SADJ 7#3

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1 

DEFENSE 

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 3 

KASOTC 

The Warrior Competition 

“The King’s Challenge” 

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE 

Dror 

PART II 

Family of Multi-Purpose 

Infantry Munition Systems 

MPIMS 

Vision 

Weapons of the future 

Land 

Forces 

2014

2 SADEFENSEJOURNAL.COM

SADEFENSEJOURNAL.COM 3



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KASOTC 2014 

The Warrior Competition “The King’s Challenge” 

The preferred rifle for most teams was an M4 variant in 

5.56x45mm with a variety of optics. Some of the teams 

preparing for the Precision Rifle course were Chinese, 

U.S., Jordanian, Palestinian, and Kuwaiti. One member 

would switch to a sniper rifle for some of the long runs. 


COLUMNS 

10 INDUSTRY NEWS 

JASON WONG 

11 NEW PRODUCTS 

CHRIS A. CHOAT 

16 INTERNATIONAL LEGAL AFFAIRS 

JASON WONG 

110 ADVERTISING DIRECTORY 

113 MACHINE GUN MEMORABILIA 

ROBERT G. SEGEL 

SHOWS 

70 SOFEX 2014 

DAN SHEA 

79 KASOTC 2014 

DAN SHEA 

86 LAND FORCES 2014 

KYLE SHEA 

96 GDA 2014 

DAN SHEA 

FEATURES 

18 PWS MODERN MUSKET 

TODD BURGREEN 

24 LESS LETHAL LAUNCHERS IN TURKEY 

N. R. JENZEN-JONES 

26 THE FNS 9 

BOB CAMPBELL 

32 DPMS GII SASS .308 WIN. AR RIFLE 

TODD BURGREEN 

40 VISION 2025 WEAPONS IN THE FUTURE 

PAUL EVANCOE 

44 WEAPONS OF THE 

REPUBLIC OF KOREA MARINE CORPS 

GORDON ARTHUR 

58 THE SECRET LIFE OF THE DROR PART 2 

TERRY EDWARDS 

65 FAMILY OF MULTI-PURPOSE 

INFANTRY MUNITION SYSTEMS MPIMS 

THOMAS CAMPION, HANNU HYTTI, 

& TOMI PESONEN 

102 ACCURACY INTERNATIONAL 

MILES VINING 


VOL 7 NO 3 // by JASON M. WONG 

INDUSTRYNEWS 

for export violations. Further online comments 

allegedly from de Jaray allege that 

the prosecution was sought in exchange for 

US/Canada trade concessions. 

UN URGED TO END LIBYA 

ARMS EMBARGO 

VIETNAM WANTS ARMS 

EMBARGO LIFTED 

Vietnam wants the U.S. to lift fully an 

embargo on arms sales that was eased last 

year, but Washington is calling for more 

progress by the communist-governed nation 

on improving human rights, their respective 

ambassadors said Tuesday. 

This year marks the 20th anniversary 

of the resumption of diplomatic relations 

between the former enemies. Vietnam says 

an end to the embargo, which was partially 

lifted last October to help improve Vietnam’s 

maritime security, would show relations 

are fully normalized. 

“It has political symbolism,” Ambassador 

Pham Quang Vinh told the Center 

for Strategic and International Studies, a 

Washington think tank. 

The U.S. and Vietnam have deepened 

ties as they find common cause in countering 

a rising China. Vietnam is also among 12 

nations negotiating a U.S.-backed trans-Pacific 

trade pact that Washington wants to finalize 

this year to help boost exports to Asia. 

The U.S., however, has voiced concern 

about Russia refueling military planes 

at the Vietnamese base at Cam Ranh Bay. 

U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius blamed Russia 

for using its arrangement with Vietnam for 

“provocative” actions that could raise regional 

tensions. 

FEDS INDICT MAN FOR MISTAKES ON DIS- 

CONTINUED FORMS 

In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau discontinued 

the Shipper’s Export Declaration 

for the Automated Export System. Despite 

this fact, the U.S. Justice Department indicted 

a California man, Pavel Flider, and 

his company, Trident International, for 

“false and misleading export information… 

in an SED” with respect to fifteen exports 

made between 2011 and 2013, long after 

said “SED” had been definitively retired. 

Because the statements on the discontinued 

form were false, DOJ charged him 

with violating the anti-smuggling statute, 

18 U.S.C. § 554, which covers any export 

made “contrary to any law or regulation of 

the United States.” Despite attempting to 

file the correct (albeit, discontinued) documents, 

the rule violation turned the defendant 

into a smuggler based upon his “false 

statement” in an SED. 

ATF BACKS OFF M855 

AMMUNITION PROHIBITION 

Foreign (and many American) readers 

may be confused by the ATF attempt to ban 

M855 5.56mm ammunition. Further discussion 

on this subject can be found in this 

month’s Legal Affairs article. 

CANADIAN GOVERNMENT TO PAY $10MIL 

FOR ERRONEOUS PROSECUTION 

The Canadian Federal Government 

has agreed to pay a Canadian businessman, 

Steve de Jaray, more than $10 million to 

compensate him for damages caused to him 

by the government’s erroneous prosecution 

in which it charged de Jaray with illegal exports 

of items that were not in fact export 

controlled. 

The case began in 2008 when de Jaray’s 

company, Apex Micro Electronics, 

shipped microchips used in flat screen 

televisions and video games to Hong Kong. 

Canadian customs flagged the items as 

suspicious. In February 2009, Canadian 

Mounties and other officials raided de Jaray’s 

home and office. According to de Jaray, 

the raid (and subsequent false prosecution) 

caused him to lose his business and 

ultimately his house. Experts hired by de 

Jaray determined that the microchips were 

not export-controlled. Canada stayed, then 

ultimately dropped, the prosecution. 

Interestingly, and not entirely surprisingly, 

it appears that there are some U.S. 

fingerprints on the prosecution. Lawyers 

for de Jaray allege, citing a cable released 

by WikiLeaks, that just months before de 

Jaray’s goods were seized, U.S. officials, including 

a high official from the State Department’s 

Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, 

chided the Canadians for their poor export 

enforcement records and insisted that certain 

trade concessions might be withheld 

if the Canadians did not start following the 

U.S. example and throw more people in jail 

Libya has urged the UN Security 

Council to approve a request for military 

purchases as it struggles to combat Islamic 

State extremists and protect its oil 

fields. The internationally-recognized government, 

one of two bodies that claims to 

rule troubled Libya, has asked the council’s 

sanctions committee to grant an exemption 

to an arms embargo and allow it to beef up 

its air force. 

“The leadership of the Libyan army has 

submitted specific requests for exemptions 

from the arms embargo to the sanctions 

committee,” Libyan Ambassador Ibrahim 

Dabbashi told the 15-member council. 

“These requests relate to reinforcing the 

ability of the Libyan air force so that it may 

be able to monitor Libya’s territory and 

borders, and prevent the terrorists from 

reaching oil fields and oil facilities, so that 

it can protect the fortune and wealth of the 

country,” he said. 

The move came as Libya declared force 

majeure on 11 of its oilfields due to the deteriorating 

security situation, the state-run 

National Oil Corporation said in a statement 

on its website. 

The oil assets covered by the declaration 

included Mabrouk and Bahi, which 

security officials said were overrun by Islamist 

militants earlier this week after security 

forces guarding the installations were 

forced to retreat. 

According to a document from the UN 

security council’s sanctions committee, Libya 

is seeking to purchase 14 MiG fighter jets, 

seven helicopters, 150 tanks, 150 armed 

personnel carriers mounted with machine 

guns, 10,000 grenade launchers, along with 

ammunition and mortars from defense contractors 

from Ukraine, the Czech Republic 

and Serbia. 


NEW PRODUCTS 

VOL 7 NO 3 

by CHRIS A. CHOAT 

Steiner Introduces 

“Intelligent” Combat Sight (ICS) 

Steiner’s new “Intelligent” Combat Sight 

(ICS) integrates a laser rangefinder and 

a ballistic calculator into a rugged and 

compact tactical weapons sight. The 

ICS, a true electro-optical aiming device, 

provides trajectory compensation by 

automatically calculating the point of aim 

based on ammunition ballistics, measured 

distance and angle to the target out to 800 

meters. The precision of the 6x40mm ICS 

greatly increases accuracy and first round 

hit probability for improved battlefield 

effectiveness for infantry soldiers and tactical 

operators using small caliber weapons. 

Just feed the ICS your cartridge’s 

ballistic info and the scope’s computer 

and inclinometer instantly calculate 

perfect hold-over at your exact distance 

and gives you a bright red dot in seconds 

– all at the push of a button. Despite its 

sophisticated technology, the ICS is a 

ruggedized, simple to operate combat 

optic that requires minimal training. 

While the magnification is optimized for 

the 7.62x51mm Battle Rifle, the ICS’s 

internal ballistic calculator is easily 

configurable for specific 5.56mm, .300 

Blackout and .300 WinMag cartridges. 

The 6x40mm ICS is fully adjustable for 

windage and 120 MOA of elevation, and 

the illuminated reticle adjusts from dim 

to bright for daylight conditions. A Picatinny 

base on top of the ICS allows for 

the addition of a CQB sight, and a backup 

iron sight on the right side provides 

an auxiliary sighting option. The sight is 

powered by one CR123A battery and the 

Class I Eye Safe laser and is waterproof 

up to 10 m. Find more at www.steiner-optics.com. 

