The Modular Small Arms System 5.56mm (Polish: Modulowy System Broni Strzeleckiej 5.56mm, MSBS-5.56) was initiated in December 2007, as a joint R&D program of the Warsaw-based Military Technology University’s (WAT) Department of Special Technologies with Radom’s Fabryka Broni.

The project aimed to develop, build and test a modular 5.56mm family of rifles within four years, up until 2010. Perhaps for the first time ever in the history of Polish arms design, the creators of the rifles polled a very wide circle of experts and end-users, both military and civilian, including the shooting media, for opinions concerning both the general layout and design details of the future Polish Army’s battle rifle.

A complete moving assembly of the MSBS rifle: bolt carrier with bolt, return assembly with the spring and guide rod (note the cut-out profile to clear the internal tungsten weights compartment) with a base plate complete with polymer bolt bumper.

The tactical and technical requirements (TTR) and initial design were ready by the end of 2008, as well as mock-ups of the Technology Demonstrators (TDs). In 2009, the actual functional model TDs were built, and tested in early 2010, after which they were first publically presented (earlier presentation were media-only) at the September 2010 MSPO defense fair in Kielce. The remainder of the time was used for test results analysis. At that point readers of the Polish STRZAL gun magazine were polled to come up with the name for the new rifle, and the winner was Radon – hinting at both Radom and the tradition of using chemical elements as names (radon, Rn, is a radioactive gas, atomic number 86).

Unfortunately, the Polish military, seemingly the most concerned entity, in fact proved to be the least interested in the new rifle. They dragged their feet at every stage, and merely tolerated the MSBS project as a tool to extract money from the government to finance the military R&D centers involved. In the brass’ expert opinion, the Beryl rifle was still going strong, and the fact that it was based on a 60+ year old design was the least of generals’ worry. Their view was, “Yes, it might be getting a tad obsolescent, but we’re going to retire before it turns obsolete – so why bother?” When most of them were Lieutenants or Captains, the army was already ‘not winning wars with mere rifles’. That mindset started to change with the influx of young blood with first-hand asymmetrical warfare experience of Iraq and Afghanistan – but alas, the junior officers from Divaniya or Ghazni, sorely aware that in the new Millennium the rifle is again the infantryman’s main tool of trade, are still a long way from the
General Staff.

Classic configuration MSBS field-stripped. Illustrated is the ‘dash R’ but the ‘dash K’ strips exactly in the same way.

New Opening

The TDs were ugly. Being just what they were called – technology demonstrators – they were to be efficient rather than eye-catching, like lab appliances. After the innards were more or less sorted out, now came the time for the looks. This was about to change a great deal, as the industrial design panel was organized at the WAT. The result was far from a simple paint job; the rifle was in fact redesigned from scratch. Hardly a part of the rifle survived intact from the initial design. Several months of hard work and several dozen mock-ups later, the final, much more pleasing to the eye and less offending to human ergonomics Radon mock-ups were justifiably proudly presented in August, 2010. The immediate reaction was mixed – some reviewers found it too much resembling the ACR for comfort. When you feed the same requirements to the same design-support software, they tend to come up with designs much like each other.

Inside the new design was as distant from the old TDs as they were on the outside. To accommodate the new design, many internals were reworked from the start. The bolt carrier morphed from a SCAR-style big, long affair with integral operating rod and fitted with dual cams for changing the ejection direction into a compact box with a single cam path for operating a cam pin – on whatever side the empties fly.

Comparison of the two configurations of the Polish MSBS-5.56 rifles, the MSBS-5.56K and bull-pup MSBS-5.56B.

The MSBS-5.56 project was to spawn a total of 11 variants, five in classic configuration (standard rifle, grenade launching rifle, carbine, LMG, DMR) and five bull-pup equivalents, plus MSBS-R, a fixed-stock ceremonial rifle for the Polish Army’s Honor Guard Battalion. For the grenade launching rifle, or 5.56 / 40mm combo, a new MSBS-specific grenade launching module, conforming to the MSBS design was created. Additionally a 12-ga military shotgun based on the MSBS-5.56 is contemplated, but so far still on paper – or rather, computer screen stage.

This duality of configuration is mirrored by dividing the design team into two centers: the ‘dash K’ team at the WAT under Col. Miroslaw Zahor and the ‘dash B’ team in Radom, headed by Krzysztof Koziel and Norbert Piechota.

How the Radon Functions

Although there seems to be little revolutionary stuff in the MSBS (as with most recent assault rifles), it’s the small details that make up the masterpiece. The designers applied for 7 patents and 11 utility models in the process. This article is the first time we are able to come up with any details.

Norbert Piechota of FB heads the Radom design team developing the bull-pup variant explaining the finer points of the MSBS-5.56K fire control group.

The 5.56mm MSBS-5.56 Radon rifle is an individual selective-fire, gas-operated weapon, in two basic configurations, the MSBS-5.56K/Radon-K (classical) and MSBS-5.56B/Radon-B (bull-pup). The Radon-K with its side-folding LOP-adjustable stock is the basic variant of the family. The bull-pup Radon-B shares the complete upper receiver with the K, substituting the B-specific lower receiver. Both rifles have the same internal design, while of course the B rifle is much more compact. Thanks to the modular design, each K rifle can be converted to a B rifle (and vice versa) in seconds as the barrels are exchangeable for different length or contour, and ejection direction can be changed at field-strip level. So far, that seems redundant, as even with the right side ejection, the bull-pup rifle can be safely fired from the left shoulder. The brass flies downwards and to the front.

The Radon’s gas system uses a short-stroke piston traveling just 17 mm (.67-in). An operating rod transfers the impulse to the bolt carrier, which starts an automatic cycle, familiar to anyone who ever fired an external piston-driven AR platform. The main difference is that the return spring is placed within the upper receiver – enabling the stock to fold. The bolt locks always turning to the right, regardless of ejection direction.

The ambidextrous bolt catch paddles are placed on either side of the trigger guard, acting on a vertical bolt hold open shaft. The magazines are STANAG 4179-compatible, but in the most recent version an extended flared magazine well mouth would conflict with the Betamags – even though quad-row SureFire 60s and 100s would fit it for LMG work. The barrels are 6-groove, 1:7 inch RHT, as they are chambered for the STANAG 4172-compatible rounds. They easily change in the field (as opposed to QCB) thanks to a clever barrel vise installed inside the trunnion. That consists of two parallel wedges, set on the shared Roman-screw – no matter on which side of the trunnion it is turned (by hex key), the wedges move in reciprocating directions at the same time and rate, freeing or latching the barrel (actually held by the trunnion, the wedges just hold it there) without the need for torque-wrenches and all. How’s that versus the FN SCAR with eight screws to be turned in exact order and to exact torque? Several different profiles of the barrels were tested, in two lengths, 16 inches for the rifle and 12 inches for carbine, fluted and plain, with a thicker contour plain barrel planned for DMR or LMG variants.

Bolt head with lugs, extractor and ejector. Note the semi-circular opening for the spring guide-rod cut down at the front end.

Totally Ambidextrous

The MSBS-5.56 is totally ambidextrous. All controls are doubled, or placed as to allow actuating with either hand (Radon-B bolt catch). The cocking handle is non-reciprocating, but allows manual bolt assist. It is placed inside the upper receiver, with triangular ‘winglets’ slouching to clear the top-rail mounted sights. Brass may be ejected to either side, by a clever arrangement of the bolt. The cam pin channel in the bolt is perpendicular to the extractor – ejector plane. To change the ejection direction all one has to do is rotate the bolt by 180 degrees. To accommodate the upper receiver to that change, you have to use a hex key (Torx blade to be precise) to unbolt the active brass deflector and exchange it for cover, blocking the other ejection opening. The new bolt carrier has only got one cam path, and the cam pin head is beveled to allow it to clear the return spring running on the top.

The bolt is rather AR-ish than the old AK-based bolt of the Beryl. It has 7 lugs with an eighth being a stump on the extractor. The ejector is a typical AR spring-loaded one.

The return spring is captive – held semi-contracted on a hollow spring guide and comes off as a single unit, making field stripping easier.

The first boxy MSBS-5.56K and -B Technology Demonstrators were anything but graceful – even though they effectively provided necessary experience.

Fire Control Group

The hammer mechanism is generally along the lines of the AR-15, with the exception of a different automatic sear. The mechanism itself is encased in a metal container inserted into the polymer lower receiver to avoid setting hard steel pins directly in soft plastic to give them ample support and to prevent key-holing the pin sockets. The FCG packet is held inside lower receiver by safety-selector axis and magazine catch. This kind of modular design of course invites the civilian-legal semi-only modifications, basing on existing parts. The semi-only civilian FCG has not yet been designed (the military model is a priority) and it is the opinion of the design team, that civilian FCGs should be rather directly along the AR lines, both to encourage use of COTS tuning components and to avoid legal problems with selective and semiautomatic mechanisms being fully exchangeable. The recent iteration of the lower receiver has a fully exchangeable pistol grip, to allow individualization with the use of the COTS components.

Stock

The length-of-pull stock adjustment should satisfy most shooters whether wearing ballistic protection or not. The stock itself offers a very good positioning on the shoulder, stable, with a much purchase and cheek weld, as well as an adjustable cheek pad. The rifle can be fired with the stock folded as the controls and ejection opening are cleared. The rifle is very stable, both in semi and auto mode.

The new side-opening, DAO-trigger 40mm Grenade Launching Module designed to conform the MSBS-5.56 rifle system. The fin inside the trigger guard is a barrel latch, the lever on the side – a manual safety.

The adjustment period to the ‘dash K’ rifle may vary in length, the shortest one would probably be from AR platform – but still the bolt catch is very different. The bull-pup is so much a different weapon, that the period of adjustment seems more obvious than in the case of the MBSB-K. Fortunately, the handling isn’t that complex, and the new skills are quite easy to acquire even though sometimes the muscle memory kicks in. What’s interesting, the shooters without deeply ingrained habits are actually found to master the Radon-B quicker than the Radon-K. The bull-pup is as pleasant to shoot as the classical rifle, powder gases or noise are not as bothersome as in some other rifles.

The bull-pup rifle FCG is identical, but with the trigger actually actuated a foot apart from the hammer, they have to be linked by a set of levers and pulleys. Same goes for the magazine release controls, which remained in their respective places in reference to the trigger while the actual magazine catch is at the side of the magazine well. Only one control had to be repositioned – or rather, the only one remained in the same position relative to the magazine well: the bolt catch. It now has a single flapper behind the Radon-B magazine well, remaining ambidextrous, and allowing the bolt to be latched open using the same hand that retracts it – which is a unique capability.

The rifle has no fixed sights. Instead, the upper receiver has a full-length dorsal 1913 (now: STANAG 4694) rail to accommodate any combination of mission-specific sighting equipment. Red dot sight is considered a standard, with image magnifier or NV attachments. The excellent Aimpoint Micro was the red dot sight of choice by the design team, but in reality, the EOTech 552 has
become more or less Polish Army standard; which is bulky by today’s standards, and the cocking winglets provide just enough clearance for the fingers.

Adjustable stock of the MSBS-K rifle. Note the hinge, extendable (LOP adjustment) part and the adjustable cheek pad. The rigid stock of the MSBS-R lacks it altogether.

Bayonet

With the rifle comes the new bayonet, replacing the 6H4 of the AKM and Tantal/Beryl rifles. The classic bayonets sometimes happened to resemble knives, but were usually dull and the size of a small saber. The Radon bayonet is anything but that. It’s rather a combat/field knife that happens to fit the muzzle. It has a handy drop point blade with partially serrated edge, and has an opening in the blade, allowing it to be hinged on the scabbard post to form wire-cutters – the AKM style. The sheath is placed inside a polymer scabbard with 3 MOLLE/PALS loops formed in the back, allowing it to be worn anywhere on the soldier. The bayonet latch is placed on a ring set on the barrel and the end of the pommel has a lug to fit the latch. The front attachment is a hook at the end of the guard, fitting a slot cut in the birdcage muzzle compensator. On early rifles these were hung underneath the barrel, but were reversed to the barrel top (HK G3 style) to avoid interfering with the 40mm grenade launcher. The regular bayonet blade is blued, while the MSBS-R has a chrome-plated ceremonial one. The latter would also retain the underbarrel attachment.

Recent lower receiver with COTS exchangeable pistol grip, new safety-selector lever, better-fenced-in magazine release button and smaller bolt-catch flaps alongside the trigger guard. Note the brass bumper at the rear edge of the ejection opening.

Bolt carrier and bolt stripped. Note a beveled head of the cam pin and the side cut out for inserting the cam pin into the cam path.

Bolt carrier and bolt stripped. Note a beveled head of the cam pin and the side cut out for inserting the cam pin into the cam path.

With rifle length barrel (16-inch) the bayonet is now going to be attached in reverse position to clear the GLM if mounted beneath the barrel. Note the guard hooked into the flash-hider.

Even though the IWA Outdoor Classic exposition held each March in Nuremberg, Germany, is traditionally mostly a hunting and sporting event, tactical users have also found some interesting things.

This year there was not just one, but two venues for the tactical aficionado. The IWA itself had a complete Hall 9 singled out for tactical displays – a new one, added this year, and one of the largest in the whole Nuremberg Fair complex. The other was a whole separate fair and conference devoted to military and law enforcement hardware and training preceding the IWA show – the Enforce Tac 2014.

The tactical trend, both in its professional and non-professional format (the latter, perhaps spending more for hardware than the real thing, as a whole – even though he spends his own, not the taxpayers’ money) is growing here in Europe, as it is in other parts of the world. Taking its cue from the U.S. SHOT Show, the IWA management tries to tap into that trend, expanding the law enforcement/military sector.

