The Firearm Blog

[ I am pleased to present this guest post written by Brendan Leo, an Australian Army Cadet corporal. ]

As a corporal with the Australian Army Cadets, I recently had the opportunity to play with the Weapons Training Simulation System. As the name suggests, this is a fully featured simulation system. Trainees fire modified weapons at a cinema sized projection on a wall 10 meters away. Between the wall and the shooters are rocks, obstacles, and anything else you might find on a battlefield. Wind machines and lights provide for weather effects.

Army Cadets using the WTSS range.

The trainees usually fire modified F88 Austeyr rifles and F89 Minimi machine guns at the screen, but any weapon currently used by the Australian Army, as well as several of those used by an opposing force can be simulated. The scenario is controlled by a technician at a console behind the firing line, who sets the wind speed and direction, the weather, and even the number of round through each barrel. The weapon recoil is provided by a tethering line connected to a tank of CO2, and speakers in the butt replicate the sound. Everything down to magazine changes, and jams are simulated, and the weight of the weapon is almost identical to the real thing.

Reservists using a machine gun with the WTSS system next to 2 F88s.

The main utility in the WTSS system is in the many different scenarios that can be replicated, such as defending a position, quick reaction, and even the sudden appearance of a helicopter. The idea behind the system is that soldiers can be placed outside of their comfort zone, using their weapons against a range of targets in different conditions. Different accessories can also be used with the weapons, including but not limited to Ninox (night vision goggles), grenade launchers and reflex sights, in addition to the standard 1.5x scope on the Steyr.

Open day. Civilians loading the F88s.

At the end of the simulation, the simulated weapon is cleared in exactly the same way as the real thing; by locking back the bolt, removing and clearing the barrel, then replacing it and rendering the weapon safe. Scores are usually calculated by grouping, at the standard target range, the PASS mark for the Australian Army is a grouping of 200mm at 100m. A grading of sniper is achieved when a group of < 40mm is achieved with 4 groups of 5 shots.

Upon completion, a standard range declaration is carried out, and the trainees receive a printout of their score. The next detail then moves in to shoot. The convenience of having no brass to clean up and no targets to patch out is shadowed by the $15 million AUD price tag for each range.

Because Australians are not allowed semi-automatic guns, rifle manufacturers make some interesting bolt and pump action conversions of AR-15s, AKs and other rifles for the Australian market.

H&K produce a special version of their SL8, itself a consumer friendly version of the G36, for the Australian market called the R8. It functions as a bolt action. The rifle is not manufactured with a gas system, that is then blocked to make it single shot, as other single shot conversions have been.

H&K R8

Last year H&K Australia were informed that they could not longer import the R8 because it is duplicates a military rifle. They are pissed because as you can see below it barely resembles the G36. The R8 receivers and barrels were never capable of functioning as a semi-auto (or at least that is what they claim).

Earlier in the year H&K again entered into proceeding to get it reclassified.

Many thanks to Ben for sending me the documents relating to the story.

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.

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.

Chris, an Australian reader of TFB, is heading to Las Vegas for work and emailed me asking if I could post these questions on the blog for y’all to answer.

1. Are there any reputable firing ranges in LV?

2. Would I be able to hire any firearms will at said range? (as I am not going to go through the dramas of bringing firearms through Aus/US customs)

3. As an Australian shooter – I have only ever fired bolt action rifles – anything else is too restricted or outright illegal here – would I be able to fire something more ‘interesting’ in LV – (ie auto/semi auto/large calibre etc)

4. Would I need any sort of particular paperwork to be able to shoot (other than regular ID) and if so, would my firearms license and Sport Shooters Assoc. ID be of any use?

Manu of Indian Defence News emailed me a link to a online reprint of a New Zealand newspaper article that was originally published on 13 May 1909. It says how New Zealand and Australia army rifles destined to Great Britain ended by being used by rebels on the Indian (now Pakistan) Afghan border.

The Englishman states that arms are being smuggled across the Pathan frontier which bear the Australian and the New Zealand Government marks. It is believed that they were sold when the new rifle was adopted.

Two years ago the New Zealand Defence Department disposed of a large accumulation of obsolete Snider and Martini rifles by tender, a condition being that they must go to England.

The purchaser of the greater number of the rifles gave an assurance that they were being sent to Birmingham, presumably to be taken to pieces and some of the parts used for more modern rifles.

The Government has since received advice that 28 of these rifles (bearing the New Zealand stamp) have been taken from the rebel hill tribes on the north-west frontier of India.

…

That must have been very embarrassing for the colonial New Zealand and British governments. I recently blogged that these old single shot Martini rifles are still being used by insurgents in the region.

1870 Martini-Henry .303 rifle which has been converted into a pistol.

My understanding of Australian guns law is that unless you are a farmer, professional shooter (such as professional competition shooter or professional pest hunter) or collector you are only allowed paintballs markers, air guns and non-semi-automatic rimfire/centerfire rifles and shotguns (pump action shotguns are subject to same restrictions as semi-auto shotguns). Pistols can only be owned by target shooters and the caliber is restricted in most cases to .38 (9mm).

