Tag Archives: M95

Steyr, Now Czech Owned

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Legendary Austrian firearms maker Steyr Arms has been purchased by the Czech Republic-based RSBC Investment Group.

RSBC, with its corporate headquarters in Prague, has been in the small arms business for almost a decade, having previously acquired Slovenian gunmaker AREX Defense in 2017. The group announced last week that it had assumed a 100-percent stake in Steyr from the German-based SMH Holding group.

Steyr, between its Austrian operation and Steyr USA subsidiary, employs over 200 and includes the legacy Mannlicher brand. It dates to at least 1864 when it was founded by gunmakers Josef and Franz Werndl.

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The Werndls had fast success in their innovative 11mm M1867 Werndl–Holub breechloading rifle, of which some 600,000 were ordered by the Austrian military and police. Changing the company’s name to OWG (Osterreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft = Austrian arms factory company), it followed up with Ferdinand Mannlicher’s bolt-action magazine-fed rifle platform in 1886, of which over 3 million were built before 1918.

And who can forget the Steyr 1912?

Remaining foremost a firearms company, it branched out over the years into bicycles, trucks, and automobiles and evolved first into Steyr-Werke AG in 1924 and then to Steyr-Daimler-Puch in 1934.

Following World War II, Steyr made the FN FAL under license for the Austrian military as the StG58, then found international success with the SSG precision rifle and MPi 69/81 submachine gun.

The Austrian Bundesheer’s MG 74 is an MG42/59 variant licensed from Beretta and manufactured by Steyr Mannlicher used since 1974

In 1977, Steyr introduced the revolutionary AUG bullpup rifle, adopted by the Austrian military as the StG 77, followed by the pioneering GB and M series pistols, and the Steyr Scout bolt-action rifle.

A Royal Oman Army soldier with an Austrian-made Steyr AUG, standard issue not only in Austria and Oman but also in Australia Bolivia, Ecuador, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malaysia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Pakistan

By 1989, with the breakup of the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate, the firearms and air gun business spun off into the firm of Steyr Mannlicher before morphing into Steyr Arms in 2019. It was purchased by SMH Holding in 2007.

RSBC plans to fold Steyr and AREX into a division headed by current AREX CEO, Tim Castagne, to “enable both companies to offer an all-encompassing portfolio in the future.”

Apparently in the Ukraine somewhere is a cache of M95 Steyr Mannlichers

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The Ukrainian Army is working on uniforms for their Presidential Regiment, a reinforced company/light battalion-sized force detailed with ceremonial guard of honor duties with a secondary detail as public order troops in the capital area.

Not wanting to rely on past Russian/Soviet uniforms, influences and weapons for obvious reasons (their current service uniforms already look more like NATO’s than Moscow’s anyway), the uniform proposals blend a lot of different things from the country’s past including gear worn by the army of the old Kievan Rus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; various Don and Kuban Cossacks of different periods; the Russian Civil War-era rule of Hetman of the Ukraine Pavlo Skoropadsky; the armed forces of the Ukrainian People’s Republic; and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of WWII and the 1950s.

One such dress uniform drawn from this buffet of military history is the proposal below.

 

If you note carefully, the rifle for the unit is the M1895 Steyr, an 8x56Rmm bolt gun with an enbloc clip magazine used by the Royal and Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI and the Germans in WWII.

Bosnian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army take aim at enemies on the Isonzo Front, 1917. Note the Steyrs

It makes a lot of sense as the Tsar’s Army (which included millions of Ukrainians) captured hundreds of thousands of M95s in the early part of the war and reissued them to the Empire’s troops. The Austrians also provided a few trainloads of the rifles to Skoropadskyi’s troops and Hetman Pyotr Krasnov’s Don Cossacks in 1918 to use against the Reds, and the Germans did the same for various Ukrainian and Cossack irregulars in WWII.

In a way, the Austrian rifle is more “Ukrainian” than the Mosin-Nagant if you think about it.

And if you told me that somewhere along the Don a warehouse exists that is still full of M95s still in arsenal condition waiting to be issued, I would not be the least surprised.