Starting this year, the Enforce Tac (also known – quite fittingly – as the ‘ET’) is again separated from the IWA – even though advertisements keep hammering the phrase ‘Enforce Tac by IWA’ at every possible opportunity. This connection was often interrupted in the past. At the beginning, since 2006, there was a two-day police training session organized by the Verein Polizeitrainer in Deutschland e.V. (PiD), accompanied by a modest (but growing with each year) exposition of the wares by the companies that sponsored the conference; but admittance was for conference guests only. Then, in 2012, the exhibition was moved from the conference venue to the IWA area, re-named the Enforce Tac show, and made to straddle both events, taking place on the second day of the conference and first of the show – with admittance to invited guests and journalists. The new venue was just a few steps outside the press office, between the office and the escalator leading down to the show – a perfect trap. After those two years, the 2014 ET returned to the previous schedule, but with a significant change. Now, the ET is no longer the Police Conference subsidiary: it’s the other way round. This year there were two parallel conferences: one on police force professional skills, with practical trainings, organized by PiD, which drew 550 participants from all over Europe (and then some), and the other on police equipment and armament, staged by the Deutschen Hochshule der Polizei of Münster (170 participants). The show moved once again, this time to Hall 10.1. This is one of the smaller halls, and it had to be partitioned in two (and still had lots of space) but that shows the growing potential of the ET, which was this year patroned by 50 companies including HK, FN, Rheinmetall and other industry’s heavyweights. If the growing trend continues, the annual Enforce Tac might with time replace the bi-annual GPEC, the police fair, in Leipzig – and then some day maybe Milipol of Paris as well, who knows?

The Enforce Tac is (yet) no match for the “tactical” hall of the IWA, nor in numbers of exhibitors, nor in coverage. Two days at the fringes do not equal the four days during the season’s prime industry gathering of the year. But it has certain advantages – e.g. the exhibitors can display hardware that they would not dare to show at the IWA unless deep behind the counter and by invitation only. The IWA still outlaws public display of real military weapons, particularly fully automatic ones. This might be a soft spot of the otherwise dynamically rising German show. They want to tap into the tactical trend, but still have to face protests from loden-clad gentlemen, outraged at the sight of those tan and black monstrosities at their fair, instead of as many cuckoo clocks or antler hanging boards. Waiting to see whose interest would prevail; let’s have a look at some of the stores.

The ALR-338 is a hefty piece of hardware – it only looks like an AR.

ALR-338: A JAFAR on Steroids.

The AR is on the rise in the recent years, probably the half-centenary of the system has awakened interest. And it keeps rising. Each year we see AR-style direct impingement or piston-driven rifles firing bigger and more powerful rounds. Now that the AR chambered in .30-06 causes nothing more than a shrug, some have gone over the top, harnessing Stoner’s rifle to really powerful medium-caliber rounds, like the .338 Lapua Magnum. At the ET and then during the IWA, a German company displayed their ALR-338. The Schweinfurt-based company of Waffen Albert GmbH (a.k.a. Albert Arms) started as a firearms training business. Their headquarters contains one of the biggest ‘shooting cinemas’ in Germany, with a 55-yard indoor range fitted with a 26×16 ft. interactive target screen. There they started a firearms business and weapon repair shop. One of the shop’s attendants, a young Russian by the name of Vitaly Grauer, in his free time started to tinker with a large-caliber piston-driven AR. When he was finishing it, the boss decided to bankroll the prototype – as a matter of fact, hoping mainly for an advertisement value of the extreme endeavor. But as soon as the KSK (German Special Forces) trainees heard about it, the unfinished prototype was bought right away. Now, the ALR-338 (Automatic Long Range Rifle, .338 caliber) is series-manufactured, and for a while was a seriously-considered contender for the Bundeswehr medium-caliber sniper rifle, replacement of the G22 (the AI bolt-action rifle) until the military revealed that they’re looking for another bolt-action rifle. Nevertheless, the company has a full portfolio of orders for a rifle, capable (says DWJ gun magazine, Jan/2014) of putting 5 shots of .338 LM into a 69 mm circle at 300 m – in 9.87 seconds.

The unfinished receivers of the ALR-338 show the charging handle slots at sides. These are manufactured by Albert Arms themselves.

The ALR-338 is built on own-manufactured uppers and lowers, with a 650 mm long Lothar Walther match-barrel of 1:12 inch pitch (to be soon replaced by 1:10 inch pitch), fitted with M18x1 (same as Sako TRG-series) muzzle thread for a muzzle brake or suppressor attachment. The rifle is totally ambidextrous, with standard cocking handle replaced by two new, side-slot mounted ones. The bolt and bolt-carrier are of size and design appropriate to tame the powerhouse cartridge. The bolt has two rows of locking lugs, 16 in total. Even the extractor has two full-size lugs to stabilize the bolt-head. There’s a polymer accuracy wedge installed into the lower receiver, individually screw-adjustable from the outside to take out the play. Of course, as the ALR-338 is a product of the custom gunsmithing department, it can also be ordered in a mirror-image version for lefties, ejecting to the left.

Polish Szafir sighting system looks like an ACOG with Docter sight slapped on; but it was designed from scratch. What looks like a laser protruding from behind the LKA-4 tube is in fact a battery compartment for an AA battery.

PCO S.A.

The Warsaw-based Polish optronics company presented their wares at the joint Polish booth in Hall 9, with PSO Maskpol (means of ballistic and NBC protection), FB Lucznik-Radom (small arms manufacturer), ZM Tarnów S.A. (sniper rifles) and HPE Holsters (gun leather crafter). Amongst the PCO products the newest CKD-1 Szafir rifle sighting system was showcased. The Szafir (Sapphire) seems to be a new opening for the company, designed at the company’s own initiative, with an eye towards the Polish Soldier of the Future (ISW Tytan) – and now offered as the Polish Army’s new standard rifle sight for both legacy (Beryl) and objective (MSBS-5.56) individual rifle systems. The Szafir is comprised of two sights, a constant 4-power LDK-4 scope for precise shooting with an open MK-1 red-dot sight on top of it for CQB. The sight is still under development and its future will be cast by the results of the military testing.

Voere is back with an X3 – and every inch as cutting-edge avant-garde as it used to be.

X3 – Voere’s Back

The Austrian sniper rifle, Voere X3, is a further development of their modular 20-03 model, designed for tactical application. The 20-03 started a series of precision rifles that dusted-off the somewhat forgotten recently, once avant-garde trademark. Still remember that electric-primed ‘hunting’ rifle chambered for ‘caseless’ soft-point ammunition of the 1990s? Yes, that’s them, same Voere company. The first step towards X3 was the LBW hunting rifle, and its tactical sibling, the LBW-M, chambered in about everything starting with .222 Rem up to .375 H&H. Then came the .338 LM-chambered only LBW-M2, and here comes the X3, which is a notch bigger LBW-M2, shooting anything from .308 Win to .408 Chey-Tac. A bolt locking into a barrel extension enabled the aluminum receiver – but still depending on caliber and type of barrel (steel bull, steel fluted, carbon composite) the rifle weighs in at 7.6 to 8.6 kg (16.7 to 19 lbs.). Not Avant-guard enough for you? Then consider a 390 g (13.96 oz.) bolt, which is (save for the exchangeable bolt head in 4 caliber-group sizes) also made of aluminum in a .408 Chey-Tac rifle, mind you.

The X3 is a long-distance rifle, which you might guess by looking at the scope base. Instead of parallel with the bore it is 3 MOA convergent, so that firing a heavy bullet at a long distance you don’t have to move the reticle all the way up to find a cross-hair.

Shape of the thing to come – an American variant of the new HK civilian rifle, the HK-243S with factory STANAG magazine adapter in place. This is a TAR model, note adjustable stock and Keymode metal RIS forend.

HK had displays at both ET and IWA. The ET booth was bursting at seams with LE/Mil weapons, while the IWA booth showcased the civilian offer. The main news at the LE/Mil booth was the all-new all-metal RIS forend for G36 in all lengths, made of aluminum with Grenade Launching Module anchor points. The forend had only two permanent 1913 rails, top and bottom, with now fashionable Keymod openings at the sides for temporary mounting of the shorter side rails – or accessories mounted directly into the keyholes. Other than that, the MP7A2 had a 1913 bottom rail instead of the folding foregrip, and there was the 5.56mm UTM-chambered pale blue Plastic Training MP7PT.

The HK booth in Hall 9 showcased the all-new product from the civilian line – the HK 243S. Finally, after 18 years of manufacturing, the G36 had spawned a civilian model worthy of a name, replacing the earlier ‘look-unlike’ nightmarishly disastrous SL8. The new HK243S is simply a semi-auto only G36, offered in black or Flat Dark Earth, and in two versions, or rather levels: the SAR (Semi Automatic Rifle) Sporter Basic Variant (semi-only equivalent of the basic military G36A1, fitted with the coveted KSK 1913 rail – MSRP in Germany 1,730 EUR) and TAR (Tactical Automatic Rifle) Sporter Professional (with KSK adjustable stock, low 1913 rail with integral BUIS and the all-new military Keymod RIS forend, with additional options of Norwegian-style bolt hold-open release within the trigger guard, MSRP Germany – 2,290 EUR). The third option was initially to be called the HK293S – being the same rifle in both configurations, fitted with a STANAG magazine adapter. The latter is finally to be called the same as the European version, but would be aimed squarely at the American market.

A Welrod reborn for veterinary purposes – Brügger & Thomet VP-9.

Brügger & Thomet VP-9: For Tactical Vets

Swiss suppressor maker Brügger & Thomet (B&T) showed a new product this year, a 9mm pistol called the VP-9, or Veterinary Pistol, 9mm. This weapon is a modernized copy of the British Welrod of World War II fame. The name is not some kind of a sophisticated camouflage, but its real intended use. Apparently, dispatching animal victims of road accidents rose in Switzerland to the level requiring a determined solution. The neo-Welrod would deal with the problem swiftly and without undue noise. Also, owing to the design of the suppressor, slowing the regular 124 grs bullet to subsonic speed, the ricochet threat is greatly reduced. The noise level is (according to the manufacturer) ‘not unlike slamming the car door’, or up to 129 dB with normal ammunition, and use of a subsonic round would reduce that by mere 4 dB. The pistol is 286 mm long and weighs in at 862 grams, the magazine holds 5 rounds, and the pistol is of course a repeating bolt-action weapon.

Puckle Gun in Christian configuration – for round bullets.

Transarms – Tactical Retro

German classical arms dealer Transarms has each year a small exhibition of their wares – from .45 Luger, to a Krieghoff Luger, to Red Nine Broomhandle or Colt 1902 Military. This year they truly outdid themselves by displaying the (replica) Puckle Defense machine gun – one of the earliest such ever, patented in England, on May 15, 1718. This is essentially a big crank-turned flintlock revolver with a single barrel and a 7-chambered cylinder, replenished by an assistant gunner. The inventor of that contraption, one James Puckle, even graced the patent drawing with a ready advertisement copy of his own pen: ‘Defending King George, your Country and Lawes, / is defending Your Selves and Protestant Cause’. To this end served the most frequently cited today idea of Puckle’s: using ‘ye olde rounde’ bullets against hostile Papists, and square-sectioned ones ‘to convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization’. Somehow it proved not a commercial success, and as a newspaper of the era commented, the Puckle Gun ‘only wounded those who hold shares therein.’

NR81 is a civilian version of the QBZ 81, a 7.62x39 weapon, merging AK and SKS design: the first native Chinese small arms design accepted by the Chinese Army.

Norinco ante portas

The new exhibitor this year, so far not in tactical Hall 9, is Norinco of China. They brought a nice selection of semi-only versions of the modern Chinese military rifles, like Type 81 (NR81 and NR81-2 folding stock model), or the bull-pups, like Type 88 (NR9TM) or Type 97 (NR97A as well as a compact NR97AS). New Chinese AR-15s were on display, as well – both ‘M16’ (NRCQ) and ‘M4’ (NRCQ-A) size. A new product, soon to trigger a visit of non-plussed Russians from Molot, was the NSS12 semiautomatic magazine shotgun, looking unnervingly alike to the Saiga-12. Another new product was the new Shanghai Police sidearm, the NRP9 revolver, mixing together in S&W-like layout an eclectic collection of ideas, like Ruger-like transfer bar firing mechanism with an additional manual safety.

The new SIG P320 pistol is essentially a P250 without a hammer.

American SIG-Sauer

After Swiss SIG fell, and German J.P. Sauer & Sohn reverted to hunting rifles, the U.S.-based SIGARMS soon overshadowed its roots, boldly breaking out from pistol ghetto into rifle territory under a new name of SIG-Sauer. Soon there were inevitable AR-15s and even 1911s coming down the chute. The MPX submachine gun series caused many an eye-brow to rise.

At the ET and IWA fairs SIG-Sauer displayed the new P320 pistol, a hammerless version of the P250, and a new rifle, modular SIG 556xi series. The selective fire variant has premiered at the ET, but semiautomatic version shown at IWA also drew crowds. This is a development of the older SIG 556, turning multi-caliber: the exchangeable lowers, barrels, bolts and magazines each rifle allow them to fire any of the three rounds – .223 Rem, .300 BLK or 7.62 x 39 Russian.

The NSS12 shotgun seems to be a Saiga-12 lookalike.

Chinese police revolver, the 9mm NRP9, issued as of this spring to the Shanghai Municipal Police.

