I recently hit the road and visited Carl Walther’s state-of-the-art factory in Ulm, Germany for a factory tour that also included a peek behind the curtain of the gunmaker’s custom and engraving shop.
Those who know Walther are well aware that the company has long produced exhibition and presentation-grade pistols for special occasions and to meet customer requests. Just drink these in.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Ulm is a beautiful city by any standard and has been home to Carl Walther GmbH since 1945
The current Walther factory, in Lehrer Feld along the autobahn just outside of the Danube bastion city of Ulm, contains nearly 130,000 square feet of floor space and opened in 2006. It is the birthplace of such innovative firearms as the PPQ and its all-steel sisters, the Q5 and Q4 Steel Frame, and today’s PDP series while continuing the company’s Olympic sports heritage with designs such as LG 400, LP 500, and KK 500, along with being the home of legacy designs such as the PPK.
I was lucky enough to be invited inside for a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Mississippi-based Olin Winchester this week secured a nine-figure Pentagon award for assorted handgun ammunition.
Based in Oxford, Olin-Winchester was awarded a $145 million fixed-price contract to make .38 caliber, .45 caliber, and 9mm ammunition for the Army. The contract was issued by the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.
The company has been making M1153 and M1152 9mm loads as part of the U.S. Army Modular Handgun System (MHS) program since 2016, but the inclusion of .38 and .45 is interesting and points to stocks of specialized or legacy firearms still in use by the military.
While the Army used M1911s in SF units as late as the recent trips to the sandbox, the last “official” 38s bought by the Army were Ruger Security Sixes for use by Dept. of the Army guards at assorted armories and depots in the 1980s…but the Army is still buying .38-caliber ammo
More in my column at Guns.com.
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.
More in my column at Guns.com.
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.
More in my column at Guns.com.
The current NGSW field
The U.S. Army is full-speed ahead on an initiative to select a new series of innovative 6.8mm-caliber Next Generation Squad Weapons to phase out its 5.56mm platforms for combat troops. However, it would seem the Department of the Army is hedging their bets with traditional systems just in case things don’t work out like planned such as in past ambitious programs for futuristic small arms.
In April, FN won a 5-year $119 million contract for new M4/M4A1 Carbines from the company’s South Carolina factory– where 500 of the shorty 5.56s roll out every, single, day.
And this week, Big Army likewise issued a $78 million award to FN for more M249s, the squad-level U.S-made variant of the FN Minimi light machine gun that has been standard since 1982.
Just google the Individual Carbine (IC), Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), or the Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) programs to see why keeping the legacy infantry arms in production until things work out is a good idea.
The army advanced combat rifle ACR prototypes.
Last year, FN apparently trialed a version of their MK 20 SSR (sniper support rifle) in 6.5 Creedmoor as USSOCOM was flirting with the idea of fielding the new– and increasingly popular– round for future use. Not to let research go to waste, the company just announced they will start selling the commercial variant of the SSR, the FN SCAR 20S, in 6.5CM.
Boom.
More in my column at Guns.com.
French trench raiders during the First World War, winter 1917 Bezange Forest, Lorraine, note the Ruby pistol.
The French military has flirted with modern semi-auto pistols for longer than most. During the Great War, thousands of Spanish-made Ruby and Star pistols augmented the country’s rather lackluster Modèle 1892 revolvers.
This cleared the way for the later FN 1922-inspired MAB Model D pistol and Charles Petter’s famous Mle. 1935, the latter design one that went on to morph into the Swiss SIG P210, arguably one of the best handguns of the 20th Century.
After WWII, the MAC Mle 1950, itself very P210-ish, was adopted and, coupled with the PAMAS G1, a domestically-made clone of the Beretta 92F, is still in service today.
The French MAC 50 PA modèle 1950 pistol
Now, 115 years after the Ruby was first ordered, the French defense ministry has placed an order for 75,000~ new Glocks.
The Glocks, reportedly a two-tone Gen 5 G17 MOS with a threaded barrel, suppressor-height night sight, and optics plate, will be delivered through 2022.
Besides the Austrian polymer pistols, the French are also going FN when it comes to a rifle to replace their venerable FR F2 (itself a souped-up MAS1936).
Sniper overwatch by a 3e RPIMa marksman with a French FR-F2, Rwanda, 1993. These rifles will be upgraded to SCAR H PRs in the coming years.
More in my column at Guns.com.
So a spent some time at Daniel Defense in Georgia recently, filming an episode of Select Fire. Marty Daniel has an interesting story, with the basis of his company starting because his golf game sucked.
They made their first rifle in 2009 and now, just a decade later, are cranking out 40,000 a year. Talk about growth.
So I told you guys that I spent some time in the Palmetto State last month filming at FN with Guns.com. Want to see how the tour went? I think you will find the M240 and M4 production lines interesting. Do you know FN makes roughly 500 M4s every single day?
After they’re test fired, they’re disassembled, cleaned, then reassembled and given a 101-point inspection. Then, they’re literally dipped in preservation oil and packaged 50 rifles to a large wooden crate.
Some poor Joe or Devil is going to have to clean that off one day…
Anyways, check out the full video below.
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