Chinese QLZ-87 35mm grenade launcher
A reader emailed me this photo of a Bolivian solider carrying a strange firearms and asked what weapon he was carrying.
I was unable to identify it but Tony Williams, our resident ammunition expert, was. It is a Chinese QLZ-87 35mm grenade launcher.
According to Guns.ru, this fully automatic grenade launcher, like the AR-15, using a direct gas impingement system. It uses 6-round or 15-round drum magazines. The ‘light’ configuration, pictured above, weighs 26 lbs.
[ Many thanks to Tony for providing identification. ]
[ Many thanks to Norm for emailing me the photo. ]
I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
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What about the 1500 Type 88 and Type 99 armed with the standard 125mm Russian gun and AT-11 sniper missiles?
The Type 59 (1959) was stopped been made in the 80's. Crappy yes (tank on tank), but every division has tank support.
The 5.8 heavy fires a 5.0gram / 77 grain bullet at 970m/s. That's better than the current M855 round of the NATO.
The 5.8x42mm DBP-88 “heavy round” cartridge has a muzzle velocity of 970 m/s from the Type 95 LSW / Type 95 SAW / QBB-95 (557 mm barrel length) and 895 m/s from the Type 88 / QBU-88 (620 mm barrel length). It has an effective range of 800 m and can penetrate 3 mm steel plates at a distance of 1000 m. It is reported to have very good accuracy at 600 meters.
As for the Navy, I fully agree.
The Type 88 is based on the Type 59 chassy and the Type 79s basic turret with HEAT round protection. The Type 99 in many ways is a knock off of the T-72 which dosnt have the best combat record aginst the M-1, Challanger, and M-60 tanks. They dont have the xperince or ideals for armord warfair and so they dont get top line tanks. However most fighting in asia is in unsutable terrain for tanks so you can say China dosnt need a top line tank force since most terrain is not sutable for tank fighting.
Yes on balistics the 5.8 is longer and heaver but tests done shown the round is worse on over penatration than M-855 ball, so like 9mm NATO it penatraits but it penatraits too much. How ever in none urban fighting this dosnt matter as much. The US is tryng to get new ammo that dosnt over penatrait since it fails to knock down a enemy solder.
As for small arms Regular elite army units have Type 95 series. but many reserve and People Milita forces still use Type 56 rilfes and Carbines. So theres alot of arms in Chinese service.
Anyway interesting debat we have here.