French army showed some advanced thinking in terms of small arms prior to and during World War One. For example, the French were among the first to adopt and mass-issue semi-automatic rifles. They also were among the first manufacturers of inexpensive, production-oriented squad automatic weapons, namely the infamous CSRG M1915, otherwise known as the Chauchat after the person who led the development commission (CSRG stands for Chauchat, Suterre, Ribeyrolle and Gladiator – the first three being the names of the designers and the last one being the name of the manufacturer, French bicycle-making company Établissements des Cycles “Clément-Gladiator”).
The entire gun was developed so its parts can be made in almost every mechanical workshop with generic lathe equipment, and with loose tolerances. This weapon was one of the lightest in its class, being about 2-3 kilograms lighter than the Lewis LMG; but it also was the least reliable, in part because of its complicated design and in part because of the crude machining and loose fitting of its operating parts, resulting in a wide variety of jams and stoppages. It was also prone to self-disassembly under prolonged firing, if parts became worn. Other sources of trouble were an open-side magazine which easily collected dirt and dust, and an outdated cartridge with a severe taper of the case combined with a large diameter rim.
In fact, the Chauchat light machine gun is often considered as the worst weapon of its class, ever produced in quantity. Nevertheless, the CSRG was produced in great numbers in spite of availability of better (and of course more expensive) weapons, such as the Hotchkiss Portative, Lewis or Madsen, and issued not only to French troops, but also to the American Expeditionary corps in Europe, first in the original French 8×50R chambering, and then in the .30-06 US chambering. Alongside the criticisms there are more favourable reports of its successful use and it is probably fair to say that, despite its problems, it was still better than nothing. Some sources claim that as many as 250,000 8mm M1915 plus almost 40,000.30-06 M1918 were built during the Great War. Several countries (such as Belgium, Greece and Poland) even used this weapon during the early 1920s, adapted to their domestic military ammunition. Read the rest of this entry »

The basic idea of the bullpup stock for the semi-automatic shotgun vas devised by the US police sergeant Alfred Crouch circa 1957. He developed a “device for firing the shotgun single handed” around a Remington 11-48 autoloading shotgun, and began to offer it to various shotgun manufacturers. His ‘device’ was built from the shotgun, stripped from its stock, and a hand-made aluminum bull-pup type stock with the pistol grip and a rotating buttplate, attached to the rear part of the shotgun receiver. The trigger was linked to the sear by the long sliding bar. He finally sold his design to the US company High Standard circa 1965, which redesigned the Crouch stock, replacing the single aluminum stock with the plastic shell, assembled from three parts, with integral carrying handle at the top. The carrying handle served as a sighting rib and as a mounting for the built-in flashlight. The heart of the system was the gas operated, self-loading High Standard Flite King shotgun, stripped from its conventional stock and enclosed in the patented plastic bullpup shell. The first production shotguns of this design, designated as HS model 10A, appeared circa 1967. In the 1970 the High Standard improved the basic design. The integral carrying handle was replaced with the folding one, the separate front and rear sights were added, the cocking handle was doubled on the left side of the gun, the flash-light mount was made detachable. This model was designated as the HS model 10B shotgun. Both models were originally sold only to the law enforcement agencies and other such users, but latter found its way to the civilian market as a police surplus and trade-ins. While being very promising in theory, the HS 10 shotguns were known for inadequate (if not marginal) reliability, especially with the non-magnum loads. The relatively low magazine capacity of only 4 rounds also was a minus. Initially HS 10 shotguns found some popularity among the US police departments, but latter were quickly retired from active duty. Read the rest of this entry »

Armalon PC carbine, developed in around 1997 by British company Armalon Ltd, follows the general idea of the Spanish “Destroyer” carbine, which was developed between two World wars for use by Spanish Guarda Civil. Basically, it was a shortened and lightened conversion of the standard bolt-action rifle to significantly less powerful pistol ammunition, which resulted in much shorter effective (and dangerous) range, as well as in decreased recoil and noise. Armalon carbines also produced with idea of short-range weapon which can be fired accurately at ranges beyond capabilities of most pistols. these carbines are suitable for security, training and self-defense purposes. Being manually operated, such weapons are more tolerant to variations in power of ammunition used, but practical rate of fire will be of cause slower, compared to semi-automatic carbines in same caliber, such as Ruger PC9 or others like that. On the other hand, in some countries civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons can be limited by law, and bolt-operated pistol caliber carbine might be a good choice there. Read the rest of this entry »

