On the 19th January, a contract award notice was published announcing that Italy’s Carabinieri have ordered 1,000 new Beretta PMX submachine guns. Beretta unveiled their new submachine gun, the successor to the iconic Modello 12 submachine gun, back in November [Read More…]
In the early ’50s, small arms of the Soviet Union have been deeply modernized. The Kalashnikov’s “avtomat” along with its new cartridge was adopted and it was replacing the submachine guns and rifles in the service. The Makarov pistol was also [Read More…]
Beretta have unveiled the new successor to their iconic Modello 12 submachine gun. The new 9x19mm PMX was unveiled at the 2017 Paris Milipol expo. The PMX uses a blowback action and fires from closed bolt. It feeds from a 30 round magazine and has a right-side folding [Read More…]
August Coenders is one of those firearms designers that we almost don’t know anything about. During the WW2, Coenders was working in a German company called Rochling’sche Eisen und Stahlwerke GmbH. Most of the information about him and his firearms became [Read More…]
In the mid-2000s, India began looking for a carbine to replace their 9mm L2A3 Sterling submachine guns which they inherited from the United Kingdom. Two weapons were developed, one by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), and another by the Armament Research and Development [Read More…]
In the mid-2000s, India began looking for a carbine to replace their 9mm L2A3 Sterling submachine guns which they inherited from the United Kingdom. Two weapons were developed, one by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), and another by the Armament Research and Development [Read More…]
My friend Scott H., the guy with a lot of machine guns, told me about this unicorn that Altra Firearms recently acquired. It is a Ruger MP9. For those not familiar with this gun, it was designed by the father of the UZI, Uziel Gal. Ruger bought the rights to the Uzi in [Read More…]
Sometimes there is virtually no way to see images of long-forgotten Soviet firearms that were not ever adopted. Even if any samples of such firearms exist, they are most likely gathering dust in some vault. Thanks to the video and description released by Kalashnikov [Read More…]
Kalashnikov Media, Kalashnikov Concern’s dedicated media website, has been ramping up its releases recently. Its latest video features a hair-raising demo by Kalashnikov’s demonstration team. The Kalashnikov Group held the demo on Armourers’ Day, a [Read More…]
In the article about the KGB Operational Briefcase I promised to dig deeper with regards to the solution from B&T. I saw this at the B&T Police Days in Thun, Switzerland, in 2015 and took some pictures that I managed to dig out from my computer. Thinking about [Read More…]
Victor Aster is a Belarusian firearms concept designer. He shared with TFB one of his CAD designs of a personal defense weapon (PDW) called Humble-Bee. The idea is to have a compact firearm for law enforcement and military needs which would be very simple, lightweight [Read More…]
While the STEN gun endures to this day, if only as the “cheapest” full-auto machine gun that US civilians can purchase, it was not the first sub machine gun from the UK in World War II. That honor goes to the Lanchester MkI, which certainly has a familiar [Read More…]
In this fourteenth installment of Personal Defense Weapon Calibers, we’ll be looking at a highly minimalist incarnation of the PDW/SMG round: The 7.65x20mm French Longue. The story of the French Longue begins with the US entry to World War I and the brilliant [Read More…]
PPSh-41 submachine gun was the main SMG of the Soviet Union during the WW2. It was cheap to make and was deployed in large numbers. It was also chambered in 7.62x25mm Tokarev, which means it shared the same ammunition as the handgun and the same caliber/bore as pretty [Read More…]
TOR (means fireball in one of the local languages) is a Venezuelan firearm designed by a gentleman named Fernan Altuve Febres. It was designed in 1995 and initially chambered in 5.6x36mm (a cartridge unknown to me). It was tested by Venezuelan paratroopers, tank and [Read More…]
What do you get when you take the venerable speedster 7.62 Tokarev, and load it with a muzzleloader-style sabot and 50gr .22 cal projectile? You get one of the most interesting pistol, submachine gun, and personal defense weapon ammunition concepts there is! Today [Read More…]
It has been a little while since we visited the subject of modern personal defense weapon calibers, so to start it off again we’ll be taking a look at a new high velocity round that is only a few years old: Armscor’s .22 TCM. This round was reportedly [Read More…]
Russian gun magazine “Kalashnikov” has published this image on one of their social media pages. It is taken in Beretta facilities. Supposedly these are the upper and lower receivers of a new Beretta submachine gun or pistol caliber carbine. Unfortunately, [Read More…]
The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is seeking something a little smaller than its existing M4A1 and Mk.18 carbines: The command just released a request for information (RFI) to the industry seeking proposals for conversion kits for M4A1 Carbine receivers that [Read More…]
The Sterling L2A3 was the iconic Cold War submachine gun of the British Army. Inexpensive to make, compact and rugged, it was a design that incorporated the experience from the Sten submachine gun, a weapon which though inexpensive really left a lot to be desired. In a [Read More…]
One potential solution to the problem of a suitable anti-armor pistol and submachine gun round is to take the existing ammunition system and introduce one or more new kinds of ammunition which provide additional armor piercing capability through higher muzzle velocity [Read More…]
So far in the Modern PDW Calibers series we’ve talked about small caliber, high velocity PDW rounds like the 5.7mm FN and 4.6mm HK, and we’ve tackled larger, punchier calibers like the 10mm Norma Auto and the 7.5mm FK. However, we still have not tackled the [Read More…]
Since we’ve discussed the .30 M1 Carbine caliber, it is probably only a matter of time before someone mentioned another .30 caliber round used by the Allies during the Second World War, that being the 7.62x25mm Tokarev. The round is a turbocharged derivative of [Read More…]
If you are a fan of the World War II German MP40 submachine gun and want to have one of your very own, you are pretty much out of luck unless you are willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a transferable original. However, it has been possible to buy [Read More…]
The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make [Read More…]
The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make [Read More…]
During World War II, various companies and weapons designers vied for the coveted contract that ultimately became the M1 Carbine in .30 Carbine. One of those companies was Auto Ordnance, which did submit a “light” rifle design, but as a “just in [Read More…]
In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for [Read More…]
In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for [Read More…]
This looks like a lot of fun. I have seen videos of matches at Knob Creek and it seemed like a waste to use a machine gun. Shooting a semi auto would actually be more accurate and faster than using a machine gun. However some of the stage design in this video lend [Read More…]