The Pentagon on Wednesday announced a 10-year contract to General Dynamics-Ordnance & Tactical Systems for new M61A1 Vulcan 20mm guns.
The firm-fixed-price award, for $88,275,000, was granted to Gen Dyn by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, based at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. Classified as an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity requirements contract, it will cover the purchase of new M61A1s in support of the F-16 fighter aircraft. Of this amount, some $7.8 million in funds set aside for Foreign Military Sales were obligated. Notably, 25 overseas allies fly the aircraft along with Venezuela, which probably doesn’t rate FMS dollars anymore.
Battlefield Vegas’ 20mm Vulcan nicknamed ‘The Hand of God’ at the Big Sandy Shoot October 2018. (Photo: Ben Philippi / Guns.com)
More on the Vulcan contract, and Gen Dyn’s work on the Next Generation Squad Weapon for the Army, in my column at Guns.com.
I used to lovegun shows. Like a six-year-old on Christmas morning kinda love.
Now pushing a half-century under my keel, I remember the “good old days,” if you will, of the early 1990s when a mad rush of surplus from post-Cold War Eastern Europe was flooding in coupled with the liquidation of stocks long-held in NATO arsenals for the same reasons. You know, $99 Russian SKSs, $49 Turkish Mausers and Russian Nagant revolvers, $79 Spanish Mausers and M91 Mosins (with bayonets and accessories!), $125 SMLEs, $200 Walther P-1s, $150 Makarovs, Bavarian-marked M1 Carbines for $300, etc, etc. ad nauseam.
However, sometime around 2014 or so, after the great panic buys and skyrocketing prices of everything gun that came post-Newtown, I stopped going to shows as I found that 99 percent of items were just way, way overpriced and the “I know what I got, son,” guys were just so tiring when you tried to point it out. Carpetbaggers. Opportunists. In-authentic bottom feeders of the gun community. Gross.
Just as I was thinking about dipping my toe back into the water, I got this in the “new stuff” email from Empire Arms this week. If you don’t know, Dennis over there is the man, hitting the road like 200 days a year to scour the country for milsurp deals and passing them on to the people on his list.
Our recent visit to the TULSA ARMS SHOW was pitiful, as virtually everything I wanted to purchase at tables was priced at two to five TIMES what we would sell them for (and few, if any, items were actually moving at those obscene asking prices). There has to be a lesson there somewhere, as this “top-dollar” attitude is not doing anyone any good. I am certain that these dealers and table-holders actually didn’t feel that their prices were too high at all, it was just that literally everyone coming through the door of the show was a “cheap bastard” (including me, I guess).
Of course, any public entering the show with anything decent for sale got “low-balled” by these same self-righteous idiots. We purchased almost every one of the measly twenty guns we were able to buy from walk-ins (who commented bitterly on the ridiculous cheap offers they were given by folks who often had the very same stuff at three or five times what they were offering). Very discouraging!
The famed “blue devils” of the French Army’s 13e Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins (13e BCA) date back to before the Crimean War, when they were initially raised as the plain old 13e Bataillon Chasseurs à Pied (13e BCP), fighting as such in Algeria, the Italian unification wars, and the Franco-German War.
Transitioning into crack mountain infantry in 1888, they guarded key Alpine passes in peacetime, then in the Great War fought in the Vosges, the Somme, in the Italian Alps against the Austrians, and generally everywhere they were needed, earning seven unit Croix de Guerre by 1918.
“Les Diables Bleus” WWI Chasseurs Alpins by Georges Bertin Scott, circa 1915
The blue devils received their name due to their dark blue uniforms and large berets, retained to this day in their service and dress uniforms. Hard fighters, their motto is “Jamais être pris vivant,” (Never to be Taken Alive)
French blue devils Chasseurs alpins uniforms by Hector Large
French blue devils Chasseurs alpins marching order uniforms by Hector Large
Interbellum, they remained on the move for the Occupation of Germany, with vacations in sunny Tunisia to fight insurgents for the glory of the Republic.
Chasseurs alpins during the Occupation of the Ruhr in Buer (now Gelsenkirchen), 1923. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-09896
In WWII, following honors in the battle for Narvik against German mountain troops trying to hold on to Norway, they returned home to be dissolved by the Vichy government, leaving most of its members to shrug and quietly join the maquis resistance. Reforming their battalion in August 1944, they fought for and captured the Grand Roc Noir (11,752 ft) from the Germans before descending into the Aosta Valley in Italy by the end of the war.
French Chasseurs Alpins showing off a captured MG42 in the Alpine mountains, January 1945.
Since then, they fought in Algeria, prepared for mountain combat in the Cold War, and, since that thawed, have been very busy in recent years with deployments to Bosnia, Lebanon, Chad, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Djibouti.
Incidentally, the Chasseurs Alpins wear a distinctive piece of headgear: an oversized beret they call la tarte, or ‘the pie, ‘ and it is actually more useful than you think.
1st Lieutenant Clement from the 27th Brigade Chasseurs Alpins unit explains the various uses of la tarte, from keeping your feet warm to protecting your eyes from the sun. Clement and his fellow mountain infantry soldiers deployed to Rena, Norway, for Exercise Brilliant Jump 22, which tested the ability of the very high-readiness component of the NATO Response Force:
The Army’s recently announced budget request for the fiscal year 2022 includes at least $114 million for new rifles, handguns, and the next generation of small arms.