Adams Arms Announces New 

.308 Piston Driven Rifles 

Adams Arms is proud to announce the options and price points from entry level 

introduction of their revolutionary new all the way to the FAST model, which 

piston driven small frame .308 rifle. With will be able to outperform and outlast 

their years of research and development anything on the market. All rifles will 

they’ve engineered the finest .308 to ever feature; Voodoo Innovations melonited 

hit the market. Weighing in at less than barrels, guaranteed 1 MOA accuracy for 

8 pounds and more than 50% reciprocal life, pressure relief cuts under the barrel 

to standard AR-15 components, their extension, LifeCoat brass saver bolts and 

innovative .308 rifles will be setting a kidney shaped ejector. The LX proprietary 

design allows brass to eject cleanly 

new standard in the firearms industry. 

The new lineup includes 4 models with and efficiently, while preserving it for reloading. 

Their LifeCoat coating provides 

the lubricity of nickel with the corrosion 

resistance and hardness of PVD, increasing 

the life of the part exponentially. The 

guns also feature the XLP Adjustable 

Gas Block and Selector and Picatinny 

Adjustable Gas Block (on Standard & 

MOE Models). With retail prices ranging 

from $1,329.99 to $2,999.99 there is a 

model to fit every need and budget. More 

information at www.adamsarms.net. 


Faxon Firearms, manufacturer of the 

innovative ARAK platform, is proud to 

announce the addition of the 7.62x39 

Russian caliber to its offerings for the 

ARAK-21. This addition will allow the 

user the added advantage of a larger 

caliber round and less expensive ammunition 

for more range time. This system 

makes the ARAK-21 platform one of the 

most versatile platforms on the market, 

allowing the user to have the potential to 

have three rifles in one (5.56, .300blk and 

now 7.62x39). The 7.62x39 caliber will be 

available for order in standard ARAK-21 

upper receivers, complete XRS rifles, and 

as a stand-alone kit for existing ARAK- 

21s. Kits will be available in 12.5-inch and 

16-inch medium profile barrels. Current 

Faxon Firearms Adds New 

7.62x39 Kit to ARAK-21 Platform 

ARAK-21 users/owners can simply 

purchase the 7.62x39 kit as an addition 

to their current rifle upper. The 7.62x39 

caliber kit comes with an interchangeable 

bolt, firing pin and barrel, all designed to 

work interchangeably with the current 

ARAK-21 upper receivers and XRS rifles. 

Rather than modify existing components, 

Faxon took detailed time and testing to 

create a robust set of solutions that solve 

many of the issues of the cartridge that 

plague other conversions. They lowered 

and widened the feed ramps to ensure 

consistent chambering, increased the 

bolt diameter to handle bolt thrust, and 

supply a new firing pin that matches the 

depth and width of the venerable AK to 

ensure consistent ignition. They set out to 

design a platform based rifle that takes 

the best of the AR and the best of the 

AK and combine them into one rifle 

with cross caliber capabilities. With 

the addition of the 7.62x39, they are 

expanding the capabilities for each user 

of the ARAK-21. This option further 

expands his or her platform and opens 

up many new shooting options. The 

ARAK-21 7.62x39 Kit has a retail price 

$499. Retail price for single barrel 

upper receivers is $1,199 and multiple 

caliber kits that include 7.62x39 will 

add $99 for the bolt and firing pin. 

7.62x39 equipped ARAKs and kits will 

start shipping late February. More 

information can be found at www. 

faxonfirearms.com. 

Mossberg Releases MVP Light 

Chassis and Blaze 47 Rimfire 

What could possibly improve the accuracy 

and handling qualities of Mossberg’s 

groundbreaking MVP Series of bolt-action 

rifles? Why not add a lightweight, aluminum 

MDT chassis; Magpul Mil-Spec CTR 

adjustable stock and MOE pistol grip; SilencerCo 

Saker muzzle brake, and adjustable 

bipod? O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc. is 

pleased to announce the MVP-LC bolt-action 

target rifle in 5.56mm NATO (.223 

Rem.) and 7.62mm NATO (.308 Win.); 

both available in optional Vortex-scoped 

combos. These AR-compatible bolt-actions 

utilize patented design features that 

accept and feed from AR-style magazines 

(AR-15-style for 5.56mm NATO and both 

M1A/M14 and AR-10-style for 7.62mm 

NATO models). Housed in an aluminum, 

tan-finished, light chassis stock 

designed by MDT that provides a 

modular, ergonomic base, this MVP is 

engineered for accuracy with its V-shaped 

bedding and recoil lug area that only 

makes contact with the receiver at those 

points. The free-floating, medium bull 

barrel is threaded and comes with a SilencerCo 

Saker muzzle brake, utilizing the 

Trifecta quick-detach mounting system 

(thread cap included). The barrels, constructed 

of carbon steel, are button-rifled 

with 16.25-inch length and 1:7 twist rate 

in the 5.56mm NATO (.223 Rem.) chambering 

and the 7.62mm NATO (.308 Win.) 

sports an 18.5-inch barrel with a 1:10 twist 

rate. Both feature a matte blue finish on 

all metalwork. Enhancing the accuracy on 

this tack-driver is Mossberg’s Lightning 

Bolt Action (LBA) Trigger System that 

delivers a crisp, creep-free trigger pull 

and is user-adjustable from 3 to 7 pounds. 

Machined from aircraft-grade aluminum 

and hard-coat anodized to military spec, 

preventing corrosion and minimizing 

wear, the LBA trigger system delivers the 

utmost in reliability and durability for 

consistent shot placement. Additional 

design features include: spiral fluted bolt; 

oversized tactical-style bolt handle; Picatinny 

top rail for ease of adding optics; 

and adjustable bipod. MVP-LC rifles come 

standard with Magpul P-Mag 10-round 

magazines and with the patented designs 

of the MVP, you can use aftermarket 

AR-15 (5.56mm NATO/.223 Rem.) and 

both M1A/M14 and AR-10-style (7.62mm 

NATO/.308 Win.) aftermarket magazines. 

Both calibers are available in MVP-LC 

Scoped Combos, which include Vortex 

Optics Viper HS-T (Hunter Shooter 

Tactical) 4-16x44mm variable riflescope 

and rings. Mossberg has also introduced a 

newly-engineered line of lightweight and 

easy-handling Blaze autoloading rimfire 

rifles for 2015, and joining the family is 

the Blaze 47, replicating the look and feel 


Newest SureFire Scout Light 

Provides Power-Source Versatility 

SureFire, LLC, manufacturer of high-end illumination tools and tactical products, has commenced sales 

of the latest, highly versatile member of its best-selling, ever-expanding family of LED Scout Light Weapon 

Lights. The new M600 AA Scout Light-for long guns equipped with Mil-Std 1913 (Picatinny) rails-can be 

powered by AA lithium or AA alkaline batteries, the latter of which are typically more readily available globally 

particularly in remote or rural areas. Powered by two lithium AAs, the M600 AA’s solid-state light emitting 

diode (LED) generates a maximum output of 200 lumens and produces tactical-level output for up to 3.75 hours 

on a set of batteries. The output and runtime from two AA alkaline batteries is approximately one-third that 

from lithium AAs, but this reduced output/runtime is theoretically outweighed by the convenience of using these 

easier-to-find and often less-expensive power cells. But to maximize output and runtime, SureFire recommends 

powering the M600 AA with lithium batteries whenever possible. The M600 AA uses a proprietary Total Internal Reflection 

(TIR) lens to shape the LED’s output into a smooth, flawless beam with ample reach and enough surround light 

to maintain good situational awareness in close to medium-range applications. Like all SureFire Scout Lights, it securely 

attaches to any Mil-Std 1913 rail, the M600 AA utilizing an integral thumbscrew clamp that attaches/detaches the light to 

said rail in a matter of seconds. Constructed of lightweight aerospace aluminum that’s hard anodized with a Mil-Spec finish 

for added durability, this new Scout Light can be easily activated via its momentary-/constant-on click-type tailcap switch, 

or via several remote plug-in switch models available for purchase from SureFire as optional accessories. The M600 AA Scout 

Light has an MSRP of $299. More information can be found by visiting www.surefire.com online. 

of the widely-popular AK-47 rifle. These 

fun-to-shoot .22 LR autoloaders feature 

a polymer receiver and are available with 

fixed-length wood stocks or adjustable 

black synthetic stocks, featuring Mossberg’s 

innovative FLEX TLS (Tool-less 

Locking System) interchangeable recoil 

pad system. Both wood-stocked and synthetic 

versions are available with optional 

10- or 25-round magazines. Experience 

the fun of shooting a classic military-style 

rifle platform in this affordable, American-made 

rimfire rifle series. The Blaze 

rimfire rifle design utilizes the durability 

and lightweight characteristics of today’s 

highly-engineered polymers. The molded 

polymer receiver and action are paired 

with compact 16.5-inch free-floating, 

blue-finished barrels with 1:16 twist rate. 

The metal bolt, firing pin and bolt handle 

feature complementing blue finish and 

the Blaze 47 also features an ambidextrous 

safety. The spring-loading, 10- and 

25-round magazines are easy-to-load 

and are also sold as Mossberg-branded 

accessories. The Blaze 47 captures the 

look of the venerable AK-47 with the 

following standard features: adjustable 

fiber optic rear sight and raised front 

rifle sights; choice of fixed wood stocks 

with 13 1/2-inch length-of-pull (LOP) 

or lever-activated, 6-position adjustable 

LOP synthetic stock (11 1/4 - 14 inches) 

providing greater comfort for all shooters; 

and optional 10- or 25-round capacity 

magazines. Mossberg has also incorporated 

its user-friendly FLEX TLS System on 

the synthetic-stocked versions of the Blaze 

47: with the simple push of the integrated 

TLS latch, the recoil pad can be easily interchanged 

for other sizes of FLEX recoil 

pads; no tools required. Go to their web 

site at www.mossberg.com. 


Adaptive Tactical Has New Sidewinder 

Venom 10-Round 12 Gauge Magazine 

Adaptive Tactical, LLC, manufacturers of 

innovative firearm stocks and accessories, 

including the popular Sidewinder Venom 

shotgun systems, is proud to announce 

the release of its Sidewinder Venom 

10-round box magazine for the 

Sidewinder Venom magazine-fed shotgun 

system. This system provides the ability to 

transform your Mossberg 590, 500* and 

88** series 12 gauge pump action shotgun 

into a magazine fed, smooth operating 

tactical shotgun. The Venom 10-round 

magazine is compatible with 12 gauge 

2.75-inch ammunition. It allows for rapid 

reloads while maintaining reliable feeding. 

Each magazine is made of durable 

polymer construction with strong composite 

and metal components. Magazines 

are available in Black, A-TACS, MultiCam, 

or Desert Digital. The interchangeable 

design makes this not only an innovation 

for the range but for home defense. Individuals 

now have the ability to leave their 

shotgun unloaded with an easy, quick 

loading option. This also allows for speedy 

transitions from buckshot to slugs or 

whichever ammunition the user chooses 

by labeling each mag with the specific shot 

shells loaded. For more information on 

Adaptive Tactical visit www.adaptivetactical.com. 

MasterPiece Arms Unveils 

New MPA930DMG Pistol 

MasterPiece Arms (MPA), manufacturers of the MPA MAC Line 

of semiautomatic pistols, carbines, suppressors and MPAR rifles, 

proudly announces the MPA930DMG, the first all-aluminum 

lower pistol from the new DMG (Defender, Machined, Grip) 

Series. This 9mm pistol is based on the 930sst, but includes a 

fully machined aluminum pistol grip and lower receiver. The 

930DMG uses their fully machined grip system matched up with 

an all-aluminum lower receiver; significantly reducing the overall 

weight of the pistol. The 930DMG is chambered in 9mm, uses 

Glock style magazines, has adjustable front and rear sights, has a 

built-in single point sling flush cup, and mounting holes for a rear 

fixed or side folding stock. The MPA930DMG comes standard in 

Cerakote Tungsten coating. It is also available in Black, Gunmetal, 

Flat Dark Earth and Burnt Bronze Cerakote finishes. The pistol is 

further equipped with a side cocker, scope mount, hammer with 

disconnect (plus original hammer) and comes in an MPA polymer 

case. It will also be available in an SBR version shown in the 

photo. It has a retail price of $679.99. For more information on 

MasterPiece Arms and their product line of pistols, rifles, carbines 

and suppressors, visit www.masterpiecearms.com. 


Ross & Zheng Engineering Unveils New 

Multi-Caliber UNIMAG AR Magazine 

Ross & Zheng Engineering (RZE) has 

announced that it has a new multi-caliber 

magazine to fit the AR 5.56 platform guns. 

The UNIMAG multi-caliber magazine, 

RZE’s first production-ready firearm 

component, provides enhanced performance 

and reliability for gun owners and 

enthusiasts. Compatible with AR-15 and 

other rifles that use a STANAG magazine, 

the UNIMAG is proven to be reliable 

and functional for six different types of 

ammunition and counting. The patented 

design includes a two-piece, self-levering 

follower that maintains its stability while 

also accommodating tilt introduced by 

the ammo, and a self-adjusting magazine 

shell to regulate various cartridge a universal magazine of multiple caliber 

including the self-levering follower for 

diameters. This is the first magazine that compatibility for firearms (U.S. 8667724 

can handle the .223, 6.5, 6.8 and the two B2) and the magazine shell of a universal 

AK calibers, the 7.62x39 and 5.45x39, magazine of multiple caliber compatibility 

for firearms (U.S. 8850732 B2). The 

reliably. It also offers manufacturers a 

tremendous opportunity to expand their company holds two additional firearms 

AR-15 product families, particularly in accessory patents and has one patent 

7.62x39 uppers and lowers. RZE’s proprietary 

technology is backed by patents, at 

pending. Learn more about the UNIMAG 

www.rosszhengengineering.com. 

New Seek Thermal Camera Makes 

It Easy to Focus In On Your Target 

Seek Thermal has just announced the 

Seek XR, an extended range version of its 

award-winning thermal camera. Created 

with outdoor enthusiasts in mind, the 

Seek XR allows people to literally see 

heat, making it possible to spot people 

and animals in total darkness. For hunters, 

the Seek XR can be used in daylight, 

the dark, or in obscured visibility conditions. 

It’s useful for scouting, bloodtrailing, 

hunting game, and much more. 

The new Seek XR has a manual focus 

lens for viewing objects at close range, 

or at distances of up to 2,000 feet. Until 

recently, the price of thermal imaging has 

kept it out of reach for almost everybody 

except military and law enforcement. The 

Seek XR will be available in January for 

both iOS and Android devices for $299 

at www.thermal.com Thermal imaging 

converts heat energy into an image that 

can be seen with the human eye. Traditionally, 

thermal cameras costing several 

thousand dollars and up have been used 

by firefighters, law enforcement and 

the military to see through smoke or in 

complete darkness. Seek Thermal has 

pioneered the next generation of thermal 

imaging technology sized and priced for 

the everyday consumer. The Seek camera 

is a small device that plugs into the 

micro USB connector on Android devices 

and the LightningTM connector on iOS 

devices. A durable magnesium housing 

protects a next-generation thermal sensor 

and custom chalcogenide lens. It weighs 

only 0.5 ounces and creates true thermal 

images with a resolution of 206x156, or 

over 32,000 thermal pixels. Prior to today 

this kind of resolution was only available 

in cameras costing several thousand 

dollars and up. The Seek camera works 

with a free app that is available in the 

Apple App store and on Google Play. The 

app makes it easy for people to get started 

with thermal imaging, while also including 

a range of controls substantial enough 

for people who use the camera for serious 

work or serious fun. App features include; 

capture and share thermal photos and 

videos, select from different temperature 

measurement modes including the ability 

to automatically highlight everything in 

the scene that is above or below a specified 

temperature and select from nine 

different color palettes. Technically called 

“LUTs,” there are different color ranges 

that can be applied to temperature measurements. 

You can also swipe seamlessly 

back and forth between a regular and a 

thermal image in Thermal+ mode. For 

more information visit www.thermal.com. 


INTERNATIONAL LEGAL AFFAIRS 

M855 – What’s the Big Deal? 

VOL 7 NO 3 // by JASON M. WONG 

Pay any attention to American politics, 

and the reader will know that the ATF 

recently attempted to reclassify and effectively 

ban M855 5.56mm ammunition. 

Thankfully, the effort was thwarted 

for the moment, but what was the big 

deal? How and why did ATF believe that they 

had the power to ban a specific type of ammunition? 

To answer that question, we need to 

examine a bit of history. 

THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF ARMOR 

PIERCING AMMUNITION 

In the 1970s, law enforcement officers 

became increasingly worried about the 

availability of armor piercing (AP) ammunition 

capable of being fired from a handgun. 

Comfortable and effective body armor was 

becoming available to more police officers at 

a reasonable price. Rather than fight an escalating 

war of increasing firepower, an attempt 

was made to limit and restrict AP ammunition 

capable of being fired from a handgun. 

As many rifle shooters know, most body armor 

cannot stop a common rifle projectile; 

those that are able to stop a rifle projectile are 

usually very heavy, cannot be concealed, and 

are effective against only one or two impacts. 

Restrictions against rifle ammunition capable 

of penetrating a protective vest would 

instantly classify most as AP. The restriction 

against AP ammunition was thus limited to 

handgun ammunition. 

In response to law enforcement demands 

for action, The Law Enforcement 

Officers Protection Act of 1985 was debated 

and became law. When applied in conjunction 

with provisions of the Gun Control Act of 

1968, these two pieces of legislation become 

singularly important, as one cannot operate 

without the other in defining and prohibiting 

the possession of M855 ammunition. 

THE GUN CONTROL ACT OF 1968 

The early 1960s were a turbulent period 

highlighted with the assassinations of John 

F. Kennedy (1963), Malcom X (1965), Martin 

Luther King (1968), and Robert Kennedy 

(1968). Add the University of Texas shooting 

in 1966 with a call to restrict the possession 

of firearms, and one finds the Gun Control 

Act (GCA) of 1968 – the first major piece of 

U.S. anti-gun legislation since the National 

Firearms Act of 1934. For the purpose of this 

analysis, a singular piece of the GCA is relevant 

– the Sporting Purposes Test. 

The Sporting Purposes Test was passed 

as part of the GCA, and grants the U.S. Attorney 

General the ability to restrict the import 

and manufacture of any firearm or ammunition 

that is not “generally recognized as 

particularly suitable for or readily adaptable 

to sporting purposes.” The actual language 

within the law is quite bare, with interpretation 

of the clause left to the governing agency 

– the ATF. As demonstrated in prior acts, the 

sporting purpose test has been used for political 

gain, namely in 1986, when “assault style” 

rifles were banned from import into the U.S. 

Other acts in the name of “sporting purpose” 

include the determination that Striker-12 and 

USAS-12 shotguns had no legitimate sporting 

purpose as Title 1 firearms, and were re-classified 

as destructive devices. The basis for the 

attempt to ban M855 ammunition comes in 

part from the sporting purposes test. 

THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS 

PROTECTION ACT OF 1985 

During debate of the Law Enforcement 

Officers Protection Act of 1985, (LEOPA), 

Congress sought a ban on ammunition that 

was capable of penetrating body armor, and 

that could be fired from a handgun. Senator 

Moynihan (D-NY) testified that the intent 

of the bill was to only ban ammunition that 

both met a performance standard and was 

designed to be used in a handgun. 

“[L]et me make clear what this bill does 

not do. Our legislation would not limit the 

availability of standard rifle ammunition 

with armor-piercing capability. We recognize 

that soft body armor is not intended to stop 

high powered rifle cartridges. Time and again 

Congressman Biaggi and I have stressed that 

only bullets capable of penetrating body armor 

and designed to be fired from a handgun 

would be banned; rifle ammunition would 

not be covered.” (Hearings, Senate Committee 

on the Judiciary, 98th Congress, 2d Session, 

May 17, 1984. 30-31. (Senator Moynihan) 

(emphasis added). 

Sadly, this important point was not included 

in the final bill. The final bill did not 

include either a performance-based standard, 

nor limit the definition of armor piercing ammunition 

to ammunition “designed” for use 

in a handgun. Instead, the bill used different 

language based upon the composition of the 

ammunition and whether the subject ammunition 

may be used in a handgun. The legal 

framework under which ammunition in the 

United States is now defined is found in 18 

U.S.C. 921 (A)(17)(B): 

(B) The term “armor piercing ammunition” 

means— 

(i) a projectile or projectile core which may be 

used in a handgun and which is constructed 

entirely (excluding the presence of traces of 

other substances) from one or a combination 

of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, 

beryllium copper or depleted uranium; or 

(ii) a full jacketed projectile larger than .22 

caliber designed and intended for use in a 

handgun and whose jacket has a weight of 

more than 25 percent of the total weight of 

the projectile. 

18 U.S.C. 921 (A)(17) 

As a result, all ammunition that meets 

the composition criteria of the law and may 

be fired from a pistol is defined as AP ammunition. 

Although the LEOPA ultimately did 

not include a performance standard as contemplated 

during debate, the law did give the 

U.S. Attorney General the power to exempt 

ammunition that otherwise falls within the 

definition of AP ammunition, but is “primarily 

intended to be used for sporting purposes.” 

Exemptions have been issued in the 

past. In 1986, ATF exempted M855/SS109 

ammunition under the sporting purposes 

test. Similarly, in 1992, ATF exempted the 

.30-06 M2 AP cartridge from the regulation. 

According to ATF, since 2011 there have been 

approximately 30 exemption request for AP 

ammunition. 

THE PRESENT 

Much has changed since 1985, and like 

most regulatory frameworks, the law has 

not kept up with industry. Demand for lead 

free ammunition as a safer alternative to 

traditional hunting ammunition has created 

ammunition that was not commercially 

available in 1986. New lead free ammunition 

relies upon steel and tungsten in shot shells, 

and copper-based projectiles for rifle ammunition. 

Often, the copper-based projectiles 

may be 95% – 100% copper based, with a 

small percentage of zinc or other metal. 

Similarly, increased awareness of NFA 


firearms, combined with the inability to secure 

a law enforcement sign off has created 

a market for pistols based upon full sized 

rifles. Examples include the SIG 556 pistol, 

a .223 caliber pistol based upon the SIG 

556 rifle, or any number of AK-type pistols, 

based upon the design of the semiautomatic 

AK-47 rifle. Such pistols were not available, 

and were barely conceivable in 1985. Substitution 

of the law enforcement sign off requirement 

for the NICS program may have 

helped alleviate some of the current issues 

with NFA look-alike firearms, but ultimately, 

these types of pistols were likely to come to 

market eventually. 

When both issues are combined, the 

issue over AP ammunition and enforcement 

of the law becomes relevant. According to 

ATF, the correct framework under which to 

examine the legality of M855 ammunition 

is the LEOPA and the regulatory intent of 

the legislation – namely, the safety of law 

enforcement officers and application of the 

sporting purposes test. ATF asserts that the 

only means of examining the M855 round 

is to determine whether a pistol fires the 

M855 round, and whether the M855 round 

meets the requirements of AP ammunition 

as described in 18 U.S.C. 921 (a)(17). If both 

conditions are met, by definition, the M855 

round is armor piercing. The U.S. Attorney 

General may then choose whether to exempt 

the M855 under the sporting purposes test. 

ATF TAKES A TUMBLE. 

Laws are made by Congress. Interpretation 

is assigned to the agencies that govern 

that subject matter. As a result, discharge 

from a smokestack would be governed by the 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The 

EPA would be tasked with creating rules and 

regulations necessary to enforce laws created 

by Congress. The same applies to firearms. 

Congress passed the GCA and LEOPA. ATF 

in turn creates rules and regulations needed 

to interpret and enforce the law. As one might 

guess, interpretation and enforcement is political, 

and may (or may not) conform to societal 

norms or industry expectations. 

Rulemaking is also governed by law. 

Federal agencies are required to follow the 

Administrative Procedure Act, a law that 

dictates how rules and regulations are made. 

In general, the agency makes an announcement 

of a proposed rule, calls for comments 

from the public, reviews and responds to 

the comments made, and announces the 

final rule. This process can take several 

months or more. Changes to existing rules 

call for the same type of prior notice and 

comment period. 

On February 13, 2015, ATF published 

the 2014 ATF Regulation Guide. The prior 

guide was published in 2005, making 

the newly updated guide relevant and 

necessary. Within the guide, ATF omitted the 

current AP exemption for M855 ammunition 

from the regulations. 

On February 14, one day after publishing 

the 2014 regulatory guide, ATF called for 

comments to revoke the current exemption in 

place for M855 ammunition. Within the call 

for comments, ATF specifically calls for a determination 

of whether certain projectiles are 

“primarily intended for sporting purposes” 

within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. 921 (a)(17) 

(c) – invoking both the LEOPA and the GCA 

as the basis for the proposed rule change. 

Comments were to be accepted through 

March 16, 2015. 

On the face of the call for comments, the 

rule change appeared neutral. Nevertheless, 

ATF has consistently interpreted “sporting 

purposes” to only include the traditional 

sporting uses for firearms – namely, hunting, 

competitive target shooting, and skeet 

and trap shooting. ATF’s historical interpretation 

of the sporting purposes test does not 

include plinking or practical shooting, which 

ATF has ruled to be police or combat-style 

competition, and not “sport.” M855 ammunition 

can be used in hunting, but its use is 

limited. Although neutral on its face, and in 

conjunction with the totality of ATF’s actions, 

the call for comments was likely a precursor 

to a rule change revoking the exempt status 

of M855 ammunition. 

On March 6, ATF attempted to calm 

public fears and outrage through Twitter 

by tweeting, “Nothing to analyze here folks, 

just a publishing mistake. No AP ammo 

exemptions revoked.” 

On March 10, ATF published a special 

advisory, noting that more than 80,000 

comments had already been received. 

ATF also noted: 

“Although ATF endeavored to create a 

proposal that reflected a good faith interpretation 

of the law and balanced the interests 

of law enforcement, industry, and sportsmen, 

the vast majority of the comments received 

to date are critical of the framework, 

and include issues that deserve further study. 

Accordingly, ATF will not at this time seek 

to issue a final framework. After the close of 

the comment period, ATF will process the 

comments received, further evaluate the issues 

raised therein, and provide additional 

open and transparent process (for example, 

through additional proposals and opportunities 

for comment) before proceeding with any 

framework.” (Emphasis added.) 

By the close of the comment period on 

March 16, a reported 300,000 comments had 

been received by ATF, the majority of comments 

against the proposed ATF rule change. 

On March 10, ATF also published a 

Notice of Publishing Error, noting that the 

2014 ATF Regulation Guide omitted the AP 

exemption for M855 ammunition, but that 

“ATF has not rescinded any armor piercing 

ammunition exemption, and the fact they are 

not listed in the 2014 online edition of the 

regulations was an error which has no legal 

impact on the validity of the exemptions.” 

ATF asserts that the oversight will be corrected 

in the near future, and the exemption added 

to the 2014 regulatory guide. 

On March 12, in testimony before the 

U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee 

on Commerce, Justice and Science, ATF Director 

B. Todd Jones said that ATF would not 

act on more than 30 requests (some pending 

for more than three years) for sporting use 

exemptions (i.e., an AP exemption) sought by 

ammunition makers for non-traditional ammunition 

designs without a new regulatory 

framework in place. ATF has acknowledged 

these petitions are for the hunting market, 

which they regard as a “traditional sport.” In 

theory, exemptions for the pending exemption 

request should be granted quickly and 

easily through the sporting purposes test. 

Finally, on March 20, ATF Director B. 

Todd Jones announced his resignation, nine 

months after being confirmed to the position 

by Congress. Although Jones announced 

that he would be taking a position with the 

National Football League, the timing and 

extremely short tenure as Director speaks 

volumes about a political agenda and the 

Director’s failings. 

THE FUTURE 

It is important to note that ATF has not 

abandoned its efforts to re-classify M855 ammunition. 

Within the March 10 announcement, 

the agency states that “ATF will process 

the comments received, further evaluate the 

issues raised therein, and provide additional 

open and transparent process… before proceeding 

with any framework.” Curiously, was 

ATF referring to the 2014 regulatory guide 

omission when it was referring to providing 

an open and transparent process? By law, 

ATF is required by the APA to publish a draft 

of the proposed rule change and allow a comment 

period. Any efforts by ATF in the future 

should require public disclosure and input, 

but given the political nature of the agency, 

awareness and vigilance will be required. 

The preceding article is not intended 

as legal advice, and should not be taken as 

legal advice. If the reader has specific legal 

questions, seek competent legal counsel. 

Mr. Wong is a Washington licensed 

attorney. He regularly provides legal counsel 

to the firearm and defense industry via 

his law firm, The Firearms Law Group. Mr. 

Wong also maintains Hurricane Butterfly, 

an import/export company that assists U.S. 

firearm manufacturers and foreign buyers 

wade through the regulatory quagmire of 

U.S. import/export regulations. He may be 

found online at FirearmsLawGroup.com. 


PWS “MODERN MUSKET” 

STORY & PHOTOS BY TODD BURGREEN 


DIRECT IMPINGEMENT AR 

It is no secret that the Eugene Stoner’s AR platform is the 

best selling rifle in the U.S. with many manufacturers 

jumping on the bandwagon in recent years by offering 

their versions. It seems the ARs adaptability attribute is 

also its most abused quality. Primary Weapons Systems 

(PWS) is seeking to counter balance this trend towards over 

accessorized ARs with their “Modern Musket” direct impingement 

AR. That is right, PWS, the standard bearer for 

the long stroke piston driven AR, has introduced a direct impingement 

AR platform. 

The Modern Musket joins PWS’s existing MK1 5.56mm, 

MK2 7.62x51mm long stroke ARs, T3 rimfire, and recently 

introduced MK3 Precision Bolt. PWS is known as a leader 

in the quest for improving the AR operating system and cultivates 

an almost cult following based on superior customer 

service, unique interaction style with consumers and, most 

importantly, coming through on their promise of a superior 

AR rifle. PWS did not hang their hat on going with the typical 

short stroke piston in lieu of Stoner’s original direct impingement 

(DI) AR design; they took the less traveled path by 

utilizing a long stroke operating piston. We will define long 

stroke as exemplified by the AK47 of having op rod connected 

to the bolt carrier whereas short stroke consists of a more 

complex arrangement of tapped gas imparting force to an op 

rod that impacts another part of the mechanism that acts on 

the bolt carrier. PWS did not stop with the long stroke piston 

in their tweaking of the AR; rather they insisted on top quality 

components as well modifying the buffer tube connection 

to the receiver as well as bolt carrier design. 

While PWS long stroke AR rifles are well-known and respected, 

their entry into the direct impingement AR market 

is presently still relatively unknown. In the world of modern 

marketing it is nice to discover a product in the catalogue you 

ABOVE: The direct impingement Modern Musket harkens back to our early 

nation’s history. BELOW: The PWS Modern Musket rifle was used from barricades 

and simulated cover while engaging multiple targets. 


MODERN MUSKET 

A 

feel should be the main story. The PWS 

Modern Musket is such a product. Any law 

enforcement agencies, security conscience 

citizen, or modern sporting rifle (aka AR- 

15) connoisseur should consider the PWS 

Modern Musket. PWS has chosen to take 

advantage of lessons learned with their 

long stroke MK1 and MK2 ARs and apply 

this to the Modern Musket. 

The homage paid by naming their 

new DI AR Modern Musket is based on the 

AR’s ever growing popularity in the U.S. 

market as well as PWS’s belief that every 

freedom loving American should own an 

AR just as we depended on gun ownership 

at the birth of our nation’s independence. 

The same PWS principles that guided 

their long stroke AR journey are present 

in the Modern Musket. Only after a thorough 

survey of the topic did PWS move 

forward. The Modern Musket DI-16 tested 

for this article is chambered in .223 Wylde. 

A quick word about the DI-16’s .223 

Wylde chambering is in order. The .223 

Wylde was designed as a match chambering 

for semiautomatic rifles. It will accommodate 

both .223 Rem. and 5.56mm 

ammunition. It is relieved in the case body 

to aid in extraction and features a shorter 

throat for improved accuracy. As most 

know, the 5.56mm is not synonymous 

with the .223 Rem. chambering. Generally, 

it is advised as acceptable to fire .223 

Rem. in a 5.56mm, but not the other way 

around. The .223 Wylde was meant to give 

a slightly tighter body spec than 5.56mm, 

but a bit looser than .223 Rem., while retaining 

a longer lead/throat. In effect, 

the .223 Wylde is a hybrid splitting the 

difference between the 5.56mm and .223 

Rem. while extending benefits in terms of 

accuracy and reliability. 

The Modern Musket is a no nonsense 

AR rifle. PWS chose to use a Magpul MOE 

buttstock and pistol grip with the Modern 

Musket. The collapsible buttstock is easily 

adjusted for length of pull and/or transport. 

It is also one of the lighter AR versions 

on the market, especially considering 

that it features a full length rail and 16- 

inch barrel, weighing less than 7 pounds. 

The low profile PWS gas block found in 

Modern Musket rifles is machined from 

heat-treated tool steel and is much lighter 

than standard low profile gas blocks helping 

to shave weight. A minimalist PWS 

KeyMod rail design measuring 15 inches 

further assists in weight savings. The PWS 

rail system permits the barrel to be free 

floated for better accuracy. The Modern 

D 

E 


B 

C 

A: The PWS Modern Musket rifle was used from barricades and simulated cover while 

engaging multiple targets. B: A supplied Lucid HD 7 is a nod to realism that red dot 

sights are here to stay. Most will add flip-up back up iron sights for peace of mind. C: The 

PWS KeyMod handrail maintains adaptability while streamlining the forend as well as 

allowing the barrel to be free floated on the Modern Musket. D: PWS’s bolt carriers have 

performance enhancing features such as increased mass, gaps and channels between 

skid pads, and a BCM Gunfighter charging handle. E: Modern Musket with Lucid HD 7 

sighted in using Champion front pedestal and bags. F: The Modern Musket was tested 

with Lucid HD 7 and Leupold Mk 4 3.5-10x optics. 

Musket shows versatility in satisfying customer 

needs by not using full length quad 

rails, but instead a lower profile handguard 

with adjustable KeyMod Picatinny rail 

sections. The KeyMod handguards minimizes 

weight and prevents the Modern 

Musket from being front heavy impacting 

handling, yet allows for effective cooling 

of the barrel and secure mounting of sling 

swivels and flashlight attachment interface. 

The minimalist approach for rails still 

allows plenty of room for VFG, bipod and 

lights/lasers if so needed. Not all weapons 

need rails and an array of accessories to be 

considered viable. It is often best to let the 

end user how to set up their specific rifle. 

The DI-16 variant features a 16-inch 

1:7 twist barrel contributing to an overall 

length of 36.5 inches with stock extended 

and 33 inches collapsed. PWS uses high 

quality chrome moly barrel blanks that 

they turn themselves; then Isonite treated 

inside and out for hardness and corrosion 

resistance and then threads on their 

proprietary muzzle device design. The 

rifle weighs 6 pounds 12 ounces pounds 

empty. The trigger used with the Modern 

Musket is a definite upgrade over typical 

Mil-Spec variants; it is an ALG Defense’s 

Quality Mil-Spec trigger for a smooth pull 

and a crisp break. 

PWS’s experience in developing their 

piston ARs is carried over into the Modern 

Musket. They eliminated the typical AR 

castle nut method of attaching the carrier 

tube to the lower receiver using indexing 

screws instead. PWS has designed an enhanced 

buffer tube with an extended lip 

to support the carrier at rest, allowing for 

smooth entry into the buffer tube upon 

cycling of the action. The buffer tube has 

QD sling attachments machined directly 

into the aluminum, is enhanced with four 

integral drain holes in addition to a rear 

drain hole thus allowing more water to escape 

the system, as well as fluting for more 

debris tolerance in adjusting the Magpul 

rear stock. Lastly, their buffer tube uses a 

H2 buffer consisting of a tungsten weight 

housed in a steel body coated in nickel Teflon 

for reduced friction. 

The Modern Musket’s bolt carrier is 

precision machined, Isonite treated and 

sport unique features that increase the reliability 

of the DI AR-15 platform. These 

features are increased mass to extend dwell 

time and delay unlock. As a result, the PWS 

bolt carriers allow chamber pressure to be 

greatly reduced for easier extraction. Gaps 

and channels between skid pads allow for 

F 


The 16-inch barrel DI-16 Modern Musket chronograph 55-62 grain bullets at 3,000+ fps. 

fewer points of contact within the receiver 

thus resulting in less friction and keeps 

debris from interfering with function. A 

BCM Gunfighter charging handle tops off 

PWS’s effort in improving the bolt carrier 

by giving the user better purchase in manually 

operating the Modern Musket’s bolt. 

Inexpensive charging handles tend to twist 

and bend when put under stress as expected 

with a rifle designed for hard use either 

in training or deployment. 

PWS’s most significant upgrade for 

the Modern Musket is shipping it standard 

with Lucid’s HD 7 red dot optic mounted 

on the upper receiver’s flat top rail. Let’s 

face it – customers will end up foregoing 

iron sights as the primary means of aiming 

their Modern Musket and mount a red 

dot of some sort. PWS accepts this truism 

and equips the Modern Musket with a 

sound choice for a red dot straight out of 

the box. End users can still mount back 

up iron sights of their choice with Magpul 

sights the most likely option. Water proof, 

shock proof and fog proof, the 13 ounce 

Lucid HD 7 red dot sight allows users to 

cycle through four different reticles and 

is covered by a lifetime warranty. Lucid 

founder, Jason Wilson, was convinced 

there was a market for simple, reliable optics 

at an economical price. MSRP for the 

Lucid HD 7 is $249. His plan was to design 

a scope here in the United States, and 

then manufacture it overseas to keep the 

price reasonable. The Lucid HD 7 features 

a rubber-armored aluminum body, lower 

1/3 co-witness for your AR-15’s iron sights 

and an integral scope mount. The Lucid 

HD 7 takes a single AAA battery that frontloads 

into the base of the unit and provides 

an estimated 1,000 hours of use. The HD 

7 has a two hour auto shut off. On the left 

side of the base is the power button and 

up/down brightness controls featuring 

seven settings as well as an auto brightness 

setting. Also, on the left side of the HD7 is 

the reticle selection turret, which gives you 

four options: a 2-MOA dot, a 2-MOA dot 

surrounded by a larger circle, a crosshair, 

or a chevron. Elevation and windage turrets 

use 1/2 MOA adjustments. 