Brugger & Thomet (B+T) APR 308 sniper rifle was born in 2003 as a further evolution of the French PGM rifle. Brugger & Thomet company was a long-time distributor of PGM rifles, and in 2003 competed in a tender to sell the French Made but Swiss modified rifle to Singaporean army, which at the time sought a new 7.62×51 precision weapon. After some confusing communication over who had the rights to sell the rifle, Brugger & Thomet company decided to improve and to produce the rifle in fully Switzerland. The Brugger & Thomet (B+T) APR 308 sniper rifle was first presented to the public at 2005 MILIPOL exhibition, and is now adopted as a standard sniper rifle by the Army of Singapore..

Brugger & Thomet (B+T) APR 308 sniper rifle is a modular weapon, built upon a metallic lower receiver (main frame or chassis), which houses upper receiver with bolt group and barrel, as well as fire control group, folding buttstock and other furniture. Gun action utilizes traditional manually operated rotary bolt with three radial locking lugs at the front. Opening and closing rotation of the bolt requires only 60o of radial movement of bolt handle. Free-floating precision-made barrel is equipped with special muzzle brake which also serves as a mounting point for quick-detachable silencer and hosts folding front sight. Trigger group, manual safety and pistol grip are assembled into single detachable module. Trigger is of two-stage type and fully adjustable (trigger adjustments do not require disassembly of the unit).Ambidextrous manual safety is conveniently located above the pistol grip. Ammunition is fed from a detachable 10-round box magazine, which provides last round bolt hold-open feature. Read the rest of this entry »

T65 assault rifle was developed at Taiwan state arsenal to replace obsolete 7,62mm M14 rifles of US origin. The T65 rifle closely resembles US-made M16A1 rifle and is probably made on US-supplied machinery, although the Taiwanese rifle has some differences in design and appearance. Reports on original T65 rifle suggested that it performed not satisfactory, so it was improved and became T65K2 (also sometimes referred to as T68). Later on, a T86 carbine was developed – it is very similar externally to US-made M4 carbine although it has piston-type gas action of T65. The last weapon in this line-up is T91 carbine, which can be described as T86 with carrying handle replaced by Picatinny-type accessory rail.

T65 assault rifle is gas operated, selective fired weapon. It uses M16-type two-part aluminum receiver and similar rotating bolt action, although gas system is different – it has short-stroke gas piston, located above the barrel and concealed within handguards. The T65 rifles replaced carrying handle of M16 pattern with rear sight block; otherwise it was similar to M16A1. Starting from T65K2 Taiwanese designers returned the carrying handle (removable on T91 carbine). T65 uses magazines compatible with M16 rifles. Read the rest of this entry »

The M1 carbine is an interesting little weapon. The original request for a compact and lightweight shoulder arm to replace service handguns for second-line (non-fighting) troops was first issued by US Army in 1938. The idea behind this request was that a shoulder arm, such as carbine, firing ammunition of moderate power, will have more effective range and will be much simpler to train the users to fire it accurately, than the standard .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol or revolver. This request was probably the first recognition of the need in the Personal Defense Weapon in the modern sense. Request was shelved for some time and re-issued in 1940. It included the new cartridge of .30 caliber but of power far less than of US general issue .30-06 ammunition. The cartridge, officially named the “cartridge, ball, .30 caliber, M1″, was developed by the Winchester company. It was a straight-case, rimless design with round-nose bullet weighting 110 grains (7.1 gram) and muzzle velocity of 1860 fps (~ 570 m/s). Muzzle energy was about 2 times more than of .45ACP pistol cartridge but still almost 3 times less than of .30-06 rifle cartridge. In the modern sense the .30 carbine cartridge can be called an “intermediate” but the lack of the muzzle energy and round nosed bullet limited the effective range to about 200 meters or so. Anyway, it had still much longer range than any pistol round of its time, along with moderate recoil. Many companies submitted their designs for US Army trials but the winner eventually became the Winchester. Read the rest of this entry »

The STEN name came out of names of the designers (R. V. Shepard and H. J. Turpin) and from the factory where they worked (Enfield arsenal). It was one of the most crude and ugly and simply, but effective submachine guns of the WW2. Almost 4 millions of STEN guns of different versions were made between 1941 and 1945. STEN guns were made not only in Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield; other makers included famous British gunmaking company of the time BSA Ltd, as well as Royal Ordnance Arsenal in Fazakerly, England, and Long Branch Arsenal in Canada.

