#Xm8

Thanks to my friend and the Royal Malaysian Navy for letting me use these photos. My friend was invited onto the Malaysian Navy base and got a chance to not only photograph this rare gun but also shoot it.

Last time The Firearm Blog wrote about Heckler & Koch’s Gray Room we stated we cannot get enough.

It is with a heavy heart that we at TFB bring news of the death of a true industry great: Jim Schatz has died. Jim’s career in the industry spanned four decades, and he served as a paratrooper (11B) with the 82nd Airborne, a shooter and instructor with the Army Marksmanship Unit, and most famously as an officer with Heckler & Koch. Through his time at H&K, he became known as the guru of all things HK, and many times he was recommended to me as the “go-to” personality whenever my research intersected with that company (which was often).

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 me to just tell you about it and to snap a few foggy cell phone pictures, though, so I brought along Othais of C&Rsenal to help me take high resolution light box photos of these unique and rare firearms.

The US Army’s “Punisher” XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CTDE) weapon program is in danger, says a report released earlier this week by the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office. The program has been riddled with delays and cost spirals, as well as three accidents in 2013, but beyond that the Army has failed to outline a plan for procurement and basic issuance of the weapon, putting the program in jeopardy. From the (heavily redacted) report:

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is indeed an “XM8” rifle in the wild…

Reader Azril sends us some photos of the recent 58th Malaysian Independence Day parade. The Malay armed forces use an interesting mix of armaments including, uniquely, the Heckler and Koch XM8, two of which are visible in the image below:

HKPro.com forum poster Marine0303 posted the notes from an armorer’s course he took on the H&K G36 rifle. It is complete with pictures, and provides a really good essential understanding of the design and its maintenance requirements:

Before Christmas, CZ-USA announced the impending importation of CZ S805 pistols – the first S805 pattern weapons to see importation to the United States. The pistol will be available with an adapter for a SIG brace. From CZ’s Facebook page:

TommyBuilt Tactical is an 07/SOT FFL who specialize in customizing H&K rifles. They are busy working on a conversion kit to turn a H&K SLR rifle, the sporting version of the H&K G36, into a H&K XM8 look-alike.

Fox News has published a badly written article about the whole M4/5.56mm debate. The article goes on and on about the limited range of the M4/5.56mm

The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) had their 76th anniversary last month. At a show they put on celebrating the anniversary their special forces group, PASKAL, had their weapons on display. I was quite surprised to see a XM-8 and MP5 with grenade launcher!

Rihanna’s music video for the song Hard features lot of guns. Plenty of M4′s (being fired in a very careless manner) and XM-8s can be seen. Seems that while Hollywood has figured out that the XM8 is no longer cool, the music industry has not.