Ammunition tested with the PWS 

Modern Musket was a combination of 

600 rounds of Black Hills Ammunition, 

Federal Premium, American Eagle, Hornady 

TAP loads and Winchester 55 grain 

FMJ. Readers deserved to see what base 

line accuracy was like with the Modern 

Musket: thus, the decision to mount a 

Leupold Mk 4 3.5-10x scope before re-attaching 

the Lucid HD 7 for the remainder 

of the T&E. The Modern Musket kept all 

loads tested under 2 inches at 100 yards; 

this includes FMJ with premium loads 

hovering around inch groups. This accuracy 

level justifies permanently mounting a 

magnified optic such on the flattop upper 

if a user desires. Of course, a red dot optic 

such as Lucid HD 7 is viable as well. Accuracy 

test protocol consisted of 3 five-shot 

groups with each ammunition type and 

group sizes were averaged. Velocity figures 

ranged from 2,800 fps to 3,000 fps over a 

RCBS chronograph. 

With the magnified optic removed it 

was decided to expand normal T&E protocol. 

After sighting in the Lucid HD 7 at 

50 yards, the PWS Modern Musket was 

taken to the Echo Valley Training Center’s 

(EVTC) 360 and “Jungle Walk” ranges. 

Training scenarios involving team tactics 


MODERN MUSKET 

along with patrolling to contact allowed 

the Modern Musket to shine in terms of 

potent firepower and accuracy. Firing 

from unorthodox positions while working 

around range vehicles showed why the 

light weight PWS Modern Musket and Lucid 

HD 7 are such a good combination. The 

PWS is easy to manipulate and the HD 7’s 

red dot is not dependent on a specific eye 

relief distance to be effective in accurately 

placing rounds on target. The Lucid HD 7’s 

red dot sight assisted in engaging targets at 

close distances with the red dot easy to pick 

up rapidly. The HD 7 red dot sight offered 

the capability to engage multiple targets in 

rapid sequence compared to open sights, 

while at the same time providing adequate 

accuracy out to a couple hundred yards on 

man-sized targets yards due to the red dot 

not obscuring the target due to the dot not 

being that large. 

A huge benefit of choosing an AR 

for use is the multitude of magazines 

available from various manufacturers. 

This author has come to trust Brownells 

for metal AR magazines and Magpul for 

polymer variants. The Magpul 40-round 

PMag is steadily growing as a favorite 

among the higher capacity AR magazine 

variants due to its track record of performance 

involving multiple weapon reviews. 

Along these same lines nearly every tactical 

webbing gear manufacture in the U.S. 

offers products to carry AR magazines 

ranging from chest rigs, vests, thigh subloads, 

belt pouches etc. Go-to brands are 

US Palm, High Speed Gear, Velocity Systems/Mayflower, 

and BLACKHAWK!. A 

simple offering from BLACKHAWK! is 

their bandoleer style pouch. It will appeal 

to many with its ability to accommodate 

two pistol magazines in conjunction with 

four AR magazines. The BLACKHAWK! 

bandolier can be grabbed in a hurry and 

slung over your shoulder while also hastily 

grabbing the Modern Musket. For civilians, 

four spare magazines plus one in 

the Modern Musket is plenty to solve most 

issues that would call for the PWS DI AR in 

the first place. 

All Modern Musket features are 

intended for maximizing effectiveness 

during a fight or realistic training on the 

range. The key component in a fighting 

rifle is reliability. No matter how accurate 

or powerful chambering a rifle is if it does 

not work 100% of the time it is a liability. 

As with any personal weapon, selection of 

a fighting rifle is as personal as it gets and 

individual preferences and prejudices will 

decide interest level in the PWS Modern 

Musket. The Modern Musket is intended 

for serious practitioners who plan on using 

it for patrolling, training, or defense. If you 

ever envisioned a scenario responding to 

a bump or other commotion and have to 

grab a rifle and bandolier of magazines on 

the way to respond, then the PWS DI AR is 

more than worthy of consideration of the 

Modern Musket nomenclature. 

SITES OF INTEREST 

Primary Weapons Systems (PWS) 

www.primaryweapons.com 

Lucid Optics 

www.mylucidgear.com 

Brownells Inc. 

www.brownells.com 


Less-Lethal 

Launchers During 

Protest in Turkey 

BY N.R. JENZEN-JONES 

Crowd control actions executed by 

Turkish police in 2013 have showcased 

the employment of several 

less-lethal launchers. Aside from a 

range of medium-calibre riot guns 

(including 37/38mm Federal Riot Guns, 

37/38mm Penn Arms PL-8 rotary launchers, 

and MKE 40mm launchers) firing CS, 

impact, and possibly OC munitions, three 

other less-lethal launchers have been observed. 

Each of these launchers have the 

ability to fire multiple projectiles quickly, 

and a capacity which exceeds that 

of the typically-employed 12 gauge and 

37/38mm and 40mm systems. Both of 

these weapons appear to be in use by the 

Çevik Kuvvet anti-riot police unit. There 

has been some confusion about what these 

systems are, where they are produced, and 

what their capabilities are. 

The Fabrique Nationale d’Herstal 

(FNH) FN 303 is a purpose-designed, 

semiautomatic weapon that uses compressed 

air to propel projectiles approximately 

100 meters. It functions primarily 

as an impact weapon, although several of 

the available (FN-proprietary) projectiles 

have secondary effects, as described below. 

The weapon is constructed primarily 

of polymer, and is relatively lightweight at 

2.2 kg. There is a Picatinny rail along the 

top of the receiver, and folding front and 

rear iron sights. An EOTech holographic 

sight, specifically calibrated to match the 

FN 303’s ballistic profile, is also available. 

The FN 303 is fed from a 15-round detachable 

drum magazine, which features a clear 

polymer back plate to allow for rapid identification 

of round count and type. Magazine 

changes can be accomplished in a few 

seconds, and magazines can be reloaded in 

around 30 seconds. The weapon is factory-set 

to a muzzle velocity of 86-91 metres 

per second. Compressed air canisters are 

factory-specified, and the user manual 

warns against using other containers. One 

full tank should last for at least 100 shots. 

FN 303 ammunition has also been 

documented in Turkey with 18mm (.68 

calibre) glycol-based impact munition for 

the FN 303. Other available projectiles 

include powder-based impact, impact 

plus indelible marker paint, impact plus 

washable marker paint, and impact plus 

irritant powder. The munitions all contain 

a bismuth payload to provide weight for 

impact, and are fin-stabilised to provide 

accuracy at longer ranges than many other 

less-lethal launchers. All have the primary 

effect of incapacitating the target or 

degrading his or her will to fight through 

force of impact. 

Marker rounds have the secondary 

effect of assisting authorities in identifying 

potentially threatening individuals. 

The irritant projectile contains a synthetic 

capsaicin known as PAVA (for pelargonic 

acid vanillylamide; also known as nonivamide), 

which delivers a disruptive or 

incapacitating effect. At close range, these 

projectiles have been known to penetrate 

sheetrock, hollow-core doors, and auto 

glass and still affect the target behind 

cover. FN Herstal estimates the range for 

point targets at 50 meters, but the weapon 

can be effective out to 100 meters against 

area targets, such as crowds. FNH USA estimates 

the minimum engagement range 

at 1 meter, but U.S. DoD policy forbids engagement 

at ranges less than 5 meters. 

As with other impact munitions such 

as rubber bullets or 37/40mm impact projectiles, 

it is essential to engage targets in 

the limbs or torso to avoid serious injury. 

The FN 303 manual warns that, “Death or 

serious injury may result from projectiles 

striking the head or neck.” It is important 

to remember that there are risks inherent 

to the use of all less-lethal systems; this is 

precisely why there is a trend towards the 

use of the term ‘less-lethal’ rather than 

‘non-lethal’. Comparatively safe systems, 

such as the FN 303, are often a preferable 

alternative to the use of live rounds or other, 

more dangerous less-lethal solutions. 

It appears that the Turkish police 

tested the FN 303 in 2008, and introduced 

it into service in 2010. A 2010 article 

from Dünya Bülteni, a Turkish news 


site, suggests the use of both washable 

(pink) and indelible (yellow) marker projectiles. 

(www.dunyabulteni.net/index. 

php?aType=haber&ArticleID=122880, 

published July 26, 2010). Damien Spleeters 

has more on the presence of FN 303 

launchers in Turkey at his excellent 

site, Damspleet (www.damspleet.com/ 

post/52814245459/trying-to-quell-protests-turkish-police-uses, 

published June 

12, 2013). The FN 303, in particular, 

seems to be the cause of frequent confusion 

when it comes to identification. In one 

particularly egregious example from The 

Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ 

article-1374315/Gaddafis-letter-Barack- 

Obama-calls-end-unjust-war.html, published 

April 7, 2011), an FN 303 seen 

in Libya was described as an ‘American 

submachine gun’. 

The other two systems sighted are 

the TAC 700 riot gun, produced by PepperBall, 

and the Tippmann LE-900. Both 

of these are essentially repurposed paintball 

guns, operating in a similar fashion 

and firing a similar projectile. Unlike the 

FN 303, the TAC 700 and LE-900 air cartridges 

can be refilled without the need for 

special equipment. They are selective fire 

weapons, capable of semiautomatic fire, 

three-round burst, and fully automatic fire 

at rates of up to 700 and 900 rounds per 

minute, respectively. PepperBall describe 

OPPOSITE PAGE: The Fabrique Nationale 

d’Herstal (FNH) FN 303. (Zuma 

Press) ABOVE: Turkish law enforcement 

personnel photographed wielding the TAC 

700 riot gun. (The Atlantic) BELOW: A 

man firing the 37/38mm Penn Arms PL-8 

rotary launcher. (AFP) 

the TAC 700 as target accurate out to 60 

feet (approximately 18 meters), or for area 

saturation out to 150 feet (48 meters). 