The new SIG 556xi rifle in full selective fire glory but at both SHOT Show and IWA only semiautomatic ones were shown.

The Beginning: 1922-1939
The history of Skarżysko-Kamienna, a town of now 48,000, started in 1923.  Prior to that only a village called Milica was situated nearby, mentioned in chronicles as early as 1183, but later lost amongst the woods.  In the 1890s the Russians, occupying this part of Poland, built a railroad connecting their fortress of Ivangorod (now Dęblin) with Sosnowiec on the fringes of Silesia.

In 1922, the Central Military Production Plants Authority in Warsaw sent Mr. Leonard Łabuć (future first director of the State Ammunition Factory) with Mr. Franciszek Kuropatwiński to Skarżysko Kościelne commune to delineate a place somewhere close by the railhead, where the ammunition factory would be organized.  They chose a large forest clearing on the banks of the river Kamienna.  The new township outside Milica, where workers erecting the factory were to be lodged, was christened Kamienna and given municipal status in 1923.  Soon the first factory buildings were standing and on 25 August, 1924, the Phase I of the State Ammunition Factory (Polish: Państwowa Fabryka Amunicji, PFA) construction was finished, and the first manufacturing lines were busy filling artillery grenades.

Pistol ammunition from Mesko: standing 9mm Luger, LRN, SJSP, FMJ, blank and AP, lying 9mm Makarov FMJ.

Later the factory still grew, with case-making, primers, fuzes and rifle ammunition plants built. The PFA was designed to be Europe’s most modern ammunition plant, and was built from the ground up to accommodate the very best and most modern machinery available. In 1926 the fuze department delivered their first batch for the military acceptance. In 1927 the rifle ammunition plant started manufacturing 7.9 mm x 57 rounds (8mm Mauser), and soon it was capable of delivering 1 million rounds per month, with only powder being contracted from outside Kamienna – primers, bullets and cases were all manufactured on site.

By now the PFA in Kamienna employed 3,500 blue-collar and 250 white-collar workers.  In 1927, the state-owned munitions concern of State Armament Works (Państwowe Wytwórnie Uzbrojenia, PWU) was established, with all hitherto independent factories its subsidiaries.  The State Ammunition Factory (PFA) now became the Ammunition Factory of the State Armament Works (PWU-FA).  Together with the privately-owned smaller company Z.A. “Pocisk” S.A. in Rembertów by Warsaw and the Warsaw-based, military-owned Ammunition Plant No.1 (WA-1) they supplied all rifle ammunition consumed by the Polish military.  The PFA/PWU-FA headstamp at that time (1927-1939) was comprised of the Polish Eagle at 12 o’clock on the head.  The workers’ township rapidly grew into a real city, soon thwarting and swallowing the communal authorities’ seat at Skarżysko Kościelne.  In 1928, Kamienna was thus renamed to the current name of Skarżysko-Kamienna (of which only the first part is usually used in non-formal parlance).  Milica was likewise swallowed into it, and soon became one of the city districts.

Sentry armed with Sten submachine gun at the gate of the State Ammunition Factory in 1946.

The plant developed a sizeable mobilization capability reserve, which was kept busy with civilian production, cooperating with the automotive and domestic appliances industries.  The PWU-FA had its own Bureau of Studies, where up to 500 mostly ammunition-connected designs were created and developed.  As of the mid-1930s the PWU-FA took up production of handgun rounds: the 9×19 Luger with two different FMJ ball variants; the 115-gr for the Army’s Vis (F.B. Radom) pistols and 124-gr for the Police Suomi SMGs, as well as 7.62x38R for Nagant gas-sealed revolvers used by the Police.  As of 1936, the 7.9×107 DS, the PWU-FA’s own design of high-velocity antitank rifle ammunition, was also manufactured for the wz.35 ATR.  Heavy machine gun rounds, the 13.2×99 Hotchkiss were made for the imported Hotchkiss wz.31 HMGs used by the Polish Navy.  In 1938, the 20x138B automatic cannon ammunition came into manufacturing for use in the Polish 20mm wz.38 cannon.  Other light automatic cannon ammunition made by PWU-FA was the 40x311R for Bofors wz.36 antiaircraft gun.

At War: 1939-1945
After the defeat of Poland in 1939, the PWU-FA was taken over by the German Hasag (Hugo Schneider AG) of Leipzig and Altendorf.  The Skarżysko plant operated under German control, manufacturing 7.9×57 and 9×19 German-style ammunition; in 1944 adding the 7.9×33 Kurz intermediate round, all three in steel lacquered cases headstamped with German manufacturing code “kam.”  Many prewar PWU-FA employees were forcibly deported to other Hasag plants, and more than 30,000 people died in a Nazi forced labor camp situated on the plant’s premises.  The Polish and Jewish slave workers were sabotaging the production, despite severe penalties including numerous public executions of the culprits.  Nevertheless, the large scale smuggling of ready ammunition and components by the Polish workers continued, and clandestinely loaded rounds were delivered to the partisans.

In the summer of 1944, with the Soviet steamroller gaining momentum westwards into Poland, the Skarżysko-Kamienna plant machinery and supplies were evacuated to the German subsidiaries of the Hasag, leaving only gutted ghosts of what once used to be Europe’s most modern ammunition plant.

Shooting range ammunition from Mesko: pistol ammunition with SJSP anti-ricochet bullets and rifle rounds with plastic-cored ball to prevent ricochets and reduce danger zones.

Behind The Iron Curtain: 1945-1989
Skarżysko-Kamienna was liberated in January, 1945, and the plant was ordered re-opened as soon as possible.  The first postwar manager of the PFA, Mr. Antoni Kunicki, faced a difficult task: he was left with a gutted ruin where his factory once was.  During that year though, the machinery started to be repatriated from Germany, and by winter of 1945 rifle ammunition plant started to deliver first trial batches 7.62 mm x 54R rounds.  The name was again PFA, the State Ammunition Factory, but for the first time these letters were introduced into the headstamp.  In the later 1940s, handgun ammunition was again manufactured – the 7.62mm x 25 Tokarev, as the new ‘liberated’ Poland was forcibly aligned with Stalin’s Eastern Bloc and its army was re-armed with Soviet arms.  In 1950, the case headstamp was changed from PFA to a “21 in oval” cryptic code, which replaced the letters on military ammunition since then.  The oval was discarded in 1955, but “21” is still Skarżysko’s manufacturer code featured in military headstamp.

Meanwhile the factory underwent a number of name changes.  In 1945, it was the State Ammunition Factory, in 1948 the product nature was removed from the name to conceal the real production, and the plant was given a typically Communist non-descript name of United Metal Works, Plant Nr 2 in Skarżysko, ultimately changed in 1951 to Metal Works Skarżysko, with acronym Mesko (Me S-ko) being used as a logo on civilian product lines.  During the 1970s the acronym worked its way into the official name of the factory, then Predom-Mesko Metal Works (Predom being a nation-wide domestic appliances holding company).  Mesko then made its way onto the headstamps of the civilian ammunition being made at the time: hunting rifle cartridges and .38 Special ammo manufactured for the Police.  In the mid-1980s the ‘Predom’ title was dropped and the company was called General Sikorski Mesko Metal Works as of 1988.

23x152B cannon ammunition from Mesko: OFZT, dummy, blank, BZT.

During the Cold War era, the Skarżysko plant manufactured all types of Combloc military ammunition: 7.62×25 Tokarev (1948-1956), 9×18 Makarov (1965-today), 5.45×39 Kalashnikov (1983-1994), 7.62×39 Kalashnikov (1956-today), 7.62x54R Mosin (1945-today), 12.7×108 DShK (1955-1977), 14.5×114 KPVT (1955-1988), and light automatic cannon ammunition.  Experimental work included development and limited production of the 7mm x 41 Lantan intermediate round in the 1970s, as well as caseless ammunition in 1980s, including an indigenous 9mm handgun round and 5.45mm rifle round projects.  Additionally during the 1980s, the Mesko plant started licensed production of the Strela-2M (SA-7 Grail) man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS), and independently developed it into an aerial version, the Gad (Reptile) missile, used on Polish helicopter gunships as a self-defense weapon.

Mesko At Large: 1990-2014
In the early 1990s, following the fall of Communism, Mesko along with the rest of the Polish defense industry was thrown into disarray.  Commercialized in 1991 as ZM Mesko S.A., and no longer the state’s top priority, the plant survived mostly on civilian lines of production, including kitchen ovens, lighting fixtures, automotive parts, mixers, meat grinders, lawn mowers and other – fortunately – indispensable domestic appliances.  New types of ammunition were started then, hoping for export deals.  Soon, however, the Army started to prepare for integration with the NATO alliance, moving from Soviet calibers towards Western ones.  9×19 Luger was to replace the 9mm Makarov, while the 5.56×45 and 7.62×51 NATO rifle rounds were to replace both Kalashnikov rifles calibers and Mosin rounds, still used for the excellent PKM machine guns.  New handgun (Wist 94), submachine gun (PM-84P), rifle (Beryl) and machine gun (UKM 2000) were designed and chambered in the Western calibers, while the HMG manufactured in Tarnów (the licensed copy of the NSV) was rechambered for the .50 BMG (WKM B).  At the same time, 9×19 ammunition was offered for export, along with .38 Special and .357 Magnum, including the (probably) world’s only .357 Magnum with a wadcutter bullet.

Mesko offered 5.56mm ammunition: M193 equivalent, tracer, blank, RS ball.

After a few years of dark despair, Mesko finally regained footing in the mid-1990s.  In 1995, the military again started to order sizeable consignments of ammunition, this time mostly in Western calibers. Mesko had by then developed its own MANPAD, the Grom (Thunder) being a development of Strela (or rather Strela’s replacement, the 9K38 Igla or SA-18 Grouse) with Western counterparts or their own developments replacing the Russian-supplied components.  The Grom was accepted into the Polish Army in 1995, and is still modernized and updated on a yearly basis, now becoming the backbone of the Polish troops (as well as Georgian and Indonesian, with Peru declaring they will soon follow suit) direct antiaircraft defense.

In 1996, Mesko formed a consortium with Israel’s Rafael, offering to the Polish Army an Israeli Spike ATGM.  The bid was successful and as of 2003 Mesko is supplying the Polish Army with license-manufactured Spike-LR antitank guided missiles.  More than 2,000 missiles and over 260 launchers were accepted into the Polish Army so far.

In 1999, Mesko started cooperation with the Scandinavian ammunition concern Nammo, which at first concerned 70mm rockets, medium-caliber artillery ammunition and ecological ammunition disposal, but later branched off into virtually all aspects of ammunition production, with both companies exchanging their products and services and offering products using the other company’s products and components.  E.g., Mesko is making .50 BMG cases for Nammo, while Mesko-manufactured .50-Cal. ammunition features Nammo-supplied NM-series multipurpose projectiles, while most of Mesko small arms ammunition is loaded with Vihtavuori powders.  Other foreign partners of Mesko include French missile giant MBDA, Swedish SAAB Bofors Dynamics, and many others.

Selection of small caliber ammunition from Mesko: to the left 7.62x39 (tracer, ball, HPT), .50-Cal. M33 Ball, 7.62x54R dummy, blank, 5.56mm blank, ball and tracer, 7.62x51 AP.

In 2011, during an internal reorganization of the then Polish defense industry’s holding concern, the Bumar Group, Mesko was appointed a leading company of the product division Bumar-Amunicja, and to mark that occasion, the name of the company was changed again, this time to Bumar-Amunicja S.A.  Shredding a recognized trademark like Mesko for a temporary whim of a company that imploded and disappeared just two years later seems unwise enough to warrant hope, that Mesko would be back with us – and sooner than later.  But the plant itself is still very much alive and kicking for a 90 year old.

– Mesko’s offerings in 2014 –

Handgun ammunition:

• The 9×18 pistol ammo is loaded in brass case.  The varieties offered include a lead-cored ball and a blank (23mm long crimp-closed).
• The 9×19 pistol ammunition is loaded in brass case.  The varieties offered include: 124 gr plain lead RN ball, 124 gr semi-jacketed ball, 124 gr FMJ ball, 113 gr KPO low-ricochet FMJ ball, 124 gr brass-washed lead SWC and blank (28mm, crimp-closed).
• .38 Special revolver ammunition is loaded in a brass case.  The varieties offered include: 148 gr Wad Cutter practice load, 157 gr SJSP and LRN combat loads, and three variations of Short Stop loads of different velocities.
• .357 Magnum revolver ammunition is loaded in brass cases.  The varieties offered include three 157 gr balls: a wadcutter (WC), SWC and SJSP.

Intermediate rifle ammunition:

• The 5.56×45 rifle ammo is loaded in brass cases.  The varieties offered include two types of ball, the 62 gr RS with steel penetrator (red primer annulus, plain bullet), and 55 gr lead-cored projectile (M193 equivalent, export only), a tracer round (red PA, red tip), a blank (M200 equivalent, crimp-closed, green-tipped).
• The 7.62×39 rifle ammo are loaded in brass or lacquered steel cases.  The varieties offered include: steel-cored ball, tracer (green tip), short range training ball (plastic core and tip), and blank (48 mm long, crimp-closed), as well as HPT ammunition.

70mm aerial rocket NLPR-70 with Nammo warhead and Mesko booster.

Rifle ammunition:

• The 7.62×51 rifle and machine gun ammo is loaded solely in brass cases.  The varieties offered include: lead-cored ball (plain), tracer (red tip), AP (black tip), API (silver tip), short range training (plastic core and tip), and blank (66 mm long, crimp-closed).
• The 7.62x54R rifle and machine gun ammo is loaded solely in brass cases.  The varieties offered include: steel-cored ball (plain), tracer (green tip), short range training (plastic core and tip), blank (54 mm, crimp-closed) and HPT ammunition.

Heavy machine gun ammunition:

• The 12.7×99 (.50 BMG) HMG ammunition is loaded in Mesko-manufactured brass with RUAG primer.  The varieties include plain M33 Steel-Cored Ball, as well as a range of Nammo-supplied multi-purpose projectiles, like NM 173 Multi-Purpose Armor Piercing (AP-S, aluminum tip), NM 140 MP (green tip), or NM 160 Multi Purpose-Tracer (green over red tip).  The NM 140 MP is loaded in two variations, a machine gun load and a special enhanced consistency sniper load (green over yellow tip).

Light Automatic Cannon Ammunition:

• The 23x152B ammunition is used with AA weapons (ZU-23 towed or ZSU-23 Shilka quadruple SPAAG).  Varieties offered include the API-T (BZT), HEI-T (OFZT), two spin-stabilized discarding sabot loadings: the APDS-T (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot – Tracer) and FAPDS-T (Fragmenting Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot – Tracer), as well as blank (cardboard-tipped, 158 mm) and dummy.
• The 30×173 cannon rounds are used for the Mk44 Bushmaster Chain Gun.  Varieties offered include the APFSDS-T (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot Fin-Stabilized with Tracer), the FAPDS-T round (Fragmenting Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot with Tracer), the MP-T/SD (Multi-Purpose-Tracer w/ Self-Destruction feature) and TP-T (Target Practice-Tracer).
• The 35×228 cannon rounds are used for Oerlikon KDA light anti-aircraft cannon.  Two varieties are offered: FAPDS-T (Fragmenting Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot – Tracer) and TP-T (Target Practice – Tracer).

Mesko 5.56x45 used by the Iraqi National Army trainees – note distinctive crate and legend in Polish.

Rockets and missiles

• The NLPR-70 rocket is meant for firing from aerial pod-launchers.  They feature RA 79 MOD1 or RA 79 High-Explosive Incendiary Semi-Armor Piercing (HEISAP) warheads with Nammo impact fuzes, powered by a double-based solid fuel rocket booster by Mesko.  The 70mm caliber, 12.2 kg rocket with 5.9 kg warhead is 1362.5 mm long and reaches speeds up to 45 mps, with maximum range of 10.3 km.
• The Grom Man-Portable Aerial Defense System (MANPADS) is meant for firing at line-of-sight aerial targets approaching at speeds up to 400 mps or receding at speeds up to 360 mps, at an altitude of 10-4,000 m, with engagement distance between 500 and 5,500 m.  The complete Grom system comprises a multiple use handgrip with thermal sight and disposable launching tube containing a 10.3 kg, 72mm of caliber missile, making up to 580 meters per second under sustaining motor.
• The Spike-LR ATGM is meant for engaging tanks and other AFVs or helicopters at distances between 200 and 4,000 m.  The 107mm caliber, 10.5 kg missile contains tandem, shaped-charge warhead, fired at 150 mps under sustaining motor from the 5.1 kg launcher fitted with optoelectronic, dual-circuit homing device (CCTV and argon-cooled infra-red detector), capable of transmitting the image from the seeker head to the display at the launcher.

Almost lost in a sea of plastic-fantastic new-wave “museums of idea, not objects” resplendent in touch-screens and 3D displays, but lacking substance and exhibits, in Germany there is a besieged island of a good, old time museum close to bursting its seams with the most fascinating hardware; a variety and quality of which is getting harder and harder to find.

If the winds of good fortune should ever sweep you across the pond to Europe, and you love arms of all types, make sure you got a spare day to spend in beautiful and ancient (it used to be a Roman Legions garrison city) Koblenz, a city at the junction of the Rheine and Mosel rivers, in the state of Rhein-Pfalz, about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Frankfurt/Main.

Koblenz is the seat of the German Bundeswehr logistics service, known formerly as the BWB (Federal Office of Military Technology and Procurement), nowadays re-christened into a real mouthful of an acronym: BAAINBw (standing for Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support).  Never mind the name, in 1962 the office started a study collection of war materiel, collecting and researching German and foreign military hardware, teaching Bundeswehr soldiers the ins and outs of foreign (Warsaw Pact) equipment – and of course comparing German equipment with foreign ones with an eye towards what can be copied and/or improved to make the Bundeswehr combat load and hardware better.

The first 1892 prototype of the Bergmann pistol, designed by Louis Schmeisser (father of Hugo of SMG and Sturmgewehr fame). The early repeating and automatic pistols collection of the WTS is something one has to see to believe.

Soon, historical examples started to flow in as well, and in 1982 the combined influx of old and new artifacts made the BWB collection burst at its seams with both paper-pusher’s and collection items.  Thus, a new location was found, and the WTS (Military Technology Study Collection) moved out into a freshly vacated pre-war Langemarck Barracks at Meyenerstrasse 85-87.  There at last, a fixed exhibition was organized, and with the influx of new and old artifacts, the character of the collection steadily started to change course from strictly utilitarian towards more scientific.

The Nepalese hand crank-operated Birendra (Bira) machine gun is a reverse-engineered Gardner Gun fed from a top pannier magazine. Just one of the 50+ non-automatic machine guns on display at WTS.

Though the collection was initially off limits to civilians, that changed with time and at the beginning of the new century everybody could see the collection upon inquiring by telephone 24 hours in advance to make sure the collection was open on the targeted day.  Nowadays you don’t need even that: you just get there, any day of the year, except for Easter and Christmas weeks, between 9.30 AM and 4.30 PM, pay a mere 3 Euro and you’re in.  A practical note: make sure you have and use Euro coins.  This is a minimum-maintenance museum, meaning that you don’t normally meet a single member of the staff during your entire visit and no one is breathing down your neck when you’re lusting over some arcane handgun.  There’s no cashier desk to sell tickets, no credit cards (major or otherwise) are accepted – you just go to a gate with a turnstile and a slot machine.  Deposit your three Euro in coins into the slot, and a turnstile can be pushed out of the way to admit one.  Don’t develop any stupid ideas, though – from the moment you enter the Barracks you’re under constant CCTV surveillance.

In 1970 the Rheinmetall company tried to put its foot into the German individual rifle door, then as now, firmly stocked with HK weapons. The company tried to introduce the 5.56mm weapon, and decided to make it advanced enough for the Bundeswehr to be unable to overlook it. However, they were unsuccessful because the rifle was deemed too modern – guess the plastic receiver and optically-sighted bull-pups were not yet all the rage...

The WTS is an overwhelming mega-museum.  It displays a stupefying amount of everything a soldier would ever touch during his/her stint in the military: from underwear and uniform, to mess kit, to service piece, to tanks, artillery, jet aircraft – all the way to a midget submarine.  And all this had to be crammed into the display area – even though there’s 75,000+ sq ft of it.  Practical note #2: To secure maximum viewing pleasure, one is well-advised to not have any accompanying personnel who are not inclined to truly appreciate the hardware.  Just leave said personnel at a hotel to see the city, or if your credit card would survive such extremes, at a local mall, and take a day off from your vacation.  There’s enough there for a true military technology aficionado to spend an entire day 09:30 to 16:30 at the museum without a single moment of boredom.  But people not bitten by a hardware bug would find little for entertainment, would be terribly bored, and would spoil your delightful technical vacation.

A prototype Walther G43 model chambered for the 7.9mm Kurzpatrone fed from a Sturmgewehr magazine.

The ground floor has halls with tanks, vehicles, field artillery, flak artillery, heavy artillery (up to and including Hitler’s 240mm K3 supergun), radars, searchlights, noise-locating gear, engines, helicopters, aircraft, torpedoes, sea mines, depth charges, generators, bridge-building pontoons – just about everything that’s heavy and military.  The engine collection is really fascinating, including e.g., Jumo 205 aerial counter-stroking diesel engine that powered the Junkers Ju-86 bomber, or the masterpiece of Soviet engine design, a radial maritime 503A diesel engine comprising 7 banks of 6 cylinders each, numbering 42 cylinders in all.  It is hard to imagine the shape of the crankshaft that thing needed…

The first working model of the caseless HK G11 automatic rifle.

The second floor has halls upon halls of uniforms and personal equipment.  At the time of my visit there was a very interesting temporary exhibit of soldier pocket knives from the 19th century onwards showing examples starting from pen knives through the Swiss Army Knife from its humble beginnings until present day multitool “pocket tool boxes.”

9mm Walther AP (Armeepistole), a P.38 predecessor with internal hammer. This is the semi-compact size with the shortest (3 in.) barrel.

Then there’s light and anti-tank artillery, machine guns, machine cannons, Gatlings galore, from camel-gun to the GAU-8/A, including a very interesting selection of Soviet Gatlings, both engine-driven and automatic – and they had automatic multi-barrel guns, mostly aerial, starting at 7.62mm to .50 cal. (YakB-12.7 as mounted under the front cockpit of the Hind-D helicopter gunship), to 23 and 30mm (AK-630 maritime anti-aircraft 30mm water-cooled Gatling: the 6-30 in this designation stands for 6-bbl, 30-mm).  Apparently the Soviets wanted their Gatlings independent of electric power and instead they opted for gas-operated guns.  The GShG-762 on display in WTS is actually a cross-over between the power-driven and automatic: it uses an electric motor to load belt and fire first shot – and then powder gases take over.  This was meant to be an improvement over the YakB-12.7, using electric-primed pyrotechnical propulsion cartridges to propel the gun for the first shot.  The gun was loaded with a six-shot cylinder (actually an in-line harmonica-shaped magazine) of propelling rounds, and the pilot had to use his ammo supply in six bursts – or else he was unable to shoot it all out.  So afterwards, in the smaller caliber gun, the pyro starter was replaced with an electric motor – hence the cog wheel around the barrel cluster.  At the opposite end of the spectrum the WTS has acquired one of the late 1800s Nepalese Birendra (Bira) twin-barrel pannier-fed hand-cranked guns utilizing a copy of the Gardner Gun system.

A rarely seen weapon: the HK P11 five-shot underwater pistol for combat scuba divers.

The machine gun hall houses a most comprehensive collection of machine guns.  There are regular service models, their prototypes, never adopted test pieces and more.  Things like the 100-Shiki rifle-stripper clip fed aircraft (!) gas-operated machine gun.  There are a lot of Japanese aerial armaments there, things like the Ho-301, a 1940 caseless 40mm engine cannon for fighter aircraft, the 20mm cannon series based on .50 cal. Browning design, the 92-Shiki and 98-Shiki aerial flexible guns.  From the Germans’ unique designs, you can see the TuF-MG, which is the world’s first HMG, a 13mm Maxim chambered for the T-Gewehr ammo.  There are also two Knorr-Bremse prototype MGs, as well as Krieghoff’s prototype aerial MG and Krieghoff’s prototype contender for the FG-42 paratrooper’s rifle.

Blooper Tube with a difference – a three-shot repeating China Lake variant of the M79 grenade launcher.

The third floor houses the military communications gear and an interesting exhibition of aircraft instruments, and then you get into the attic and you think you came to heaven: the attic holds a knock-out exhibition of individual small arms, from double shot-single barreled flintlocks all the way to the HK XM8 and underwater P11 pistol.

Japanese 40mm caseless aerial cannon Ho-301.

Mars pistol?  Check – and not only one, but two different models: the 1900 Webley Mars and 1906 Consortium Mars.  And Whittman’s Webley & Scott 1903 pistol for better measure.  Bergmann pistol?  Check – with at least a dozen models from the 1892 prototype of the No. 1 pistol up until the Danish 10/21 Bergmann.  A Colt Model 1900 sight-safety Parallel Ruler?  You bet – USN s/n 85.  The repeating pistols – anyone ever seen a repeating pistol?  And I don’t mean the Remington XP-100 sawed-off rifle, but 1880s and 1890s military prototype repeating pistols, mostly Austrian and German.  They have them all, Volcanics, Bittners, Laumanns, Schillings, Schoenbergers, Schulhoffs – you name it.  Trivial stuff like Broomhandles, Lugers, Tokarevs, or P38s hardly deserve a notice and a photo.

A 7.75mm Vollmer A.35/III automatic rifle: Germany’s first assault rifle of 1935.

Unfortunately, the photography conditions are the only thing that truly detracts from an otherwise 100 percent enjoyable visit at the WTS Wonderland.  The exhibits are either too cramped or set behind greasy fingered glass, which reflects either the fluorescent tube lights, or your flash, or (most times) both, and then the attic section has glass panels with security wire molded in, and they also blink in your flash.  However, if you’re not making photos, but just using your Mk I eyeball, you can see anything and everything quite well. This museum is not only an excellent value for the price of admission, but is exceptional in its variety, rarity and comprehensiveness of its collection.  For people interested in this sort of thing, there will probably be a strong urge to return at the first possible occasion.

At this year’s 21st International Defence Industry Exhibition (MSPO is an acronym from Polish name of the fair: Międzynarodowy Salon Przemysłu Obronnego), almost 25,000 square metres of exhibition space was the showcase for 400 companies from 23 countries.  It is a tradition of the MSPO to designate the Leading Nation, which has a national pavilion to promote its defense industry’s capabilities.  This year was Turkey, which signified two important anniversaries in Polish-Turkish diplomatic relationship: this year is the 90th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relation between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Turkey – but next year will be an even more solemn occasion: the 600th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Poland and the Ottoman Empire.  The Turks were Poland’s south-eastern neighbor and scourge for several hundred years.  Both countries fought long and hard, but in the end it was the Ottoman Empire that up until 20th Century remained the only power not to accept the division and occupation of Poland in late 18th Century by Russia, Prussia and Austria.

The honors bestowed on Turkey were more than matched by the appearance of the Mekhteran, the world’s oldest military marching band, still performing in 17th Century costumes.  The Mekhteran greeted the arriving VIPs, including the President of the Republic of Poland, Mr. Bronisław Komorowski, Poland’s, Turkey’s and Ukraine’s Defense Ministers, Polish Minister of Treasury, and Poland’s National Security Council’s Chairman.

The Turkish National Pavilion comprised half of Hall F with products from many Turkish defense industry companies, including the Otokar (armored vehicles manufacturer), as well as small arms manufacturers, MKE and Sarsilmaz.  The MKE is a many year licensee of German companies, mostly HK and Rheinmetall, so their walls of HK rifles and SMGs, as well as MG3s, were not much of a surprise to anyone.  Sarsilmaz manufactures mostly handguns – hardly innovative as one can guess their inspiration at first glance.  Their pistols are much like CZ-75s or HK USPs, with a pinch of Walther P-99 look-a-likes, and revolvers hold few secrets to anyone familiar with S&W L-frames.  Recently they ventured into the rifle market with a Black Rifle offer of their own called the SAR-223.  Their semiautomatic only and select-fire military/police propositions look exactly like a direct-impingement AR-15 of M4 proportions should or would.  But there’s more to that: a 9mm SMG/semiautomatic carbine called TE54 is not a clone of the Colt 9mm SMG (Model 635) but an original design in 9mm, with a magazine well of the lower receiver shrunk for MP5 magazines and ejection opening in the upper receiver small enough to pass only a 9mm Luger round or case, and devoid of cover.  The internals are of course completely different, with straight blowback action, but the external ergonomics are exactly the same between the TE54 and AR-15 platform, so re-training is almost non-existent.

The only thing new at Fabique Nationale was this F/X Minimi, showcased at the F/X firing range that became a regular feature of the Polish distributor, Cenzin.

After Beryl was finally made to feed from the STANAG magazine, time came to reap the harvest and install a bolt stop at long last. This year’s Beryl modification with STANAG magazine adaptor was fitted with a functional bolt stop, complete with bolt release lever inside the trigger guard.

A prototype of the new version of the Croatian VHS-D2 rifle was displayed along with the new Croat 40mm underbarrel grenade launcher. Finally, the FA MAS style crank fire-selector gave way to a conventional thumb-operated ambidextrous lever. The flipside is that the pistol-style thumb-operated bolt-stop had to be moved somewhere else – and got on the bottom of the receiver, behind the magazine, which is not a perfect solution, to put it mildly. The case ejection direction is finally changeable now, and there’s one feature that no bullpup ever had: an adjustable butt-plate. An adjustable butt stock on a buttless rifle might seem funny, but in fact, the bullpup users also tend to wear body armor, and hitherto had to make do with non-adjustable weapons – now that problem’s gone. The grenade launcher is also highly unorthodox in having an entire barrel assembly swinging out for loading around the axis parallel to the barrel.

Mekhteran waiting for the VIPs to arrive.

ZM Tarnów was this time much more low-key, presenting mostly readily available guns like the Alex family of all three sizes (7.62mm, .338 and .50 BMG).

Sarsilmaz had nice M4-styled direct gas impingement AR-15s, called the SAR223.

Radon-K (aka MSBS-K) with the all new conforming 40mm underbarrel grenade launcher is getting ready for a huge military debut, and was now presented with new sights. The grenade sight is of a customary quadrant style with front post and notch – but there’s also a cleverly shaped mounting rail to attach, for example, the Meprolight grenadier sight. The sighting unit sitting on the main rail is a new product from PCO – the Szafir.

The RGP-40 revolver grenade launcher form ZM Tarnów is also still living and on the brink of acceptance into the inventory: this year’s MSPO saw two versions with different barrel lengths.

This year’s show brought a multitude of (mostly) indigenous UAV projects, of all sizes and descriptions – gliders, fixed-wing tractor and pusher aircraft, as well as helicopters, for reconnaissance and tactical use – like the ILX-27 unmanned helicopter gunship prototype armed with a ZM Tarnów 4-barreled .50-cal. Gatling gun.

On April 24-25, 2013 the Fourth Rheinmetall Infantry Symposium was held in Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, Germany. Once again it was  organized by Rheinmetall Defence’s division of Rheinmetall Weapons and Ammunition. SADJ was there with about two dozen defense media writers invited from three continents.

This year’s Symposium gathered over 200 participants from several countries, mostly European NATO members and neutral countries (Swiss and Sweden), but some more exotic locations were also represented, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Many participants were in full dress in their military uniforms, including as many as three generals. The main fare of the Symposium was of course Rheinmetall Defence products, discussed in lectures and displayed in both static and dynamic exhibitions. Other exhibitors included Dynamit Nobel Defence, FN Herstal, General Dynamics, Haix, Heckler & Koch, MEN, Oakley, Rhode & Schwarz, RUAG, Schmidt & Bender, Simunitions 3M/Peltor and Vinghøg.

Over a day and a half of the bi-annual Symposium the participants had an opportunity to hear close to two dozen lectures on a wide range of infantry-themed subjects: from “Improving Explosive Effects Of Dismounted Infantry Firepower,” to “trends in 40mm grenade launchers and ammunition,” to current and future state of shoulder-fired infantry weapons, to operational experiences from Afghanistan and handing over control from ISAF to local government. The Symposium roster was – traditionally – a bit Bazooka/Mortar/Grenade Launcher – heavy, but a static display was a chance to get some hands-on knowledge of lighter stuff, including a brand-new and displayed close-up for the first time Rheinmetall RMG .50 cal. chain gun, hitherto shown only from a distance – and even that through a veil of camouflage netting. Again, demonstrations and lectures about the German Infantryman of the Future (IdZ – Infanterist der Zunkunft, internally at Rheinmetall called the Gladius program) were conspicuously absent – even though numerous elements were displayed at the static exhibition.

Detonation of a 40 mm HEDP grenade piercing a steel slab.

The presentations and lectures were delivered in English to avoid translation, by both the company reps and the ‘end users’, i.e. military personnel from several countries. All were fully relaxed, keeping healthy distance and exhibiting sometimes contagious, and often self-ironic humor. The epitome of that style was a presentation of ‘Operational realities’ or Afghanistan ‘lessons learned’ by the deceptively boyish-looking Capt. Robert Grant of 4 SCOTS, British Army, recounting the finer points of several operations performed by his regiment. It was maybe not even the core lecture that enthused the audience, (which was delivered in a concise, matter-of-fact militarily way, and studded with hard-earned bits of wisdom – transferring in just 15 minutes more valuable information than some other lecturers took three times longer to convey), but the aftermath – that being a slide show of snapshots from the combat tour, some being an embodiment of the famous British sense of humor.

Pictures From the Exhibition
The main star of the show, except of course of the hosts, was Heckler & Koch, whose display was the largest and most frequently besieged. The main points of interest were new models of their flagship infantry carbines: the HK416A5 and HK417A2. The new 416s and 417s do sport a redesigned (front turning knob) gas valve and integral fully ambidextrous controls, in fashionable Flat Dark Earth hard anodizing (internally known at the company as ‘The American Finish’). The 416/417 gas system is of the self-regulating type, initiated by the G36, and the gas-valve is only used for running with a suppressor – other than that (when the valve is set to ‘S’ for Suppressed) it remains always at ‘N’ for Normal.

The ambi-416/417s were mere prototypes and they will still go through modifications – but  rather of petty nature, perhaps the right-side bolt carrier hold-open lever would be replaced with one enabling the manual activation for a chamber check, as the present version has a shelf underneath, precluding that and makes the unfortunate south-paw end-user switch to the other side in order to hold the bolt open manually.

Other already known models were displayed at the HK stand as well, mostly with some small modifications or in arcane configurations, hard to get hands-on when delivered to the target ‘black’ unit. These included a G36 with a RIS-style four rail aluminum handguard, similar to the 416, and a STANAG-compatible ambidextrous magazine well for the G36. A STANAG-compatible 30-round all polymer translucent magazine was on hand, as well as a new rendition of the G36 magazine without the stacking interfaces on the sides – long whined-over by the end-users for wasting space in a magazine pouch and catching on everything precisely while one is in a dire need of a fast reload.

New generation of FN’s Five-seveN, the Mk 2. Not much changed... (Photo courtesy of Remigiusz Wilk)

There was also a big display of the newest HK GPMG, the 7.62-mm HK121, shown with an almost complete set of extras, including spare barrels of different lengths and weights, foregip/extending bipod for Special Forces, several types of butt-stocks (including turret gun spade grips), and a co-ax set (bobbed pistol grip with solenoid trigger and the longer, bull barrel – absent).

The older (though looking like a kid brother in comparison) 5.56mm sibling of the HK121, the MG4 machine gun was also displayed, mounted on the small-arms Vinghøg Buffermount. Other firearms displayed were the P30 pistol with a huge selection of exchangeable grip panels, enabling a tailored grip for every conceivable hand, and the HK GLM side-opening 40mm LV grenade launcher tube with alternative stand-alone kit.

The neighboring Rheinmetall stand offered a wide selection of grenades and mortar bombs, as well as several firearms. The most interest-gathering of these was the MG3 KWS, a modernized, ‘tacticool’ variant of the venerable MG3 GPMG, with a totally new shoulder stock (with adjustable cheek piece, shoulder rest and adjustable rear monopod). Other than that, the weapon has a redesigned fire control group with swiveling safety/selector lever (instead of MG 42 style push-rod), enabling semiautomatic firing, and is fitted with an electronic shot counter. Of course today no weapon can do without Picatinny rails: one was placed on top of the barrel shroud, the other in tandem with it on top of the receiver cover, and a short accessory rail was placed on the left front of the barrel shroud. This latter is asymmetrical because of the barrel changing slot extending along the entire right side of the shroud precluded fitting another on the right front. The 50-round belt is fed from polymer drum magazines (made by HK) during during transfers. This almost 70 years old machine gun is still used by many armies who might possibly be interested in a facelift modernization – even though the Bundeswehr seems poised to switch from the MG3 to the new MG5; being the HK121.

Another version of the new 40mm Medium Velocity grenade launcher were the semiautomatic Hydra and single shot Cerberus as presented by Rheinmetall. The 40mm MV concept (100 mps initial velocity) is intended to span the range gap between the 40mm LV and HV, being used in hand-held launchers.

MG4, HK’s 5.56-mm squad automatic weapon in rare sustained fire role, on a tripod.

Fire Control Systems for automatic grenade launchers were also on display, including the most advanced Vingmate FCS. The latest edition, displayed in Unterlüß, was fitted with a new thermal camera. It was displayed with the HK GMG, but also with two rarely seen AGLs, the American General Dynamics Striker Mk47 and South African Denel Vektor Y3.

Heavier exhibits were displayed at the outdoors display, including the Vinghøg Ring Mount for smaller ACs and APCs. The VRM is a sort of power-operated turret protected by Level 1 or 2 (optional) sides, with additional back protection provided by the hatch lid. The main armament cradle with a proper adapter can take a 40mm automatic grenade launcher or a machine gun (5.56mm SAW, 7.62mm GPMG or .50 cal. HMG). Vertical arc of fire is –15 to +50°, all around. Top frame takes camouflage netting or sun shade. The complete set weighs in at 250 kg (with Level 1 protection).

The Rheinmetal RLS RMG 50 heavy machine gun was also displayed outside, as a part of the Dual FEWAS remote controlled weapon station. Other then the elusive German chain gun with reciprocating barrel and bolt (sort of XM312-esque, but MUCH more compact), the weapon station was armed with two RGW 90 (Matador) shoulder fired recoilless anti-tank launchers by Dynamit Nobel Defence. The turret sports an optoelectronic observation and sighting suite, consisting of day-light CCTV, uncooled thermal camera and laser (IR) rangefinder. The optical suit and armament are the only components of the system not protected by armor. There are two control sets provided, for gun-layer and commander, the vertical arc of fire is –20° to +60°. The main weapon list covers most machine guns or automatic grenade launchers known to mankind at the present date – provided mounted with a proper adapter. So far only DND RWS 90 AT launchers are supported by the DUAL Fewas – but of course The Customer Is Always Right, and proper adapters can be devised for most other systems, should the buyer prefer them to the Matadors.

FN Herstal showed their usual display, of which a most interesting and practical blooper-tube FCU 1.5M sighting module and modernized FiveseveN Mk 2 pistol is worthy of a note. The ‘new’ FiveseveN has a solid (hitherto two-part) slide with metal sights, and controls would now be made out of black, instead light gray plastic. Hardly revolutionary changes.

A metal mock-up of the next generation semiautomatic grenade launcher for 40mm MV ammunition.

Personal equipment from the Gladius program (known in the German Army as the IdZ, Future Infantryman) were on display, including the electronics, sighting equipment, integrated load bearing vest, the cooling vest and uniform – but the item drawing most curious onlookers were undoubtedly the…ballistic knickers! That was a combat underwear with integrated ballistic protection for the soldier’s groin. But the issue here transcends the ease of mind of a grunt – it’s mostly for added protection of the massive blood vessels nearby, mainly the femoral arteries. Hits severing one of these are known to have killed many soldiers within minutes. The garment is of course made out of thermo-active, breathable, moisture wicking technical fabrics with antibacterial characteristics to boot.

Firing Demonstrations
The most flashy part of the Infantry Symposium are day and night firing demonstrations. The night demo is unfortunately not much more than an opportunity to see flares light occasionally punctuated by arcing tracers.  If you’re more into grey-greenish shadows, the hosts have provided a TV display showing the range in NV. During daytime you may actually see what is firing what, where from and where to – although from a distance that is deemed safe by the organizers.

One can see live firing of the various flash-bangs, smoke grenades, hand grenades – including the Air Burst Hand Grenade, which works like hand-thrown version of the WW2 Bouncing Betty mine. After the grenade is thrown, narrow spring steel supports deploy, righting the grenade upon fall. Then a lifting charge is fired, separating the fragmentation unit from the base and throwing the pre-fragmented main unit – being actually a proper grenade – about 1m (3 ft) high, whereas it detonates, extending the kill zone in comparison with other ground-detonating ones.

The current German GPMG, MG3 by Rheinmetall was displayed in a PIP version, called the MG3 KWS tuned with various bells and whistles.

This year a demonstration of the Fly-K Silent Mortar was finally held. Functionally, the Fly-K is a reincarnation of the spigot mortar – like the WW2 British Blacker Bombard or PIAT – with looks of a Japanese Type 89 ‘Knee Mortar.’ The mortar bomb (looking rather like a rifle grenade) is being impaled upon the spigot inside the cup-like barrel part of the mortar. Inside the spigot there is a Double-Action-Only trigger mechanism, firing the propelling charge inside the grenade. The bomb itself is on the light side (approx. 0.8 kg), so a charge to propel it to 800 meters isn’t exactly large. Thanks to that, at mere 100 meters from the firing position the measured report is just 54 dB! This could be corroborated on the spot – from a camera pit 50 meters distant from the Fly-K position, we witnessed the demo with earmuffs removed. The brochures were right – it really is as loud as a champagne pop or clap of your hands. Moreover, the day-time demo enabled the mortar to show its mettle – shattering the old adage, that a mortar is a high-angle-only weapon. This mortar can be fired Line of Sight – but of course at a much shorter distance. Anyway, in a pinch it’s definitely better to have a weapon able to fire bombs LOS at 200-300 meters, than not to have one at all. The Special Forces potential of the Fly-K is obvious, enabling massed surprise bombardment of enemy positions. With a practical rate of fire within 12-16 rpm range, this weapon is hardly audible at 100 meters, while sending bombs to 800 meters. Before the first bomb impacts on target 800 meters apart, the crew would be able to pop 6 bombs and scoot to another location to renew bombardment.

Another demonstration was held of the programmable 40mm HV ammunition – and again, it was impressive. Two 5-round bursts from an HK GMG fitted with the Vinghøg Vingmate FCS produced 10 airbursts at precisely the same spot, that is, 1 meter over the roof of a target automobile at 500 meters. That’s impressive accuracy, and you could see dozens of small holes pierced in both the automobile and wooden witness silhouettes located around. Most of these fragments would have been intercepted by body armor or helmet, but there were enough of these to find some unprotected spot and do damage.

After the demo was finished, guests were invited to acquire hands-on time experience with HK and FN small arms, including the grenade launchers. Not much to relate there, except for the FN rep’s ballet, who had to single-load the Minimi, because German safety regulations precluded anyone but Rheinmetall personnel to go fully automatic, despite a) firing from a reinforced cubicle with no way to impart a shot anywhere except down range, and b) most of the audience being active service military personnel trained to use machine guns. The HK stand just substituted the machinegun with another 416 rifle, and were ready to go.

The FN FCU 1.5M grenade launcher sight might not be smaller or lighter, but it is centered and nothing moves outwardly. The red display at the back shows the rangefinder read-out – now it’s time to readjust the aim, if the first measurement was wrong.

On the other end of the firing line 40mm LV grenade launchers were used, fitted with automated sighting modules, provided by both HK and FN. The Heckler and Koch table offered the AG-HK416b slung under the HK416 fitted with the FelVIS. This a rectangular block the size of two cigarette boxes with an Aimpoint T1 precariously perched on top, clinging for dear life from the left side rail of the RIS-style forend. A cable with pressure plate switch goes from the box to the pistol grip. The shooter aligns the red dot with the target and presses the switch, while keeping the dot spot-on. The target is thus lazed and distance is measured, with data sent to a ballistic computer inside the box. On release of pressure, the firing solution worked out by the computer is executed, whereas the whole box tilts around the horizontal axis to an angle, re-aligning the red dot with the target would set proper elevation to send the grenade to the point of aim. An additional display underneath shows if the rifle is set vertically. With red dot on target and a cant display on vertical, you should hit the target upon squeezing the trigger. Despite scant and accidental experience with a grenade launcher, I was able to achieve a direct hit at a 300 meters target with second shot – but it took way too long for a combat scenario. The sighting module changes the weapon’s center of gravity (all the weight is on one side), sticks out of the weapon (a hard-knock magnet of unbelievable proportions), and can be vulnerable to both battlefield debris or abuse. The most annoying thing about it however, was the need to focus the eyesight at the same instant both on target 300 meters apart and a canting indicator right in front of one’s face. The low-tech solution was obvious to us within 10 seconds – use a sight displaying a cross reticle not a dot and discard the canting sensor.

Which is exactly what the designer of the FN FCU 1.5M grenade launcher sight module did. The Belgian sight was fitted on EGLM module of the SCAR platform, here used in a stand-alone mode. The cubic capacity of the FN sight is probably the same as the HK unit, but it is straddling the centerline, so it doesn’t cant the whole thing. Also, the sensor unit, collimating sight and ballistic computer are built into a fixed box – nothing here moves outside. The operation is the same as its Teutonic competitor: sight, press, release, elevate the rifle until aligned with the reticle, hold breath, press trigger and pray. The only additional display shows distance readout, and you don’t need it all to aim the weapon properly. It is useful, however, if you wrongly mark the target: I was aiming at 200 meters, while the display flashed ‘105’ and I immediately knew something is wrong. Another measurement was point on, and I was good to go then. Now the FN sight has a large cross, almost European # 4 hunting reticle, which is a built-in low-tech canting sensor. Even if the ground is uneven, and you can’t trust the horizontal line, you just keep the vertical on, and it still does the trick. You only got one sight picture to hold, no additional displays to help you lose the focus. And the result was a rewarding sight of an (almost) headshot with a 40mm grenade at 200 meters!

Of all the “wonder weapons” fielded by the Third Reich in the last desperate days of World War II, only the automatic rifle chambered for the intermediate cartridge was able to achieve a decisive, palpable, instant and permanent success, which results are still seen throughout the world almost 70 years after Berlin fell.  The name Sturmgewehr, meaning ‘assault rifle,’ became a universal term for such a weapon in most languages of the world.  It all started with the original Sturmgewehr 44, designed by Hugo Schmeisser of the C.G. Haenel in Suhl, Germany.

Many years before WWII started, small arms designers of the world noted that in the real world the power of the rifle round was seldom used to the full extent.  The late 19th Century saw the extraordinary surge in rifle shooting distance capability.  The introduction of smokeless cartridges with small caliber jacketed bullets extended the individual effective range of fire far beyond the limitations of the open sights.  At 2,000 yards, where these bullets were still lethal, a man-sized target would hide completely behind even the thinnest of front-sight blades.  At this distance only large, group, soft-skinned targets were ever vulnerable to rifle fire, and these were fired upon in salvoes by whole units of riflemen.  After the advent of machine guns, they took over this task as the modern hard-hitting, flat-trajectory cartridges were ideal for machine-gunning enemy at long range.  The other group of cartridges for automatic weapons occupied the opposite end of the power spectrum – these were pistol cartridges shot from semiautomatic pistols and soon to be employed in submachine guns.  The gap between the two breeds opened up every year, and at the end of the 19th Century there were people determined to bridge that gap by introducing specialized ‘intermediate rounds’ (Mittelpatronen).  The first to do research in that area were Friedrich W. Hebler from Switzerland and Austrian Karel Krnka, who were discussing such ammunition as early as 1892.  It was still too early then for such consideration because the military only recently converted to rifles firing breech-loaded fixed ammunition and were still obsessed with extending maximum range and velocity of the bullet comparing the fps values of their rifles like tourists nowadays compare the number of megapixels in their digital cameras.

During the WWI, the issue of a totally new class of rifles AND ammunition became a moot point – the front lacked regular ones sorely enough.  But then in the Spring of 1918, Hauptmann (Capt.) Piderit, attached to the GPK (Gewehrprüfungskommission, Small Arms Proofing Committee) of the German General Staff in Berlin, submitted a paper in which he argued for the introduction of the immediate round in the German Army, along with a suitable firearm.  He pointed out that in the real world of conflict, virtually no firefights took place at over 800 meters distance, and thus half of the performance of the round, capable of launching a bullet over two kilometers from a Gew 98 or a Maxim was simply wasted.  A less powerful, smaller, shorter round, would save powder and brass, while soldiers would be able to carry more bullets and gain instant increase in firepower without increasing his already considerable battle load.  Less energy means less recoil, enabling semiautomatic or even selective fire rifles (that he, for lack of better name, called it a ‘Maschinenpistole’ even though it is clear from the body of text that he meant it for more powerful ammunition) to substitute Gew 98s, putting up more effective firepower at reasonable battle distances.  Nothing transpired from the Piderit report.  The Army decided it already had a ‘machine pistol,’ a true one: the MP 18,I chambered for the already available 9mm Luger ammunition and didn’t want another, especially in an exotic chambering.

Walther’s rendition of the MKb 42(W). Note the exposed bolt carrier and gas tube telescoping barrel. (Bas Martens)

The subject returned in January 1923, when Infantry Inspectorate set out combat requirements for the Gew 98 successor – smaller and not heavier than a Mauser repeater, mimicking its ballistic performance out to at least 400 meters, and with a magazine yielding 20, or better, 30 rounds.  The experiments led by the Swiss in the 1920s and German companies trying to develop an aerial machine gun for intermediate ammunition came handy in the 1930s, when the development of the future infantry rifle started at long last.

RWS proposed two rounds stemming from aerial ammunition developed there, both in 46 mm long case, one with 7mm and the other with 8mm bullet.  Additionally, DWM had their own cartridge, the 7mm x 39.1 nicknamed – for whatever reason – the Bergmann round.  In 1934, the Gustav Genschow & Co. (Geco) company proposed the fourth round (7.75mm x 39.5) along with a Heinrich Vollmer designed automatic carbine chambered for it, the Model A35 – itself a further development of his earlier SG29 semiautomatic rifle.  This was an extremely overcomplicated weapon, which would have surely become a nightmare for the hapless user, should it ever hit the ranks of any army.  The military (for once) displayed sound reason and discarded it.  But not because it had a blow-forward gas piston and needed a rocker to transit the impulse of the forward-going piston into the bolt-carrier’s rearwards recoil.  The reason was that gases were bled through a hole in the barrel wall, something that the German military in the 1930s dreaded more than thousand deaths.

Weird as Vollmer’s A35 was, it worked (in the laboratory at least) and this success did not go unnoticed.  The government started its own intermediate round and weapon program.  Polte of Magdeburg, Germany’s ammunition giant, was commissioned to develop the round as of spring 1938, and started with a tiny, yet important step, which all the earlier contestants somehow missed – by signing a contract with the Wehrmacht’s Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Land Forces Armament Bureau, the IWG successor).  At the same time HWA contracted C.G. Haenel of Suhl to create a suitable weapon, of which 50 pieces were to be delivered by early July 1942 for field testing.

At the same time the HWA presented the requirements for both round and rifle.  The weight was to be ‘lower or equal’ to K98k, the length ‘significantly’ shorter, accuracy comparable to K98k out to 400 m, selective fire with a rate of fire (theoretical) under 450 rpm, rifle grenade compatible, reliable in field conditions, easy to maintain, and ‘of straightforward design.’

Mechanized troops troop carrier, 1945, armed to teeth with an MP 43/1 (note wide butt stock) and with an anti-tank capability (carrying two AT Teller mines).

Parallel development of both weapon and ammunition in two separate companies is always a big challenge for both.  It is simply not easy to design a rifle around the yet-to-exist round.  However, any slight change that was introduced in any of the two, the other company had no choice but to follow, frequently resulting in delays, as was yet again confirmed by the German intermediate round program.

The Early Trials
In December, 1940, a prototype ‘Maschinenpistolen’ from Haenel and Walther, who joined the race in 1939, was tested at Kummersdorf, the HWA proving ground.  The results were disastrous: jams were abundant, several barrels got bulged, and there was one catastrophic failure.  The HWA testers blamed it on inferior quality of the ammunition.

In early February 1942, the HWA ordered 10 million rounds for field testing and introduced new nomenclature.  The ‘MP42S’ was now known as Maschinenkarabiner 42 (MKb42, Machine Carbine Model of 1942), and the round was 7.9mm Karabinerpatrone 42 (Kar.Patr.42).  In early July 1942, at the Infantry School in Döberitz, then at Kummersdorf Proving Ground, field testing and comparative tests of the Polte ammunition and Haenel rifle, dubbed the ‘MKb42(H)’ started.  In 3,654 shots fired, there were 11 case separations, 67 duds (of which 56 fired on second trial), and many stovepipes, blamed on the prototype stage of the weapon’s design.

Further development centered on cheaper and simpler production methods.  The bullets were of mE (mit Eisenkren, literally iron-cored, meaning mild-steel) to save lead.  To save machining time and tools, the cores ceased to be turned, and instead were stamped.  The new core, developed by the August Winkhaus Company, was blunt-nosed, which necessitated a new assembly method – and that in turn called for virtually a new bullet, but the savings were more than worth the effort.

The resulting cartridge was again introduced into the inventory of the Wehrmacht as a Maschinen-Karabiner Patrone “S” (M.Kb.Patr. “S”), only to be re-named again in 1943 to Pistolenpatrone 43 mE when the whole program was re-classed as a Maschinenpistole 43 (MP43) or Submachine Gun, Model of 1943.  It wasn’t the last name, however, as in early 1945 the SMG name was once again dropped in favor of the famous Sturmgewehr moniker, and the round was then named the Kurzpatrone 43 (Short Round, Model of 1943).

The hybrid Haenel MP43B – combining the features of MKb42(H) and 42(W).

The MKb42 According to Haenel
Parallel to the cartridge development at Polte, a team of designers at C.G. Haenel Waffen- und Fahradfabrik in Suhl, directed by the company’s manager and chief designer, Hugo Schmeisser, developed a weapon to shoot it.  It was a selective fire gas-operated automatic, with gas tube running above the barrel, firing from open bolt position, with a vertically tilted bolt to lock breech block.  Open bolt means that between the shots the bolt is held to the rear by the sear – a design concept usually used in weapons meant to fire mostly long bursts, like true machine guns, to enhance cooling between the shots.  The downside of the open bolt system is decreased accuracy in semiautomatic fire, due to having a large mass (bolt or bolt and bolt carrier) cycling before each shot, jarring the weapon at the instant of firing.  This was possibly a legacy of Hugo Schmeisser’s vision of the Maschinenpistole, as embodied in his previous open-bolt landmark designs, such as the MP 18,I and MP 38 (which was not his design, but nevertheless used some of his ideas). There are more MP 38-style details as well, including the external muzzle thread for blank firing device, form of the magazine well, L-shaped safety cut-out to insert the handle of the cocked bolt and telescoping operating spring cover (evident in early drawings).  The gas mechanism is comprised of a gas block pinned on top of the barrel, with gas tube guiding a long-stroke gas piston to the rear opening of the gas chamber, in which gases passing from the barrel by hitherto anathemas gas opening pressed against the piston head.  The piston itself was placed at the end of the very long operating rod, connected with a bolt carrier.  The bolt carrier governed the bolt locking and unlocking, while the bolt carrier’s projection served as a hammer to blow upon the bolt’s free-floating firing pin.  The gas block access was granted by a curious tubular plug, screwed in from the front of the gas block, and reaching all the way forward to the front sight base, forming sort of over-under shotgun layout with the barrel underneath.

The AK-100 series successor wasn’t created overnight – the first models were already evaluated by 2009.  The new rifle even got designated then as the AK-200 – but still arguments abounded whether that should be another modified 100-series rifle with rails all over, or a totally new design.

In July 2010, the first press statement told everybody to prepare for a revolution soon to come – a totally new modular design, a new opening in the long career of the AK.  It was said to enable exchanging bolts and barrels, shoot different cartridges, to have enhanced ergonomics, better functionality and to be good enough to challenge the best that the West was able to muster.  It was also said that the Russian Defence Ministry was very much interested in the new weapon, taking an active part in shaping the new design, and purportedly even contracted the Izhevsk plant for the AK-100 series wholesale replacement.

Fifth Generation Avtomat Kalashnikova seen from the right.

Fifth Generation Avtomat Kalashnikova seen from the left. On this rifle, the single shot position of the safety-selector is denoted with letter O instead of more customary 1.

Then traditional silence fell, and on January 24, 2012 the new Avtomat was shown to the public for the first time amongst much fanfare.  The new design, created by the Izhmash’s chief designer, Vladimir Viktorovich Zlobin, was designated the “AK-12,” for “Avtomat Kalashnikova Model 2012.”

Four months later another presentation took place, but this time for a chosen few, at a closed meeting of the Interministerial Working Group of the Military-Industrial Laboratories Committee in Solnechnogorsk on Lake Senezh, 65 kilometers from Moscow.  The participants, representatives of the Defense and Internal Affairs Ministries, as well as Federal Security Servicemen, were able not only to look at, but shoot the new rifle as well.

In common opinion, the AK-12 has a much milder recoil and muzzle jump than the predecessors.  Nevertheless, numerous modifications and changes were requested, most of them arising from input by the special forces users that were in attendance at the presentation.  The Izhmash representative promised all would be implemented by the end of 2012.

The AK-12 with accessories, as shown in January 2012. Note the scope, extended buttstock, foregrip, 40mm GP-34 under barrel grenade launcher module and sheathed bayonet. The magazine attached is an old 30-round one coming from an AK-74M. The 4-stacker besides holds 60 rounds, while the drum takes as much as 95 cartridges. This earlier model has a separate lower rail bolted to the lower handguard – already replaced with monolithic polymer lower handguard with integral rail. Note a replaced cocking handle on the right side of the receiver.

New, Yet Old
Those who expected miracles could be disappointed by the weapon’s appearance.  AK-12 has some minor ‘loans’ from the FN SCAR or the Czech Sa-58, but even with the naked eye one can see the AK heritage.

It still remained a gas-operated long-stroke piston selective-fire rifle with the gas tube above the barrel.  The bolt carrier is connected with the operating rod and the gas piston is at the front end of the op-rod.  It fires from a closed bolt; this bolt being set into a bolt carrier, and locks to the receiver trunnion by turning to the right.  The fire control group has an internal hammer, and all the other innards, automatic sear, disconnector and trigger operate in the same manner as in the AK-74.

Novelties
The most important novel feature of the AK-12 is the caliber-swap concept.  The AK-12 receiver is said to have been re-designed to allow barrel-swapping and thus caliber-changing (but honestly, it doesn’t look like it changed much, and certainly no quick-change features are present).  The basic version (and the only one so far demonstrated) is chambered for the 5.45mm x 39, but it can be changed to the original AK round, the 7.62mm x 39, or the 5.56mm x 45.  The advertisement indicates also the 7.62mm x 51 NATO round, but it seems highly unlikely that such a big and powerful round could be fired in the same receiver – probably another set of building blocks would be needed, just like with the SCAR-L/SCAR-H or HK416/417.  Also, 6.5mm Grendel or 6.8 Rem SPC were speculated as possible chamberings as well, but so far nothing official has been said about them.  The factory statements predict a wide variety of possible configurations, with different barrels, different calibers, different FCGs, different stocks, for military, police, civilian-legal semi-only, etc.

The AK-12 in full firepower with a 95-round drum magazine and 40mm GP-34 grenade launcher attached. Note the grenade launcher module attached to the false rear ‘bayonet lug’ under the gas block – the real bayonet lug is under the front sight.

The ergonomics has been greatly enhanced in comparison to the predecessors.  The telescoping stock is foldable to the side (left or right, whatever the need of the user) and set in-line with the barrel axis to reduce muzzle jump.  The stock latch is the part of the stock itself, not the rifle, thus enabling easy reversing of the stock folding direction.  For export to where folding stocks are deemed ‘non-sporting,’ the latch can be easily disabled or the stock can be exchanged for a solid, non-folding variation.  The rubber-clad cheek-piece and butt-plate are height-adjustable.  A new muzzle device has a standard 22 mm external diameter to enable rifle grenade use.

The cocking handle has been relocated significantly to the front, and can be fitted from left or right, according to the shooter’s wishes.  The receiver cover is all new, much sturdier and hinged at the front, with an integral 1913 rail all along the top.  At the rear end of the rail a tangent sight with a peep hole (for aiming with a stock) and notch (for aiming while shooting from the sling with butt folded) is attached to the top rail.  There are more rails as well: on top of the handguard (in-line with the cover rail), and even on top of the gas block.  The handguard also has rails on the sides and at the bottom.  Lugs under the gas chamber and front sight holder are intended for an underbarrel grenade launcher (GP-25, -30 or -34) (the former) and bayonet attachment (the latter).

The main sight of the rifle is a red dot sight – this time an Aimpoint Comp M4 knock-off. Just behind the red dot mount a mechanical sight is mounted on the rail. Note the flip-over peep-hole or notch sight. (A.V. Karpenko)

The receiver cover latch is actuated by the lever on the right above pistol grip.  Right in front of it another totally new lever-style control is situated – a four-position safety/fire selector.  The positions are: ‘ΠΡ’ (=PR, for Predokhranyeniy, SAFE), ‘1’ or ‘O’ (for Odinochniy, SEMI), ‘3’ for 3-round BURST and ‘AB’ (AV for Avtomaticheskiy, AUTO).  This lever has replaced the legendary Kalashnikov safety-selector-dust cover (itself a ‘loan’ from John Moses Browning’s Remington Model 8 rifle).  Theoretical rate of fire in fully automatic firing is 600 rpm, but is said to rise up to 1,000 rpm in 3-round bursts.

Other controls are located in the front part of the trigger guard.  The magazine latch is classical in appearance, but it said to be redesigned to enable magazine release with the trigger finger.  The oval buttons above are bolt catch actuators – another big-time novelty in the AK-12.  The bolt catch is mostly manually-actuated, for inspection purposes, as the hitherto introduced magazines lack the bolt catch actuator projection on their followers.  The 5.45mm AK-12 takes all AK-74M-compatible 30-round magazines, as well as RPK-74 45-round magazines.  The 7.62mm variant would also take all AK/AKM/RPK magazines, of 30-, 40- and 75-round capacity.  New types of magazines introduced with the AK-12 comprise a new 30-round magazine with bolt-catch actuator, 60-round quad-stack banana and a 95-round drum.

Carbine (AK-12U), 9mm submachine gun (PPK-12),  Designated Marksman Rifle (SVK-12), and Light Machine Gun (RPK-12) versions of the AK-12 are also planned, as well as a semiautomatic-only civilian export version.

The ambidextrous (left- or right-folding) buttstock is adjustable for length of pull, height of buttplate and cheek piece. (A.V. Karpenko)

Now What?
No one seems to know what’s next.  The future awaiting the AK-12 seems hardly bright, so far.  The MoD has ordered a test batch and the testing is already under way.  Only when it is done can a decision be made whether the Russian Army would re-arm – or wait a little longer for another new rifle.  The security forces are also testing the AK-12 and carefully select the wording of their press releases so as not to put themselves in any awkward commitment.  Only the manufacturer is sure to have the rifle in full production for the country’s military – and soon, ‘at the latest in FY2013.’  Whether it would be so depends on the will of Izhmash’s main client: the Army of the Russian Federation.  And the Army, even though it ordered a test batch, seems to be neither overly impressed with the new rifle nor interested in it.  In 2011, for the very first time, the Army did not buy a single Kalashnikov assault rifle, and is openly referring to it as ‘obsolete.’  The military does not want any more Kalashnikovs – they already have as many as 17 million of these in its mobilization stocks, counting both older 7.62 mm AKM and newer 5.45mm AK-74 variants.  The ministry representative once mused that, “We already have enough Kalashnikovs to wage several world wars,” and although his quip was quickly glossed over by his superiors, it seems to voice the general attitude toward the once iconic Comrade Rifle.

The AK-12 was created and financed with Izhmash’s own money and the company vows to find remuneration in the international markets, including a civilian one, if the Army won’t budge.  There seems to be a big sales potential, given the popularity of AK-tuning throughout the world.  Thus, the opportunity may come to have a factory-tuned Avtomat Kalashnikova-PIP, right straight from the original manufacturer, bristling with 1913-rails, enhanced ergonomics, fully ambidextrous, fitted with a bolt hold-open and all the bells and whistles.

– AK-12 SPECIFICATIONS –
Caliber: 5.45 mm x 39
Length, O/A, stock extended: 945 mm
Length, O/A, stock folded: 725 mm
Barrel length (bore only): 415 mm
Sighting radius: 583 mm
Weight, w/o magazine: 3.3 kg
Weight, empty 30-rd magazine: 0.23 kg
Weight, empty 60-rd magazine: 0.33 kg
Weight, empty 95-rd magazine: 1.0 kg
Max. sighting range: 1,000 m
Rate of fire (theor.): 600 (FA)/1,000 (3-rd burst) rpm

The history of the Croatian rifle, brought to the market by the HS Produkt company of Karlovac (named after their first market hit, the HS9 semiautomatic pistol, known in America as the Springfield XD) started in 1992, during the Croatian War of Independence.  The ancestor of the company, IM Metal, built a prototype bull-pup rifle based on the M70 Kalashnikov AKM copy manufactured by the Crvena Zastava for the pre-war Yugoslavia.  The limited technological capabilities of the war-time company and lack of experience on the side of designers doomed the rifle from the start, but the military was hooked on the easy-handling bull-pup and more prototypes appeared, along a hectic development timeline, revisiting almost every automatic rifle design concept ever devised.  The first prototypes (1992 and 1996) were AKM developments, gas-operated with a long-stroke piston.  Then in 1999, the first French connection took place when the designer, Marko Vuković, put a delayed blowback mechanism straight out of “Le Clarion” (the Bugle) into it.  This was not necessarily a success, as just a year later he beat a hasty retreat to the gas-operated gun, this time making it a direct gas impingement with novel forced ventilation feature forming a pneumatic cushion behind the bolt.  The patent was applied for in that form, and its vague description coupled with a blurry drawing misled many authors to form a myth of a “gas cushion” feature with powder gases being bled behind the bolt – which was never the case.  Externally the 2000 rifle was a very much cluttered eclectic mix resembling somewhat the Singapore’s SAR-21 or Israeli Tavor coupled with a HK G36 style enormous carry handle, armed to teeth with 1913 rails in such a quantity, that one could hang an impressive array of fashionable tactical extras all over.  This was the form of the VHS that was shown in a series of promotional photos in 2005.  But even as that display was taking place, a final form of the VHS was eventually taking shape as of 2004.  This time it was a bare-bones short-stroke piston-driven gas-operated weapon with all the frills of the prototypes gone.  And surprisingly, then the French connection came back with a vengeance, but this time only in external features of the rifle.

Safety-fire selector lever of the VHS: ‘SAFE’ with lever in longitudinal axis of the weapon – note the cancelled bullet ideogram; ‘SEMI’ rotated fully to the right – note single bullet molded on the side above; ’FULL’ rotated fully to the left – note three bullets molded above.

The first 50 VHS-D rifles (20-inch barrel) and VHS-K carbines (16-inch barrel) were for troop testing in Croatia, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, when Croatian contingents were deployed with NATO forces, were ordered on November 19, 2007, and handed-over on November 24, 2008.  The testing (including a service-life testing, reportedly aborted after 50,000 rounds with no main parts breakage) took part in the first quarter of 2009, followed by a decision announced by Croatian MoD, Mr. Branko Vukelić, to accept the VHS into the inventory of the army and initially order 1,000 each of both variants, at a unit price of ca. 1,500 EUR (since then lowered to ca. 1,000).  The Croatian Army announced their intentions to replace 60,000 aging ex-Yugoslav Kalashnikovs with the VHS, which were eventually also to replace the HK G36 carbines (G36K and G36C) bought for the Special Forces and foreign deployments in order to achieve interoperability with NATO.

With such ambitious intentions the purchasing rate fails to overwhelm so far: after initial 2,000, the next batch of 3,000 were, due to budget austerity measures, ordered in 2011, and then 2012 procurement figures are as feeble.

Bugle On the Outside
The external looks of the VHS reveal the source of inspiration to be the French FA MAS rifle, but even the first glance inside makes it obvious, that the inspiration is only on the outside – thankfully.  Instead of the Király-style lever-delayed blowback bolt, the VHS has an honest rotary bolt head, and is a gas-operated weapon with a short-stroke piston.  The military VHS is a selective-fire weapon, capable of semiautomatic and fully automatic fire, with no burst option.  The civilian-legal version would be available in semi-only configuration.

Both D and K barrels are fitted with a birdcage-style flash-hider, and the D offers rings turned into the barrel to control the rifle grenade launching range.  According to the photographs of the Croatian military in action, their version also has got a French-style sliding grenade boom guide impaled on that barrel, as well as a swing-arm grenade high-angle launching sight, which can be used with the rifle held turned on the side.  Contrary to the French model, which is bolted to the receiver under the carry handle, the Croatian grenade sight is bolted to the underside of the carry handle.  Both features are absent from the export model.

Fifteen shots Federal American Eagle 55 grs FMJ-BT, rested, semiautomatic, at 100 meters with BUIS-quality sights, straight out of the box. The VHS-K carbine shoots better than the VHS-D rifle, but this is most probably due to better sights. Anyway, amazing performance considering the circumstances.

Gases are bled from the bore to a gas chamber above the barrel.  There, they are channeled through the gas regulator, inserted from the front.  The regulator has three positions, ‘normal,’ ‘high’ (larger opening for reliable operation with weaker ammunition) and ‘cut-off’ for grenade launching.  The regulator is impaled on the gas piston, fitted with a return spring of its own.  Due to different barrel lengths, VHS-D and VHS-K each has its own regulator, with different diameters of the ‘normal’ and ‘high’ channels, so each is marked accordingly on the front bar.  The bar (or rib) is marked ‘1’ on one end, serving as a regulator position indicator (points to barrel on ‘normal’) and ‘K’ or ‘D’ depending on weapon’s type.

The regulator body has got three retaining/positioning lugs around the circumference, and is (piston) spring-loaded.  To change the position one has to press it inwards enough to withdraw the lugs from the abutments, then turn towards the next setting through 120° and release, letting the spring reposition it in the gas chamber.  If the gas assembly is released before the next abutment has a chance to catch the lugs, the whole assembly will pop-up from the rifle, and can be withdrawn for cleaning.  How’s that compared to the gas piston removal procedure from the SCAR?

Channeled trough the regulator, the gases push against the gas piston.  The piston hits the operating rod, extending all the way forth, from the bolt-carrier – similar to the SCAR.  The operating rod is hollowed to cut down weight, and houses the return assembly – a captive spring on a guide rod anchored in the receiver back plate.  The bolt-carrier is hung beneath the operating rod.  The bolt is of the recently (i.e. for almost half of a century) most popular system – turning bolt head with a multiple locking lugs engaging into the barrel’s locking ferrule.  It is popularly associated with Eugene Stoner, who was indeed a great fan of it (AR-10, AR-15, AR-16, AR-18), but in fact it was first used by Melvin Johnson, albeit for the short-recoil operated weapon.

The world’s first real heavy machine gun appeared during World War I, although big-bore machine guns were by no means a novel feature by then – it was rather that the machine gun has retraced its own first uneasy steps.  The first ever machine guns, multi-barrel hand-cranked contraptions, were all of at least .45-inch caliber, as high as .58 – because those were the standard infantry rifle calibers of the era.  The first automatic machine gun designed by Maxim in 1882, was also chambered in .450.  It was only in the 1890s that the first machine guns were specifically built to fire smokeless ‘miniature’ calibers, being around .30-inch at that time.  The WWI resurrection of these big-bore cartridges came about because of the other two man-made wonders that appeared on the battlefield: the aircraft and the tank.

The first heavy machine guns were built in 1917 by the French, when it seems all of a sudden an idea dawned on them, that their conical-shaped, awkward Mle 1886 Lebel (8mm x 51R) rifle round owes that awkwardness to its direct parent, the Mle 1874 Gras round (11mm x 59R), its case being necked-down in 1886 and shortened to keep the overall length of the new cartridge.  If so, and if a Hotchkiss Mitrailleuse Mle 1914 was chambered for the Lebel, would it be then convertible to shoot the parent round? If so, the 11mm bullet would be an ideal vehicle to carry enough white phosphorus to put a fear of God into any airborne Hun!  The British also experimented with resurrecting the .450 Martini – and for the same reason.  Now that the Hotchkiss Balloon Gun was available, it was hurried into the air on board Voisin IX aircraft as an observer’s gun.  To employ it for single-seat fighters, it lacked on one significant point: firing from an open bolt, it was unfit for synchronization.  And so, in 1918 another Gras-round machine gun was created – this time using a Colt-manufactured Vickers M1915 converted to air use in 11mm, creating the Colt-Vickers M1918 “Balloon gun,” firing from the closed breech and thus eligible for synchronization.  Before the Armistice, the French, U.S. and Belgian air forces of the era roamed the skies in their Spads and Henriots with the 11mm machine guns, earning many kills with these.

But this was just for starters, as both the Hotchkiss and the Vickers 11mm guns were basically rifle-caliber machine guns, just chambered for a dusted-off antique large-bore ammunition.  The real break-through had been made in Germany, where fear of British tanks has spawned a machine gun chambered for the new, truly high-powered round, originally designed for a single-shot anti-tank rifle, the famous Mauser’s T-Gewehr: the 13mm x 92SR. Called TuF MG18, this Tank- und Fliegerabwehrmaschinengewehr Modell 1918 was the first of the new breed: true heavy machine guns, not only in bore diameter, but in power-level as well.  It was a Maxim machine gun, size-wise mid-range between the Grim Reaper (rifle-caliber MG 08) and the Pom-Pom (37mm automatic cannon of the Boer War fame).  Although barely fifty were manufactured before the war ended, this gun made a big splash: hardly any machine gun designing nation was able to resist an idea to build one for themselves in the interwar years.  Of these only two have achieved really lasting success and both are still encountered on battlefields in every corner of the earth: the Browning M2 and the Dushka.

The DShKM M1938/46 HMG of the Afghan National Army (ANA) on firing position in a fire base somewhere in the Hindukush Mountains. Note the round inserted into the cam operating lug to serve as the cocking handle in lieu of the damaged cocking handle on this M1938 Universal Mount.

HMG: The Soviet Style
The history of the DShK started in the hoary ages after the end of the Russian Civil War and the crushing defeat in the 1920 war by the Polish.  On October 27, 1925, the Revvoyensoviet (Military Revolutionary Council) of the RKKA (Rabochye-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armya, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) decided to develop new automatic weapons, chambered in calibers between 12 and 20mm.  Having reached that conclusion, the Revvoyensoviet ordered the Artkom GAU (Artillery Committee of the Main Artillery Directorate) to prepare the preliminary tactical and technical specification by May Day, 1927.  These called for a machine gun chambered in the British .5 Vickers (12.7mm x 81SR).  Tula Works designers, Ivan A. Pastukhov and Pavel P. Tretyakov were given the task.  The machine gun was to serve mainly an AA weapon, to counter the low-flying enemy aircraft.  It seems that the painful lesson taught by American ‘mercenary’ pilots (including Lt. Merian C. Cooper, later to became a Hollywood producer of the first King Kong movie) fighting for the Polish was well learnt.  Ground role, like anti-tank duties, was deemed secondary.  The Vickers round promised an opportunity to follow the British success in creating another blown-up Maxim gun.  However, in 1926 the Italian, who also adopted the Vickers ammunition, indicated another path, by designing an entirely new gun, called the Breda-SAFAT, which after arduous labor and troubled childhood has developed handsomely into a very successful aerial HMG.

The Artkom decided to emulate the Italian example rather than go the Vickers path as initially planned.  The gun experts at GAU calculated that the Model 1910 Maxim enlarged to handle the .50-caliber round would weigh a minimum of 60 kg (132 lbs) – and that without a mount.  This was deemed intolerable for a modern weapon and designers were instructed to abandon the Maxim system.  Another problem was the water-jacket.  In a primarily AA weapon, the inertia of the water sloshing in a large pipe surrounding the barrel would get in the way of the gunner’s ability to precisely lead the flying aircraft, except for on a complicated cogwheel-operated mount.  The Artkom specification thus called for air-cooling.

The Tula team faced a difficult challenge – they had precious little experience outside the Maxim platform, and they were working in an internationally-isolated country.  Browsing through the captured materiel they decided the Dreyse M1910 machine gun would be the best way to go, its tilting-lock breech being much simpler than the Maxim or Browning.  Before they realized it was a dead-end, it was already too late to start from scratch.  The resulting weapon was a recoil-operated, closed-bolt firing weapon, with a low rate of fire – but high rate of stoppages.

JS-2 heavy tanks were the first that rated individual anti-aircraft defense by way of the Dushka mounted on a special ring mount with spring equalizers to relieve the weight and enable one-man handling. The relaxed stance of the soldiers on the engine compartment cover suggests that the tank’s loader is fighting mainly his boredom in captured Berlin.

The same specification was also independently taken on by Kovrov-based designer then rising to meteoric fame – Vasiliy A. Dyegtyarov (NB – even though all sources spell his name as Degtarev, because of the 1:1 transliteration from Cyrillic alphabet, this name in Russian is actually pronounced as ‘Dyegtyarov’).  Dyegtyarov was a self-educated ex-metal worker, mentored by the leading Soviet small-arms authority, the ex-Tsarist general, Vladimir G. Fyodorov (another victim of misspelling, he is known in the West as Fedorov), a designer of the world’s first assault gun, the M1916 Avtomat Fyodorova.  His pupil was possessed by his idea of a ‘machine gun system’ – a universal machine gun design, with the same lock-work and operating principle, adaptable to become almost every machine gun ever needed by the military.  In 1927 he was in the midst of revolutionizing the Red Army’s armament by introducing his trio of same action rifle-caliber gas-operated machine guns: the DP for the infantry, the DT for armor and DA for the air force.  Just as the 1917 recoil-operated Browning almost immediately spawned the field, tank and aerial versions, so did Dyegtyarov.  And where Browning’s next step was a scaled-up Fifty – so was Dyegtyarov’s.  He was, however, not bonded by the Artkom’s decision to use the British round, and so he decided to use a completely different, much more powerful cartridge, the 12.7mm x 108, being developed by the Soviet ammunition industry at that time.  This ammunition was initially designed and manufactured in two sibling versions: one rimless, and one rimmed (12.7mm x 108R), the latter adopted for the early version of the ShVAK aerial machine gun, better known in its final form of an automatic cannon, chambered for the 20mm x 99R ShVAK round of the same outside diameter and overall length.  Both of the 12.7s were identical, except for the lower extremity of the cartridge case.

In 1929, four years after the Revvoyensoviet decree, the Red Army still had no heavy machine gun, and after large summer maneuvers the narkom (People’s Commissar, or minister/secretary) of Military and Naval Affairs Kliment Ye.  Voroshilov grew impatient.  He summoned both teams to stress the importance of their task and urged them to hurry-up, reportedly using his trademark ‘military non-uncertain terms.’  As a result of this meeting, Dyegtyarov’s gun was given an official development sanction (it was hitherto developed as an experimental, almost-private venue), and hurriedly introduced into the inventory of the Red Army as the “Dyegtyarova Krupnokalibyerniy” (Dyegtyarov’s Heavy) or DK.  In a nutshell it was a gas-operated, flap-locked open-bolt firing DP LMG on steroids, chambered for the new 12.7mm round.  At first it was even fed from the same style top-attached pannier magazine, but the size and weight of it proved prohibitive, and so in 1931 a new drum magazine was designed for it by Alexander S. Kladov.

This magazine, as well as the whole feeding mechanism, proved to be a soft underbelly of the DK.  The theoretical rate of fire was less than impressive at 360 rpm, and the resulting practical rate of fire was low as well – or worse, as the gun jammed almost constantly.