#NATO

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

The American company Aeroscraft, founded by an immigrant from Ukraine, and the State owned company  Ukroboronservis will co-operate to produce M4 carbines to NATO standard.

World War II, as the name implies, was a tremendous conflict with gigantic leaps forward in both technologies and the tactics that went along with them. As a result of the conflict, infantry-troops carried, shoulder-fired semi-automatic firearms became the norm, first inspired by the fielding of the Garand and later perfected by the Nazis and Soviets.

The U.S. Army hosted the annual Best Squad Competition in Grafenwoehr, Germany with teams going head-to-head in 30 different challenges. This years competition, which emphasizes joint readiness and on bringing NATO partners together, focused on sniper team qualifications.

Background: You may remember NATO’s “Powered Rail Team”, consisting of 10 nations with the common goal of bringing forward a STANAG (NATO standardization document) for a Powered Accessory Rail for small firearms? Think a Picatinny rail, but with power inside for your lamp, laser, sights etc.

Modern? Sure, but let’s take a step back… Way back. It’s 1890 and smokeless powder has just been invented. There’s this guy named Rubin going around and spreading the gospel of the small caliber, high velocity .30″ bore round. You’re in Imperial Russia; what’s your country to do to keep up with this new tide of ammunition innovation?

On Saturday we looked at one British  “contender” which could have in some alternate reality become the NATO standard round, and today we’re going to look at another: The 4.85x49mm. After the United States adopted the .223 Remington round as the 5.56x45mm in the mid-1960s, a race began among NATO member nations to create and adopt something similar. Lest the Organization lose the benefits of standardization if a member nation pre-emptively adopted a new SCHV round, these efforts force NATO to begin a competition for a second NATO-standard infantry round. Entrants from the USA, France, Belgium, Germany, and the UK competed head-to-head, and while it was the Belgian 5.56mm SS109 that emerged victorious, the 4.85x49mm round submitted by the UK was ballistically impressive enough to warrant a second look.

Today on an extra special episode of Historical Intermediate Calibers, we’ll be taking a look at one of the most controversial experimental military rounds, one that many believe should have become the standard for the Western World at the beginning of the Cold War. That round is the .280 British, also known as the 7x43mm, and beginning in 1947 it competed head-to-head against the caliber that eventually became the 7.62 NATO in trials to become the standard infantry small arms caliber of the free world. The .280 British has, in the almost 70 years since its invention, become one of the great “might-have-beens” of the small arms ammunition world. Many small arms enthusiasts wonder how firearms history might have been changed if this brilliantly designed British 7mm round had been adopted by NATO instead of the overlarge and too-powerful US-designed 7.62mm.

“Nathaniel’s starting another series? Oh brother…”

We have been covering the US Army’s latest M855A1 and M80A1 “Enhanced Performance Rounds” (EPRs) here at TFB for the past few years. We’ve seen how in independent tests both M855A1 and M80A1 fragment early, thanks to their yaw-independent characteristics and special jacket design. One question that has not been answered publicly, however, is at what point do these rounds fail to fragment and upset; in other words, at what velocities do the EPRs not have enough gas to create the kinds of dramatic terminal effects we’ve so far seen from them?

One week ago, we reported that Remington had distributed letters to owners of the troubled first generation R51 pistols that their replacements from the new second-generation were ready to be shipped. Since then, YouTuber and R51 buyer RyeOnHam has received his second generation R51 replacement pistol, and released a first look video on the weapon, embedded below:

S&T Motiv, the successor to Korean defense company Daewoo Precision Industries, was showing off a new variant of their K2 rifle that equips the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, alongside the M16A1 which remains in use with second-line units. The new rifle is called the K2C1, and features a new quad accessory rail replacing the previous plastic handguard, full-length 1913 Picatinny optics rail, and AR-15-style six position collapsing butt, which also folds. The new rifle will come in two variants, short and long barreled, with 305mm (12″) and 465mm (18.3″) barrels.

The US Army’s Modular Handgun System is slated to move forward, downselecting in August of this year from a reported 12 submitted proposals to only three, in preparation for the final competition. The program solicitation was released in September with a deadline of the 1st of February, but the deadline for submissions was extended to February 12th. Now, it seems the Army is in review of the proposals and is poised to choose the final three entrants, one of which will become the next US military standard issue pistol. IHS Jane’s reports:

The venerable SVD “Dragunov” (after its designer, Yevgeny Dragunov) was one of the first successful squad designated marksman’s rifles ever developed, and it spawned numerous copycats and competitors. In the more than half-century after it was developed, however, virtually no successors to the design have been developed in Russia itself – until now. The Russian 164th edition of Popular Mechanics carries the story on a new precision carbine.