Both systems are chambered for .68 calibre 

paintball-type projectiles. Tippmann, 

a well-known manufacturer of paintball 

markers, ammunition, and equipment, 

produce a range of .68 calibre markers. It 

should be noted that PepperBall-branded 

systems are also based on Tippmann 

paintball markers. 

A wide range of projectiles are available 

for the systems. PepperBall lists several 

of their branded projectiles on their 

website, including inert, marking, water-filled, 

and glass-breaking (solid nylon) 

varieties. Additionally, there are the eponymous 

‘PepperBall’ projectiles, available in 

‘Live’ and ‘Live X’ formulae. The Live projectiles 

are filled with Capsaicin II, whilst 

the Live X range contain PAVA, described 

by PepperBall as “10x hotter than Live 

projectiles.” Numerous other .68 calibre 

paintballs are available from other retailers, 

including a variety of pepper, chili, 

and PAVA-filled examples. One South African 

website, Xtreme Paintball, (www. 

paintballguns.co.za) lists its solid nylon 

projectiles as ‘Skull Breakers’. 

(This article is reproduced courtesy 

of Armament Research Services 

(ARES) and was originally published 

by them December 4, 2013. 

www.armamentresearch.com.) 


The FNS 9 

By Bob Campbell 

A SUPERIOR POLYMER PISTOL 

The FNS 9 9mm self-loading handgun 

is Fabrique Nationale’s entry into the 

lucrative polymer frame striker fired service 

pistol market. These handguns are the 

most popular police service type and also 

have become very popular for personal defense 

and concealed carry. While the FNS 

9 is going against formidable competition, 

the pistol gives up little, if anything, to 

any competitor and has advantages over 

most. The FNS is a locked breech, recoil 

operated, striker fired design with a magazine 

capacity of 17 plus one rounds. FN 

has previously introduced a line of double 

action first shot handguns. The S in the 

FNS stands for Striker Fired. While there 

is nothing new about this type of handgun, 

the fact that FN Herstal is manufacturing 

a quality polymer frame service pistol 

is good news. 

Fabrique Nationale D’Herstal, often 

referred to as simply FN, is among our oldest 

manufacturers of firearms. The company 

produced the Browning Auto 5 shotgun, 

the Browning High Power 9mm pistol, and 

many other famous designs. FN also manufactures 

service grade firearms for military 

use, including machine guns and a 

respected AR-15 variant. FN enjoys an excellent 

reputation for reliable and rugged 

firearms. The FNS pistol is manufactured 

at a modern facility in Columbia, South 

Carolina. The pistol features a polymer 

frame and a steel slide. The slide configuration 

is unique to the manufacturer and 

resembles other FN products. The pistol 

locks up by butting the barrel hood into the 

ejection port. The pistol unlocks by means 

of angled camming surfaces at the bottom 

of the barrel. The trigger action is a double 

action only type. When the slide is racked 

the striker mechanism is partially cocked. 

By pressing the trigger the striker is driven 

to the rear of the slide against spring pressure 

until the sear breaks and the striker 


is released. This results in a lighter trigger 

pull weight compared to a double action 

first shot pistol that must both cock and 

drop the hammer. There is little take-up 

in the trigger and trigger reset is very fast. 

The FNS trigger breaks at 7 pounds trigger 

compression and clean. 

The pistol’s metal parts are attractively 

finished in a deep Melonite finish. 

(The slide is actually dark finished stainless 

steel.) This finish is far more durable 

than conventional blue finish. The slide 

features forward cocking serrations that 

are ideal for gloved hand use or a worst 

case scenario. The controls, the slide lock 

and the magazine release are fully ambidextrous. 

These controls not only make 

the handgun attractive to the left handed 

shooter they also give any combat shooter 

a handgun that is fully capable of ambidextrous 

use if the situation calls for 

firing around a corner to firing from cover 

Above Left: After a thorough evaluation, 

the FNS 9 stands head and shoulder above 

many other 9mm handguns. Above Right: 

During tactical drills the FNS pistol showed 

excellent combat ability. 


features of the FNS 9 handgun are totaled 

we find a credible service pistol with much 

to recommend. 

SHOTS FIRED 

For the firing evaluation we collected 

a number of loadings, including full metal 

jacketed or ball ammunition, jacketed hollow 

point 115 grain weight, jacketed hollow 

point 124 grain weight, and +P variations 

on the JHP. The choices included the Black 

Hills 115 grain ‘Blue Box’ remanufactured 

load, the Black Hills 115 grain JHP or EXP 

loading, the Black Hills 115 grain +P, the 

Black Hills 124 grain JHP and the Black 

Hills 124 grain JHP +P. This wide variety 

of loads clocked 1,050 to 1,300 fps over 

the Shooting Chrony chronograph. In 

with the ‘wrong’ hand. It is not uncommon 

to see students allow the support hand 

thumb to contact the slide lock during 

firing exercise. This will not happen with 

the FNS. FN has designed a slight but noticeable 

guard around the slide stop that 

prevents inadvertent manipulation. The 

magazine release is well designed and 

offers brilliantly fast magazine changes. 

Coupled with a tapered high capacity magazine 

that aids in rapid insertion in high 

speed drills, the magazine release makes 

for a handgun that is very fast during high 

speed drills. The FNS features the requisite 

firing pin or drop safety. This firing pin 

block locks the striker until the trigger is 

fully pressed to the rear. The trigger face is 

a two part design. The FNS will not fire due 

to lateral pressure on the trigger but will 

only fire if the trigger is pressed to the rear. 

The barrel is four inches long, and manufactured 

from stainless steel. 

The sights are good examples of service 

grade handgun sights. These sights 

may be adjusted by drifting with a brass 

punch if need be. The three dot configuration 

with white outline is a good design for 

rapid acquisition during combat drills. The 

sights offer real precision to 25 yards or so 

in practiced hands. The pistol is supplied 

with two changeable frame inserts, which 

may be described as flat and arched. The 

frame features a standard rail for use with 

combat lights or laser accessories. The 

frame is aggressively stippled and pebbled 

for abrasion. Adhesion when gripping the 

handgun is excellent. Finally the trigger 

guard is well designed with sufficient clearance 

for gloved hand use. When all of the 


every case there were no failures to feed, 

chamber, fire or eject. The FNS 9 is approaching 

1,000 rounds of various loads 

without a single stoppage of any type. Beginning 

with the ball load, combat groups 

were fired at 7, 10 and 15 yards. The FNS 

9 gave good results. Trigger control is vital 

and the FN pistol’s trigger is crisp and 

offers a sharp let off. There is little take up 

and then a smooth 7 pound trigger compression 

and a rapid trigger reset. The 

cadence of fire is never set by how quickly 

you are able to press the trigger but rather 

by how quickly you are able to regain 

the sights and aim again after recoil. The 

FNS pistol gave good results. The trigger 

action is notably more useful than any 

double action only striker fired handgun in 

our experience. 

The Black Hills Ammunition 115 grain 

EXP is loaded as hot as possible without 

resorting to +P pressure, yet breaks over 

1,200 fps from the FN’s 4-inch barrel. This 

is a top running personal defense load that 

has demonstrated good expansion in personal 

testing. The FNS 9 gave good feed 

and cycle reliability and never failed to 

exhibit good accuracy with this load. The 

if back in uniform or deploying the 9mm 

for serious business. Recoil is slightly more 

than the standard 124 grain loading, but 

hardly of consequence in the service size 

FNS handgun. This is a loading that may 

be counted on to function, feed and fire in 

handguns and carbines and always deliver 

good results. 

Absolute accuracy is relative and 

much depends on the shooter. The intrinsic 

accuracy of the FNS 9 pistol is high. 

It is up to the shooter to translate this 

into practical accuracy. In firing during 

combat drills the double action trigger of 

Opposite Page Top Left: Firing offhand the 

FNS proved comfortable in initial firing. Left: 

Maintenance is quite simple and straightforward. 

Above: The FNS performed well with 

the Viridian combat light. 

Black Hills Ammunition 115 grain +P load 

uses a controlled expansion bullet for this 

high velocity number. The balance of expansion 

and penetration is ideal for service 

use. Recoil was not noticeably greater than 

the EXP, but velocity was superior by about 

50 fps. The 124 grain JHP is a good choice 

for those favoring a heavier bullet. A heavier 

bullet often produces more momentum 

and will function in a dirty gun and in all 

circumstances. This is the standard NATO 

weight bullet. Finally, the Black Hills ammunition 

124 grain JHP +P was tested. In 

firing a single magazine of each of the credible 

defense loads, each was impressive. 

The quality control, clean powder burn and 

accuracy of these loads are excellent by any 

standard. The 124 grain JHP +P would be 

this author’s choice of a 9mm service load 

the FN handgun is an advantage. When 

moving from one firing position to the 

other there is never a need to decock the 

action or engage a safety; simply remove 

the finger from register with the trigger. At 

normal handgun engagement ranges – 5 

to 15 yards –the pistol gives excellent results. 

When firing off of a solid bench rest 

at 25 yards, the Black Hills Ammunition 

115 grain FMJ and this shooter delivered 

a 4 inch five shot group. An effort with the 

Black Hills Ammunition 124 grain JHP, 

proven accurate in several handguns, gave 

slightly better results with a 3.6 inch best 

group. This isn’t a target grade handgun 

but a service grade handgun and the results 

exhibited are clearly more than adequate 

for personal defense. This is a formidable 

handgun well worth its price. 




