#HecklerAndKoch

Many consider the H&K P7 to be the finest handgun ever offered by the company, or even of any company. YouTuber LifeSizePotato recently posted a picture of his P7M13 to Imgur, an image hosting/social media site:

On Saturday, I reported that the Bundeswehr has purchased 600 HK417/G27P rifles and 600 MG4 machine guns to replace/supplement G36 rifles on the front lines. The initial run of German language-articles, especially when translated, appeared to say that these purchases were the initial buy in a program to replace the G36, which is not the case. Unfortunately, my reporting did nothing to clarify that these purchases are supplementary to the G36 fleet – similar to the purchase of the HK417 by the Australian Army, and 7.62mm LMT MWS rifles by nations like the UK and New Zealand – not the Bundeswehr’s first steps towards an all-7.62 fleet of rifles.

In a surprising move, the German Defense Ministry has accepted an order of 600 new rifles and 600 machine guns to replace the troubled HK G36 that was savaged by scandal earlier this year. Their choice? The 7.62x51mm HK 417 rifle. The Local reports:

Heckler & Koch’s recently released P30SK is the subcompact version of their hammer-fired mid-sized P30 9mm handgun. The P30SK shares its basic design features with the P30, but has a shorter 3.27″ barrel and shorter grip with a 10-round double stack magazine. Roughly comparable to a Glock 26, the P30SK features the same ambidextrous safety as the P30S model, as well as a decocking button at the rear of the slide. The P30SK comes in six models with three different kinds of trigger groups (any of the three available with or without night sights), including P30SK LEM “V1” light DAO, P30SK “V3” DA/SA without safety but with decocker, and P30SKS “V3” DA/SA with safety and decocker. The model I received for T&E was the P30SKS V3 model with night sights.

The S805 Bren pistol from CZ, the company’s next-generation modular follow-on to the often-mistaken-for-an-AK Vz. 58 has finally reached American storefronts. We’ll talk about the rifle itself in a minute, but first Tim of the Military Arms Channel has already released a medium-length video discussing the new pistol, embedded below:

In response to the German government’s declaration that the G36 rifle had “no future” with the Bundeswehr, the Lithuanian government has announced it has ceased all procurement of the rifle, also used as standard by their armed forces, pending further results from the German investigation. 15min.lt has the story:

Russian special forces were spotted recently in the Russian republic of Dagestan, which has been experiencing an insurgency recently. The commandos were equipped with at least two foreign weapons, an HK417 7.62x51mm rifle with an impressively large suppressor, and an Accuracy International Arctic Warfare sniper rifle, caliber unknown, also suppressed. The video from War Clashes is embedded below:

Heckler and Koch’s VP9 is a popular gun, and many of the gun owners who have purchased one have done so for self-defense purposes. There are practically endless aftermarket options and accessories for pistols, but perhaps the one item purchased on the largest scale is holsters. Modes of carry vary widely and depend not only on personal taste but concealment method, individual build, and a host of other factors. With this in mind Safariland has come out with not one but dozens of options for the VP9. This way VP9 owners won’t be restricted to just a few choices but will have a wide variety of options.

Gun forums across the internet were abuzz this past weekend with news that some distributors had in stock examples of the new H&K VP40 handgun. Some of the relevant posts are replicated below:

Many of our readers have asked how the apparent flaws of the 20-year-old G36 rifle could have remained unknown for so long. The German Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen offers an explanation. DW reports:

The fate of the trouble G36 rifle has been revealed: German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced on Wednesday that the Bundeswehr would seek immediate replacement for the rifle. From DW.de:

In response to the recent EMI/WTD 91 audit report on the G36 rifle’s thermal issues, Heckler and Koch has issued a statement rebuking the claims made by the Ernst Mach Institute about the rifle. The statement has been machine translated into English and replicated below:

German news media have been on fire over the past couple of days over a report that is expected to be released to the public soon. It is apparent that the audit report of the G36 rifle, conducted by the Ernst Mach Institute and Bundeswehr’s Technical Center for Weapons and Ammunition, is especially damning. A report summary from faz.net is replicated below, first in machine-translated English, then in native German:

Heckler and Koch have announced a compact variant of their excellent P30 series of hammer-fired polymer framed handguns. From the press release:

Throughout the sixty-seven years Heckler and Koch have been in business, there are a number of firearms produced by the company that one could consider perennial. Chief among such designs would be the MP5 and or the G3, both weapons which continue to see use even fifty years after their creation. While for many, rifles and sub-machine guns would be the first to come to mind, HK has a history of producing pistols which define the concept of utilitarian and are practically indestructible.