#HecklerAndKoch

Previously, we discussed trying to lighten the soldier’s load by making the cartridge case out of different materials, including aluminum and compositing the case out of polymer and metal. Yet, wouldn’t the lightest possible case configuration be… Having no case at all? That’s the thinking behind one of the most ambitious ammunition configurations there is, the case-less round.

A good friend of TFB, Ronaldo, sent us some great photos of super secret squirrel type Brazilians training in preparation for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. With large events like the Rio games, any number of scenarios can come up requiring an elite force to respond quickly.

France, one the world’s first adopters of the bullpup rifle, will officially be abandoning the stockless rifle concept for good, it seems. The competition to replace the venerable FAMAS bullpup rifle has moved forward, and the only competing bullpup design, HS Produkt’s VHS-2, has been eliminated, along with Swiss Arms’ SG 550 and Beretta’s ARX-160. The downselect means that the next French standard rifle, replacing the four-decade old “Bugle”, will be either the Fabrique Nationale SCAR or the Heckler & Koch HK416, two heavyweight competitors on today’s rifle market. Sputnik News reports:

In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for me to just tell you about it and to snap a few foggy cell phone pictures, though, so I brought along Othais of C&Rsenal to help me take high resolution light box photos of these unique and rare firearms.

MKE – Makina ve Kimya Endüstrisi Kurumu – from Ankara in Turkey has roots going back to the 15:th century.

On the heels of Heckler & Koch announcing their suit against the German government regarding statements about the company’s G36 assault rifle, comes news that the German court in Koblenz has issued a statement that the German gun manufacturer cannot be blamed for any problems the rifles may have, as the rifles were delivered conforming to government specifications. From Der Spiegel:

It’s not April Fools’ ( we already did that, thanks for playing along!), German gunmaker Heckler & Koch has apparently won the US Army’s Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System competition with its G28E incorporating a baffle-less OSS suppressor. This is a major victory for both H&K and Operator Suppressor Systems, as Heckler & Koch beat out long time rival Fabrique Nationale as well as SASS incumbent Knight’s Armament Company to win this major procurement contract. This is also, so far as I know, the first time that OSS’s baffle-less supressor design has won a major general issue military contract. From FBO.gov:

The Lithuanian Land Forces have reached a decision: They will be keeping the Heckler & Koch G36, and will continue to buy the controversial rifles. In July of last year, the Lithuanian government halted procurement of the polymer-receivered German assault rifle amid controversy about the rifle’s stability in different temperatures and humidity levels. Despite strong rhetoric from the German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, and a scathing report from the Ernst Mach Institute, the Lithuanian government’s research effort regarding the rifle concluded that the G36 is a very suitable infantry rifle, and that the rifles “diverge from their technical characteristics only in case they are used for fire support, i.e. as light machine guns,” according to the press release.

You know that running gag on the web where if someone buys a Heckler and Koch product, they show the rounds loaded in the magazines backwards? Well it’s almost a “must do” if you buy a new HK gun, but still a lot of people ask why or snicker and tell the poster that they have made an error. In this video, we try to tell the real story behind the notorious catalog blunder.

The Royal Marines are still rocking the old faithful H&K MP5. This is an advertisement for the Royal Marines and focuses on the S Squadron 43 Commando Protection Fleet. I am surprised they have not been equipped with red dots and flashlights, like the SureFire fore end.

Heckler & Koch has had an unusual relationship with the striker-fired handgun. The world’s first polymer-framed striker-fired production pistol, the VP70, was an H&K, and what many consider to be the company’s finest handgun ever, the P7, was also striker fired. However, aside from those two, Heckler & Koch had not produced any other striker-fired handguns, despite being one of the world’s major pistol design and manufacturing firms. Had, that is, until the summer of 2014, when the company released a brand new handgun, which harkened back to the aforementioned VP70 with the name VP9.

In the early 1980s, German gunmaker Heckler & Koch began to design a new submachine gun that would improve on the existing MP5, in response to a US Navy solicitation for an advanced submachine gun as part of the Joint Services Small Arms Program (JSSAP). The SMG I, which was the product of this development, is not the focus of this article, so instead I’ll refer readers to the HKPro article on the weapon:

This photo is taken by the legendary SMGLEE. It is of a motorcycle unit for Brea Police Department in Southern California. The motorcycle has an H&K G36K mounted to the rear of the BMW police motorcycle. Does it still count as a trunk gun if it is outside the trunk?

Reader Azril sends us some photos of the recent 58th Malaysian Independence Day parade. The Malay armed forces use an interesting mix of armaments including, uniquely, the Heckler and Koch XM8, two of which are visible in the image below:

Deutschsprachiger Hognose, author of the excellent blog at WeaponsMan.com and who has been following the unfolding G36 controversy closely,  recently wrote an excellent “roundup” article on the situation of the German infantry rifle as it now stands. The Defense Ministry just last week released a Prior Information Notice for modern infantry rifles, a precursor to a tender, and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced back in April that the G36 “had no future with the Bundeswehr”. This implies that the G36 will be replaced by some as-yet undetermined rifle “as soon as possible”. On that subject, Hognose wrote: