#Lightweight

In this video, James Reeves is at Huğtek Arms’ booth during IWA 2024 to see what is allegedly the lightest .357 Magnum lever action rifle in the world. Not only is it light, but it’s reasonably priced and modular, with the ability to change furniture and accessories.

It seems hard to believe that the SIG Sauer Cross could get much smaller or lighter, but it has. The new Cross TRAX model is even more streamlined than the original. Let’s see how they accomplished that feat.

Following the release of the upper receivers used in their R-10 rifles, ROAM has announced that the magnesium alloy lower receivers of these rifles are now also available separately. The ROAM R-10 rifles based on these magnesium alloy receivers are extremely lightweight with the lightest one, R-10 Red River Ultralight, weighing in at 5.48 lbs oz (.308 Win, 16″ pencil barrel, titanium BCG).

Seekins Precision has added another rifle to their HAVAK family of bolt-action rifles. The new rifle is called HAVAK ELEMENT. It is built to be a lightweight hunting rifle and to achieve the goal they designed a hybrid action with a use of aluminum in places where you don’t really need steel and where the use of aluminum won’t compromise the strength of the action and reliability of the rifle. The result is a 5.5 lb rifle (with 21″ barrel, chambered in 6.5PRC).

Ascend Armory added a new receiver set to their line of AR-15 receivers. Just like other receivers made by this company, the new set is also machined out of billet aluminum, however, what sets it apart is the existence of multiple relief cuts which make this receiver set a lightweight one.

Brownells now makes lightweight AR-15 bolt carrier groups. While the bolt itself is a standard one, the bolt carrier has been lightened by cutting and machining out the material and leaving just enough to make it functional. As a result, the new BCG weighs 8.2 ounces.

In today’s episode, we follow Miles to Shot Show 2018 Media Day at the Range and visit Caracal USA.

Another innovative company that I came across in the NEXT section of Level 3 of SHOT Show 2018 exhibition was Jones Arms. It is easy to simply pass by their booth because the most interesting product they have is not something that immediately catches your attention. At first glance, it looks to be just another AR-15 based PCC barrel. When the company officials handed me the barrel, I was shocked because it weighs a fraction of what you expect such a barrel to weight.

The golden age of polymer cased ammunition has probably already begun. Certainly, Norwegian-Finnish ammunition manufacturer Nammo seems to believe that, as they recently took a significant stake in American company MAC, LLC, makers of polymer-cased composite ammunition, some of which has already been type-classified by the United States Navy. MAC, LLC will continue as an independent company.  Nammo announced the acquisition via a press release, which is embedded below:

At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range capability. The rifle, Milley said, will give a 10x improvement in capability through the type of ammunition, optics, and degree of chamber pressure specific to it, with the aim of providing the soldier a weapon with much more accuracy and range than the current M4 Carbine. Milley also clarified that the term “10x” was not intended to be a precise measurement of the capability growth, but rather a term indicating significant improvement. The new rifle will come as part of an effort that also includes new artillery, tanks, aircraft, and virtual reality training facilities, Milley said.

3.65 lbs! That is an unbelievably low weight for an AR-15 style rifle. Actually, some handguns weigh more than that. What makes the Master of Arms ENYO rifle even cooler is that despite its unusual look and light weight, it should be a perfectly suitable rifle for a wide variety of applications.

Canton Ohio custom gunmaker Middlebranch Machine has released a teaser image of a new kind of suppressor, which they say is made of “carbon fiber composite” construction. Unlike previous efforts at making carbon fiber suppressors, Middlebranch Machine’s design does not seem to use a straight carbon-fiber tubing body, but appears to be 3D printed, instead. This is strongly suggested by the background of the image which shows a customized Glock with a unique looking suppressor in front of what is probably a Markforged Mark Two carbon fiber 3D printer. Mark Twos are some of the only carbon fiber 3D printing machines in the world.

Recently on The Firearm Blog we talked about one of the great might-have-beens, the German caseless G11 rifle developed by Heckler & Koch during the 1970s and 1980s. Today we have a video from 1990 filmed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds of a demonstration of the G11K2 on the firing range.

It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed thinking about small arms. I’m trying to put everything out of my mind so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning, go to the range, and bring you some raw ballistic data. So of course what pops into my head is an almost complete article about just why the Army’s latest whizzbang rifle program is doomed to collapse in a heap. All I have to do is write it.

Is the US Army pushing for a new high-powered 6.Xmm caliber with their new NGSAR program? Recently, the listing for the NGSAR industry day in December was updated with a document describing in part the agenda of the second conference. Scheduled for 9:45 in the morning in the document is a 15 minute long presentation on “Ammunition Data – Surrogate Projectile and Specs”, presented by Todd Townsend, David Charowsky, and Mark Minisi. Minisi’s name may not be well-known, but it will be familiar to astute students of recent wound ballistics literature: It was Minisi who developed the finite element analysis-based tissue damage model, which has been refined over the past decade at ARDEC through PM Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS). Mr. Townsend is also likely representing PM-MAS, now under the leadership of Colonel Hector Gonzalez.