#.50Cal

Accu-Tac has released a new heavy duty version of their aluminum bipods. The new bipod is called HD-50 and it is designed for rifles chambered in .50 BMG caliber. Because of the heavy weight of .50 BMG weapons and high stresses associated with the recoil of the .50 BMG round, Accu-Tac has incorporated some design changes into the new bipod’s construction.

Guncrafter Industries are the people behind the .50GI, a .50 cal pistol round that can be used in .45acp pistol hosts. They caliber convert a 1911 and even a Glock.

The Dutch Army is set to procure a further fifty Barrett .50 BMG M107A1 anti materiel rifles. The purchase is being made through TBM – Technisch Bureau H.A. Muller, Barrett Firearms Manufacturing’s sales representative in the Netherlands.

Ever wanted your own field gun but never had the garage space to keep one? Well look no further, a small group of British gunsmiths have developed a working scale replica of the World War Two-era British Ordnance QF 17-pounder!

Being a defense show rather than a firearms industry show, there are a bunch of interesting products to see at AUSA that one might not get a peek at elsewhere. An example of this kind of product is the Modular Interlocking Ballistic Barriers from KF Armory. These barriers are made of a solid proprietary rubber-like material, can absorb impacts up to .50 cal (for the variant rated for that round), and can be assembled into walls and structures in very little time.

General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GDOTS) brought their .338 Norma Magnum caliber Lightweight Medium Machine Gun (LWMMG) to the 2017 Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual meeting, giving TFB the chance at a closer look at this much-anticipated long range weapon.

As you can see from our recent articles, Kalashnikov Concern has introduced a number of new products during the ARMY-2017 exhibition. Besides the firearms which we wrote about in separate articles, there were many other new products that are either not entirely small arms related or are prototypes with a very little information available about. Many of them won’t “qualify” for a separate article, that’s why I’ve decided to combine them in this article.

The US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) is developing a new kind of .50 caliber ammunition called the All Purpose Tactical Cartridge, according to a presentation given at this years National Defense Industry Association small arms conference. The new round will be a sabot design, similar to the existing .50 cal M903 SLAP round, but apparently with a more streamlined shape and better accuracy.

At the 2017 National Defense Industry Association conference on small arms, US Army ARDEC presented a brief on new technologies for enhancing the longevity of machine gun barrels, using 3D printing techniques. The project’s goals as stated in the presentation were to eliminate the need for spare barrels to be carried by reducing barrel temperature (especially chamber temperature) and increasing the cookoff limit of the barrel (the point at which a barrel gets so hot that rounds will fire from heat alone, without the primer being struck by the firing pin), without a decrease in accuracy or an increase in barrel weight. The team investigated two different 3D printing methods for manufacturing advanced barrel units:

In what may be a world’s first, silencer manufacturer Delta P Design has just announced a 50 caliber rated 3D printed suppressor. The 12.7mm (I’ll let you do the math) model is made with a proprietary inconel alloy that can withstand use on a variety of heavy machine guns.

WWII warbirds have always interested me since I was a kid, I used to build model kits of P-51 Mustangs, Mitsubishi Zeros, Spitfires etc. A while back I posted a pretty cool video of the Twilight Tear, a P-51 Mustang test firing her six .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns out to 75 yards at a specially built range.

You may have seen the post about Mark Serbu shooting a full auto MP5 out of a Cessna. While that is neat, here are the big boys. My friend Alexander V. took these pics at the Lyon Air Museum.

As a researcher and history enthusiast, one of the issues I often have to wrestle with is that of eyewitness accounts, specifically when to trust them and when not to. That subject itself is one for another time, but today I want to look at a specific example of an eyewitness account as an illustration of how they can be misleading to someone trying to reconstruct historical events.

Patrick visits with 50 Cal Val and Royal Nonesuch to talk about the RN-50 rifle, the GB-22 pistol, and a prototype pistol that might be in development. Plans are currently available for the GB-22 pistol for $12 and complete pistols MAY be coming in the future.

Ever since hooking up with Explorer cases last year, I have been a super fan of their products. I know, I know, it is just a plastic box. A special talent I have is breaking things, or causing proximity failures. When I deployed, my pelican case failed; my stuff was coated with sand and dust even though it wasn’t opened. I have yet to do more than scratch the outside of my Explorer Cases.