The “SF” suffix stands for “Special Forces” and designs the version of the ARX160 known in the United States as ARX160A2.  Leaving intact the operating system, Beretta refined its polymeric assault rifle in many aspects.

Afghanistan, November 13, 2011: A gang of armed Taliban terrorists hold 18 hostages in the Kabul offices of Esko International, a North American company specializing in food distribution.  Task Force 45, the intervention unit of the Italian Armed Forces composed of elements taken from Italian Special Forces units; storm the building in a well coordinated, multidirectional, simultaneous attack.  The raid of TF45 ends with the liberation of all the 18 hostages and the total elimination of all the terrorists winning attention and praise from the international Special Forces community for the perfect way they executed their mission.

In Italy, a handful of units have the status of Special Forces: 9th Paracommando Rgt. “Col. Moschin” (Army), Commando Operative Group or G.O.I. “Teseo Tesei” from COM.SUB.IN, (Navy), Special Intervention Group or G.I.S (Carabinieri), and 17th Commando Wing (Air Force).

Task Force 45 enjoys the same status as the U.S. Navy Seal’s Team Six or U.S. Special Forces Detachment Delta and officially does not appear in any order of battle of the Italian Armed Forces.  It’s silent, efficient group of highly trained soldiers that quietly works out of the sight and the glamour of information media to hit the enemy or rescue civilians or their own comrades in danger.

These gallant warriors in 2009 issued their specifications to Beretta to modify the new ARX160 to meet their own needs.  Beretta responded to the challenge giving birth, in 2010, to the ARX160SF.

The ARX160SF inherits the operating system from the infantry version of the rifle.  It’s a self adjusting gas operated rifle with a unique system halfway between a short stroke and long stroke gas piston.

ARX160SF flashider. Different from the infantry version, there are no integral compensator ports – only upward slots.

The Bolt Group
The ARX160SF bolt group is made of two components: the bolt body and the bolt carrier.  Both components are built using CNC tool machines from high resistance steel bars, requiring complex processing and a careful quality control on dimensional tolerances to ensure the strictest uniformity of each piece and interchangeability.

Once assembled, they will be kept together for normal weapon maintenance, thus reducing the number of pieces the soldier has to handle when cleaning his rifle and keeping simple the logistic chain.

The bolt carrier has a long frontal flat bar on the top of its body that protrudes forward reaching the piston of the gas system, working as the operating rod.  This allows a better distribution of the moving masses, helping the balance and control of the weapon while shooting.  The bolt carrier has a prismatic shape with flat sides that seal the two ejection ports when the bolt is closed, thus not allowing dirt and dust to penetrate inside the receiver.  Half way along the bolt carrier there is the charging handle that is held in position by a long laminar spring located in the flat operating rod.  The charging handle can be positioned on the left side or right side, as the shooter prefers.  To change the side is easy: just pull the bolt carrier group rearward up to an indicator mark in the middle of the ejection port and pull outward the charging handle until the bolt carrier group is locked.  Then rotate on the opposite side the charging handle, push it inward to unlock the bolt carrier group, and pull the bolt all the way back.  There is a third position for the charging handle, along the longitudinal axis of the gun, and it is used when the soldier needs to strip the weapon for cleaning.

Permanently attached to the rear of the bolt carrier is the recoil spring with the spring rod that ends with a polymer block that engages the notches in the body of the receiver, keeping the bolt carrier group in its position inside the weapon.

ARX160SF telescopic buttstock. Notice the black trigger shaped button to adjust the stock length.

The bolt has a bolt head with nine locking lugs, similar to those ones of the Stoner systems.  The lugs at the three and nine o’clock position are integral with the two extractors.  This is another unique feature of the ARX160 family: two extractors operated by two rods that run through the bolt body and protrudes to the rear complete with springs that keep the extractor in the right position.

The ARX160SF has two extractors because, according to how the ejection selector in the rear of the polymer receiver is positioned, one works as an extractor and the other works as an ejector.  When moving the ejector selector in the other position, the roles are inverted and also the ejection direction is reversed.

The cam is realized by the interaction of some grooves machined on the bolt body and the bolt carrier, transforming the rectilinear movement of the bolt carrier in the rotating movement of the bolt head.  Other grooves are machined on the bolt body in order to avoid the eventual mud or dirt inside the receiver that would clog the mechanism causing the carbine to malfunction.

The Barrel
While the ARX160SF can mount, like the infantry version, both barrels of different length (normally, the ARX160 is delivered with two barrels, one 12-inches long and one 16-inches long) chambered in 5.56mm NATO, the ARX160SF mounts usually the shorter one.  The version tested is the most recent, different from the version presented in 2010, and has the flashider modified to mount a sound suppressor made for Beretta by Brugger & Thomet.  The barrel is made from a high resistant steel bar and realized by a cold hammer forging process.  The barrel is chrome lined to increase barrel life and the rifling is the usual 1:7-inch RH twist according to NATO standards for use of the SS109 military cartridge.

