#Ef88

Photo Of The Day and we take off to the Combat Training Center, Baturaja, Indonesia. We see soldiers from Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and the United States conducting a multinational field training exercise as part of Exercise Super Garuda Shield.

Photo Of The Day: The SL40 grenade launcher is made by Steyr Mannlicher and was selected by Thales Australia as the preferred choice when the EF88 assault rifle was under development by the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Note that the soldier aims through what is most likely a red dot with a pretty tilted zero due to the ballistics of the 40 mm grenade.

The US Army’s ongoing Next Generation Squad Weapon program has spawned capable designs from three companies. While the NGSW program has not yet selected a winner it was inevitable that the companies would begin to offer their weapons to other nations seeking to upgrade their infantry small arms. It appears that the first may be the NGSW prototypes from SIG Sauer.

The Australian Government has announced that the Australian Defense Force will receive a further 8,500 EF88 rifles. This comes on top of the 30,000 already ordered and procured from the Thales owned Lithgow Arms. The move comes as Australia announced a major realignment of their defense policy, we covered this in more detail over at Overt Defense.

The Cove is an Australian Army blog that covers everything related to soldiering.  In a recent series of posts, author Solomon Birch took an in-depth look into the previously issued EF88 bullpup rifle.  Mr. Birch used the M4 rifle as a comparative baseline.

Thales Australia has launched the newest update to its F90 bullpup assault rifle, at DSEI 2017. The weapon, which is the pre-production version of the prototype F90 Export shown off at IDEX 2017, sports a host of improved features versus both the legacy AUG and the F90. Thales released a press release describing the rifle, just prior to DSEI.

Recently, I wrote  an article about one negative aspect of bullpups which is caused by their much-touted rearward balance. Even though its scope was extremely limited, this article caused a lot of discontent in my comments section, and many of my readers expressed a feeling that I was trying to slam bullpups or otherwise promote conventional rifles as the ideal weapons. In this post, therefore, I wanted to address the underlying issue behind this: How do I really feel about bullpups? Put differently, which do I think is better, bullpups, or conventionals?

The bullpup rifle tends to be – when it comes up – a pretty divisive subject among “tactical” rifle shooters. Bullpup detractors dismiss the layout as clunky and awkward, while its proponents cite the advantage of longer barrels and shorter overall lengths. Both camps are often correct in their criticism, but there is another aspect of the bullpup that I think often goes poorly addressed – if it is addressed at all. That is the subject of balance.

Big news at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting 2016, importer Lithgow Arms USA will be bringing the EF88/F90 improved bullpup assault rifle to the USA. The F90 is a variant of the Steyr AUG developed for the Australian Defence Force to replace the F88 (their designation for the AUG) bullpup rifle.

News from IWA 2016, Lithgow Arms, the small arms division of Australian defense conglomerate Thales, and former government arsenal, has announced that they will be offering a semiautomatic version of their F90 military rifle for the law enforcement/police market, as a patrol rifle. The F90 was developed by Thales to replace the AUG F88 Austeyr bullpup rifle, upon which it is based.

The Australian Army’s program to produce a successor to the F88 “Austeyr” is on the verge of bearing fruit. Army.gov.au reports that the F90, formerly designated “EF88” is now being issued for trials, in preparation for final modifications and production. The F90 is a lighter, more modular system that fixes many of the flaws of the original Steyr AUG design:

Jenzen-Jones had an opportunity to shoot Thales’ new EF88 (F90) rifle at Lithgow arms factory. I love the two-tone color combination of the olive green stock with tan metal finish.

Lusaka, our man in Paris, had the opportunity to closely examine and review the brand new Thales/Steyr F90 rifle.