Israel Weapon Industries announced the introduction of the 300 BLK caliber into its X95 line of assault rifles. The new military weapons will be shown at the Eurosatory 2016 show in France this month.

Until now, the X95 has been available only in 5.56 NATO, 5.45×39 and 9mm. The 300 BLK makes a fourth caliber option in these bullpup style rifles. IWI US, the United States based subsidiary of IWI, announced earlier in the year that the company would roll out semi automatic TAVOR and X95 rifles in 300 BLK.

Since the 300 BLK was designed to be compatible with magazines and bolts that are sized for the 5.56 NATO, the addition of the .30 caliber round to the X95 line up wasn’t likely to be a huge technical challenge. However, I am interested to see that IWI believes there is enough military interest in the round to make the required R&D and production line modifications and/or additions to offer these rifles.

One of the benefits of the 300 BLK is its ability to run heavy bullet weight subsonic loads that are eminently compatible with sound suppression. For a military unit still running suppressed MP5s, the X95 in 300 BLK offers similar suppression ability with a number of platform improvements. One of the most obvious improvements of the 300 BLK X95 over the MP5 is the flexibility of simply changing a magazine to move to supersonic loads with significantly more power and range than the 9mm could ever hope to achieve.