#Suppressed

Welcome everyone to the 121st edition of ‘Hot Gat or Fudd Crap?’, one of our many series here on TFB. If you’re new to the series, this is where we look at the most obscure firearms that are actually for sale and ask the question – is this Gat a sweet deal or only has a Fudd appeal?  Each week the TFB staff weighs in with their thoughts, but readers get the final say in the poll at the bottom of each article.

This episode of the TFB Field Strip series involves the feature-rich FN FNX-45 Tactical, naturally chambered in .45 ACP. The FNX‘s predecessor, the FNP-45 Tactical was a contender in the Joint Combat Pistol trials of 2005 and 2006 to replace the Beretta M9 service pistol. Even though the JCP program was scrapped, the FNP lived on and was eventually redesigned into the FNX, and the FNX-45 Tactical was released commercially in late 2012. The FNX-45 Tactical stands out from the standard models in that it includes a longer, threaded barrel for suppressor use, as well as suppressor height iron sights and it’s also optics ready from the factory. This field strip comes courtesy of Black Sheep Armory II in Panama City Beach, Florida. Let’s dig in.

Welcome back shooters, thanks for reading TFB’s Silencer Saturday. Today’s post marks episode 20 of the series that focuses on everything that is silencers, suppressors and mufflers. This Saturday we are going to discuss a topic that can be often overlooked as being almost childish or gimmicky. The joys of suppressed rimfire are nearly endless: from backyard plinking, pest control, precision target, pistols and rifles, rimfire suppressors offer some of the most dramatic results that the shooting world has to offer. Especially when paired with subsonic ammunition.

Winchester has a new label of ammunition to catch the wave of silencer popularity. It is called Super Suppressed and it is tailored to make your suppressor experience more fun than ever. It is going to be initially offered in 6 calibers with the potential for more to come.

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. 

The US Army will be holding a second Industry Day for its Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle program, which seeks to replace the M249 light machine gun with a new longer-ranged, lower signature automatic rifle. The Industry Day will be held at Picatinny Arsenal on December 12th and 13th. The Army is also accepting white papers concerning NGSAR by January 16th, 2018. The updated NGSAR listing is available here.

Previously, we compared the Russian 9x39mm subsonic sniper round to its Western counterparts, including the .300 AAC Blackout and the .45 ACP. As it stands now, the 9x39mm is a subsonic round only – no supersonic loads exist for it currently. But… What if they did?

Today’s Modern Intermediate Calibers will handle something a little different. While virtually all rounds we have looked at so far were designed primarily for supersonic use, today we will be taking a gander at the Russian 9x39mm round – a dedicated suppressed caliber designed exclusively for the subsonic flight regime, with no supersonic option (yet) available. This begets a question, then: Is the 9x39mm truly an intermediate caliber? To answer this, we should consider a few facts about the 9×39: First, it was designed for carbines and rifles with cartridge overall lengths comparable to common intermediate calibers, like 5.56mm or 7.62×39. Second, it was designed to give substantially better performance than is possible with pistol rounds, including armor piercing effect above that which is normally possible with handgun rounds. Third, it is used more like an intermediate caliber than a pistol caliber, being issued with a whole host of sniper rifles, assault rifles, and other weapons comparable to any other intermediate caliber. Therefore, I would argue that it is an intermediate, albeit possibly the strangest one in common use.

Manufacturer SIG Sauer brought along their brand new MCX Rattler ultra compact 5.56mm and .300 Blackout assault rifle/carbine to the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting. The Rattler is an ambitious design intended to bring a reliable extremely short barreled AR-type rifle to the military and civilian market. Historically, designing very short barreled gas operated rifles that function well has been a serious challenge, so the Rattler’s designers had a tall order to fill.

Geissele has taken the step from manufacturing accessories, to making the guns themselves: The company released its new VSASS semiautomatic sniper rifle system at the Modern Day Marine 2017 industry demonstration. News of the new rifle was first broken by Soldier Systems Daily, via an article available at this link. The VSASS (which stands for Very-long-range Semi-Automatic Sniper System) is a Stoner-type direct gas impingement system built from the ground up by Geissele, utilizing very few off-the-shelf components. It sports a number of refinements, including an extended length barrel extension, hardened steel cam pin raceway, cobalt alloy cam pin, and other improvements to the operating group. Many internal surfaces are coated in the durable solid lubricant by Nano Composite Coatings, which appears to be owned by Bill Geissele. The VSASS uses SR-25 magazines, as well as Geissele’s SSA-E trigger. It weighs 12.3 pounds unloaded and without optic, according to the Soldier Systems article, with variants chambered for .260 Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, and 7.62x51mm NATO.

On display at the recent Russian Army 2017 expo was Kalashnikov’s new AM-17 and AMB-17 compact assault rifles. The AM-17 is a 5.45x39mm caliber improved version of the MA assault rifle introduced last year, designed to fill the same role as the AKS-74U compact assault rifle/personal defense weapon. The AMB-17 is an integrally suppressed variant of the same, firing the 9x39mm dedicated subsonic round first introduced with the AS Val and VSS Vintorez in the 1980s. Pictures of the new rifles have been posted on various social media outlets, such as TFB contributor and small arms expert Max Popenker’s blog.

Suppressor manufacturers, start your engines. The United States Marine Corps Systems Command (MARSYSCOM) has issued a new request for information (RFI) to the industry regarding future suppressors for the M4 and M4A1 Carbine and M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR). The request is intended to tap potential industry partners for future suppressor production, possibly in preparation for a new contract. The RFI’s requirements are, in the usual military fashion, detailed and stringent:

An integrally suppressed variant of the AK called the Gopak was on display a recent demonstration at the Goncharivske trial grounds in the Chernihiv area of Ukraine. In two videos released via YouTube this week, the rifle is demonstrated firing and being inspected by the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov. The rifle is visible in the video below, at 0:58 and 3:51:

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!

At the 2017 National Defense Industry Association’s annual Armament Systems Forum in April, representatives of the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) presented a new method for measuring and quantifying gas blowback with suppressed firearms. The testing was conducted in the service of creating a new standard test procedure for gas blowback, for the Army, NATO, and the industry. Importantly, the test procedure involved mounting air inlets in locations corresponding to the shooter’s face when firing the rifle, which gives accurate measurements for what quantity of toxic gases reach the shooter’s face during operation.