Just after the bayonet lug, at the beginning of the 12-inch barrel, are the gas port and piston (on the 16-inch barrel the gas port is almost half way).  The telescopic piston extends when the bullet passes over the gas port and gas pushes it out backwards pressing the op-rod integral to the bolt carrier.  The full extended piston protrudes for a considerable length, comparable to the size of a 5.56 brass case.  The piston does not give only a simple “impulse” like short stroke systems, but it keeps going on pushing the operating rod of the bolt group, allowing a smooth, continuous action that greatly helps reliability and the case extraction and ejection process during the shooting cycle.  In this the ARX160 gas system is similar to long stroke systems.  The piston is in no way permanently connected to the bolt group operating rod, and this is a characteristic peculiar of the short stroke systems.

The safety and fire selector of the Beretta carbine has only three positions. The 3-round burst, present in the AR70/90, has been eliminated. The hole behind the flat sling mount is to reverse the ejection direction.

Beretta took the best from both systems merging them in what it seems the most efficient way.  The absence of permanent mechanical link between piston and bolt group allows also one of the most interesting characteristics of this assault rifle made in Gardone Val Trompia: to change the barrel literally in a matter of seconds without the need of any tool.

The barrel ends on the breech side with a barrel extension similar to the Stoner locking systems provided with nine notches for the bolt locking lugs and, at the bottom of the barrel extension, two feeding ramps.

The barrel is locked to the action with a latch operated by two sliding cursors on both sides of the rifle body: to remove the barrel the shooter should open the bolt and lock it open, to slide down the cursors, disengage the gas valve from the opening at the front tip of the handguard and pull out the barrel.

To remount the barrel, or switch it with another barrel, the shooter just has to follow the sequence in reverse order.  Quick and simple.

This feature, and other ones Beretta R&D included in the AX160, as we will see later during the range test, allows the Beretta ARX160 to have maximum flexibility in configuring the rifle according to operator need.

Upper Receiver, Stock & Rail System
The ARX160 body has been realized in the same reinforced polymer as used in the aerospace industry, but to meet Italian SF requirements the color has been changed from the dark gray of the infantry version to the current tan.

The design of the body has been modified in many little details.  For example, the rail under the front handguard has been changed: in the infantry version there is only one rail with two different portions, the front portion was a classic Picatinny Mil-Std 1913 rail, to allow the shooter to mount the needed accessories: front handle, tactical light or other items, while the rear portion was a proprietary T rail to mount the UBGL (Under Barrel Grenade Launcher), the 40mm GLX160.

A direct derivation from the TAR-21 Tavor bullpup rifle, adopted in 2003 by the Israel Defence Forces, we are going to introduce to SADJ readers the version designed for the Sayeret (Special Forces) units, a shorter and more modular rifle that, in case of need, can be converted into a SMG.

The TAR-21 project in Ramat Hasharon was started in 1995 when the Israeli company name was still IMI (Israel Military Industries).  In recent times, IMI ownership has been handed over from the State of Israel to a private company, the Samy Katsav Group (the same holding that includes also Meprolight, Selectron International Optronics and Global Shields) and changed its name to Israel Weapon Industries or IWI.

It was the intention of IWI that the new rifle design would have to satisfy the needs of the Israeli infantryman due to the most recent battlefield requirements.  A large majority of the combat actions of the IDF happened in urban areas, where soldiers must fight in harsh CQB conditions: apartments, narrow roads, restricted spaces typical of small villages where the terrorist enemy have their site and hold their positions.

Another tactical consideration comes from the fact that IDF is a highly mechanized army.  Even if the Israeli soldiers, during their GIBUSH (the selection for the combat units), are trained to cover long distances marching by feet, it is an operative reality that most of their movements on the battlefield are done travelling by APCs, IFVs or by helicopters.  This requires to have the equipment, including the assault rifle, as compact as possible.  IDF learned this lesson when they adopted the FN FAL, in the 1960s.  Aside from reliability problems they had with this rifle, the FN FAL was a very long rifle and very uncomfortable to carry inside an armoured vehicle or to be handled inside a helicopter during an airborne infiltration behind enemy lines.

Currently IDF is armed with a very small quantity of IMI Glilon (the Galil short version), and mainly with M16A1s, refitted with round handguards and different sling system, and Colt M16A1 Carbines, with old style polymer collapsible stocks, both with fixed carrying handle on the upper receiver.  Only in recent times has the series 900 Colt M4A1 carbines been issued.  According to battlefield reports, even the M4A1 has been judged by the Israelis as too long to fit the need of the Israel mechanized infantry.

The solution chosen by IWI engineers was to design a bullpup rifle; allowing this way to have a short rifle without limiting the ballistic of the 5.56mm cartridge because of very short barrels.  The result was the TAR-21 rifle (the acronym stands for Tavor Assault Rifle – 21st Century), officially adopted in 2003 by the IDF.

