#ATK

Orbital ATK, the defense contractor who manages and operates the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, will soon be bought by defense giant Northrop Grumman, according to an article released on Reuters. The purchase price is expected to be close to $8 billion USD. From Reuters:

Just one day after Orbital ATK’s announcement of a $92 million order for 5.56 NATO and 7.62 NATO ammunition the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri suffered a detonation in a primer mixing cell that has left one person dead. News organizations are reporting that four people suffered what we can only assume to be minor injuries from the explosion as they were evaluated and then treated at the scene. The explosion occurred at around 1:00 PM

In a new twist to the ongoing story of the US Army’s XM25 CTDE “Punisher” airburst infantry grenade launcher, Orbital ATK, a technology partner on the program, has sued fellow partner Heckler & Koch for failure to deliver 20 units of the new weapon. Orbital ATK is seeking more than $27 million in damages from H&K, and transfer of some intellectual property to another contractor. Orbital ATK says that Heckler & Koch’s failure to deliver the weapons has jeopardized its contract with the US government, raising the chance of program termination, and at least causing a substantial delay.

When dealing with conventional automatic or semiautomatic man portable firearms, a failure to fire usually results in one having to manually clear the misfired round and chamber a new one.  What if there were a firearm that would automatically eject the misfired round and chamber a new round with another pull of the trigger (or in full auto by just keeping the trigger depressed), with enhanced reliability and higher mean rounds between failure than conventional firearms?  What if this same firearm also vented almost all gases forward for suppressed use in a semiautomatic or automatic format?  What if this same firearm also offered a programmable/variable rate of fire, a shorter receiver length than conventional arms, and is capable of forward ejection for ambidextrous use?  The technology exists.  Chain guns (the term “Chain Gun” is a registered trademark of Orbital ATK)  offer this capability.

It’s GLORIOUS. So much destruction. When you need your target to be destroyed into a puddle right now. Here is a video ATK made of their medium caliber chainguns.

Savage Arms announced the release of a new over and under shotgun called the 555.  The shotguns were first shown at the 2014 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, and are now part of the company’s line-up.

ATK has announced that the company is splitting into two companies, a defense company, which will be called ATK Orbital and a sporting company that does not yet have a name. ATK Orbital will take control of the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant and will sell ammunition to the new sporting company. Shares in the new sporting company will be distributed to existing ATK shareholders.

Reuters has broken the news that Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the owner of Weaver optics and mounts, is in talks to purchase scope and accessory maker Bushnell. Bushnell is said to be valued at around $1 billion. The company is currently owned by the private equity firm MidOcean Partners. Reuters reports …

It is not often we get to peer into the accounts of a gun company. Up until recently there were only two publicly listed firearm makers in the USA, Ruger and Smith & Wesson, but they both produce a huge range of firearms, teasing out the financials from a particular category of firearms is difficult. Earlier this year the public company ATK purchased Savage Arms for a cool $315 million. In the earnings call today Mark W. DeYoung, CEO of ATK, revealed that they expect Savage Arms to have sales in the range of  $180 million to $190 million and will have operating profit in the range of $25 million to $28 million. Not bad for a company that almost exclusively sells bolt action rifles! It looks like ATK purchased Savage for about 10-12x operating profit, which is reasonable.

The firearm industry consolidation continues. ATK, a major player in the defense industry, has purchased Blackhawk Industries.

Federal have produced two new loads, under the American Eagle brand, for the M1A (M14) and M1 Garand rifles. The cartridges have staked primers and the powders used were chosen with the rifle’s specific gas system design in mind.

Because of demand from customers have Federal have brought back the .22 Long Rifle UltraMatch Rimfire Target

Alliant Lake City Small Caliber Ammunition Co., LLC is a subsidiary of Alliant Techsystems (ATK) who among other things manufacture military and commercial ammunition. They own the CCI and Federal premium brands. In the fiscal year 2008 ATK’s annual report says “military small-caliber ammunition business again delivered more than 1.4 billion rounds to our nation’s armed forces.”.