Nestled between military barracks, headquarters buildings, officers’ clubs and canal systems in the Dusit District of Bangkok is the home of the Royal Thai Army Ordnance Corps compound. Unlike some of the more congested, loud and smelly parts of city, the area between the Bang Sue MRT station on the Blue Line and Victory Monument is a much more relaxed scene, allowing a visitor to take a calming stroll to the Royal Thai Army Ordnance Department. Finding the museum is as simple as looking it up on Google Maps; however, gaining entry to the museum is another quest entirely. Small Arms Review was graciously offered the opportunity to tour the museum by a long-time friend of the magazine. The museum is in an old building that overlooks Thahan Road on which the entry to the Army Ordnance Department is situated. For a visitor out of the blue, the ability to enter the museum or not is more contingent on the guards and officers on duty at the main gate to the Army Ordnance Corps compound. Some visitors have found access this way; others have not. Currently, the senior officers within the Army Ordnance Corps want to permanently offer the museum to the public on a visitor basis, but this will most likely be a year in the making. We would recommend partnering with a Thai friend, calling beforehand and walking in with him or her in order to translate.

The Royal Thai Army Ordnance Corps is the primary branch of the Royal Thai Army (RTA) that is responsible for manufacturing, issuing and servicing the ordnance needs of the RTA and has been active for many years in this capacity. Thailand receives the lion’s share of its equipment from overseas purchases and especially from U.S. military aid programs since the Vietnam War. But there are a number of indigenous manufacturing programs that the Ordnance Corps takes part in. One of the biggest is the 5.56x45mm NATO HK33 rifle that was produced at the same Bangkok com-pound. In Thai military and law enforcement service, the HK33 was adopted as the Type 11 in the 1990s, differing for both branches in terms of engravings and markings. Currently, the Ordnance Corps only services and refurbishes active-service Type 11s while the Corps ramps up for the licensed manufacture of TAVOR TAR-21 rifles at the facility. The TAR-21 is already used by the RTA as purchased from IWI in Israel, but this will allow the Ordnance Corps to continue manufacturing the majority of their own service rifles.

Although the RTA traces its origin to its founding in 1874, the museum collection spans well beyond that year, reaching into periods where Thai soldiers fought without firearms or cannons. This includes various swords, spears and shields that were used in historic battles. Where the museum is strongest is in its early to mid-20th century collection. Here we saw a wide variety of contract small arms and prototypes that came into Thailand from all over Europe and the United States. Many of these were sent to Thailand for trial and were thereafter retained by the Ordnance Corps in the reference collection where they lie today. With the outbreak of hostilities that would engulf Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, Pol Pot’s era in Cambodia and especially the Communist insurgency in northern Thailand, the collection moved toward the captured mate-riel that came with fighting Communists in the north and the resulting U.S. aid that flowed in at the same time. Items such as early Armalite AR-15s with green furniture, XM177 carbines and covertly produced Chinese AK-47s marked as “M22” are very representative for this period. After the end of large combat operations, we noticed a marked decline of small arms in the collection with the exception of indigenously produced Thai Ordnance Corps materiel which includes some very niche designs and prototypes for the military.

The museum’s first floor is the presentation hall where visitors are greeted by a sign in Thai over the entry door. Luckily for photographers, barely any of the small arms in the hall are encased in glass, so good photographs of minute details and markings are relatively easy to achieve. If the Ordnance officers present that day are especially kind, one will be able to get behind the stands and take in-depth photo graphs up close.

This hall is organized in a wraparound fashion where visitors snake through the displays that are organized chronologically. The first displays presented to the visitors as they enter are to the left and are early cannons used by previous Thai dynasties, especially during the reign in the ancient city of Ayutthaya when it was the seat of the kingdom before being destroyed by the Burmese in 1767. Rounding the corner is a wooden royal chariot built by the Ordnance Corps that was used in the king’s coronation ceremony. After the chariot, is a long row of First and Second World War heavy machine guns and cannons. The heavy machine guns range from Thai contracted Vickers, Maxims, Japanese variants and even some French examples, among others. This section concludes with a wall marking where the Communist insurgency begins, featuring small arms captured by the Communists and those used against them. Rounding up from this exhibit is an entire wall dedicated to Thai prototypes of the Type 11, various examples of working with the M1 Garand rifle to create better stocks and, most fascinating, a display of Thailand’s experimentation with using Type 11 rifle grenades to shoot planting seed canisters from helicopters over rural areas in order to stimulate agricultural programs in the kingdom. The Thai government has always taken a very serious interest in the country’s agricultural programs, so developing something like this isn’t entirely surprising in the Thai context. Outside of it, however, the canisters are quite the unique invention. It is not known how effective the program was as it is not in use today by any Thai government agency.

Above the presentation hall on the second floor is the reserve collection of the museum. This is where all the small arms that are not on display are kept. They are secured by chains to rifle racks or kept in glass cases, with a separate section for handguns. Entering the hall, it is customary for Thai people to pay their respects to an altar that is situated in one of the corners of the room. This is where most of the prototype and trials rifles from the 19th and 20th centuries are kept, as opposed to mostly machine guns and cannons downstairs. Possibly one of the more interesting artifacts in this room is a set of complete machine shop drawings for Danish Madsens, all written in Thai. A number of Madsens exist in Thailand with extensive Thai markings on them, begging the research question: to what extent did the Thais engage in Madsen production in the interwar years?

Visiting

The Royal Thai Army Ordnance Corps Museum is a tough one to get into for the casual visitor, so putting it on a checklist for Bangkok will take more than jotting it down as a line item. But for the serious small arms researcher and especially for anyone doing historic small arms research in Southeast Asia, the collection is an absolute requirement.

The museum is open on a case-by-case basis. Our best recommendation would be to call ahead and work with a Thai partner to help a visitor through the process, especially with translation.

Israel’s fight for independence after the Second World War is filled with spectacular and courageous exploits and daring moves in order to thwart both the British government in Palestine and the resulting Arab advances. One such story is that of the “Ayalon Institute” on Kibbutz Hill outside of the town of Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv. It was here that for several years after the war, several million rounds of 9x19mm ammunition were produced for the Haganah under the supervision of Ta’as. This military industry wing would later morph into Israel Military Industries (now, IMI Systems) after independence. 

In preparation for the independence of Israel, the Haganah leadership understood the importance of having a stable supply of ammunition. One of the more widely used small arms that the Haganah used were captured or smuggled 9mm STEN submachine guns (of which Ta’as is reported as having actually produced over 4,000 from improvised workshops). In order to supply both current ammunition needs and to prepare a dispersed stockpile around Palestine for an eventual outbreak of hostilities, Ta’as began a covert 9x19mm ammunition manufacturing operation. Everything about the operation had to be shrouded in multiple layers of secrecy and redundancy. From disguising the need to import copper in order to make lipstick tubes to timing the test fire of ammunition to exactly when a nearby train would pass by in order to mask the sound of the gunfire, everything needed to be kept in utmost secrecy from the British authorities.

Such was the secrecy during and even after the ammunition production that the underground factory wasn’t known publicly until 1987 when a local school teacher had been reading the diary of one of the workers. Thereafter it was turned into a museum where visitors can still take a guided tour of the factory in Hebrew or in English for a small fee. There has also been some research conducted outside of the museum, so researchers are welcome to learn even more about the operation in more depth than this article has to offer or even make a visit to the factory. For example, we know more about the types of headstamps that the factory produced, which can be found throughout Israel, and some have even made it into cartridge collections in the United States.

When arriving by car to the Ayalon Institute, one can park directly outside the visitors’ office entrance. Visitors need to schedule a visit ahead of time by calling the center and specifying an English or Hebrew tour. Admittance is 30 Shekels paid at the counter. The tour begins by watching an informational movie about the factory, its origins and some of the operations post-Second World War. Then the tour guide takes over and guides visitors through many of the important talking points situated throughout the small factory.

The underground factory was built in less than a month under the guise of making a storage cellar for the local kibbutz that was established above ground. It was essentially a long hall that was around 50 meters in length and had a ceiling approximately 6 meters in height. This entire facility was 8 meters underground with a laundry above one end and a bakery above the other. Workers entered through the laundry through a mechanism that lifted up a heavy laundry machine for 3 minutes, in which the entire staff would have to either come out or go in at certain periods in the day. At the other end where the bakery was, the oven was built on hidden rails that allowed it to be moved several meters forward, thus making a wide opening for the lowering of the heavy machinery needed to roll cases or punch headstamps out.

The factory itself was very well-organized as a standard assembly line for ammunition production, starting with the beginning stages of shaping raw material on one end to filling cases with powder, pressing in bullets and primers on the other. The factory even had a test range where different lots of ammunition would be tested for velocity and penetration standards. It also had a dining section so workers could eat, a bathroom and even a UV room where workers would have to spend a certain amount of time so that their cover stories of working in the fields all day could be justified to those in the kibbutz and more importantly to the British, who had a base almost next door to the community center.

In order for visitors to get a better realization of what the factory might have looked like during operation, the museum has dummies in positions of working on the machines and has printed out, scaled-up photographs of actual workers during their time at the factory. We like the creative attempt to make these life-size cutouts of the real people involved with the factory as it gives a visitor a real sense of the kinds of young people that took enormous risk to work covertly.

Workers would complete 10-hour shifts in extremely hot conditions, always fearful of an accidental explosion from the propel-lants. Estimates in the factory claim that at times almost 14,000 rounds could be completed in a single day of work; another source even stated that almost 40,000 rounds were produced at the factory’s peak. An initial figure of 2.25 million rounds is quoted for total ammunition production during the 3 years of operation from 1946 to 1948, but there are others that quote an even higher amount. The completed ammunition would be boxed in standard 50-round cardboard boxes and then transported above ground at the end of every day. It would be picked up by a driver who was already delivering various supplies for the bakery and would come in the evening. This driver would then deliver the ammunition to Ta’as authorities which saw to it that it was distributed across the numerous rebel groups throughout Palestine. Very little of each operation was known to the other division due to the need to keep the secrecy of the entire organization.

In conclusion, we would highly recommend a visit to the Ayalon Institute; it is well worth the drive down to Rehovot and the admittance fee to peak into a fascinating aspect of Israeli history. Especially in light of the current closing of the IDF History Museum for the foreseeable future. The visitors’ center also sells various books and CDs about the factory that are not available online for purchase internationally 

THE AYALON INSTITUTE

Visiting Hours

Sunday–Thursday: 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Friday: 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Saturday: 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Make sure to call ahead and lock down a spot on an English or Hebrew tour ahead of time as slots can fill up quickly. If you are not slotted for a tour, they cannot let hop on.