While the overall FY2022 Defense Department Budget is $112 billion, most of the non-operational dollars are for high-level R&D and big-ticket items like the F-35 fighter. The Army’s budget book for weapons and tracked combat vehicles meanwhile has a low nine-figure ask when it comes to individual small arms.
The bulk ($97 million) is to go to the Next Generation Squad Weapons, with much of the balance to acquire new Barrett-made Precision Sniper Rifles, and a few crumbs for M4s, M17s, and the like.
While most of Colt’s world-famous Python .357 Magnum models were service-sized and longer, some more abbreviated variants were made.
First introduced to Colt’s 1955 catalog for a price of $125 and pitched as “a finer gun than you actually need” to “a limited number of gun connoisseurs,” the big double-action revolvers were most common with barrel lengths in 6-inch and later 4-inch formats. There were even some big 8-inchers that came along eventually.
Downsizing, Colt produced a few short runs of these vaunted revolvers with a 3-inch barrel known to collectors as “Combat Pythons,” and, off and on between 1955 and 1994, the 2.5-inch model, which still sported full-sized grips.
The hybrid polymer-cased cartridge, developed by Texas-based True Velocity as part of the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program, is compatible with legacy firearms as well.
The 6.8mm TVCM composite case design, coupled with the Army’s 6.8mm (.277-caliber) common cartridge projectile, was originally developed and optimized for use in the NGSW-Rifle and NGSW-Automatic Rifle submissions submitted to that military program by General Dynamics-OTS. It performs better ballistically than 7.62 NATO and weighs 30 percent less.
However, using what True Velocity characterizes as a “switch barrel” capability, they have demonstrated it can work with much of the Army’s currently fielded small arms including the M240B belt-fed machine gun, the M110 semi-automatic sniper system, and the M134 minigun.
Which could mean that, even if NGSW tanks, there could be a revolutionary advance in the ammo used by U.S. troops in the near future.
Sig Sauer, as I’ve covered a few times in the past couple of years, is one of the three teams who are in the running for the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons, a group of guns using the same 6.8mm caliber that is set to replace the M4 and M249 families. Further, they are the only one that is solely a firearms company and plans to do everything in-house as opposed to the other two teams which are made up of several sub-contractors.
Their submission:
Sig’s MCX Spear series carbine aims to be the Army’s NGSW-Rifle, replacing the M4. Standard features include a fully collapsible and folding stock, rear and side charging handle, free-floating reinforced M-LOK handguard, fully ambidextrous controls, and a quick-detach Sig Next Generation suppressor. (Photo: Sig Sauer)
Sig’s Lightweight MMG is a belt-fed general-purpose weapon intended to become the Army’s NGSW-Automatic Rifle, replacing the M249 while hitting the scales at 40 percent lighter and with a round that has double the effective range of 5.56. (Photo: Sig Sauer)
Both platforms use Sig’s 6.8mm hybrid ammunition, which is billed as offering a significant reduction in weight over traditional ammo while offering better performance and greater penetration while using a 121-grain bullet. (Photo: Sig Sauer)
Further, Sig thinks they are positioned to pull it off, a move that, when coupled with the fact that their P320 pistol has been adopted as the M17/M18, would give the company the Pentagon small arms hat trick with the exception of 7.62 caliber platforms.
Sig Sauer this week announced it has completed the delivery of the company’s Next Generation Squad Weapons system to the U.S. Army.
The company is one of three contractors who in 2019 got the nod from the Pentagon to continue with the NGSW program. The sweeping initiative aims to replace the Army’s 5.56mm NATO small arms – the M4 Carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Sig’s program consists of an in-house-designed lightweight high-performance 6.8x51mm (.277-caliber) hybrid ammunition, NGSW-AR lightweight machine guns, NGSW-R rifles (based on the MCX carbine), and next-gen suppressors.
They certainly look the part and, if selected, would give Sig the small arms hattrick as their P320s have been adopted as the DOD’s standard handgun to replace everything from the USAF’s lingering K-frame 38s to the Marine’s M45 CQB railguns and everything in between. At that point, the only man-portable system used by the Army not made by Sig would be the M240 and M2, which FN still has a lock on.
Meet the hottest new semi-auto of 1977, the Browning Double Action, available in a 9+1 .38 Super or 9mm and, for those who are fans of only shooting once, a 7+1 .45ACP.
The resemblance with the early Sig Sauer P220 is striking. Hey…
Ludwig (Louis) Wilhelm Seecamp was a pre-WWII German gunsmith who, once called up and placed in the Gebirgsjäger, logically served as a unit armorer, furthering his firearm skills. Post-war, he emigrated to Canada and then to the U.S., starting a career with Mossberg that endured across the 1950s and 60s.
At age 72, he founded L.W. Seecamp Co. in 1973 after a lifetime of experience, specializing in double-action M1911 conversions until, in his 80s, he patented a series of compact DAO all-stainless pocket pistols that didn’t skimp on craftsmanship.
The LWS 32
The small double-action gun didn’t have sights, which adhered to Seecamp’s wartime experience on the Eastern Front.
As noted by the company’s history, “Ludwig had become a firm believer in the value of DA after a Walther P-38 saved his life in WWII. That incident, which left him with a cheek-long scar and some missing teeth from a bullet wound, also convinced him point shooting rather than sight use is the reality in close range combat.”
The LWS 32 proved so popular, introduced at a time when John Browning’s circa 1899 cartridge was dying out in defensive pistol use, that the handgun market was soon flooded with pocket pistols in the same caliber and general layout. These included the Beretta 3032 Tomcat, the NAA Guardian, and the Kel-Tec P-32.
As they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery…