Things just got worse for our Australian gun owning brethren:

The Federal Government will change import regulations to tighten controls on firearms that have a “military-style appearance”.

…

Mr Debus said that there was “absolutely no reason” for anyone to own a shotgun that looked like a semi-automatic rifle.

Now any rifle, shotgun or even paintball marker looks like a semi-automatic is will be destroyed by customs. This will limit the import of pump-action rifles into the country. Apparently they have been importing the Romanian pump-action AK pattered PAR-3/PAR-1 rifle.

From the above article. Looks like a
AU legal PAR-3 or PAR-1 (top).

I am sure they will ban the pump action Remington 7600 rifle pistol grip and M4 style stock as well. I believe the 7600 is popular in Australia. The politicians must have forgotten to ban pump action rifles.

“0497″ spotted these photos at defense.gov.au. The rifles pictured appear to be the Blaser Tactical 2. The photos are of the Australian Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan. Click to expand:

The Tactical 2 is available chambered in .223 Rem., .308 Win., .300 Win. Mag. and .338 Lapua Mag. and features the Blaser straight pull bolt system.

Blaser Tactical 2. Click to expand.

Australia recently purchased AU$161,716.66 worth of Blaser Tactical 2 rifles:

Matt recently comment on this post about the Australian AUG A4 (ADI Austeyr F88 A4):

To clear up “125″ issues and confusion the A3 varient is to be upgraded to allow the firing of GLA and underslung shot gun attachment with the trigger finger. There is much speculation on INF 2012 weapon systems and the steyr will look marketly different. What is concrete is that what changes happen to the weapons system the it must have the same range or better and must not be any heavier than current weight with modifications. There is a photo around of an ugly australian modified A3, this is not the new rifle and was a test bed system and was a demo only. The ADF rumour mill is leaning more to the AUG A4 design as now Australia owns the rights of all world wide styer production and also pattened designs from Austria.

I had not idea that the A4 existed. I did some Googling and found some photos in a brochure from ADI, the Australian arms and ammunition manufacturer. They may be the “test” A4 that Matt mentioned in Matt’s comment.

I think it’s a pretty ugly design. It looks like someone attacked an AUG with a hacksaw, screwdriver and a few picatinny rails. Especially in contrast to the AUG A3 (from steyr-arms.at):

Where is the grenade launcher trigger?

I would be surprised if the Australians upgrade their A1/A2 AUGs to use the M203 when the M320 will go into production later this year (according to Wikipedia).

M4 with M320

From MP.net:

However, although the 13,000 Steyr rifles which have been in service for 20 years, would not be replaced, they would be a significant part of the upgrade programme.

The study would look at modifying about 3000 of the 13,000 5.56mm rifles so they could take more fittings on the top rail, instead of the factory-fitted 1.5 magnification sighting system

The Australians already use a mixture of the AUGs with 1.5x sights and the ‘railed’ AUGs. I have always thought that the 1.5x scope was a bad compromise on an assault rifle. The target acquisition speed is less than a non magnified red dot sight (I have no experience with magnified red dot sights) but lacks the benefits of a more powerful scope. It must be working for the New Zealanders because they are only thinking about converting 23% of their rifles.

Australian Solider in Iraq with ADI Austeyr A3 that
comes fitted with a rail.

Taser recently announced a deal to sell 3000 M26 Tasers, an older model, to an undisclosed country. After a 30 second google search I guess it is Australia.

From CourierMail (dated January 29 2008):

POLICE will not say how many Tasers will be issued across the state after Police Minister Judy Spence brokered a deal with the controversial police union to provide one to every front-line officer.

I say three thousand. I don’t know they bother hiding these details in the information age.

According to the Motley Fool Taser increased is value on the stockmarket by $43 million on this deal which is worth only 1.2 million. The market sure likes Taser.

The older M26 model

Heres the thing, if you shoot an animal which protected by the state and is illegal to hunt, such as Australian crocodiles, don’t take photos of your trophy, especially when you are possessing the firearms illegally.

The utter incompetence of some people astounding.

More here.

I came across some nice Steyr AUG photos at MilitaryPhotos.net.

More here.

I read many shooting magazines from around the world and I came across this advertisement in an Australian magazine. It shows what must to be the current AIA M-10 range being produced.

I scanned it into the computer. Click the image below to enlarge it.

Australian International Arms (AIA) calls the M-10 the the 5th generation Lee-Enfield, read more about it here.

I fired up Skype and actually tried calling one of the Australian companies at the bottom of the advert to see if I could get any more information about the rifles. Unfortunately after trying two numbers I realized my rough timezone calculations were a bit off. Checking a timezone website confirmed this!

It is a pity they do not offer the 7.62×39 version anymore. Not at all practical but a 30 round AK-47 magazine on a bolt action rifle would be … unique! Although the special edition M10-B3 that has a M134 mini-gun barrel is very cool

I have no new information about their availability in the US.

A photo of the M10 No4 MK4 Classic:

A photo of the M10-B2 Match:

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