Contact Info

Tel: 08-9406552, 08-9300585
Fax: 08-9407534
Email: ayalon@shimur.org.il

While in Afghanistan Small Arms Review received the unique opportunity to examine a 9x18mm PM Makarov-patterned, self-loading handgun that was produced in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Northwestern Pakistan. Small arms produced in this region have been colloquially referred to as “Khyber Pass Guns” due to their point of travel into Afghanistan through the passage of steep mountain valleys between Torkham in Pakistan and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Somewhat of a misnomer, the majority of these firearms are actually made nowhere near the Khyber Pass. Instead, a more correct and prominent center of gunmaking in the region is the small town of Darra Adam Khel, which lies approximately 40 kilometers due south from Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. 

The name “Darra” is important to take into account because locals on the ground refer to indigenously produced firearms as “Darraie” guns, adding the Dari descriptive postfix to the first name of the town, Darra. Although Darra Adam Khel has always been the center of craft firearms production in the region, there have been many other villages that engaged in gunmaking as well. Many of these have lost their prominence or have been shut down in the modern era. Despite this discrepancy in the actual origin of any firearm from Darra or from another village, Afghans and Pakistanis will refer to any firearm locally produced or assembled as a “Darraie” gun. 

Among many Western analysts and experts there is an attitude to refer to indigenous firearms that are almost carbon-copied from their original counterparts as “copies” or “fakes.” However the reality of local Afghans and Pakistanis is quite different when looked upon with 

a critical eye. These firearms aren’t made to “trick” or “fool” a local or tourist into purchasing a seemingly authentic rifle, only to find out later it was not an authentic production (though this hasn’t stopped generations of travelers from falling into this predicament, if only for a lack of local knowledge). It is a very implicit understanding between buyer and seller whether or not a firearm is a Darraie or an “Asleey” (Dari for “original”). The difference will be in the price and intent. The reason why one would purchase a Darraie instead of an original is because buyers want something that is as close to the original firearm as possible, but the price might be too high or supply might not be there at all. Affluent Afghans will always be sure to tell guests that their firearms are in fact the “real deal,” as one Kabul-based antique shop seller put it, as opposed to being a Darraie that lower class Afghans might have to contend with. Of course, there might be a few hiccups, unknowns and misidentifications among sellers and customers, but for the most part originals and Darraies are very well segregated within the Afghan and Pakistani markets. 

Market Conditions 

In examining this particular Darraie Soviet Makarov-patterned copy, we will first start with a description of the market surrounding the handgun. The owner purchased it on the Kabul black market for approximately $300 USD which included a magazine and four rounds of 9x18mm ammunition, also reloaded in the KPK Region. For another $300 USD in local Afghanis, two more magazines and 50 rounds of Chinese 9x18mm ammunition still in its original foam and cardboard packaging were purchased. These prices are typical for ammunition and a Darraie Makarov on the Kabul black market. An original Soviet Makarov will fetch double the $300 price tag and even more based on its condition and scarcity on the market. 

The Darraie Makarov Handgun 

At a cursory glance and without a basic knowledge of PM Makarov variants and derivatives, the Darraie Makarov handgun is made true to form and would appear to be simply another weather handgun, a survivor of the now decades of fighting in the region. The left side of the handgun has a stenciled factory scrawl of “WE 1314 (Izhmash Triangle) 91,” with an alleged manufacture date of 1991 (but this isn’t present on the slide). The magazine lacks markings, but the Bakelite pistol grips are present with the Soviet star on the sides. A note here is that many Darraie firearms will not be entirely produced from raw materials in Pakistan. Many are composites of original components from broken or otherwise unusable firearms, mixed with the Khyber Pakhtunkwa-produced portions. In this case the Bakelite grip might be an original PM Makarov, as indigenous gunmakers have taken a much longer time to catch up to evolutions in polymer manufacturing and fabrication technology. 

But once we get past the outward appearances of the handgun and start taking it apart to look at individual components, profiles and fitting, the differences between a Darraie and an original Makarov become stark. Luckily, we were able to have on hand a spare PM Makarov parts kit originating from outside of Afghanistan. In an attempt to test interchangeability, we wanted to see which spare parts would fit in the Darraie handgun and found out that the majority of the original components were not at all interchangeable with the handgun. In fact, some of them, such as the trigger and transfer bars, actually completely impaired the handgun when inserted, making it almost non-functioning until removed. 

A similar phenomena was present with the ammunition. The cartridges that had been fired and reloaded in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were dimensionally offset from the new in-box, factory-produced Chinese 9x18mm cartridges that were almost certainly to specification in regards to a comparison with other 9x18mm cartridges from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and East Germany. But actual function in the firearm actually proved the reverse. The Darraie rounds fed, extracted and ejected flawlessly when the action was worked, but the Chinese factory rounds could not eject as their dimensions wouldn’t allow them to (as they were longer), while the Darraie rounds would. Although our sample size is small, if there are more of these Darraie rounds, then one has to conclude that there might be a 9x18mm “Darraie” that is being loaded and works with the Darraie Makarov handguns. Unfortunately, we were not able to conduct a live-fire test to see if the rounds would function reliably. 

Although not in the same location, we were able to compare angles through photographs of a Soviet PM Makarov with a production date of 1983, courtesy of the Phoenix Defence working reference collection and Dan Shea. 

Black Hills Ammunition will be debuting four new cartridges this year as the company continued to expand its ammunition offerings to the public. Of note for this year is a .357 Magnum lever-action round, an updated commercial offering of the MK 262 MOD 1, a .308 Win lead core offering and a new 6.5mm Creedmoor round that is aimed at the hunting market. All these rounds will be available for purchase this year from dealers and online stores that market Black Hills ammunition.

.357 Magnum HoneyBadger

The .357 Magnum load from Black Hills comes with a 127-grain HoneyBadger monolithic bullet that is CNC-machined. The round is intended for hunting with revolvers or can be used safely in the tubular magazines of lever-action rifles. Black Hills states revolver terminal ballistics in tests as penetrating up to 18 inches with a 4.5-inch wound cavity, while carbine-length barrels (18 inches tested) show a penetration of 24 inches and a wound cavity of 6 inches in diameter. In both cases, bullets are reported to retain 100% of their weight. 

Originally the HoneyBadger bullet design fell under the nomenclature of Lehigh Defense due to the collaboration during development, but it has been subsequently changed. The line includes a number of handgun loads for 9x19mm, .38 Special, .44 Special, .45-70 and even .380 ACP. What makes the round unique are three to four (depending on caliber) spiral flutes that form the composition of the copper bullet, in addition to the non-deforming and non-fragmenting characteristics when penetrating animals or barriers.

According to Black Hills’ press release: “Since the projectile is a precision-machined monolithic bullet (solid copper), there is no chance of failure due to bullet fragmentation even at the much higher velocities generated when fired though the carbine. … This exceptional performance comes as the result of specially designed, fluted copper projectile, which does not rely on expansion to produce the desired terminal effect. The projectile instead is designed so the machined flutes cut and grab tissue as the bullet passes through tissue at high velocity, focusing and accelerating the tissue flow radially from the bullet.”

Cartons come in 30-round segments marked as “.357 Magnum 127 Gr. HoneyBadger.”

MK 262 MOD 1 Commercially Packaged

Black Hills first began working with the U.S. military in 1996 when the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit needed a more accurate 5.56x45mm round for their shooting competitions. A successful 80-grain bullet was produced that proved accurate out to the 600m that the AMU was shooting at. This led to the beginning of a relationship with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane in 1999 for fielding a better 5.56x45mm round for the MK 12 Special Purpose Rifle that began use in special operations but later migrated to the Marine Infantry as its use in combat with what would become the MK 262 MOD 1 77-grain bullet made by Black Hills Ammunition. Specifically paired with the MK 262, the MK 12 project sourced a number of different components over its timeline, but generally the rifle used M16A1 lower receivers and A1/A2 buttstocks, 18-inch barrels, Knights Armament handguards, Leupold optics and a quick detach suppressor. These rifles continued to see service with the Marine Infantry into the final stages of Operation Enduring Freedom where they were still being used in combat in 2014. The Marine Corps specifically liked the MK 262 enough to extend issue to beyond the MK 12 shooters and to Marines armed with M16A4s, M4s and M27 IARs.

Black Hills initially offered the MK 262 MOD 1 to the civilian commercial market as the 77-grain Open Tipped Match (OTM) in standard 20-round cardboard packaging. This new offering from Black Hills will be explicitly packaged as MK 262 MOD 1-C in metal ammunition cans and the cardboard DOD packaging, with the “C” meaning “Commercial.”

“This round is the exact construction and performance of U.S. Military MK 262 MOD 1. (Since this is not being shipped to the U.S. Military, it does not undergo full U.S. military acceptance procedures.) MK 262 MOD 1-C is available in a military can containing 460 rounds in 20-round cartons. It is otherwise identical, and each can comes with the same lot acceptance accuracy documentation that is provided on military lots. No lot of MK 262 MOD 1-C will ship unless it shoots group averages of 2 inches or less at 300 yards (.64 MOA maximum/10 shot groups),” according to Black Hills.

The price of 460 rounds is going to be approximately $460 where it is available through dealers and distributers. Ammunition will come packaged in cardboard cartons that are packed in metal ammunition cans. Cartons are marked, “20 Cartridges, 5.56x45mm Special Ball, LR 77 Gr. Sierra OTM MK 262 MOD 1-C” with their respective lot number.

Dual Performance .308 Win and 5.56x45mm

New for this year on the hunting scene is a monolithic copper bullet for both the .308 Win and 5.56x45mm platforms. Loads are available in 62-grain 5.56x45mm and 152-grain .308 Win bullets.

According to Black Hills, “The Dual Performance projectiles are precision-machined, monolithic copper projectiles that immediately expand upon impact to form a large temporary cavity exceeding that of conventional bullets. Once the large primary cavity is created, the petals release from the body of the projectile to cut separate wound tracks through the stressed tissue. The body of the bullet, still retaining a very substantial portion of the original weight, but now free from the unnecessary drag, penetrates deeply to ensure maximum effect on the target.”

.308 Win rounds will come in yellow and black cartons packed in 20-round segments with “.308 Win Match 152 Gr. Dual Performance” marked on the side of the carton. 5.56x45mm rounds will come in red and black cartons packed in 30-round segments with “5.56mm 62 Gr. Dual Performance” marked on the sides.

6.5 Creedmoor 120-Grain Hornady GMX 

Black Hills is now loading 6.5mm Creedmoor with 120-grain Hornady GMX bullets. Gilded Metal eXpanding (GMX) is a bullet line that Hornady introduced in 2009. The design uses a monolithic bullet with a polymer tip that initiates the expansion of the round once it penetrates wild game. Black Hills went with Hornady GMX due to the increased performance over lead core bullets in weight retention (100% as compared to 50% to 70% as quoted). 

Black Hills stated: “The excellent GMX design causes the bullet to open immediately upon impact, over a wide range of velocities, causing large diameter wound cavities that anchor game quickly and humanely. Monolithic gilding metal bullets, because they retain their weight, do not need to be as heavy for caliber and application as conventional bullets and can thus be pushed to higher velocity.” 

Cartons will come in yellow and black packed in 20-round segments marked with “6.5 Creedmoor 120 Gr. GMX” on the side of the carton. 

SHOT Show 2020 has come, has excited and now is over. This year was similar to previous years and, if anything, might have seen an increase in participating vendors, necessitating a mid-week Pop-Up booth section on the 5th floor of the Sands Expo and Convention Center for the second year in a row. Despite the enormous diversity within the firearms industry, there were some trends that became clearly relevant to those who wandered the booths throughout the week. Possibly the biggest in terms of the defensive handgun market was the mass adoption of handguns with red dot optics mounts, or at least having an optics-capable plate on handgun slides. Last year, some of the larger companies were trickling in with limited optics capability, but this year it certainly took the industry by storm with a significant percentage of every handgun manufacturer, importer or distributor offering a wide breadth of optics, optics plates or optics-ready slides in everything from their standard offerings to their custom shop product lines, standard duty packages and subcompact defensive setups. Also of note, in terms of product trends, was the continued march of the pistol brace, starting with SB Tactical, Gear Head Works and now Magpul; industry partners across the board were sprouting up with improved designs of their own or supplying products with some of the aforementioned companies. 

This has also been a significant year of military acceptance trials, with SIG SAUER taking home the SOCOM .338 Norma Magnum acceptance and Barrett Firearms being awarded the Advanced Sniper Rifle (ASR) contract also by SOCOM. Development continues on polymer-cased ammunition in the form of True Velocity’s selection to supply significantly lighter and reportedly more reliable rounds to the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program, which is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Dillon Aero has upped the game with both .50 BMG and .338 Norma Magnum redesigns of its M134D Minigun.

Otis Technology Purchases DRD Tactical

DRD Tactical recently fell under the Otis wing in October last year and demonstrated its APTUS® rifle at the show this year. This rifle recently won a contract with a close U.S. ally in Asia in August 2019.

Magpul Pistol Brace

The polymer magazine company is diving deep into the accessories field this year with several new products. Of particular note is the new Magpul AR-15 pistol brace, of which there are two variants, the BTR and the BSL. Also added to the product line are a number of drum magazines for the CZ EVO, dedicated GLOCK interface drums for pistol caliber carbines and polymer stocks for the Savage 110 and Ruger PC-9. 

Trijicon Ventus Rangefinder

Alongside new optics and magnifiers was the Trijicon Ventus™ Rangefinder. The device is touted to be able to read six different wind values up to ranges of 500 yards and then able to lase as a rangefinder out to 5,000 yards. The ability to mechanically make wind calls is a very rare capability in the industry despite a pressing need for accurate wind call measurements in the precision rifle community. 

CZ-USA Bren 2 MS Carbine

CZ is bringing a 16.5-inch barrel rifle variant of their Bren pistol line which has been on the U.S. civilian market for over a year now. The rifle is a semiautomatic civilian variant of the select fire Bren rifle which has seen limited adoption by the Czech Armed Forces. Handguards are M-LOK-compatible with built-in rail sections along the sides and bottom while a full-length optics rail runs the length of the rifle. CZ officials have hinted at a possible .308 Win release for the U.S. market as well.

Patriot Ordnance Factories Handguns and AR-15 Pistols

POF-USA made some news earlier last year when the company introduced a .22 LR AR-15 pistol with brace that was compatible with Ruger 10/22 magazines called the Rebel .22LR. This was certainly an attraction at the show, but what also got attendees’ attention was the P19 handgun which is a 9x19mm semiautomatic patterned after a GLOCK 19 Gen4 frame while using some of the aftermarket parts that POF already makes for the GLOCK market.

Century Arms AK-74 Rifles

The military surplus and budget rifle manufacturer Century Arms is introducing 5.45x39mm AK-74-patterned rifles to the U.S. civilian market amid a large marketing campaign aiming at getting more 5.45mm rifles into the hands of U.S. shooters.

Christensen Arms .22 LR Precision Rifle, 5.56mm and 9mm AR Rifles

New this year is the Ranger 22, a 5.1-pound precision bolt-action rifle that is compatible with Ruger 10/22 magazines. Also new this year are lightweight competition AR-15-patterned 5.56x45mm and 9x19mm rifles and carbines.

Heckler & Koch VP9-Optics Capable

While not coming with a particular optic, HK is bringing their VP9 handgun to market with five mounting plate options that customers can specify on their orders. These plates are drilled and threaded to accommodate miniature reflex sights from Trijicon, Leupold, C-More Systems, Holosun, Burris and Vortex, among others.

FN America 6.5mm Creedmoor SOCOM Request

New at the FN America booth was FN America’s answer to a request from SOCOM for a 6.5mm Creedmoor variant of the MK 48 light machine gun. Essentially identical to the MK 48 except for caliber and internal components, the version on display was equipped with a suppressor as well.

GEMTECH Lunar 9

Gemini Technologies was present at the show with a new modular suppressor called the Lunar 9. Benefits of the Lunar 9 are that it can be converted from a 7-inch model to a 4.7-inch model in order to shorten the length when desired but still remains hearing safe. Decibel metering ranges from 129 Db in the 7-inch configuration while rising to a 135 Db in the 4-inch version.

Smith & Wesson 9x19mm “EZ”

The Military & Police line of handguns is getting an upgrade in the form of a 9x19mm Shield EZ M2.0 carry handgun. Previously, the grip-safety-equipped handgun was only available in .380 ACP. 

SureFire Suppressors

As SureFire digs deeper into the suppressor market every year, the company is expanding the product lineup. Of particular importance here is SureFire’s SPS 50, designed for use on .50 BMG precision rifles. The suppressor uses a proprietary mount that has to be installed before use and has an added blast mitigation bracket at the muzzle, reportedly helping significantly with felt recoil.

Remington 700 Upgrades

Pistol braces are coming to Remington in the form of the Model 700-CP Armbrace equipped with a short barrel and SB Tactical arm brace along with a sub-16-inch barrel. The pistol configuration Remington 700 is intended for backcountry hiking as a short package that can still make precision shots out to several hundred meters.

Aimpoint CompM5b

The CompM5b is the latest in the optic line at Aimpoint, decreasing the previous M68/CCO-sized optic to something much more manageable on a shorter carbine. One of the important design features are the adjustment turrets which use an external tab to lock in place, not requiring a special tool or cap to make those fine adjustments.

Maxim Defense SBRs

Maxim had two new offerings for SHOT 2020. Both are pistol-brace- or SBR-configurable AR-15s that are coming in 7.62x39mm, 5.56x45mm and .300 BLK. The MDX 508 has an 8.5-inch barrel, while the MDX 510 has a 10.3-inch barrel. Designations are as follows: SCW Pistol, SCW SBR, CQB Pistol and the CQB SBR.

Condor Recon Chest Rig

Condor brought the latest version of a chest rig that the company is experimenting with, a minimalist design that allows for central magazine pouches with an admin pouch on top that has internal pockets, PALS laser cut webbing on the outside and a waist-level utility pouch as well. 

SHOT SHOW 2021: Show Master Info

Location
The Sands Expo Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. is situated on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip just off the I-15 interstate and easily accessible from McCarran International Airport. The convention center is within walking distance of hotels such as Caesars Palace and The Mirage.
Contact
Registration
Customer Service
regmgr@shotshow.org
(855) 355-7468
Exhibitor 
regmgr@shotshow.org
(855) 355-7468
Exhibit Space
Chris Tatulli
ctatulli@nssf.org
(203) 426-1320, ext. 214
Next Show
SHOT Show 2021, January 19-22, 2021, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Focus of Show
This show has an astoundingly broad spectrum of exhibitors, from firearms to accessories (e.g., scopes, flashlights), from soft-gear equipment to ammunition. Aside from the floor where exhibitors can display their products and interact with buyers, NSSF also hosts a number of educational programs. The Law Enforcement Educational Program (LEEP) addresses current police topics such as active shooter. Retailers can attend sessions from SHOT Show University discussing human resources topics, ATF compliance and many more. 
An industry day at the range is held on the Monday prior to the show so vendors can provide a live-fire demonstration, with the morning being dedicated to media and the afternoon being reserved for buyers. 
Statistics
Thousands of exhibitors and attendees from across the globe attended the show. Along with IWA, SHOT ranks as one of the largest firearm trade shows on the globe. 
Dress
While there is no dress code per say, business attire is a sensible choice.
Hotel Hints
The show is located near hotels on the Las Vegas Strip and has partnered with a number of hotels to offer discounted rates. Details are published on the show website (shotshow.org). Henderson, Boulder City and Sloan offer lodging alternatives within reasonable driving distance.
Power & Plug Types
120V, 60Hz, grounded wall outlet. It is always advisable to protect sensitive electronics with an uninterruptable power supply. 
Country Warnings
Consult Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for any local advisories and the U.S. Department of State—Bureau of Consular Affairs for U.S. travel warnings (Travel.State.Gov). 
Cultural Hints
Americans and Las Vegans are used to receiving overseas visitors. English is the spoken language. 
Tipping
It is common practice to tip 10% to 15% for lunch and 15% to 20% for dinner. Tip 10% to 15% for taxi drivers who offer courteous service and about 15% for limo drivers.
Getting Around
Rental cars are available at McCarran International Airport, with left-hand drive and automatic gearboxes. Parking structures are readily available along the Las Vegas Strip; although some charge a fee. The airport is very close to the Strip and hotels. It is conceivable to attend SHOT Show without hiring a cab at all; however, there are many cab companies, Uber and Lyft.
Firearms-Related Points of Interest
Battlefield Las Vegas offers machine gun rentals where one can shoot a number of automatic firearms. There are 12 MG rental groups in the area as well as several shooting ranges. Concurrent with the SHOT industry day, ATAC Global holds a law enforcement / military demonstration event. Pre-registration is required.
Tourism
Immediately near Las Vegas, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and Valley of Fire State Park offer beautiful vistas and hiking experiences. Mt. Charleston to the Northwest has skiing and hiking. To the east, there is Hoover Dam, and Lake Mead forms one end of the Grand Canyon while the National Park is about 300 miles away by car. Of course, the Las Vegas Strip itself offers entertainment in the form of casinos and numerous shows. 
NOTE: All information subject to change. Go to www.shotshow.org for up-to-date information.

By Miles Vining

Can Your Rifle Go the Distance?

There are a number of shooters and instructors who say that many of the current 5.56x45mm carbines on the market aren’t being used to their full capacity. Of course, being proficient with an AR-15 that has a 16-inch barrel at distances of 25 meters is extremely important. It lends itself well to realistic home defense situations, and this is where the majority of law enforcement encounters take place. But why stop there, especially for law enforcement? If an active threat can be stopped from a distance, then why not train for that situation given that the weapon systems being employed can absolutely reach out to ranges of 100-300 meters with quality optics, ammunition and most importantly the training?

The SIG SAUER Academy’s answer to this is the Mid-Range Carbine Course offered by the Epping, New Hampshire-based training school. The skill building course is an onsite offering through the Academy where it is run on part of a complex situated over 10 acres of live-fire and simulation training ranges for the armed citizen or a member of law enforcement or the military. In addition to Mid-Range Carbine, there are a vast amount of courses offered, ranging from CQB tactics with handguns and rifles to long-range precision marksmanship. Most are 1-day courses, but there are a few that run several days due to the length and topics covered.

The Mid-Range Carbine Course initially began due to a rising interest across the industry from both a civilian marksmanship and a law enforcement perspective to push the capabilities of personally owned and department rifles when it comes to shooting from 100-300 meters. The course also requires a more refined understanding of the fundamentals of marksmanship when that range increases. As one instructor put it, everyone is a sniper at 25 meters and in.

The course started with our instructors (full-time SIG SAUER Academy staff), Dillon Kenneson (Lead) and Colin Murphy (Assistant), discussing the difference between some of the trajectories we were going to see in the course and most importantly which range to zero our rifles at and why. The old adage of zeroing at 36 yards for a 300-yard battle sight zero works well for an infantry application, but outside of the military, it has proved to be far less useful when it comes to bullet drop at these further ranges. Instead, many instructors have been working with 50- and even 100-meter zeros for battle rifles simply because the tradeoff at those further ranges with bullet drop is much more worthwhile. This is especially true when we factor in using a center mass point aim and allowing for a vertical spread that will still allow us to maintain the same point of aim on a humanoid target (steel, paper) out to 300 and even 400 meters.

Range Time

After the initial instruction, we got out to the range and started zeroing our rifles. The class size was under 10 which worked well for the two instructors who were able to go between students to make adjustments and corrections. When initial zeroing was complete we started working on the distance drills; the hands-on, practical application portion of the course. This consisted of working between the 100-, 200- and 300-meter firing lines, going into different shooting positions that challenged us to try and make good shots despite shooting offhand. Targets used were paper silhouettes and bullseye concentric circles in addition to steel silhouettes. The paper was used to gauge our accuracy in different positions, how tight we could get those groups, while the steel was used to quickly see if what we were doing was actually working on target without having to walk downrange to register results.

During the course of shooting the topics discussed in the classroom quickly became apparent. Zeroing at 25, 50 and even 100 started to become very evident as students began shooting groups they either were extremely surprised at or genuinely displeased with. Corrections had to made, and some had to re-zero or change their distances as they realized their errors. The other piece that became readily apparent was the actual equipment that was being used. Many of the students hadn’t been able to reach out to the distances we were shooting at with the rifles they owned. For the majority this was simply because they lived in urban centers that don’t allow for longer ranges to exist in a relatively close distance to their homes. But even for those who did shoot long-range, not having the exposure to the various positions and conditions in the course allowed them to test out their gear.

Unfortunately, students found out that some of their latest tactical ware either wasn’t all it was caked out to be or was lacking in some area. Whether it was a magazine, a scope, bipods or even a bolt hold open device, putting the items through their paces was an excellent test that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to go through. Less than a detractor, this is certainly one of the more important parts of any shooting course; learning about your own equipment and how it works or actually doesn’t work while under stress.

At the end of the day with spent brass covering the range, the class was concluded and certificates issued. For many of the students, it was their first in-depth introduction to long-range shooting skills with a carbine.

For more information on classes offered see sigsaueracademy.com.

In part I of the Interview In SAR Volume 20 Number 9 SAR gathers the background on Barrett Firearms and Chris Barrett’s participation in the growth of the company. We take up the story at that point…

SAR: What is Barrett’s recent interest in creating a medium machine gun?

Chris: A while back a solicitation come out in the Commerce Business Daily. It was part of the network that people used for Government Contract announcements. Nowadays it is called Fed Biz Ops. The solicitation was for a lightweight version of the M240 series. Primarily replacing the Bravo version. Eventually this turned into what the M240 Lima is today. What we thought was really the case was that the solicitation was written so one particular contractor could quickly win it, written between the lines, and a Commercial Off the Shelf product would be available.

Apparently they were looking into a lightweight M240 at the same time the solicitation came out as well. We were very disappointed at that after we had invested so much energy into our design. Regardless, we saw the solicitation and we put the Barrett brain to it. We looked at the M240 and saw all these different rivets and small parts and thought to ourselves, “With a modern CNC machine can’t we make all of this one piece? Can we turn sixty some pieces into one part?”. And the answer is “Yes, you can.” The riveted design has a lot of short comings. One, it is built like the Titanic, old school, steam power, this is how we built things in the industrial revolution. It has laminations between metal. This is where corrosion and rust like to start. Anytime two pieces of metal are touching together, what happens between them? Oxidation. Any fastener eventually comes loose, a simple principle of firearms design. Anything designed to come loose, does. And rivets are a kind of fastener. So we designed a hardened 4140 steel receiver, that alone was four pounds lighter than the standard 240. It is simple, and proven. So we feel that the solution that the Army received in the Lima was not particularly creative at all. It is not wise to say, “Let’s take a great design and just make every part out of titanium.” That’s not how you select material as an engineer, by just selecting material based on one attribute. Titanium isn’t the ideal application for what that machine gun is used for. I would call it a misunderstanding of design intent. We just have a simple and elegant solution to a problem. We’ve really been paying attention to the design recently as well. We started with the receiver, the heart of the gun, and now we are moving out from there, on to many different parts of the machine gun. We will have several patents on components of that machine gun by the time we are production ready. As an example, the original handguard design with the tri-Picatinny rails clamps onto the gas tube. It tends to heat up very quickly during a course of fire. So the handguard has to be a huge block to keep your hand way from it, with heat insulators to further keep the rails from getting hot. We decided to say, “We’re not touching it”. Ours doesn’t even touch the gas tube, it bolts to the front of the receiver and free floats as you will along the gas tube. We removed the bipods which also used to be mounted to the gas tube, and that is connected to the barrel. I know that a machine gun is not a sniper rifle, but I want my machine gun to hit where I’m aiming. And even on that gun, with that heavy of a barrel, as that gun gets warm and I’m putting pressure from my head on the butt stock, that deflects a barrel and could have detrimental effects downrange. So we moved the bipods to the handguard, which is already free floated, so you are not affecting the point of impact. Your handguard and your bipods are still getting some heat radiated off of them but it is nothing compared to the previous design. Then you have the ability to quickly remove the bipods. If you damage them or need to get them out of the way in a hurry, then you can easily remove them with ours, but with a conventional M240, you have to take some time to take them off, time you might not have. We also redesigned the butt stock, feed tray cover, even some of the internals. Then we did the 240 LWS, the Lightweight Short. It is four inches shorter, but with the same system. It is a machine gun, the size of the Mk.48 in overall length, almost the same weight, but it is a 240. And the 240 is an undeniably reliable machine gun. The Mk48 is not what the 240 is, when it comes to reliability. What we think we have done, is that we have created a machine gun that is the same package size of the Mk48, but has the unwavering reliability of a 240.

SAR: Has there been any further input on the 240 LW outside of the U.S. and have there been any sales?

Chris: Yes, we’ve actually sold some 240 LWs to two countries now, one of them in northern Europe. They are very discerning customers, and they love our design so far. We’ve worked with them a lot on the design and throughout the experimentation process. We’ve got some interest from more, but this kind of thing takes time.

SAR: The Model 82 has made Barrett unique in that since its inception, the company doesn’t have any direct competition when it comes to a .50 caliber, long range, anti-material rifle.

Chris: There is an enormous value to being first in a field, and not only being first but also having a quality product. You almost have to be negligent to be caught off guard in that case, to get caught by competitors. We’re persistent with our platform, we have a rifle that is 30 years into maturity, and they are only getting better. We’ve got a tremendous amount of field testing from militaries all over the world as well. Things you cannot duplicate in a laboratory or design shop have resulted in the M82A1, with the enhancements to the bolt carrier group, are really at the heart of why that rifle works so well. But then the rifle became the M107. So dad built the rifle and it had some limited military usage, and I believe it was Sweden’s military EOD teams that were the first to pick it up. A huge misconception we have is that this rifle was developed for military usage and in reality, it wasn’t, there wasn’t a requirement out there that it would fill. People thought it was a bad idea to begin with. Ronnie Barrett, a photographer, who played with subguns and belt feds, wanted to shoot a .50 caliber firearm, but didn’t want to own an M2. But the military started seeing a use for it, and it just took off from there. We modernized it even further with the M107A1, which made it a lot lighter, more precise, and it takes a suppressor. It was a block of enhancements, some from feedback, some from things we knew we had to change from experience of building the rifle. Well the U.S. Military has not adopted the M107A1 because like a lot of things in Government procurement, things can take a while to happen. So the U.S. has not adopted it, but several other countries have adopted it as their first anti material rifle. Norway, Denmark, to name a few. We also offer an A1 upgrade to militaries that have the M107, in which we cut the rear of the buttstock off and put a polymer piece in it, with adjustable length of pull, and an integrated monopod socket with a Picatinny rail. This also allows for the fitting of a spade grip to the rear of it from which you could fire the weapon from inside a vehicle more easily than the traditional grip. We changed many of the little features as well, when it comes to tolerances and fits. In the beginning the M82s were 3 or 4 MOA rifles, we have multiple M107A1s that are shooting 1 MOA today. However one of the biggest downfalls of the rifle is the ammunition. Throughout its history it has mostly been employed with machine gun ball ammunition and it needs precision rounds for long range work. We handload our own rounds here for that purpose.

SAR: What are some of the recent changes that have influenced the company?

Chris: When it comes to employees, as we have become more efficient, our employee to rifle ratio has not grown. Our peak employee count was during the M107 fulfillment because we had to surge our production. But what has happened in the last three to five years is that we’ve gotten better leadership which has led to better efficiency. Now we are back down to around 110 employees, but are making more than we ever have before. It’s processes, and technology. We are getting better via technology but are keeping that Barrett “DNA” of the people that make it happen. We still have craftsmen, but we are leveraging technology as much as we can. In essence, to get to the ragged edge of performance, it costs a lot. The difference between a rifle that can shoot 1 MOA and one that can shoot .5 MOA, well that last .5 MOA is going to cost you a higher percentage than getting to 1 MOA. But the people we’ve added, the executive leadership team has been instrumental in changing the way the company operates, through the efficiency, the quality, and the customer satisfaction level. Especially our Vice President of Operations, is one of our unsung heroes. He isn’t from the gun industry at all, he’s from the automotive industry. Our sales head, he’s from this industry, and you have to have that. The sales guy has to know who to call, how things work within it, etc… But at the operations level, I didn’t want that. The gun industry compared to other industries is largely immature. As an example many companies have still been building guns gunsmithing style, fitting them together. He has changed the way we work in that he brought in a hospital like mentality of keeping everything clean, having quality control checks. He is the reason why we build more products today than ever, with more quality, more efficiency, with less defects, and with fewer people. I like to think we follow the Thomas Edison model. Edison was a brilliant designer on his own accord, but he didn’t design everything he came out with. He was the creative director of a group of people that he pushed to get what he knew he wanted. That’ is why he created so many industries and that is more or less where I want to see Barrett go. It is fantastic to have a Ronnie Barrett that put together the M82, but we are trying to get a whole group of equally talented designers, who are pushing the envelope. That is where I see us going. He is still here with us though, out on the floors, still very involved in everything that is going on. But for the future, we are looking into getting the right gun design team to be able to free him up and keep our products going. We are trying to stay above the trenches and see out as far out as we can, predict trends and so on. Sometimes the world’s greatest products were not from necessity but from someone saying, “Hey, this is where we need to go”.

SAR- So where does that put the company in the future? Where will Barrett be in 3-5 years?

Chris: I want to really broaden the Barrett brand so that it is accessible to more people in more markets. For example we’re pushing into the smaller calibers, the AR market. Because we started with the super niche, the M82. We’ve also got the .416 Barrett, which everyone thinks of as a California legal round, but it is so much more than that in that it is an exceptional cartridge of its own accord when it comes to long range precision. It should change what people consider to be long range. Long range used to be a thousand yards, it used to be three hundred yards a long time ago. Well I’m going to say that long range is now over two thousand yards. We want to be optimizing platforms for that cartridge. We want to offer the Barrett name to customers who might not have a need for a .50 caliber rifle. That’s why you see us with the REC7, and the MRAD. We have also launched a sub-brand of high end shotguns. We like hunting, we like traditional sporting guns too, but that doesn’t fit under the traditional Barrett brand though. We’ve got our Barrett Sovereign line of over and under shotguns, that we just introduced at SHOT show. A lot of people love the Barrett brand but they aren’t going to buy an anti-material rifle. Take for instance the Safari Club International folks. As another example we’ve acquired the assets of Forbes rifle company, a hunting rifle manufacturer, which makes some really light hunting rifles. I would like to see us as the Beretta of the United States, in that their product line up is very extensive. We’re not going to quadruple the amount of M107A1s we make, it is just not going to happen. So as a company that started at the highest echelon of performance, you can only go so far with that. You have to make products that appeal to a broader market if you want to grow. Back to us, the more products we make, the better we get, and the better our flagship products are. You just learn things from making that many more products that you wouldn’t have found out by just making just a few. That technology trickles up and down.

Since the company’s inception in the 1980s, Barrett Firearms has made leaps and bounds from the former garage that Ronnie Barrett used to make the first M82 anti material rifles. Today the company is expanding into the AR market, machine guns, and precision rifles with their MRAD design. Taking that momentum into the 21st Century is Christopher Barrett, the current president of the company. Chris was kind enough to sit down with SAR as we interviewed him about his history with the company, and where he wants the company to go in the near future.

SAR: Were you involved with Barrett Firearms from the beginning?

Chris: My earliest memories were of my dad shooting, and his firearms interests. He had machine guns in the 1980s, was a big time hobbyist, always shooting in sub-gun matches. He just had the coolest things in the world to a little boy. I’ve always been a part of the culture of this industry. I was around four years old when dad really came out with the company in 1982. I was shooting at a very young age, which a lot of people might not agree with these days, but it came naturally to our family. It helped make me the shooter I am today, and also helps with the designing aspect. I mean, people who actually shoot a lot, can identify what works and what doesn’t, and we put that into our designs. You could call it the Barrett “DNA” of the company, a lot of us are shooters, and we use the products we make. As an example, we don’t make submachine guns, but we still learn things from them that we can put into our other designs. If you are always in tune with that sort of thing, it makes you a good designer.

SAR: How did the company develop, throughout its history?

CHRIS: Well we started with the garage years, we lived in two different houses, with two different garages that dad was putting the rifles together in. The first house was in downtown Murfreesboro, and it was literally a wood walled garage, with gravel on the floor. They rolled out carpet over the gravel, and they realized that if they dropped a pin or other small part, they couldn’t find it. So they took the carpet and turned it over, and you were walking on the back portion of a carpet. But dad made a lot of guns out of there. Then from the garage, we actually leased a building because we outgrew it, out on Manchester highway. It was a former bus repair building where they fixed Bluebird school buses. It was owned by a man in Murfreesboro who invested in the company early on. We had that building for several years, during the 1990s. Then in the early 2000s, we moved over to this building. We built every M107 of the initial contract in that old building. We quickly outgrew that new building, and then built an extension to it, which is where we are today, connected by a ramp and it was a much higher ceiling for the running of CNC machines. Very thick concrete floors because these machines have to be on a very stable base, because of the vibration and harmonics.

SAR: When did you really start getting involved with the company?

CHRIS: Even as a young teenager and a child, I was tinkering at the plant. I remember being a kid, around 10-12 years old and I was operating acetylene torches, and doing stress relieves on welds. When you see your dad doing stuff like that, you always want to be a part of it. Another thing that helped was that we worked on cars together, we restored cars together. When I was 14, he bought a 1964 Corvette and we restored it together. I did the small jobs while he did the big stuff, but what you learn about metal working, fiberglass working, engine building, playing with gears in a transmission, you really take with you for the rest of your life. Most people just don’t have that opportunity anymore. We were doing that as the company was growing from the very early times. I went to High School, took computer aided drafting as a class, specializing in AutoCAD, working with two dimensional drafting. We don’t really even do that anymore, we do all our work in three dimensions now. When I graduated High School, I had no aspirations to attend university or go to college whatsoever, didn’t even occur to me. I wasn’t a good student, so I came right out of high school and that summer I came to officially work for the company full time. I got to work in the back, doing some of the jobs that I was already doing as a teenager, sand blasting, operating a band saw, sawing up raw stock. Every job I did, I wanted to improve immediately. For example I said, “Hey, let’s get a new sandblasting cabinet, let’s automate this sawing process”. So I got to move around the company and do a number of these jobs. This was around 1997 or so. After having this spot for a while I started realizing that this was all still on paper, there was no automation to it. We needed to make a revision to this. Chris Vaser, one of our oldest employees, was still drafting designs on paper for the company. Absolutely phenomenal draftsman, old world type with the lead pencils and putting things on paper. But this was what our technical data package was at the time, and this in the 1990s! It was on pencil and paper. It is beautiful and romantic when you think of it, but the technology of the industry at the time had far surpassed this. I mean, as a high schooler in 1995, I was working with AutoCAD programs. As an example, it automatically verifies geometry, with a pencil and paper, you could “cheat” and could get away with making mistakes. Computer aided drafting has really changed this industry in ways that we can’t imagine. I mean, we are in the golden age of firearms design. There is nothing like a brand new off the shelf rifle, a $400 hunting rifle that can outshoot the sniping rifles from the Vietnam War. A lot of this is because of computer aided modeling.

SAR: What role did you play in this computer revolution?

CHRIS: I bought the first engineering computer for the company, I remember it was a monstrosity of a tower and a monitor which was probably only 18 inches at the time, and we thought it was huge. We spent almost five grand on it, and in that day it was considered a major investment, along with the Pro Engineer software package. At the time it was the leading computer modeling software, so I sat there and learned how to use it. Not the most intuitive thing in the world, but after about a year or so, I designed the very first Model 98 on that. The prototype was actually a semi automatic .338 Lapua. Up to that point, it was the most radical departure we had made from our .50 caliber designs. The .338 Lapua Magnum was just starting to really gain some traction in the U.S. in 1997/98.

SAR: Accuracy International was becoming successful with their .338 Lapua and the Swedish contract in the early 1990s.

CHRIS: I hate to throw a bone to a competitor, but that rifle, at the time was recognized for there being nothing like it outside of AI. We heard the buzz about .338, and through that we kept plugged into our community of military and police buyers, so we knew there was beginning to be a need for the cartridge in a sniper rifle. It was sort of the thing in 98, but then it went dormant. We then heard of military solicitations for a .338 rifle in 2008, about 10 years later. At the time, we only had the Model 82A1 series, and the Model 95 and that was it. We only had two products back then, and they came in one color, and in one caliber. We essentially had two fixed products, like Henry Ford with the Model T, just coming in black. They were of a certain architecture at that time, and stamped sheet metal. They were .50 caliber, and were actually precision limited, in some part due to the ammunition. The .50 BMG round is not developed like a .338, a .308, or even a .223 is. It’s a machine gun round. Getting into the world of precision shooting was tough because we really didn’t build things like that.

SAR: Essentially they were 3 MOA anti material rifles.

CHRIS: Exactly, I mean even the Model 95, you probably could get an inch, inch and a half group out of it, depending on handloading. At the time we knew we needed a precision rifle. We did like semi autos, but we looked at what was the most accepted, most accurate, and precise rifle at the time. And it was the Accuracy International line. So dad bought one of their AWs for testing and evaluation. And we were looking at certain things, about what made it shoot so well and we found out it had some principles that we liked. But we wanted a semi-automatic, and were thinking along the lines of what would a semi auto version of the AW look like. So in the Model 98, you can see some of that inspiration with a strong rigid, bedded chassis, a flat bottomed receiver that looks a lot like a bolt action. A free floated barrel with a handguard beneath it. There was some influence there, but on the inside it was one of the most novel things ever. Although we never put that design into production at the time, we were able to take certain design elements from it and use it in our current rifles. Aside from that, when it comes to firearms design in general, you have to learn to only take the good elements from other designs, and make sure to reject the bad. However, I hate novelty for novelty’s sake; I want to design things for a practical purpose. But moving on, we weren’t and aren’t financially managed. We don’t have a list of share holders to report back to, we essentially do what we think is best for the company. Thus, the Model 98 project was sort of shelved until 2008. We noticed other companies were starting to produce their own single shot .50 caliber rifles, but no one was really getting into the .338 production. So that is where we focused our efforts on production and design. Looking back on it now, the original design we had for the Model 98, was interesting and forward thinking, but it wasn’t designed for production. And that goes back to our Advanced Research Group, a term that I prefer to R&D. Ideally those designers back there should be dreaming, not developing. They should be building up a design library, coming up with concepts such as the Model 98, that although might not be feasible to produce, will all us to come back to them in the future when we might actually see the potential for such products. Separate from this we have a product development team, that does that product development, because that has to happen, in order to keep the company on track.

SAR: So what kicked off development of the single shot Barrett?

CHRIS: We saw all these cheap single shot fifties springing up all over the market, and it really hit us because we established that lead with semi-automatic .50 caliber rifles. We didn’t want to lose that edge we had in the .50 caliber rifle market. We developed the Model 99 immediately. That was entirely new architecture as well. It looks much like a Model 95 on the outside, but it is entirely different. The Model 95 and Model 82 series are all sheet metal, fabricated, and welded. The Model 99 was really the first use of the architecture that became everything that we build now, in the Model 98B and MRAD series. It is made from a single piece of aluminum extrusion that forms the foundation of the receiver, with the barrel rigidly affixed to that. The Model 99 is really the genesis of what I believe has become the new defining architecture for precision rifles. The 98B and the MRAD basically are really different. When they came out, people were still just taking sporting rifle actions and solidly bedding them into fiberglass stocks that mimic wood stocks. We called it “B” because it was a revival of the 98 program, B for bolt action. But it was a head scratcher to people when they first saw it because they would look at it and say, ‘Where’s the action? Where is the stock?’. Well, there isn’t an action or stock in the way that you know it, like a Winchester Model 70, or a Remington Model 700. That doesn’t exist in the Model 98. It is a barrel rigidly affixed into an aluminum chassis that surrounds the barrel, and puts the bore axis really low, and gets the scope up higher. Then a lower receiver that separates from the upper like an AR does. So I think it really set a new course in the industry because after that I started seeing a lot of chassis going around. Another thing that is significant about the Model 99 is the breech mechanism, it has that interrupted thread that has been a significant design feature of the 98B and MRAD series.

SAR: What motivated Barrett’s movement towards the AR15 platform?

CHRIS: It started with the Barrett M468 in around 2003, and prototype production in 2004. What got us into the 6.8 SPC experiment was that the Army Marksmanship Unit, and some other entities at 5th Special Forces Group, specifically Master Sergeant Steve Holland, came to us back then and were showing us all this 6.8 stuff. It wasn’t even SAAMI standardized yet, AMU was hand loading these cartridges out of .30 Remington cases. They also had a .22 SPC, a 6mm SPC, a 6.5mm SPC, and a 7.62mm SPC. People don’t realize just how extensive this testing was. They were shooting all these odd cartridges, and they finally settled on 6.8mm. They came to us with a Mark 12 Designated Marksman’s Rifle, and said, ‘We need this, in 6.8, or a Recce sort of rifle, also in 6.8mm. We had no interest in getting into the AR game at the time, it wasn’t even a blip on our radar. But this whole 6.8 thing piqued my interest, the fact that it goes on a standard 5.56 lower receiver. We shot some of it and realized it was significantly more powerful, and it wasn’t some sort of niche that fills a gap between two cartridges that you can’t tell the difference between. So we started looking at it and that is how the M468 came along. I made some enhancements to it, such as the larger gas block because of the increased bore size. But we made a novel front gas block that had a flip up front sight and a suppressor interface for a suppressor design that would surround the barrel and actually attach to the gas block. If you look at an M468, you will see a ratchet on the gas block that attaches to a suppressor. The idea doesn’t really work nowadays because people are wanting suppressors to be modular and have the ability to be put on different rifles, but it was just something we were experimenting with. We built a good amount of M468s, probably put more into civilian circulation in the U.S. than any other company.

SAR: Development of the M468 then led to the REC7?

CHRIS: We started looking at the viability of a piston operated AR because of that, although the M468 itself was a mid-length direct gas impingement rifle. At the time there wasn’t much of a choice when it came to piston operated ARs. 2007 was the official release date, and we came up with REC through Reliability Enhanced Carbine, and 7 for the year 2007. The piston system on it, in my opinion, is the finest piston operated system on an AR out there today. It is one piece, it comes out the front of the rifle with one other part that holds it in. A lot like an FAL really, but the handguard doesn’t have to come off, and it doesn’t separate into seven different pieces. It is indicative of what we strive for at Barrett, making it well, but not overly complicated in a smart design. Anyone can make something complicated, but a good designer will strive to make something simple.

SAR: What sort of inspiration did that piston design take from?

CHRIS: I would say it is a hybrid of the FAL and the AK. The gas plug is a little like the FAL but doesn’t have this spring loaded mechanism like the FAL does, to retain it or switch it to a grenade position. The piston design takes a little from the AK, but we patented the fluted cylinder that is in there. This is important because a lot of other piston operated AR designs try to trap the gas in there, using gas rings, etc… We wanted the REC 7 to be simple, and hard to break. Ours runs without gas rings, like an AK. We found out a way to let the gas out of the gas block by incorporating a fluted cylinder. Early prototypes weren’t allowing enough of the gas out of the system and the piston was actually getting stuck in there from the carbon build up. We then put four flutes in the back of the gas block cylinder, cut with an end-mill that took away surface area at the rear, but we left it sealed at the front, where it needed the power stroke, then when the piston gets to the rear, it enters an open area, similar to an AK. These flutes allow that gas to blow around the piston and not allow it to clog up. The gas will then flow into the handguard, and this is why on REC7s with thousands of rounds, you’ll see some soot underneath the handguard. One of our earlier prototypes went 22,000 rounds without any sort of cleaning. From there we advanced the design to a Gen 2, with a better handguard system, and built-in steel QD mounts.

The compact Soviet AKS74U is one of the more fascinating and successful developments of the Kalashnikov platform. Conceived for one usage, but actually deployed in another, the AKSU spawned an entire genre of short barreled Kalashnikovs, currently in use all over the world, and especially popular in the United States under the name “Krink” or “Krinkov”. This essay will example the history of the compact assault rifle, actual use in combat, etymology of the moniker, and current interest in the historical reproduction of the platform in the United States.

Conception and Experimentation

This story begins with a submachine gun design that was designated the AO-46, and prototyped in the 1960s. Small arms designer Peter Tkachev headed the project. It featured an over folding stock, curved magazine that served as a pistol grip, and was chambered in the round that was to become the basis for the 5.45x39mm 7N6 service cartridge, the commercial 5.6mm. This design was innovative, but there wasn’t any practical purpose or competition that suited it. However it did prove the usefulness of a compact weapon system chambered in an intermediate cartridge.

Running concurrent with the design and adoption of the new 5.45x39mm 7N6 round, the attempt to create a compact assault rifle was introduced under Project “Modern”. The stipulations for the competition called for a compact assault rifle, that with the stock folded, would not fit outside the profile of the soldier carrying it (no longer than a shoulder width or ruck sack). It was envisioned as a short rifle for infantry roles that required a defensive weapon while carrying their main weapon system, i.e, RPG gunners, machine gunners, and mortarmen. Additionally it would ideally become the rifle of choice for the Spetsnaz.

The competition began in 1973, and there was little doubt that the Kalashnikov lead design bureau would take the lead, as the new Soviet service rifle, the AK74 was being adopted, and it would make sense for the new compact rifle to have interchangeability and familiarity advantages with the rifle that the rest of the military was using. Nevertheless, prominent Soviet small arms designers submitted a number of designs to the competition. In 1976, Kalashnikov’s design was chosen as a final prototype, going on troop trials in Azerbaijan, and finally being adopted in 1979 as the, “5,45-????????? ? ???????? ????? 74”, or abbreviated, “???-74?”.

As adopted, the design remained relatively the same albeit a few changes. Initial production was at Izhevsk, but once full production became underway, the tooling was moved to the Tula Arms Factory, as Izhevsk was at full capacity producing AK74s, and AKS74s. Very few of these Izhevsk AKSUs have survived until today. In 1982 the design of the muzzle brake threads was changed, as experience in Afghanistan revealed the previous design did not lend itself well to high rates of fire. In late 1985/early 1986, the design of the handguards was changed from the two slots cut for better ventilation, to more straightforward handguards with no slots. This design change makes identification of the AKSU in photographs especially helpful. Production continued until around 1992/1993 when production of working variants stopped. From 1993 to around 1997 and according to some sources the 2000s, we see production of a line of demilitarized AKSUs for the European civilian market.