The first STEN, STEN Mk.I (full official name was 9mm STEN Machine Carbine, Mark 1), was developed in mid-1941. It was blowback operated, automatic weapon that fired from the open bolt. Trigger unit permitted for sigle shots and full automatic fire, controlled by the cross-bolt type button, located in front and above trigger. The tubular receiver and the barrel shroud were made from rolled steel. The gun was fed from left side mounted box magazines. The stock was of skeleton type, made from steel. Sights were fixed, pre-adjusted for 100 yards distance, peep hole rear and blade front. The Mk.1 featured spoon-like muzzle compensator. Some guns featured small folding forward grip. Total production of Mark 1 and slightly modified Mark 1* STEN machine guns was about 100 000. Read the rest of this entry »

The CZ-75 pistol was developed by the Koucky brothers, who worked at the state-owned arms factory Ceska Zbrojovka in the city of Uhersky Brod (Czechoslovakia, now Czech republic). This full-size semiautomatic pistol first appeared in the 1975, and the production began circa 1976. CZ-75 was obviously intended for the export market. The CZ-75 accumulated best features from many preceding designs. Resulting pistol was aesthetically attractive, comfortable to handle and shoot, quite accurate and reliable in operation. Made by CZ in various versions and modifications, CZ-75 was also widely copied and cloned. Most popular of CZ-75 copies are (or were) made by: IMI (Jericho-941, Israel), Tanfoglio (TZ-75, TZ-90, T-95, Italy), Sarsilmaz (M2000, Turkey), ITM (AT-88, Swiss), Sphinx (mod.2000, Swiss), Norinco (NZ-75, China), Springfield (P9, USA).

CZ-75 is now in service with Czech police (in the form of compact CZ-75 P-01). It is also used by Turkish police, and by several police departments in USA. By opinions of most experts, CZ-75 is one of the best combat pistols in its class. Read the rest of this entry »

PAW-20 (PAW stands for Personal Assault Weapon) is a most recent development of the South-African company Gemaco Elbree Pty Ltd, and is marketed by South African military corporation DENEL. Ammunition of new type, developed for PAW-20, is produced by the PMP – DENEL munitions. While in some advertising texts the PAW-20 was listed as a “new assault rifle”, it is obviously not a true assault rifle, but, rather a semi-automatic grenade launcher, which is intended as an infantry support weapon. PAW-20 fires specially developed explosive ammunition of 20mm caliber, using relatively short, straight cartridge cases. Muzzle velocity is about 300 m/s, which is quite low by artillery standards but rather high by standards of hand-held grenade launchers. Intended targets for PAW-20 are infantry in the open and behind light covers, as well as unarmored or lightly armored vehicles and thin-walled buildings. While maximum effective range for PAW-20 is given as 1000 meters, it is obviously stated for “area” targets such as groups of soldiers; against point targets like cars or machine gun nests, effective range will be much less probably no more than 300-400 meters – unless gun will be used in conjunction with laser rangefinder and computerized sight with built-in ballistic calculator. Read the rest of this entry »

Type 67 was the first Chinese general purpose machine gun, developed to replace earlier Type 53 and Type 57 7,62mm medium machine guns (license-built copies of Soviet SG-43 and SGM respectively). This weapon combined features borrowed from many other machine guns, and went through a number of variations, still serving with PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army). Development of a new medium machine gun commenced in 1959, with first prototypes tested in 1963. At that time the concept of a new weapon was broaden from medium to universal machine gun. Adopted in 1967, it was improved with the introduction of the Type 67-1 in 1978. In 1982 PLA has adopted the Type 67-2 GPMG, which was somewhat lighter and used a lighter tripod. Type 67-2 is so far a standard general purpose machine gun of PLA. It saw limited use during closing days of Vietnam war, and few guns of this type also found its way (through the Pakistan) into the hands of Afghanistan mujaheds that fought Soviet army during early 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »