ABOVE: Norbert Piechota of FB Radom demonstrates the MSBS-5.56B rifle. Note the steadiness of the weapon in full-auto firing: two cases are already flying, the…
ABOVE: Desert Tech of Salt Lake City, Utah, displayed their new bull-pup rifle, the dual-caliber (.308 and .223) modular Micro Dynamic Rifle, premiered at the…
Mesko, Poland’s leading ammunition manufacturer turns 90 this summer. From the beginning it was meant to provide the Polish Army with high-quality ammunition – and within the intervening years that’s what the plant, through its many guises, always did….
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….
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….
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….
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….
The Russians still say that the 65 year old Avtomat Kalashnikova would soldier on for decades, yet they are painfully aware that it’s getting out of touch with modernity – despite numerous modernizations. That’s precisely why they created the AK-12, or 5th Generation Avtomat Kalashnikova, presented in January 2012. 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….
Choosing the name of the most popular home video cassette system for your nation’s rifle might not have been intentional, but that’s the association that the Višenamjenska Hrvatska Strojnica (multipurpose Croatian automatic weapon) would not be able to shake off easily. Anyone who knows anything about weapons would also recognize the source of the stylistic inspiration – the French FA MAS F1 “Bugle,” an icon of the 1980s on par with the Phillips video cassette recorder system called the Video Home System….
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….
The XIX MSPO (which is the Polish abbreviation for “International Defence Industry Exhibition”) was held in Kielce, September 5-8, 2011. For the past decade the show has grown bigger with every year, however the recent Euro crisis downgraded the growth this year. Nevertheless, there were still 400 exhibitors from 20 countries participating in the show, with scores of foreign official visitors (including for the first….
The end of the first decade of the new millennium saw Czechs and Slovaks as the Last of Mohicans in the Unified Europe: the only country with its own creative rifle possibility to use 7.62mm caliber for the main battle long arm. The Sa-58 (Samopal vzor 58) rifle, the mainstay of the Czechoslovakian People’s Army (Ceskoslovenska lidova armada, the CSLA) has been in use since the early 1960s, when Czechoslovakia became the only Warsaw Pact country not to introduce a clone of Kalashnikov’s AK/AKM series….
Bumar is now a household name in Poland and one in circulation for over 55 years. But it was only in the last 10 years that it became a high-roller in Poland’s defense industry as a core company around which a concern of Bumar Group was built. It all started in 1953 when Bumar Construction Machinery Industrial Union was organized in Warsaw as a state holding company governing construction machinery, manufacturing and trade. Of course, as was a matter of custom….
Designing “Future Soldiers” space-age suits of armor with TV and other creature comforts has been a popular fad since 1950s, but only in the last decade have such projects significantly moved from concept into the mainstream. Latest advances in microelectronics, mechanics and ergonomics, coupled with shifting the emphasize from the tanks and missiles back towards individual soldier as a result of the end of the Cold War and in accordance with the ‘asymmetric warfare’ doctrine, brought about Future Soldier projects popping up everywhere….
A machinegunner of the Polish 16th Air Assault Battalion preparing to open fire at the Wedrzyn Training Ground pop-up target range. Note the obvious outer…
Newer model of the AR adapter features a beveled mouth for easier loading. The XVIII International Defense Industry Exhibition MSPO 2010, in Kielce, Poland, September…
Test model of the wz.1973 SMG – the Zielonka Glauberyt. In the early 1970s, most submachine guns still in use with the armies of the…
The Blyskawica (‘Lightning’, pronounced bwiskavitsa, with ‘wi’ to be read like in ‘wisdom’) was designed and manufactured fully clandestine, for the Home Army (Armia Krajowa,…
The 40mm RGP-40 MGL sparked many controversies and we’re certain to hear about it in the future. The exhibited prototype was fitted with a CK-5/Zs-1…
Right side view of the Steyr SSG 08 with Heavy Barrel-type of barrel. The SSG 08 is a new marksman bolt-action rifle intended to replace…
The 5.56mm wz.96 Beryl assault rifle in its original form – still with shrink tubes on the stock tubes, standard bipod, old type muzzle device…