Due to the high number of Elite and Recon units in the IDF, IWI was requested by TSAHA’L to modify the TAR-21 design for its own special forces.  The Micro Tavor was born, and after some intensive field testing, the design was refined and modified into the last version, currently delivered to the Israeli army: the IWI X95 Special Forces carbine.

The X95 is really compact: only 590 mm long with its 13 inch barrel.  To make a fast comparison, an M4A1 with fully extended stock and a 14.5 inch barrel is 880 mm long.

The rifle is built around a backbone made of a “U” shaped steel rail, where its mechanics moves and the polymer receiver is fixed.  It’s hard to say that the X95 is beautiful, but its appearance, in the gray-black polymer livery, is very aggressive and martial and less “toy” looking than the previous green polymer.  The change reflects the fact that the polymer chosen for building the external body of the carbine has been changed from the previous models.

The old greenish polymer was studied to be rigid and impact resistant as much as possible.  But with the frequent use during field testing, the main problem was that even if it was able to absorb hard shocks, the polymer was not able to last: after a while cracks in the body started to appear, compromising structural integrity of the weapon.  The solution was to adopt another polymer, the current black gray looking one that was “softer” but did not show cracks after intensive use, being also more resistant to the strong UV middle-east sun radiations.

The X95 operates with two different mechanics: the 5.56×45 carbine with gas recovery system and 9×19 caliber blowback operated submachine gun, both using the same body.

The 5.56 carbine uses a long stroke gas recovery mechanism.  During the shoot sequence, the bullet in the barrel uncovers a hole, the gas port, which blows high pressure gases into a tube where there is a gas piston that starts to move rearward due the effects of the gases.  The gas piston is permanently locked with the prismatic bolt carrier, that starts, in its turn, to move rearward too, and so doing, due to a cam on the bolt carrier body, causes the bolt head to rotate and unlock the breech only when gas pressures are on safe values.  The group bolt-bolt carrier keeps travelling rearward for about 70 mm, compressing the recoil spring and ejecting the spent brass.  When the kinetic force of the shot ends, the recoil spring pushes forward the bolt-bolt carrier group, feeding a fresh cartridge from the magazine, chambering it and locking again the bolt in the breech locking lugs.

When shooting the 9×19 SMG version instead, it is only the prismatic bolt weight and the force of the recoil springs that define the bolt opening delay to ensure a safe opening of the breech, the rest of the operation sequence being identical to the 5.56 version.

The X95 barrel is produced using a cold hammer forging process, with 6 right-hand grooves, 1:7 twist.  This is quite curious since the IDF uses both M193 and M855 ammunitions.  The explanation is due to the IDF doctrine, since they do not want to renounce to the better terminal effects given by the 55 grs ball, and reserve the heavier 62 grs ball ammunition only for squad sharpshooters.  On the muzzle end of the barrel is mounted a flashider with 5 radial slots located only in the upper portion of it, while the lower part is closed, being this solution identical to the one adopted on the American M16A2 assault rifle.

The gas port is located 187 mm from the end of the barrel extension.  On the breech is mounted the barrel extension, with the locking lugs for the bolt.  The bolt face presents a singular asymmetric locking lug configuration: the three locking lugs, in fact, are located at 12 o’clock, 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock.  This last one, in its turn, is split into two smaller ones.  The bolt face is hollow, to create a belt that completely surrounds the cartridge rim ensuring a level of safety in case of gas leak from a broken primer or shell rupture.

On the bolt face there are also a big extractor claw that engages the cartridge rim for almost one quarter of the diameter, and a spring loaded ejector pin.  To reverse the spent case ejection, the bolt head must be replaced – an operation that must be performed by the unit armourer.

The bolt carrier is a prismatic rectangular shaped block of steel CNC machined to accept the cam and the bolt head.  Protruding from the upper front of the bolt carrier body there is the integral operating rod, ending with the stainless steel terminal of the self adjusting gas valve.  Internally the operating rod is hollow to accommodate the recoil spring and the recoil spring rod.  The bolt, bolt carrier, recoil spring and spring rod are permanently joined and do not need to be separated during field maintenance.  The bolt carrier side walls are straight, sealing the ejection port on the polymer body, avoiding the need of a ejection port lid to keep dust and debris out of the action.

The X95 body is realized in a black-dark gray highly UV and impact resistant polymer plastic.  While the rear portion of the body is identical to the standard TAR-21 rifles, the front and middle portion differ greatly for their shapes and commands collocation.

The front handguard has a round section, with ribs on the lower part to give the shooter a better grip.  The front and upper part has ventilation holes to allow air to circulate and cool the barrel.  At the upper tip of the front handguard there are the backup front sights, realized in polymer and adjustable only for windage.  After the backup front sights there is a short Picatinny rail to allow accessories to be mounted.  Standard configurations foresee for X95s a tactical lamp, with its PTT button strapped with Velcro on the front handguard.