#SmallArms

The Moscow Police Force has put on a display that has been hitting the internet recently, specifically with this excellent collection of photos on The Chive, a website I still have no clear idea about the purpose of despite being aware of them five years ago. The collection is situated in a room, somewhere in Moscow, and includes everything from percussion muzzleloading handguns, to modern day submachine guns. however the key date in all this, is that the collection compromises confiscations starting in 1949. So these aren’t firearms that were taken in the 1800s and are now on display, these are firearms taken since 1949. Whether or not some of them were actually used by criminals is another matter, as perhaps some of them were taken off their owners for bad registration papers, death, and all other possible non criminal causes.  I think the heavy, water cooled machine guns interest me the most, in addition to all the homemade devices that are on display. The FBI Museum in Washington D.C. has a similar collection with 7,000 small arms, of all their confiscated small arms, some of which are on display, but I think the majority are locked away from the public.

This post was written as a companion to an upcoming Gun Guy Radio podcast, hosted by Ryan Michad. The discussion below will be expanded upon in the show when it’s released later this month, but for now, read on to learn more about the past, present, and future of infantry weapon calibers!

Despite sounding like something the Czechs tried to export to Britain in the 20th Century, the UK vz. 59 was a GPMG adopted by Czechoslovakia during the height of the Cold War. Czechpoint, importer and manufacturer of Czech small arms, has covered the machine gun on their YouTube channel, in three videos embedded below:

At the recent IDEF Istanbul exhibition held this past May, Azerbaijan had some interesting developments of various small arms on display. Interestingly there wasn’t any demonstration of their service rifle, the Tavor (similarly, it appears most of the military still has 74s while the Tavor is making its appearance in parades). Regardless, Jane’s has covered the Azerbaijan boot pretty well, and there are some more in depth photos of the small arms on a Pakistani defense forum. Something that really sticks out about all the small arms displayed is that much of the design is completely taken from other designs, such as the shape of the receiver on the anti-material rifle, to the sniper rifles that seem to take direct inspiration from the SCAR H and the AI PSR stock. In addition, either FAB Defense is getting the upper hand, or whomever the designer who copied FAB Defense is getting lucky, as the pistol grip on every single firearm (sans Grenade Launcher) is similar to FAB Defense’s designs, in addition to the buttstock on the light machine gun. From Jane’s-

Each year, the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) holds conferences on various defense-related subjects. One of these conferences is the Armament Small Arms Forum, which for this year of 2015 occurred on June 1-3 in Whippany, New Jersey. Anually, after its conclusion, NDIA releases some or all of the PowerPoint files for the presentations given during the conference, as they did so this weekend for the 2015 ASAF. The presentations are now available online, at this link.

This is the first part of a series of posts seeking to describe and analyze the 7.62mm Light Rifle concept promoted by the Americans, and subsequently adopted by NATO in various forms. This series will cover development from before World War II to the present day, but will focus primarily on the period from 1944-1970, which constitutes the span of time from the Light Rifle’s conception until its end in the United States with the standardization of the M16.

Soldier of Fortune has a post that links to a recent video montage of French forces in Afghanistan. The country’s forces have all since left the country but the video shows an interesting portrayal of how the 1970s technology FAMAS has entered the 21st century arena of small arms. Instead of replacing the current FAMAS’s with new receivers without a carrying handle (M16A4), the French seem to have simply engineered over it, and added rails and scope attachment points (I realize that the charging handle is directly below it, but look at the G36, there is a version of the FAMAS that is modified this way, but I can’t find any use of it in Afghanistan specifically). It looks like it would be an awkward weapon to fire with the scope so high above the barrel line, but I’ve never fired a FAMAS with an optical sight so I’m not in a position to make a valid argument. There has been a lot written on the FAMAS and it’s issues. One of the biggest problems with it seems to be a problem the French army has in getting the funding they need to upgrade not just the weapon systems, but their logistics as well. Forgotten Weapons covers the weapon, and TFB has a guest post about the particular problems with it.