The Japanese military on Monday released the details of their first new small arms since the 1980s: a new Howa modular rifle and a variant of the Heckler Koch VP9.
The Japanese Ground Self Defense Force, the country’s army, debuted what will be termed the Type 20 5.56 rifle and the SPF 9mm pistol in future use.
More in my column at Guns.com.
The humble original M16 was originally Armalite’s AR-15, and was first ordered for military service with a contract issued to Colt Firearms in May 1962 for the purchase of early Model 01 rifles to be used by Air Force Security Police.
Note, these guns had waffle-pattern 20-round mags, no forward assist, a thin 1:14 twist barrel, and the early three-prong flash hider.
Fast forward to the XM16E1, which became the M16A1 in 1967, and you started to come closer to the standard Army/Marine rifle used in Vietnam and throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. It used a forward assist and a 1:12 twist barrel.
By 1983, the M16A2 came about, it had a thicker barrel in front of the front sight, a modified flash suppressor (closed on bottom), a new polymer buttstock (lighter and stronger), faster barrel twist (from 1:12 to 1:7), and a spent case deflector for left-hand users. Considered downright vintage by the Army and Marines, the Navy still sports them these days.
M16A2- check
M9 in drop leg holster- check
Body armor- um, about that……
By 1998, the M16A4 was in play, primarily for the Marines, which had a removable carry handle, a Picatinny top rail to allow for optics, short rails on the handguard for accessories, and a 20-inch barrel with a 1:7 RH twist rate.
Note the size difference between the compact M4 Carbine, top, and the full-length M16A4 rifle, bottom. (Photos: Department of Defense)
Since the GWOT kicked off in 2002, the big shift over the years has been to move from the full-length M16 family to the more compact M4/M4A1 carbine, with its collapsible rear stock and stubby 14-inch barrel, leaving the increasingly old-school style rifle as something of a relic today. Heck, the Army for the past couple years has been very actively working on replacing their 5.56 NATO rifles and SAWs with a new 6.8mm weapon.
Now jump to 2020, and the M16A4 is now apparently the Army’s designated rifle for Foreign Military Sales to equip overseas allies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Nepal.
Colt and FN are competing in a contract to supply as much as $383 million smackers worth of M16A4s by 2025.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Wisconsin-based Vortex Optics announced Monday they have entered into an agreement with the U.S. Army an agreement to deliver a possible component of the service’s Next Generation Squad Weapon.
The contract between the Pentagon and Vortex is an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement, an award type traditionally used to fund innovative prototype procurement and development of forward-looking technology. As such, Vortex will provide production-ready prototypes for use in Soldier TouchPoint evaluations.
The optic at the center of the OTA is Vortex’s 1-8×30 Active Reticle Fire Control, which the veteran-owned company explains is “built around a revolutionary technology based on many years of internal research and development, along with multiple cooperative development efforts with the Army’s PM-Soldier Weapons group.”
The Active Reticle has reportedly been proven to increase hit percentage and decrease time to engage during Soldier TouchPoints in the past two years. In the case of a battery power loss, users still have an uncompromised 1-8x, direct-view optic and glass-etched reticle, which alone exceeds current optics.
And it looks pretty sweet.
More in my column at Guns.com.
Heckler & Koch announced Thursday the first batch of Squad Designated Marksman Rifles left the HK-USA facility in Georgia, headed for the U.S. Army.
The platform, designated the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle (SDMR) in military service, is a variant of HK’s 7.62 mm NATO G28/HK417. The base guns are produced at HK’s factory at Oberndorf, Germany then shipped to the States where HK-USA workers in Columbus, Georgia install optics and accessories drawn from a dozen U.S.-based manufacturers.
The SDMR in all its glory, complete with HK German roll marks, offset backup sights, a Geissele mount, suppressor and Sig Tango6 optic. (Photo: HK)
More in my column at Guns.com.
The U.S. Army Contracting Command on Wednesday announced a contract award to Hecker & Koch worth over $33 million.
The Ashburn, Virginia-based company was awarded a $33.5 modification to contracts for the Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System and the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle. In a nutshell, the CSASS is a more precision rifle with a 3-20 power optic and match/sniper ammo while the SDMR is for use at the platoon-level with ball ammo and a 1-6x24mm optic.
The CSASS, classified by the Army as the M110A1 rifle, is a variant of the company’s G28 (HK241) platform chambered in 7.62 NATO. The rifle, which itself is a development of the HK417 series, was first green-lighted by Uncle in 2016.
The HK G28 variant used as the Army’s Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System, or M110A1. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
As its name program name would imply, the rifle is light, weighing in at 8.48-pounds sans optics and accessories. Its primary day optic is the Schmidt & Bender scope on a Geissele mount with accessories to include a suppressor and bipod.
I’ve handled them at trade shows, and they are really nice.
What’s not to love about an HK417, especially when it is set up as a DMR? (Photo: Chris Eger)
More in my column at Guns.com.
Groovy and very sci-fi looking new guns competing in the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons program were shown to the public last week.
Intended to replace the current standard M4 Carbine and M249 SAW light machine gun, the new NGSW contenders — which use 6.8mm (.277-caliber) hybrid ammunition with an EPR bullet– were on hand at the largest land warfare conference and tradeshow in North America: the Association of United States Army annual meeting (AUSA 2019) last week in Washington DC.