Combat Use in Afghanistan

The interesting twist in the AKSU tale is that the rifle was actually not really used at all in the spirit that it was adopted in. Despite a number of prototypes and variants of the AKSU specifically for the Spetsnaz, to include enormous NSPU night sights that were the length of the rifle, suppressed under barrel 30mm grenade launchers, screw on PBS suppressors for the actual 5.45x39mm barrel, 20 round magazines, the Spetsnaz special forces actually wanted nothing to do with the rifle. This was due to the combat they were facing in Afghanistan where engagement distances tended to be 300 meters and beyond. At 100 meters, the AKSU would fair decently, but beyond that, it became much harder for an accomplished shooter to hit a man-sized target. In addition to this, the rifle would heat up much faster than a standard issue AK74. Thus, the Spetsnaz ditched the rifle in favor of the standard issue rifles, which were much more adequate for the engagements that they found themselves in. The Soviet troops that were actually issued the AKSU turned out to be vehicle crewmen, the Hind pilots, and the BMP drivers. The reason for this is that these men needed a compact rifle that wouldn’t hinder their duties inside the confined space of a vehicle, but yet needed an enormous amount of firepower if their vehicle were downed, and they had to defend it against Mujahedeen fighters attacking them from all sides. Thus, in many pictures from the era, we see AKSUs with 45 round RPK74 magazines attached to them, or 30 round magazines taped together for ease of reloading. These troops didn’t have to worry about the additional weight as they weren’t on foot patrols, but instead stayed in their vehicles on operations. The Hind pilots even had special polymer scabbards that they carried the AKSUs in, on their thighs.

Variants and Design Changes

Apart from the previously mentioned Spetsnaz configured variants, there were a number of different configurations that the AKSU saw itself in over its service life. One of the more popular ones is the suitcase configuration that the KGB used it in. This consisted of removing the muzzle device, and fashioning a sort of extended carrying handle onto the receiver cover. Once placed inside a suitcase, the KGB operator could depress the carrying handle, which would detach the case away from the gun, and with a 30 round magazine inserted, the operator would be ready to utilize the AKSU. There was also a simpler grenade launching mechanism that attached to the muzzle device, and fired a standard issue Soviet hand grenade from a blank round. These were more experimental and were not pressed into service very much.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, production of the AKSU slowed down until 1993 when production stopped altogether. In fact, as a sort of business enterprise, in around 1992 AKSUs were being produced in deactivated forms for the European deactivated weapons market. However, this wasn’t the end of the rifle as Bulgaria was able to get ahold of the technical data package and has been producing the rifle since the early 1990s. The data package was based on the most current design, the post 1986 rifle without the heat vent holes in the hand guards. Thus, all the AKSU copies coming out of Bulgaria are without the vent holes, which in addition to the “Circle 10” stamp, makes identification of these clones relatively simple. Outside of Bulgaria a number of countries began making their own short barreled AKs, some of the most significant manufacturing taking place in the region of Peshawar in western Pakistan. These models sometimes very closely resemble the AKSU but might be built on AK74 or even AKM receivers, in addition to numerous other minute differences.

“Krinkov”

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the rifle is in the nick name for it, the “Krinkov”. A name that has come to be the moniker for any short barreled Kalashnikov platform rifle or pistol in the United States today. The entomology of the name has a complicated history but the most important part is that it isn’t Russian at all. Soviet soldiers never used this name, but instead used the word, “Suchka” which translates to “Little Bitch”. In fact, the word “Krinkov” isn’t Russian at all, and really doesn’t even exist in the Russian language or dictionary.

Instead, the name originates from the Mujahedeen side of the Soviet-Afghan War and is a Pashtu word. In the 1980s and even unto today, the short rifle was and is seen as a status symbol among the mostly Pashtun tribes of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. This was due to the fact that only Soviet vehicle crew members carried them. Capturing a Soviet AK74 was certainly a good find, but being able to capture a weapon that only the most brutal and vicious of Soviet tactics utilized against the Mujahedeen was a mark of a brave warrior. During the war, the Soviets used their Hind helicopters to devastating effect on the Muj fighters, and it was rightly feared by them. So the ability to be in possession of an AKSU was tangible proof that a Muj fighter would have been able to shoot down one of these Hinds, or at least be in the company of the group that shot it down.

We have accounts from the first published Western article about the weapon, the July 1984 edition of “Soldier of Fortune.” In it, David Isby, an SoF writer, investigates the mysterious “Krinkov” in Pakistan. While he is there, he learns that the rifle is selling for the amount of 10,000 dollars, or equivalent to the sale of 4 Soviet .51 caliber Dushka heavy machine guns. This status symbol was even used by Osama bin Laden when he was recording videos in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Local Pashtuns wouldn’t understand his take on Islamic fundamentalism versus the Western powers, but they would absolutely understand the AKSU fitted with a 45 round magazine always present either on him, or in the background of his video speeches.

But because of this status symbol, Isby reports that he heard several names for it, “Krinkov”, “Shrinkov”, and “Sheskov” (Isby heard about the rifle through Ian Hogg, while he heard about it through Peter Jouvenal, a news cameraman in Afghanistan at the time, whom deserves the credit for bringing the word to the U.S.). “Sheskov” hasn’t been used since that time frame, but the word “Krinkov” is currently used in modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan to refer to the AKSU. In addition, another word, “Kalakov” is also used, but this is used to refer to AK74s, especially the AK century series of rifles, some of which have made their way into the gun markets of Dharra in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Going back to the entomology of the word “Krinkov”, among Pashtuns then and today, it was and is a popular tendency to add an “ov” to any word, to Russianize it. Inferring that a product is Russian, a “tractor-ov”, a “truck-ov” means that the product is probably of superior quality compared to a similar Chinese or maybe Pakistani product. However, we have this “Kri” in the name that has nothing to do with “Kala” from Kalashnikov. An explanation for this is that there is a certain Pashtun sub tribe in eastern Afghanistan that instead of saying “Kalashnikov” as most Pashtuns do when referring to an AK platform, they instead say, “Krishnikov”. And this is possibly the closet we will come to finding out the exact origins of the word “Krinkov”, by combing the first part of this tribes name for it, and the popular “-ov” that is added to words, to Russianize them. The “Shrinkov” and “Sheskov” that Isby heard referred to it as well, have faded away in the usage of the language, leading to “Krinkov” becoming the dominant term for the weapon in modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But how did any of this immigrate to the United States? The 1984 “Soldier of Fortune” article certainly produced some communal buzz about the topic, but the AK platform was not nearly as popular then as it started to be in the 1990s, and where it certainly is in today’s firearms community. The name was probably reinforced by intelligence officers and people who knew about the platform, and were keeping current with what it was referred to in Pakistan, in which “Krinkov” became the dominant moniker for the AKSU. The famous senator Charlie Wilson of “Charlie Wilson’s War” fame even received one as a gift from the Mujahideen that he was aiding through the CIA’s Operation Cyclone. Again, we see this as a status symbol. However, the name didn’t gain popular traction among the American firearms community until a store opened up in Naples, Florida by a certain Paul Mahoney, who named his store “Krinks” specifically because he specialized in converting and building short barreled AK rifles, and AK pistols for the firearms market. His builds weren’t anything like the quality that we see today from many modern day AK companies in the United States, but for the early 1990s they were some of the only kind of their type.

Thus, through Paul Mahoney, the word entered into the American firearms community lexicon. “Krinkov” or “Krink” has come to mean any AK platform, of any rifle caliber, with a hinged receiver cover, in an SBR rifle or legal pistol configuration. “Draco” is similarly used but refers more to those AK platforms that do not have a hinged receiver cover, and instead have a traditional AKM rear sight base, with the tilting lever keeping the gas tube installed. The AKSU doesn’t have this design feature because it uses a pin that the receiver cover keeps compressed to keep the gas tube in place. Opening the receiver cover on an AKSU allows the user to disassemble the gas tube.

Modern Day Builds in the United States

Despite their complexity to build, a number of collectors in the United States, to include the author have managed to build reproduction AKSU rifles, albeit without the full capabilities of their original select fire option. Building one requires a Russian AKSU parts kit. These are somewhat mislabeled as being from the Tula arsenal, which is misleading because every single AKSU in service in the 1980s came from the Tula production plant in Russia. The prices for these de-milled kits have gone up very high since their importation. They used to be imported with original Russian 8.5 inch barrels, and sold for a few hundred dollars. However today, one would be lucky to even find a Tula parts kit without a barrel, below the thousand dollar mark. Many of these parts kits seem to have come from the later years of the war, 1986 onwards, but there are decent amounts that come from the early war years, the pre 1986 designs with the heat vent holes in the hand guards.

The largest problem for collectors is finding an 8.5 inch barrel to match their parts kits. Original Russian barrels are extremely rare to come by in the current market so that leaves collectors with one of two options. The first is to find a Bulgarian 8.5 inch barrel, which is perfectly fine for a reproduction parts kit because the Bulgarian designs come directly from the technical data package of the post 1986 AKSUs. However, these are also drying up, and in their place comes a name called Blue Jack.

Blue Jack is an online username used by an individual in New York, who contracted with a barrel making company in Montana in around 2008 to 2010. The problem with making a proper AKSU 5.45x39mm barrel is that the twist rate needs to be correct, or else the bullets will tumble in flight. Many early AKSU builders found this out the hard way by simply substituting a virgin AK74 barrel and cutting it down to length. Not only does the gas port have to be re-drilled but the barrel itself is of a far slower twist rate because it has a longer barrel to work with in the full length AK74 design.

Thus, the company in Montana built functioning AKSU barrels to the correct dimensions, and the individual “Blue Jack” paid upfront for them, and marketed them over internet forum sites and selling sites thereafter, under his moniker Blue Jack (which he based in West Virginia). They initially sold for one to two hundred dollars, but this price soon rose as demand increased and their reputation became spectacular for actually working in AKSU builds. He then made them better by batches and assigned a number to them, as in Blue Jack Version 2, then Version 3, and so on. All of a sudden, this Blue Jack stopped having them made, and nowadays there isn’t a company on the market that produces 5.45x39mm 8.5 inch barrels for the AKSU. Blue Jack’s virgin barrels are now upwards of five hundred dollars.

Solving the parts kit situation, and the barrel conundrum, a collector still needs an American made fire control group, and a receiver in order to be 9.22r compliant. Most any AK trigger group works in an AKSU parts kit, be it a Tapco G2 or an ALG aftermarket trigger. Receivers are not hard to come by either, with Nodak Spud being an especially good manufacturer of stamped AK74 receivers. The important point here is to make sure the stock latch is included, and the rear trunnion is for a rifle build and not a pistol build as these two are very different versions. Many of these AK manufacturers also engrave their serial number and information on the bottom side of the rifle, just ahead of the magazine well. This is useful because it would otherwise detract from the historical quality of the AKSU when viewed from the sides. Important to note about the receiver is that this is the actual firearm and serial number, and thus requires an FFL to ship to.

