The Firearm Blog

During the Iraq War the Marines urgently ordered 180 of the Mk11 Mod 0 Sniper Weapon System's, but with the Army M110 Rifle Upper Receiver. This Mk11 / M110 hybrid was known as the Mk11 Mod 1. Later, the Marines began ordering the Mk11 Mod 2, a SOCOM / Navy developed variant of the SR-25 that is very similar to the M110.

Knight's Armament are now selling the last 50 of the Mk11 Mod 1 rifles that will ever be produced to civilians.

The suggested retail price ... $8508! Most of these 50 rifles are already spoken for with only a few left for sale. It is more than I would spend on a rifle of this class, but I suppose it is also a piece of military history.

Big thanks to Jesse for sending me the info.

LaRue OSR 7.62mm

The LaRue Tactical OSR has been a long time coming but LaRue are nearing shipping the rifles that are currently on order.

The OSR is an AR-10 type rifle styled after the Knight's Armament SR-25 and M110. It is built from high quality components and shoots sub-MOA groups at 100 yards. THe price reflects this, and it starts at $2,485.

From the above video. I love how the the SureFire suppressor heats up on night vision! I guess suppressors are not a good choice in night time combat operations.

DOD Buzz has some thoughts on the weapon platform used by the SEAL Snipers who took out the pirates:

And let’s not get carried away with the sea state, says DT contributor Joe Buff. A multi-thousand ton destroyer is a pretty stable platform in any but the most tumultuous sea states and makes dialing in a shot on an admittedly tossing life raft more doable — a smart platform for the Team to operate from.

Well sure a big ship is a more stable platform, but that does not make it any less of a feat of marksmanship. Missing could have meant the difference between the American captain surviving and being executed by the frightened pirates.

We also have some information — unconfirmed, though we’re working on it — about how the shots were taken and what was used. Our firearms expert Eric Poole who writes for Tactical-Life posits that the snipers were using the MK-11 .308 sniper system manufactured by Knights Armament Co. This weapon is awesome, by the way (I’ve shot it a few times myself) and, if this is indeed what the shooters used, would mark a major, high-profile departure from legacy thinking about sniping which holds bolt-action rifles as the Gold Standard or marksmanship.

I also said that I though the Mk 11 was the likely weapons system.

Bolt actions and semi-auto’s can both be made accurate enough. Bolt actions can be made more accurate cheaper, but semi-autos give a much better rate of fire. The Army is sticking with the M24 Sniper Weapons System, based on the Remington 700 bolt action, for now because of cost.

Poole figures the DevGru frogmen removed the “overpowered” standard-issue Leupold scopes and opted for the Aimpoint CCO augmented by the PVS-14 night vision monocular. Though the SEAL version of the MK-11 Mod 0 is issued with suppressors, it’s unclear whether the operators used them, but I’d bet a million bucks they did.

Good point about scopes. The range was relatively close, so I don’t think the sound suppression of a suppressor would make a huge difference to the situation, but the decrease in recoil would be advantageous when making followup shots at a moving target. I think it is safe to assume these guys know now their weapons performs when suppressed (unlike video games, in real life suppressors make no change to the external ballistics of the projectile, but it does change the weight balance of the firearm)

One other question (among many) remains open…were there three shots or four? Poole reasons, and Allen and I agree, that someone had to shoot through the lifeboat window first, then fire the kill shots. My limited knowledge of ballistics leads me to believe the snipers could not rely on the effectiveness of the one window shot to actually strike the target where it was aimed based in the potential deflection of hitting that probably plastic (glass) window.

There are a lot of things we do not know.

Thanks to Paul for the link.

The captain held in a lifeboat by pirates off the coast of Somalia has been rescued by the US Navy after snipers took out his captors. CNN reports:

U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates “had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” a military official said Sunday.

…

The three pirates, who were armed with AK-47 rifles, were killed by shooters who were aboard the Bainbridge, Gortney said.

The on-scene commander gave the shooters approval to open fire after seeing that “one of the pirates had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” Gortney said.

That is some incredible shooting!

Earlier this year a team of Marine Scout Snipers were deployed to the region for counter piracy work. They are armed with the SR-25 (Mk 11) 7.62×51mm semi-automatic, an AR-10 style rifle. They may well have been the men that were deployed to take out the pirates.

A scout sniper fires an MK-11 rifle from a HH-60H Sea Hawk helicopter

Hat Tip: Snow Flakes in Hell

We have seen some cool iPhone applications come out for shooting sports. But nothing comes close to the sheer awesomeness of the Knights Armaments M110 iPod Touch mount and accompanying ballistics software.

The M110 is the 7.62×51mm semi-automatic sniper system which won the Army’s competition to replace the aging M24 bolt action sniper system. While it will not replace the M24 in the near future, the system is seeing action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rifle is based on the SR-25, which in turn is based on the Stoners’ AR-10 design.

Knights Armaments have developed a mounting system for the iPod Touch that attaches to a side mounted picatinny rail. The mount attaches to an Otterbox protective case.

Click to expand. Photo ⓒ Chen “SMGLee” Lee. Used with permission.


Click to expand. Photo ⓒ Chen “SMGLee” Lee. Used with permission.

KAC contracted Runaway technologies to build an external ballistics calculator for the iPod Touch / iPhone named Bullet Flight. It is your standard ballistics application. You can set firearm / ammunition profiles, then call up the saved profile and enter your environment information, for example, distance, wind direction, elevation and temperature.

The application is available from the iTunes store for $11.99. It is a lot more expensive than the $4.99 iSnipe application.

We may yet see an iPhone on the battlefield

At SHOT magpul have displayed their new EMAG and a 7.62mm PMAG.

There is not much information available and some of the forums I have read are saying contradictory things. This is my take on it, I may be wrong and if I am I will update this post with the correct information.

The EMAG is a 5.56mm slick-sided STANAG magazine. It is compatible with all rifles that use STANAG magazines, such as the HK416, FN2000, Steyr AUG (NATO variant) and many other rifles civilian and military . This is a very clever move by Magpul and could dramatically increase their export sales.

EMAG

The 7.62mm PMAG is compatible with SR-25 compatible rifles and the Magpul Massoud.

seven point six two


LaRue Tactical with what appears to be a PMAG

UPDATE: I was right (that does not happen very often!). EMAG is short for Export Magazine. It will retail for $22.95.

Click to expand.

One more teaser photo from Magpul after the jump (frontpage is currently clogged up with photos)
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