difference what type of gas system your rifle uses, it is going to get very dirty!

From the patent of an early model MP5SD suppressor.

A suppressor works by slowing down the gas through a series of baffles. The slower moving gas makes less noise as it is vented out of the can (can = slang for suppressor). The downside is that on a autoloading firearm once the action cycles and the spent cartridge is ejected there is more pressurize gas in the system than there would be without a suppressor. This gas, along with carbon, dirt, unburned power, is vented into the rifle action. Without a suppressor this still happens but the pressure inside the barrel is lower because the gas is vented faster.

“new-arguy” posted photos at AR15.com of his HK 416 upper (piston AR-15 upper), which had a AAC 416 suppressor attached, after firing 2000 rounds without cleaning.

This is my HK 416 upper, I ran it with an AAC 416 silencer at the last Magpul Dynamics class here in St Augustine. 2 days, 2000 rounds. I only took the silencer off the start of day 2 for a few drills, I would guess about 150 rounds. All the rest were with the can. I dropped some lube in the gun at the start of the class, aside from that, no cleaning, no oil, nothing at all. No problems either, well, not really. I will admit, I have run regular DI guns like this without problems, but I needed to keep dumping oil on the bolt group. In fact, one of the guys who works with me ran his Noveske N4 with a AAC M4 2000 right next to me the whole class. His gun ran fine as well, but he did keep dumping lube into the bolt carrier.

Anyway, the gun was fiilthy. I have never cleaned a gun that was so dirty. Grime and crud was seeping out between the upper and lower trying to escape. It is worth mention that a large piece of carbon built up and fell under my trigger group toward the end of the second night. I thought it was a primer, but when I opened the gun up and shoot the lower, it was plainly a piece of carbon. So technically, the gun did comletely fail. I have seen this same thing happen one other time, in another Magpul class (actually the one from the last DVD). My friend Derek was running a gun with a can on it for about as many rounds. Same thing, crud kept building up until some of it found its way under the trigger group.

bigbore, of adcofirearms.com, posted photos of his AK-74 rifle after firing 2000 rounds of corrosive ammunition using a suppressor and leaving it sit for a week.

After leaving it sit for a week, the bolt rusted into place and it was no more than a club.

A problem with some of the now discontinued Ruger Police Carbine and Marlin Deer Camp, blowback autoloader pistol caliber carbines, was that their actions got very dirty. A pistol in the same caliber with a 4″ barrel would vent gas much faster than a 16.5″ barreled carbine.

Ruger PC4 (Police Carbine .40 S&W).

There is no substitute for cleaning your rifle. If you are considering a suppressor this is something to take into account. Bolt/lever/single shot action rifle with suppressors will not have this problem. The gas will be vented before the action is manually cycled. I personally have not had any problems with .22 semi-autos rifles with suppressors, nor have I heard of anyone having problems.

Many thanks to Jay for emailing me the link to the photos.

This photo is from Visier Special 6, 1997 (special edition of one of the three big German gun journals):

Click to expand.

Revolvers cannot be effectively suppressed because gas escapes from between the cylinder and the barrel creating noise (there are some exceptions). The big shell that encloses the cylinder of the PSDR 3 prevents the gas from escaping. This combined with a big suppressor and a subsonic .45 ACP round causes a noise reduction from 136 dB to 90 dB which is comparable to a CO2 air gun. Decibels are a logarithmic unit of measurement, so a 46 dB reduction is significant. In theory this gun should make a lot less noise than a suppressed semi-automatic pistol because there no slide slamming open and closed.

I had no idea such a gun existed until Sven emailed me. I really like the idea – German engineering at its best!
Many thanks to Sven, who blog at Defense and Freedom, for the scanned page and translation.

The Gemtech GSD-5 is permanently suppressed (you cannot remove the suppressor) and is available in either a 16″ barrel configuration or in a SBR config. The price for the 16″ model will be $1195.

SBR model

16″ barrel model

This video shows it off:

Hat Tip: 7trees @ ar-15.com

The Whisper X is a break barrel and is comes in a .22 or .177 caliber

Specs:

Weight: 6.61 lbs
Muzzle Velocity: .177 ft/s 1000
Muzzle Velocity: .22 ft/s 722 .

I am not sure about availability or pricing yet. Gamo USA do not update their website very often.

More info here.

Looks similar in size to a massive custom 12 gauge suppressor I saw on a Remington 870 recently.

Click to expand.

A surprisingly aesthetically pleasing gun. The Russians tend to ignore appearances.

The AEK-191 was designed during the mid 90’s and fires the marginal 9×18mm Makarov cartridge. It takes 20 or 30 round magazines, has a 6.5″ barrel, weights 4 lbs unloaded and has a rate of fire of 900 rpm.

Many more photo here.

How cool is that!

UPDATE: After writing a three paragraphs about integrally suppressed firearms it turns out this is not integrally suppressed! The suppressor fits inside the handguard. I got this via. email from the 57 Center:

This particular AR57 PDW Upper in Full-Auto with 6″ Barrel, with 6.5″ Gemtech Suppressor, is currently being produced for a couple LE Agencies.

