#MachineGuns

At the 2018 SHOT Show Industry Day at the Range, Florida gunmaker FightLite Industries, best known for their SCR “ban state” lower receiver that allows “compliant” rifles to be made using AR-15 components. FightLite also is the manufacturer of the MCR upper receiver, a conversion kit that transforms an AR-15 into a belt-fed light machine gun.

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:

Arms of the 80’s, a blog that focuses on firearms advertising from the 1980s, has uploaded and shared a fascinating documentary made in the 1990s. The Stoner Machine Gun: A Navy Seal Remembers, features an interview with retired SEAL  Lt. Cmdr. Michael J. Walsh.

With what appears to be a gadget straight out of Star Wars, a Ukrainian developmental agency by the name of Innovations Development Platform is looking for international partners and possibly investors to take part in the agencies Limpid Armor product. Using an already developed tech item from Microsoft, the HoloLens, Limpid Armor is taking it a step further and has worked through combining HoloLens with armored vehicles and video cameras surrounding the armored vehicle. The Microsoft HoloLens is  originally designed to be optimal for generated holographs through the user-worn headset. However, Innovations Development Platform realized the potential of hooking it up to a helmet and essentially replacing holographs with streaming video from the outside of an armored vehicle.

al Masdar News has recently shared photographs of so-called Islamic State fighters using belt-fed 12.7x108mm W85 (Chinese derivative of the Soviet DShK) Heavy Machine Guns mounted on commercial motorcycles. The machine guns appear to be using a standard pintle mount that is further attached to an improvised contraption that consists of a baseplate that has been welded or permanently attached to the rear of the motorcycle’s tie-down rack. To further steady both the motorcycle and the machine gun during the course of fire, two pole legs are extended from the tie-down rack, with the motorcycle itself acting as the third leg of the tripod.

A new remotely controlled weapon system has recently emerged from Syria. The Sham R3 is the third variation of the original Sham series of remotely controlled weapons stations that use a 12.7x108mm DShK Heavy Machine Gun to engage targets from a stationary position.

Taking drones down with so-called “soft measures” has so far been the fruit of most efforts to counter enemy UAVs. From using Picatinny rail mounted devices to interfere with signals to the enemy UAV, to using 40x53mm ammunition fired out of an automatic grenade launcher. An Israeli company called General Robotics has proposed a solution using conventional 7.62x51mm NATO M240s or 5.56x45mm NATO MGs in a Remote Weapon System setup. Essentially there isn’t anything new about what General Robotics is doing, really just applying existing technology to counter a new threat. The existing technology is their PITBULL remote weapons system turret that has been on the Military/LE market for at least a year. Below is a Youtube promotional video of the system.

The Pakistani Ministry of the Interior made an announcement in November of this year, that Pakistani citizens who have Prohibited Bore licenses with registered fully automatic firearms will have to either surrender their firearms or convert them to semi-automatic by January 31st, 2018. Punjab Arms & Ammunition Company just recently shared two photos of documents that are being circulated right now, notifying citizens of the ban and how to proceed. The ad in the paper below has “Public Notice” as the title.

The Armalite AR-10 is the original lightweight 7.62mm combat rifle – a space-age amalgam of aluminum, steel, and advanced plastics capable of a rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute and weighing just a hair over 7 pounds, unloaded. Its younger, 5.56mm caliber brother, the AR-15, is today perhaps the dominant rifle design in the West, but the .30 caliber AR-10 is the one the started it all, the progeny of Eugene Stoner’s brilliant design and Fairchild’s advanced manufacturing.

WarLeaks recently published a video on their Youtube channel showing Ukranian Paratroopers of the 1st Battalion, 95th Separate Airmobile Brigade in a live fire range shooting modified DShKs. This footage is actually U.S. DOD footage shot during Rapid Trident 2017, a multinational (U.S., Ukranian) training exercise that took place in September of this year. However, this isn’t the first time this has been done in the Ukraine, with a video a year older showing volunteer forces training with the same modified DShK as in the War Leaks video.

In an earlier TFB TV episode, we covered some of the experiences that combat veterans have gone through while under fire. We continue that discussion in this final episode, going into much more detail about some of the nuances and specific aspects of being in combat and actually returning fire back at the enemy. We also discuss some of the issues in today’s generation of infantry, dealing with such issues as strict rules of engagement and acquiring positive identification of enemy combatants.

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. 

A Twitter user has recently posted a video apparently showing members of the Syrian rebel group Tahrir al-Sham firing a Chinese W85 copy of the Soviet 12.7x108mm DShK heavy machine gun from a short mount that is somehow clamped to the back seat of a common motorcycle. The video only lasts a few seconds and shows the gunner very delicately shooting single shots from the heavy machine gun. You can easily see the motorcycle bouncing from the recoil of the large round as the heavy machine gun is fired. It is suspected that the entire process was meant for a staged video production or testing rather than any actual combat use in Syria, due to the actions of both the gunner and his accomplice.

Whatever the next infantry small arms configuration is, I hope it does away with the failure that is the belt-fed Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). Why? Let’s talk about it.

In the comments section of my recent Brief Thoughts article regarding caseless ammunition, there was a discussion about whether the cookoff issues of caseless would also be problem for LSAT-style polymer cased telescoped ammunition. Based on conversations I have had with subject matter experts regarding polymer cased ammunition in general, I noted that a lower cookoff threshold is one of the challenges I would expect CT ammunition developers to face. However, after some back-and-forth in the comments, I decided to contact LSAT/CTSAS program officer Kori Phillips regarding this issue (as it was not something I covered in my three-part interview with her), and she kindly agreed to allow her comments on the matter to be published here on TFB. They are below: