Tag Archives: FN FAL

AUG Man! Luxembourg Shows off New HKs, Replacing Steyrs

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Army of the mighty Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has been receiving and issuing its troops a series of new Heckler & Koch rifles, phasing out the venerable Steyr AUG bullpup.

Luxembourg, a constitutional monarchy sandwiched geographically between Belgium, France, and Germany, was inadvertently caught up in both World Wars and was one of the 12 founding members of NATO in 1949 – intending to keep out of a third.

With about 600,000 inhabitants, the country has been taking its defense more seriously in recent years and is increasing outlays for new gear, aiming to double military spending by 2028. This modernization included an April 2023 contract with Heckler & Koch for new HK416A7 5.56 NATO caliber rifles in 11- and 14.5-inch formats, along with HK269 40mm grenade launcher modules and HK417A2 rifles in 7.62 NATO.

The adoption makes sense logistically as both the French and German armies have recently adopted the HK416 as their main service rifle.

Luxembourg’s 1,200-strong army has been keeping a running play-by-play on social media over the past couple of months as it fields its 1,350 assorted new HKs.

Note the short barrel format, Coyote color, and installed angled foregrip. (All photos: Lëtzebuerger Armei/Facebook)

The Luxembourg Army strives to train 200 new recruits every year, allowing a theoretical 5,000 former soldiers under age 45 among the population should they be needed.The nomenclature and manual of arms for the HK rifles are a big change from those used with the AUG over the past 30 years.Especially when it comes to drill.How about these bayonets? Especially on a 14.5-inch barrel. They seem to be the Steyr KCB 77 style, which the country already had on hand rather than the German Eickhorn SG2000 style seen on other HK416s. In the field, the Luxembourger HK417s are running Elcan SpecterDR 1-4x optics, which are a big upgrade from the old 1.5x fixed scopes on the early-gen AUG.

Luxembourg adopted the Steyr AUG in 1995

The AUGs replaced Cold War 9mm UZIs and 7.62 NATO FN FALs– which served back when the country fielded a 4,700-strong brigade on a population of just 300,000.

Before that, the country was armed with FN-49s going back to the 1950s.

Luxembourg may keep their old AUGs on hand for emergency wartime use as, after all, thousands of residents are familiar with the design.

If they don’t, maybe we could see a brief influx of AUG parts kits, which I don’t think anyone on this side of the pond will complain about.

Finally got my FAL kit

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here is one of the famed FN FAL kits brought in last year by FN America.

The story, if you aren’t familiar, is that there were guns built for the old 15,000-strong Belgian Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie Nationale during the Cold War– rifles that spent most of their time with that service in storage as the police force didn’t need them daily. Then, FN got the rifles back as part of a deal for new guns after the Gendarmerie was demilitarized in 1992 and held on to them for another generation before deciding to disassemble 400 of them into parts kits for the U.S. Market. Ian at Forgotten Weapons has the full deets in a video for more background.

I got this example, Number 372 of 400 as noted by the certificate, during the lottery that FN held and was super happy to get it as the likelihood of these ever being available again is remote, especially for legit kits sold through FN in this condition.

The kit includes:

Bolt, bolt carrier, operating rod, trigger housing, trigger, hammer, disconnector, buttstock, pistol grip, forearm/handguard, and all small parts shown. The lower trigger frame, stocks, bayonets, and slings in these authentic FAL builder kits have light cosmetic markings from once-issued uses. 

This thing is about as legit and old-school FAL cool as it gets. Plus, as FN is based in Belgium and these were guns made for “the home team,” you know the QC during the original construction of these bad boys was on point. After all, the main reason the Gendarmerie had these was just in case WWIII kicked off and the Soviets came crashing into Western Europe.

I have to still get a receiver and some other minor parts to make it into a rifle but DSA is all over that. They are even making a run of specialty-marked Gendarmerie receivers just for these kits.

Missed out on one of those legit Belgian FN FAL kits?

Posted on by Leave a comment

Late last year, FN announced they had a supply of FAL kits up for grabs. These kits come from a batch of ~400 FAL rifles issued in the 1980s to the Belgian Gendarmerie then stored for the past 30 years that were recently decommissioned and painstakingly crated at FN Herstal and then shipped over here.

FN’s plan to move them out, rather than let some greedy dealer buy them up and resell them in a year on Gunbroker for 2x-3x the cost, was to hold a lottery for four months (December 2022-March 2023), for 100 lucky folks each month to buy a single $900 parts kit.

And, individuals sold them on GB anyway because of course, they did…

Check out these two completed auctions in the past few weeks: 

Note the blue bayonet frog and FN certificate showing 1 of 400

Well, it turns out there is a small number of these left from earlier this year that went unclaimed by the lottery winners.

FN still just wants $900 smackers for them. 

The details: 

Each FN FAL parts kit contains the following 10 imported parts: bolt, bolt carrier, operating rod, trigger housing, trigger, hammer, disconnector, buttstock, pistol grip, and forearm/handguard. You are solely responsible for complying with all applicable local, state, and federal laws when assembling a semiautomatic FN FAL rifle using an FN FAL parts kit.

Each FN FAL parts kit contains once-issued used parts that will show signs of wear and light cosmetic marking, including blemishes and discoloration. Metal parts are free of pitting or fatigue.

A skilled gunsmith must inspect and assemble the parts contained in each FN FAL parts kit. Each FN FAL parts kit is sold as-is and FN makes no warranty whatsoever with respect to the FN FAL Parts kit, whether express or implied by law, course of dealing, course of performance, usage of trade, or otherwise.

The lower trigger frame, stocks, bayonets, and slings in these authentic FAL builder kits have light cosmetic markings from once-issued uses. Metal parts are free of pitting or fatigue, as long-term storage oils preserved the operating character and finish of each component.

The legacy of the FN FAL can be felt throughout FN’s long history, from the FNC all the way to the present-day FN SCAR. Its influence is undeniable and forever changed the landscape of modern firearms.

 

FN to Hold Lottery for 400 Legit FAL Rifle Parts Kits

Posted on by Leave a comment

The “Right Arm of the Free World” has returned, fueled by a recovery project to extend the legendary FN FAL to a select group of historic arms collectors and builder enthusiasts in the U.S. market.

These kits come from a batch of 400 FN FAL rifles issued in the 1980s to the Belgian Gendarmerie then stored for the past 30 years that were recently decommissioned and painstakingly crated at FN Herstal and then shipped over here.

The catch is that FN is holding a lottery for the next four months, for 100 lucky folks each month to buy a single $900 parts kit.

While it is a Mensch move, as it keeps one company or deep-pocketed opportunists from getting all 400 kits, keeping the best for themselves, and then selling the dogs on Gunbroker to cover their costs, it still seems a little costly to me. Still, folks are paying $4K for used SCARs these days, so anything FN long arm is relative to how much folks want to spend. 

Anyway, the details: 

Each FN FAL parts kit contains the following 10 imported parts: bolt, bolt carrier, operating rod, trigger housing, trigger, hammer, disconnector, buttstock, pistol grip, and forearm/handguard. You are solely responsible for complying with all applicable local, state, and federal laws when assembling a semiautomatic FN FAL rifle using an FN FAL parts kit.

Each FN FAL parts kit contains once-issued used parts that will show signs of wear and light cosmetic marking, including blemishes and discoloration. Metal parts are free of pitting or fatigue.

A skilled gunsmith must inspect and assemble the parts contained in each FN FAL parts kit. Each FN FAL parts kit is sold as-is and FN makes no warranty whatsoever with respect to the FN FAL Parts kit, whether express or implied by law, course of dealing, course of performance, usage of trade, or otherwise.

The lower trigger frame, stocks, bayonets, and slings in these authentic FAL builder kits have light cosmetic markings from once-issued uses. Metal parts are free of pitting or fatigue, as long-term storage oils preserved the operating character and finish of each component.

The legacy of the FN FAL can be felt throughout FN’s long history, from the FNC all the way to the present-day FN SCAR. Its influence is undeniable and forever changed the landscape of modern firearms.

Hairy Legs and FALs

Posted on by Leave a comment

Well, technically inch-pattern L1A1s with early knife-style bayonets rather than true FN FALs, but still…

Note the “JAG3” rack markings on the stock of the rifle on the right, and the Soviet Red Naval banner shown on the passing destroyer. Crown copyright. IWM (A 35389) IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205165189

Official caption:

HMS Jaguar (F37) at Ethiopian Navy Days, February 1972, Masawwa Ethiopia. The frigate HMS Jaguar represented the Royal Navy at the annual event, in which the navies from Ethiopia, Britain, American, Russia, France, and Sudan took part. As the ships gathered at Massawa this shot taken from HMS JAGUAR shows her White Ensign and the Soviet Red Star of the Kashin-class (Project 61) destroyer Stroggi [sic].

Jaguar was a 2,500-ton Leopard-class (Type 41) frigate commissioned in 1959. A globetrotter, she completed a world cruise in 1969 and repeatedly went toe-to-toe with the Icelandic Coast Guard in the “Cod Wars” during which she was fitted with add-on lumber armor to absorb the impact from ramming ICG gunboats. Jaguar decommissioned in 1978 and transferred to Bangladesh as BNS Ali Haider (F17), serving until 2014.

As for the shorts, and FALs, they just historically go together.

A real deal Rhodie

Posted on by Leave a comment

Though there are tons of homage builds floating around, few actual Rhodie FAL’s are in circulation outside of Zimbabwe, and here is one up close and personal.

Larry Vickers of Vickers Tactical and Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons team up in a join table top discussion of a real deal Rhodesian 7.62x51mm NATO battle rifle from the Bush War period to include a rarely-seen Halbeck Device.

While Rhodesia, a Crown Commonwealth country, had started replacing their WWII-era .303 Enfields in the early 1960s with British-made L1A1 rifles– a semi-auto version of the FN FAL– they were cut off from arms shipments from the UK and the rest of the world by a UN Security Council embargo after 1966. The only countries that provided the regime with rifles were those who were also fighting their own insurgencies in Africa at the time: Portugal, who provided HK G3s, and South Africa, who coughed up some “sanitized” Belgian-made FALs (R1s) from their own stores.

Both baby-poop camo’d G3s (via Portugal) and assorted FAL patterns via South Africa on patrol in the veldt, late 1970s. Note most of the FAL’s have deleted carrying handles and at least two look to be carrying 30-rounders. Also, note the FN MAG on the left-hand side. 

In the above clip, Vickers points out the modifications made both by Pretoria and the Rhodesians themselves to include the removal of the South African crest– leaving a hole in the magazine well– the deletion of the carrying handle and the addition of the grenade launcher sights and garish green “baby poop” camo scheme.

But you want to see it go boom, yes? Yes.

FN FAL: ‘The right arm of the free world’

Posted on by Leave a comment

In the late 1940s, the Western allied countries in the NATO military pact were shopping for a new, modern battle rifle. With the Soviets and their Eastern bloc pals armed with the SKS and the select-fire AK-47, the bolt-action Enfields, Mausers, and MAS rifles of NATO were totally outclassed.

The Americans and British were rapidly testing new rifles at the time but Belgian arms giant FN—just recovering from the war and Nazi occupation of their factories themselves—turned to their master gun wonk, Dieudonne Saive to see what he could come up with.

Dieudonne Joseph Saive had been FN’s Chef de Service (chief weapons designer) for nearly two decades. When firearms genius John Moses Browning died, leaving his double-stack 9mm pistol incomplete, Saive finished it, creating the famous Browning Hi-Power. Besides that accomplishment, he had a hand in the Baby Browning pistol and the FN-49 rifle. It was this last gun, a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle that Saive used as a basis for FN’s new select-fire battle rifle.

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

fn fal

Nostalgia Trip: 5 Classic 50s Battle Rifles

Posted on by Leave a comment

In the 1950s cars were made out of steel, cigarettes were a food group, and men scraped the hair from their face with a straight razor. That decade where Elvis was thin and everybody liked Ike was also the golden age of the battle rifle.

In 1953, the infant NATO military alliance adopted the US-developed 7.62×51mm T65E3 cartridge as its standard rifle round. This round was destined to replace the US .30-06 fired by the M1 Garand, the British .303 of the Commonwealth Armies, the 8mm Mauser of the West German Army and others. It brought to the table a shorter length round that still had the power of the cartridges it replaced—but with less recoil. This led to a number of so-called battle rifle designs, ending the 70-year reign of the bolt-action rifle in military service. and Guns.com is looking at five classics, many of which are still around today:

Read the rest at GUNs.com

m14 ebr seeing hard service afghanistan 2013

(The m14 in the hands of the soldier above in Afghanistan is likely as old as his father, but is still trucking. Classics are like that)