We currently have our 11″ Pistol/SBR Upper available as well as our standard 16.125″

So they are now directly competing with the full-auto FN P90. Personally, if I had a choice between this and the P90 I would go with the AR platform.

I think the pistol configuration could be a lot of fun.

UPDATE: I asked if the 6″ barrel gave adequate performance. From 57 Center:

We have excellent results with both 6″ and 11″ Pistol/SBR Barrels, this would be peoples choice, LE prefers 6″ with the 6.5″ Suppressor, this unit also works in Sub Sonic,

It is very impressive that the action can cycle subsonic rounds (a light 30-50 grain 5.7mm bullet traveling below the speed of round is comparable to a 40 grain .22 LR Standard subsonic round).

Lots more here.

Click to expand.

View the rest of the brochure here.

I found this photo on the Advanced Armament website. Click to expand

The Cyclops Suppressor

Built by a New Zealander … they sure know how to build a cool rifle.

Click to expand the photos

Beautiful scenery

The rifle has a custom suppressor with a muzzle break! Here is a close up:

I assume the “404″ refers to the 404 Jeffries.

my suppressed 7mm/404 which weighs 20 pounds all up, and pushes a 180 grain Berger at 3350 fps.

The muzzle break and the threaded barrel

Threaded barrel with adapter


Adapter screwed in, ready for the suppressor.

UPDATE:

The creator of the adapter, Roger, just sent me an email. Check out his website. It contains lots of interesting information on suppressors and air gun hunting.

These tests were conducted on January 5, 2008 using 19 silencers from various manufacturers around the country. Some of the best silencers in the world were measured in this test. The test was fired using the Walther P22 pistol and a bolt action rifle manufactured in Russia call the Tula Toz 78. This is the preliminary release of this data and more individual reviews will become available as time permits.

Unfortunately, they require you to register (for free) to view the info and the videos are normal windows video files, not hosted on youtube type sites. They really need to get into this blogging ‘thing’.

What is interesting is that the second best suppressor, with regards to noise reduction, costs $295.00 while the worst costs $595.00! I have always said I do not trust these ‘high tech’ expensive suppressors.

Wendell Diller has invented a lightweight shotgun barrel extension that is about 5 feet long!

When Sean Coffey’s honker call pulled a flock of geese within range, paraplegic Dave Guzzi swung his shotgun with a 7-foot-long barrel and dropped one of the geese dead.

There was a moment of stunned silence — and not after the goose tumbled out of sky. The morning stillness was barely disturbed when Guzzi pulled the trigger on his extraordinarily long shotgun.

The sharp blast of the 12-gauge was replaced by a muffled fzzzttt. Sitting just four feet away, I was struck by how the shotgun sounded like a loud air rifle. Guzzi, who lives in Burnsville, laid the experimental shotgun between his legs and waited for more geese.

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” he said of his gun.

Apparently it is also useful for deer hunting.

More here.

a class three dealer examined it and said in his opinion it could not be removed and attached to a firearm with success.

Gamo has taken pains to make the outer case tapered front-to-rear, plus they have molded two huge flutes into the side of the case. They’ve also made holes in the flutes that expose the sides of the baffles, which are a soft synthetic material, to the air.

It was his opinion that the silencer would be too difficult to remove from the rifle without destroying it, and, even if it could be removed, that the baffles would blow out the sides if exposed to even the low pressure from a .22 rimfire cartridge. In other words, it wouldn’t silence a firearm for even one shot.

More here.

Noise is what the new Gamo Whisper is all about, and I’ll address that issue for you right now. I don’t find the Whisper to be that much quieter than any other spring piston air rifle of comparable power. In fact, my tuned .22-caliber Beeman R1, which has no silencer, is quieter because its powerplant makes less noise. The powerplant is where the bulk of the noise of a spring gun comes from, not the discharge at the muzzle.

More here.

The term ‘wet’ means some sort of liquid, be it oil, water, grease, gel or another substance is used to cool the gasses exiting the suppressor. The gas leaving muzzle or suppressor is what causes most of the noise.

From wikipedia.org:

“Wet” suppressors or “wet cans” use a small quantity of water, oil, grease or water-based wire-pulling lubricant in the expansion chambers to cool the propellant gases and reduce their volume (See ideal gas law). The coolant lasts only a few shots before it must be replenished, but while it lasts it can greatly increase the effectiveness of the suppressor. One manufacturer claims a 30% improvement in sound suppression for “four magazines” (32 to 68 rounds) with the addition of 5 ml (one teaspoon) of water or light oil to their suppressor.

I am a big fan of suppressors and own two. I have a .22LR and a .22 Hornet suppressor. My hornet suppressor can also be used on a .22LR or .22 Magnum (WMR).

In the near future I am going give ultrasound gel a try and see how it works.

Article : Wet vs Dry 22 Silencers