General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems, which is working with True Velocity and Beretta, showed off their new RM277 NGSW platform, a bullpup with lots of modularity.
Notably, the gun uses True Velocity’s 6.8mm composite-cased cartridge, which has a “drastic reduction in cartridge weight and enhanced accuracy.”
Other contenders include a team made up of Textron, which has subcontracted with ammo maker Winchester-Olin and firearms maker Heckler & Koch, while Sig Sauer is going it alone.
In the below, BG Dave Hodne, Director SL CFT, and BG Potts, PEO Soldier, talk about soldier lethality and how the NGSW fits into the equation, below.
From somewhere deep in the Old World’s borscht belt, a Russian with a rough haircut shows off the APS auto pistol and the PP-90 and PP-91 sub guns:
Sgt. Kirill Gorgoth lays mitts first on the wacky Stechkin APS automatic pistol, a hopped-up Makarov-ish handgun capable of dropping 9x18mm at 750rpm.
Next, he rolls deep with the PP-90 folding subgun which looks like a wonky VHS– because VHS is apparently still a thing in the USSR Russia.
Kirill then finishes with a Kedr PP-91 submachine gun, a handy (12-inches folded) blowback SMG designed by Evgeny Dragunov of SVD fame that can rat-a-tat at 1,000rpm.
Eye and ear pro? Nyet. Putin’s workout gloves and sweet full-auto action? Da. So much da.
The Kampfschwimmer units are the rough equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALS and, as noted in a video from the German military, they really dig that Heckler & Koch.
The above spot is in German, but relax if your Deutsch ist rusty because you could fit all the dialog onto a fortune cookie strip. The gist is: innocent German citizens are in deep sauerkraut somewhere sketchy and the KSM get tasked to pull them out before bad guys with Kalashnikovs can do weird scheisse to them.
After jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, the German frogmen are taken aboard a sneaky little Type 212 diesel-electric submarine — which has a convenient compartment for combat swimmers while their gear gets passed out via 533mm torpedo tube. Then, said KSM platoon pops up silently all spec ops pimp in the shallow water offshore and moves in. That’s when you see the beauty that is tricked-out HK MP7 SMGs along with G38 and G36 rifles and other assorted goodies right from the Willy Wonka of precision steel schmidt that is Oberndorf am Neckar.
After finding the good guys, then checking their names and mother’s names, the group exfils under the cover of snipers armed with what looks like HK417s in 7.62x51mm, dusting some Eurotrash clowns in a tiny pursuit vehicle.
“Request for hot extract” is universal.
The Heckler & Koch HK53 was designed in the 1970s as an ultra-compact version of their 5.56mm HK33, basically, the German answer to the Warsaw Pact AKS-74U Krinkov or Colt’s various Vietnam-era Commando models. They saw some export success, and in the U.S. the pre-Homeland Security Border Patrol adopted them for some tactical teams (hey, Customs had the Steyr-AUG at the same time, so you can see the need for competition).
Well, SilencerCo teamed up with Canton, Michigan’s Dakota Tactical Firearms to craft a limited run of just ten (10) roller-locked semi-auto HK53s SBRs in .300 BLK, equipped with matching Omega suppressors.
Termed the D300 by DTAC, these guns usually run bigfoot on a unicorn rare on the market. Each uses an 8.3-inch free-floated fluted barrel and a “sear-ready” tungsten-filled bolt group. The DTAC hand guard is freckled with M-Lok (because what isn’t these days?) while the receiver runs a 1913 Pic rail for your optic needs that go beyond the standard HK drum/post sights. A collapsible A3 stock, tools and 30-round mag complete the package.
How mucho do they run? Check out my column at Guns.com for that stocking sticker, along with some more sweet pics.
Despite some issues and a controversy over accuracy, the Lithuanian Army is doubling down on HK G36s.
Oberndorf, Germany, August 31, 2016:
Heckler & Koch will supply the Lithuanian armed forces with additional G36 assault rifles and the new 40mm grenade launcher, the HK269. The Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence placed the order at the end of August 2016. The contract is for approx. €12.5 million (USD14 million). Delivery will be in 2017.
The G36 has been the Lithuanian Army’s standard assault rifle since 2007. The new order is for a modified version of the G36, which the Lithuanian armed forces have designated the G36 KA4M1. The weapon configuration that has been ordered corresponds to the experience, observations and recommendations of the users. The modular G36 KA4M1 will be equipped with new buttstocks, slimmer handguards and modified sight rails. The 40mm HK269 that is being introduced at the same time differs from its predecessors in that it is possible to open the barrel on either side, so that the weapon can be used with ease by both left and right-handed users.
It’s not the only update to the country’s military, as Lithuania has received about 200 combat and medium-lift Mercedes-Benz GD vehicles, trucks and other military vehicles from the Netherlands in a $7 million deal to supplement and update the Baltic country’s military fleet.
This comes as NATO has announces a commitment to base four mechanized battalions (drawn from U.S., British, German and Canadian forces) in Eastern Europe backed up by a further 5,000-man Joint Task Force.
But in the spirit of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Lithuania is passing 150 tons of surplus Cold War Soviet ammunition, mainly 7.62x39mm cartridges, to embattled neighbor Ukraine. Nostrovia!