Once all the parts are accounted for, and the proper ATF paperwork is completed, finding a builder is the crowning task. Going with a high quality builder is absolutely essential as there are a number of steps in the process that an inexperienced AK builder can make mistakes on, from riveting the trunnion in place, to pressing the barrel in place as well. But once the project is completed, collectors will have a firearm that almost completely resembles the rifle it was in the 1980s.

The Soviet AKS74U might not have changed the battlefield, or revolutionized small arms design, but it has a fascinating history that is very unique to it, from its inception, experimentation, actual use, and the convoluted history of its popular name, “Krinkov”. Indeed, it is an artifact of history from the Soviets, the Afghan Pashtuns, and today the American firearms community.

Marine squad takes a break during a company raid for a photo while others provide security in the background. All Marine patrols became less common after the local security forces took on more responsibility for their areas. Two on the far right and the middle Marine sitting all have M27s. The right most M27 gunner is using a one point while the two left M27 gunners have three points and one of them the ECM device. Two Marines on the far left have M4s with M203s because they are squad leaders. Third man from left is a civilian Law Enforcement Program adviser. These men were American civilians with police backgrounds sent over to help with training and structuring the Afghan Police. Their weapons and issue equipment is not through the Marine Corps, thus they have different weapons and gear. This adviser has a Bushmaster M4 with Aimpoint scope.

By Miles Vining

In a previous issue of Small Arms Review, the author discussed the Low Rate Production (LRP) M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR) that had been trialed in various units throughout the Fleet Marine Force. Having covered training experience and initial issue of the weapon, this article will cover how the LRP M27 fared in its true testing environment, Afghanistan. From late May to December 2011, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. There the battalion conducted counter insurgency operations and assisted in providing security and stability throughout the region. 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment out of Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii was deployed in the Area of Operations south of 1/9 and was similarly equipped with the M27 IAR. Profiled in the June issue of Marine Corps Times, they were the first Marine infantry battalion to deploy with the M27. Readers must note that this covers the Low Rate Production M27s, of which there were only 458 produced for down range evaluation. Although these M27s are still in service with the Marine Corps, there were a number of design changes that have been made and this article does not reflect those design changes. It is very specifically about the LRP rifles and shall not be confused with the rifles currently in service throughout the Marine Corps. There are many differences between the LRP version and the current version, all of the issues addressed in this article have been changed in the current service version.

In May of 2011, Commandant of the Marine Corps officially confirmed the replacement of the M249 SAW with the announcement of a purchase of 4,476 M27 IARs. The M27s will replace current SAWs on a one to one basis, with infantry companies retaining some SAWs for supplementary purposes. The M249 served the U.S Marine Corps well since its adoption in 1984. In recent years, issues of reliability and portability had taken their toll on the weapon in its use within the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. After holding the Infantry Automatic Rifle competition, the Marine Corps selected the modified Heckler & Koch (H&K) 416 from the Colt and FN Herstal contenders. Several units were tasked with overseeing how the M27 fared downrange, 1/3 and 1/9 being two of the five.

The June heat of southern Afghanistan is warm enough to make the glue on envelopes melt and dehydrate anyone within hours of prolonged exposure. In Helmand province, the heat dries up fields and canals, creating ankle-rolling terrain and crops, drenching men in sweat from passing through. Winter nights become cold and the wind unforgiving. This is where the rural Afghan population and Taliban coexist and where 1/9 with the M27 went to work. Mobile convoys routinely crisscross the AO and foot patrols exceed 10 or more kilometers with a full combat load of ammunition, water, armor and Kevlar helmets; along with Counter Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) packs averaging 20 pounds. Here the M27 proved its worth, both in and out of kinetic engagements.

Of the engagements involving 1/9 Marines, the M27 proved to be worthy and reliable. Most took place beyond 100 or more meters and against small numbers of insurgents. The need to establish superior firepower was often not necessary. But this did not mean the M27 gunners brought any less ammunition on patrols. While the combat load for Marine riflemen with M16A4s is a standard 6 magazines in pouches and 1 in the rifle, M27 gunners loaded twice or more of that amount with 21 issued brown follower magazines. Many simply added more magazine pouches to their scalable plate carriers, with each pouch holding 2 magazines. Marines who wore patrol belts would put additional pouches on those as well. Pouches intended for 100 round SAW sacks were instead used to fit 6 thirty round magazines. Some Marines also used magazine couplers on M27s for a quicker reload but because Marines carry their weapons around everywhere and not just on patrol, this become bulky and cumbersome.

Being in-country certainly proved the M27s versatility and standardized fit. For Marines working with equipment (vehicles, weapon racks) already fitted for the M16A4, the M27 fit just as well with the butt stock fully extended. Drivers and turret gunners had no issues stowing their M27s nearby, fitting it in crevices that could not accommodate the SAW. Considering the Marines were in southern Afghanistan to advise the ANA (Afghan National Army) and AUP (Afghan Uniformed Police) forces, most foot patrols were partnered. Thus, instead of having a standard Marine squad outside the wire (although this also occurred), partnered patrols would consist of several Marines and a larger number of local security forces. Instead of a Marine carrying the squad’s firepower as a separate entity in the patrol’s composition, he could now carry more weight such as the ECM device, metal detector, and other mission essential gear regardless of his primary weapon. Designations of a separate patrol leader, point man, or assistant patrol leader disappeared as the M27 allowed Marines to take on additional duties. Instead of making sure the point men or the first in a stack didn’t have an open bolt weapon, leaders could have more freedom with their M27 gunners. Let it be of note that some smaller units that weren’t issued M27s, carried SAWs in their place.

Many M27 gunners used the issued 3 point sling. Most attached it to the rifle just like an M16A4, to the stock and the upper part of the hand guards. Some did away with the Velcro stock fitting and threaded the sling through the plastic sling swivels on the collapsible stock. Another method was to move the issued M27 sling swivel closer to the upper receiver on the RIS and attach the sling there for more movement with the M27. A disadvantage to the three point sling and one points mounted to the stock is that the butt stock is removable by simply depressing the position lever. If the stock comes off accidentally with the sling still attached, the user risks the rifle and a possible chance of losing it as well. Traditional two point slings have been used but are very rare, some gunners opting for the old padded SAW two points.

Slings bring up the issue of interchangeability between the M27 and M16A4/M4. All one point mounts designed for the M4 carbine will fit the M27, due to the fact that the buffer tubes have similar parameters. They might not work as well due to the additional weight of the M27, SDO and AN/PEQ 16. All rail attachments as well as the buttstock itself are interchangeable with an M4, but an issue M4 butt stock or Vltor butt stock with the Milkor Mk.32 Grenade Launcher cannot fit an M27 buffer tube. Most magazines on the market are interchangeable including H&K steel magazines, EMags, and PMags (if modified, but this is highly discouraged). Not to argue that the issue brown follower magazines are of a lesser quality or reliability. These magazines certainly proved their worth over the old green follower magazines and were more reliable. On higher capacity, Surefire was contacted in April 2011 by the author and a representative said that the 100 and 60 round magazines would not function but they were working on a new design. Since then, these magazines have been proven to work in the M27 but none have been issued in country. At least one Marine has used a 150 round Armatac drum successfully. More important than magazines, parts that should not be interchanged at all are the buffer springs and buffers themselves.

When 1/9 returned from predeployment exercises in Twenty Nine Palms, California, the chief complaints about the M27 were the lack of a sturdy bipod. ironically, 1/9 actually had an entire store of the issued Harris bipods, but due to logistical chains, had not issued them out to the line units. The author personally saw this store on return from Afghanistan. Some of the bipods privately purchased by gunners include, Harris, Versa Pod, CAA, imitation SAW bipods, with Harris being the most popular. Versa Pod bipods are extremely versatile because they can be taken off easily around a patrol base or on a mobile mission but can be attached when going on patrols. CAA bipods were rugged and solid but lack height. Imitation SAW bipods barely worked and ended up being detached.

Regarding cleaning practices, Marine riflemen are known to operate in extremely harsh and remote environments, keeping their weapons and equipment impeccably clean and functioning. Afghanistan was no exception for the Marines of 1/9. Although all M27 gunners have had prior experience with maintaining the M16 series of weapons and the M27 is very similarly. Of lesser note are the SDO and RMR. Unlike an ACOG on M16A4s and M4s, the SDO honeycomb and lens cap must be screwed off for disassembly. Unless the gunner has already lost his honeycomb, dust can collect on the objective lens without being readily noticed due to the honeycomb’s concealing nature. Also, the reticule on the RMR can become clogged and dim if the projector is not wiped down.

For its second combat deployment (1/3 arrived in Afghanistan 2 months before 1/9), the M27 fulfilled the expectations of an H&K weapon, measuring up to high standards and expectations. The few issues it did have are covered above and in detail. The following are some recommendations for improvement. Not to repeat an issue, but the magazine capacity and bipods need to change. 1”-13” Harris bipods with Larue RIS adaptors are going to be issued en masse but there is no current intent to increase the magazine capacity. Although Harris Bipods are an industry standard and a proven bipod system, something more suited for machine gun purposes and rough use should be considered. Harris Bipods have external springs, snub nosed feet and are made for sturdy, long range rifles. Something along the lines of the Versa Pod with sled feet or even modified SAW bipods might be more fitting.

Replacing a belt fed, quick-change barrel, light machine gun with a magazine fed, fixed barrel automatic rifle reflects the changing nature of the American military. This has already been experienced by many countries such as the UK with the L96 LSW, Russia with the RPK and China with the QBZ series. Similar to the reduction of caliber from the 7.62 M14 to the 5.56 M16A1 or the replacement of the M1911A1 by the Beretta M9, this transition is still in its infant stages of development and use. Some years of full procurement and understanding how to fully apply it tactically are currently in the making. This change has many, especially within the Marine Infantry community, bemoaning the loss of the venerable SAW to a fundamentally different weapon. As did many over the M9 and M16A1. Through out its first deployments with 1/9 and 1/3, it has served its users well. Only time will tell if it will continue to do so in future service and conflicts.

Special thanks to Liza Ponomarenko, and the Marines and Corpsmen of 1st Platoon, Charlie Company at Patrol Base Loy Kolay,