#SpecialOperations

The Civilian Marksmanship Program has an absolute unicorn up for auction, a true Mark 13 Mod 3 sniper rifle. This .300 Win Mag looks like it could tell some GWOT war stories if it could talk. It’s not every day that a gun like this is available to the public, so let’s take a look at this rifle.

Turkish security outlets on social media have recently been posting numerous photographs of Turkey’s law enforcement special operations, the PÖH armed with Sig Sauer 516 Patrol rifles or variants thereof. At TFB we’ve been slowly following the New Hampshire based Sig Sauer in exporting rifles to various LE and Military agencies overseas. Most notably with Pakistani special operations forces with the SIG516 PDW, and Iraqi Special Operations Forces (not mentioned in post) with the M400 serving alongside Rock River Arms carbines. Currently, with the Turkish PÖH, it appears that Sig is slowly taking over the issue 5.56x45mm NATO service rifle issue and becoming more widespread. The rifles being issued are either piston operated, gas adjustable Sig 516 Patrol rifles, or gas impingement Sig 516 Patrol rifles, both with what appear to be 14.5-inch barrels. We’ve also noticed a third party compensator installed on some of the rifles, in addition to the A2 birdcage flashhider. We have one photograph of a Sig 516 being select fire, so this is most likely the case with the others.

The United States Special Operations Command (US SOCOM) is looking for a new variable-power rifle optic to allow users to engage targets out to 600 meters, while still preserving close-in capability. The solicitation, released last week on Fed Biz Opps, announces a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) supply contract for up to $33.2 million dollars worth of the new optics. The draft requires offerors to provide 12 sample optics before December 8th of this year. The solicitation follows a pre-solicitation notice issued in July.

Alliant Techsystems’ (ATK) spinoff company Vista Outdoor has won a contract worth $52 million for Mk. 311 Mod 3 frangible ammunition to supply the US Army, with a completion date of June 22, 2022, according to the June Department of Defense contracts press release. The contract is likely for 100 million rounds of ammunition or more, which will probably be used mostly for training at ranges with limited backstops.

The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has revised its solicitation for the Suppressor Upper Receiver Ground (SURG) program ( via FBO.gov). The SURG program is intended to provide an upper receiver for the M4A1 Carbine which would be designed for continuous suppressed use. Last year, SOCOM released the initial solicitation, but some of the original requirements were apparently too difficult for the industry to meet. The new SURG requirements are supposedly more in-line with the industry’s capabilities at the moment, which means we might be able to expect a new SURG upper receiver to be selected in the near future.

The FN-made 7.62×39 SCAR, long rumored to be a dead project, has resurfaced. FNH USA was showing off a variant of the Mk. 17 SCAR Heavy at the 2015 Association of the United States Army annual meeting this week. The rifle is apparently in the earlier stages of development, as it appears to have a rapid prototyped lower receiver. SoldierSystems.net reports:

Jane’s has a report out about a second batch of Beryl M762 rifles being purchased by the Nigerian Armed Forces. This isn’t the first international export of the rifle, among other countries that Beryl has sold or donated to are Afghanistan and Lithuania. This random transaction most definitely has to do with Nigerian Special Operations forces in their fight against Boko Haram, and not alot to do with their overall military of 80,000 active duty troops. The total would bring it up to 1,500 rifles, and that would make sense numbers wise to equip a battalion of troops. In addition, there really doesn’t seem a need for a short barreled rifle or carbine in the open terrain of Nigeria, another unique requirement of a Special Operations unit. And in fact, such a force already exists and has been photographed with the earlier shipment of rifles. They’re called the 72 Mobile Strike Force, and SOFREP has a pretty good collection of open source information on them.

DARPA’s program to make a guided large-caliber round has met with some initial success. The video below demonstrates the technology which, while in its infancy, looks very promising:

When you travel abroad, there’s no telling what you might find. Tim of the Military Arms Channel was visiting the MKE factory in Turkey, when he stumbled upon an extremely rare original Stoner 63 rifle sitting in an arms locker. The very short video he made to document the encounter is embedded below:

Though I’m spending most of my time this Saturday hitting a stack of thick books as part of my ongoing research, I wouldn’t want to leave our readers hanging. So, today we’ll take a look at an older – but still extremely impressive – video from back in the dawn of YouTube. That is, an excruciatingly brutal 2006 test of an M60E4 of firing 850 rounds with a single pull of the trigger:

MARSOC has won a small victory in attaining authorization to use Glock 19 handguns in qualifications. Soldier Systems has the story:

WeaponsMan has begun a project that I personally find very interesting: Recreating a SOCOM M4A1 from the initial 2002 Afghanistan campaign. Hognose’s goal is to recreate with as high a fidelity as possible the weapon he served with during that period, using a 14.5″ SBR Colt LE M4.

GunBroker has for auction two very interesting STIs. WeaponsMan has covered the story: