#4.6x30

At this years SHOT Show ammunition manufacturer Fiocchi have introduced several new loads. Perhaps most interesting of these is their Hyperperformance 4.6x30mm. The round was originally developed for Heckler & Koch MP7 personal defense weapon and not many other firearms chamber it… The other new load is a 28-ga., 3-in., 1 5/16-oz., 1350 fps, #4 offering in their Golden Waterfowl Bismuth line.

Where the MP7 is that “cool gun” that almost no civilian in the United States can get these hands on (much less see), we can at least take comfort in knowing that the well-respected weapon has a few choice homes here amongst those who protect us. We may yet get to see one in person.

I have no doubt that the majority of our readers know about SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), which sets the ammunition standards, cartridge and chamber drawings etc. These standards are guidelines for manufacturers, but many reloaders, builders, wildcatters and others also use them as a reference. Anyway, if you hear about SAAMI first time, you can see and download the SAAMI cartridge drawings and much more interesting information on their website by clicking here.

If the 5.7x28mm FN is the first successful modern PDW round, then the 4.6x30mm HK is the second, and its biggest rival. German firm Heckler and developed the microcaliber 4.6mm in the 1990s as a response to a NATO solicitation for a Personal Defense Weapon, to which they submitted their new HK PDW (later MP7) chambered for the new round.

A huge thanks to my buddy Alex of SB Tactical for bringing this down upon my request. The HK MP7 is a gun that is relegated to almost Sasquatch level of existence. There are very few out there in the US and even fewer people have seen them in person let alone fired one. Sure there are airsoft versions of the H&K MP7 and your occasional online personality has had trigger time with them like SMG Lee and Larry Vickers. So you can imagine my excitement getting to handle this little PDW.

Though rare in the wild, mostly seeing use with special units and some police departments, is a favorite of Hollywood movie-makers and Triple-A video game developers, thanks to its compact size, striking looks, and fully automatic firepower. The gun itself, however, was originally intended to be an inexpensive, compact, and unobtrusive weapon that would be better for troops far from the front, the MP7 eventually became a weapon more commonly associated with the tip of the spear, direct action teams, and SWAT officers.

Anthony Williams, small arms theorist and co-author of the book Assault Rifle with Maxim Popenker, wrote an article in February of 2006 on the development of the Personal Defense Weapon and its ammunition, which he amended in late 2013. He includes in the article two photos which together represent one of the most complete collections of PDW cartridges I know of:

Hognose tackles one of the most confusingly designated of all Heckler and Koch weapons, the HK36 (distinct from the G36) and its 4.6x36mm round (itself distinct from H&K’s 4.6x30mm PDW round):