Field expedient firing positions were utilized during GII SASS evaluation 

at Echo Valley Training Center’s “Jungle Walk” range. 


DPMS GII SASS 

.308 Win. AR Rifle 

By Todd Burgreen 


The GII SASS reflects modern trends of utilizing night vision with night vision devices 

easily mounted. The ATN PS22 NVD mounts in front of day optic. The Schmidt & Bender 

PM II Ultra Short design had just this application in mind with its design. 

DPMS offers one of the broadest catalogues 

of AR rifles on the market with 

a dizzying array of AR model types, 

calibers, and configurations. The 

DPMS AR rifles cover the gamut in 

terms of mission profile and adaptability 

for the user. DPMS was founded by Randy 

Luth in 1985 as a precision machine shop 

for manufacturing M203, M14 and M16 

parts for U.S. military contracts. He also 

developed and manufactured numerous 

patented accessories. DPMS eventually 

expanded into producing their own complete 

AR type rifles. Cerberus Capital Management, 

a private equity investment firm, 

purchased DPMS Panther Arms in December, 

2007, thereby combining DPMS with 

Bushmaster Firearms International, Remington 

Arms and Cobb Manufacturing to 

form the Freedom Group. 

In general terms, ARs come in two 

patterns: AR-15s and AR-10s. The AR- 

15 is most associated with 5.56mm/.223 

Rem. and the AR-10 with 7.62NATO/.308 

Win. The DPMS GII SASS reviewed herein 

joins the growing number of AR style 

platforms chambered in .308 Win. However, 

the DPMS GII SASS will change users’ 

thoughts on how an AR-10 rifle can be 

configured. While we will focus specifically 

on the DPMS .308 Win. GII SASS AR-10 

for this article, DPMS currently offers six 

GII AR-10 models. What separates the 

DPMS GII ARs from other .308 Win. AR- 

10s? Often the AR-10 pattern rifle is associated 

with an unwieldy profile weighing 

12 pounds or more. There are DPMS GII 

models that weigh less than 8 pounds. 

34 SADEFENSEJOURNAL.COM 

DPMS has made a conscious effort with 

the GII model to blend typical AR-10 and 

AR-15 components to allow for wider access 

to AR-15 accessories while exploiting 

.308 Win. power. Forged upper and lower 

receivers are contoured to be more ergonomic 

while only 1/2 inch longer than an 

AR-15 receiver and 5/8 inch shorter than 

typical AR-10s. Their attention to detail is 

further borne out with a reduced mass bolt 

carrier. This provides a smoother, softer 

recoil impulse compared to most other 

.308 Win. AR-10 weapons on the market. 

The GII SASS accepts AR-15 type handguards 

thanks to a newly designed barrel 

nut. This pattern is followed with the GII 

SASS’s AR-15 type fire control unit for 

more accessory adaptability. DPMS GII 

AR rifles incorporate an inserted steel feed 

DPMS GII SASS.308 Win. AR Rifle 

ramp, allowing a lighter, smaller barrel 

extension and receiver, while improving 

feeding of more ammunition types and 

have lengthened the ejection port allowing 

for more consistent ejection of fired empty 

cases. This focus on reliability is supported 

by DPMS redesigning the gas impingement 

delivery system, monolithic bolt 

carrier and optimized gas ring clearances 

to eliminate the possibility of gas leakage 

during operation. The new bolt geometry 

provides superior lockup and strength 

by allowing for a smaller diameter barrel 

extension to be used reducing overall material 

and weight without compromising 

strength. In short, contoured steel feed 

ramps, redesigned extractor with elastomer 

extractor spring, dual ejectors, and 

other design tweaks found in the GII SASS

A Meopta MeoSight red dot was affixed to the GII 

SASS via a Weaver 45 degree offset mount bracket. 

This offers users an efficient CQB sighting option. 

all serve to decrease feeding, extraction 

and ejection malfunctions that can plague 

some AR-10 designs. 

The DPMS GII SASS is a precision rifle 

that even though a semiautomatic, produces 

accuracy equal to most tactical bolt 

action rifles. DPMS literature points out 

that the SASS (Semi Auto Sniper System) 

was designed to provide military marksmen 

a rifle that could accomplish long 

range precision missions, especially in a 

target rich environment, while providing 

an effective volume of defensive fire for 

close range encounters. The DPMS SASS 

emerged in response to a U.S. Army solicitation 

in the early 2000s with trials held in 

2005. Though another manufacturer was 

awarded the Army contract, DPMS decided 

to offer a version of their SASS entry to 

law enforcement and civilians. 

The DPMS GII SASS arrives 

out of the box as shown. 

The GII SASS features an 18-inch fluted 

416 stainless Teflon coated 1:10 twist 

medium contour barrel, threaded muzzle 

with Panther flash hider, forged 7075 T6 

Anodized upper/lower receivers, Magpul 

PRS stock, Magpul back-up iron sights, 

DPMS two stage Match trigger, mid-length 

direct impingement gas system, Panther 

tactical grip and 4 rail free float tube. The 

DPMS GII SASS is 30 percent lighter than 

its DPMS LRT SASS predecessor. The GII 

SASS tips the scales at 10.5 pound and 

measures 39 inches. The GII SASS represents 

an excellent balance of weight for 

minimizing felt recoil and provides a stable 

rifle platform for increased accuracy 

potential while maintaining a semblance 

of handling. The GII SASS being direct impingement 

in operation versus piston driven 

further eliminates weight and provides 

for a balanced rifle compared to being 

front heavy as some piston rifles can be. If 

you are looking for a flexible multi-mission 

rifle for yourself or agency, the GII SASS 

should be among those considered. The 

GII SASS rifle is designed to excel in a fluid 

task environment by accommodating a 

wide variety of accessories. 

A DPMS metal magazine comes with 

the GII SASS. However, Magpul PMag 20 

LR/SR 7.62 magazines will also work. This 

is a huge plus. Magpul’s PMag 20 LR magazine 

is quickly becoming the standard 

.308 Win. AR magazine with several manufacturers 

setting up their lowers to utilize 

the Magpul product. Quality magazines 

are a linchpin for a reliably functioning 

semiautomatic or select-fire weapon. 

A DPMS free floated rail system 

surrounds the barrel. The DPMS railed 

forend, in conjunction with railed flat 

top upper receiver, allows for mission 

specific configuration with lights, lasers, 

target designators, night vision devices 

and other items. 

A key point with the DPMS GII SASS 

is superior out of the box accuracy without 

having to resort to a full-blown trip to an 

agency armorer or outside gunsmith for 

tuning. The GII SASS takes a back seat to 

no rifle in terms of precision, repeatable 

accuracy, capacity, ergonomics, reliability, 

trigger, and safety. The first requirement 

of a tactical rifle is precise accuracy. The 

GII SASS tested constantly produced sub- 

MOA groups with multiple 168 grain ammunition 

brands – an important logistic 

consideration. The Magpul Precision Rifle 

Stock (PRS) is adjustable for length of pull 

and comb height, plus offers a rail on the 

bottom of the stock for a monopod attachment. 

The Magpul stock is rock solid with 

design characteristics making it conducive 

to long range shooting from the prone position 

using improvised shooting rests or 

bipod. The PRS’s hook style buttstock allows 

a shooter to “crawl” into the scope and 

hook his offhand around the buttstock for 

a more steady hold. The ergonomics of the 

stock allows for a comfortable, repeatable 

cheekweld combined with hand placement 

conducive to pulling the Match trigger 

smoothly. DPMS includes a stud rail attachment 

for the railed quad rail and a Harris 

bipod with the GII SASS. The moderate 

weight of the GII SASS allows for offhand 



LEFT: The DPMS GII SASS is equipped with 

a free floated quad rail allowing users to set 

it up as they see fit. BELOW: A Schmidt & 

Bender 5-20x50 PM II Ultra Short was mounted 

on the GII SASS via Recknagel quick release 

mount. Schmidt & Bender has become 

the optic of first choice for many elite units 

with scopes available for precision long range 

accuracy as well enhancing other types of 

weapon platforms. ABOVE: While designed 

for long range accuracy and reliability in mind, 

the DPMS GII SASS was also proofed with 

Meopta MeoSight in close range scenarios.


and other types of supported fire if needed. 

Some of the precision tactical rifles coming 

on line today reflect more of target shooting 

heritage than tactical weighing over 16 

pounds. The GII SASS’s 10 pound weight 

translates into a rifle that can be carried 

afield without fatiguing the marksman and 

is easier to adapt to non-standard firing 

positions even offhand if needed. The 18- 

inch medium profile barrel is a solid compromise 

balancing weight, performance, 

and field handling for the tactical marksman. 

The GII SASS had no problems with 

shifting points of aim even when firing a 

full magazine of twenty aimed rounds in 

relatively rapid fashion. 

A Schmidt & Bender (S&B) 5-20x50 

PM II Ultra Short was mounted on the GII 

SASS via a Recknagel quick release mount. 

The S&B had a Tremor 2 reticle. Further 

tactical modification of the GII SASS into a 

lowlight/dark role is satisfied by mounting 

an American Technologies Network ATN 

PS22 Night Vision device in front of the 

Schmidt & Bender scope. This multi-use 

ability keeps day scope constantly zeroed, 

yet allows for quick adaptation during a 

night mission. This eliminates the need 

for a separate dedicated weapon system 

exclusive to night vision tasks or having to 

constantly remove day optics from a rifle 

and replacing with a NVD. The PM II Ultra 

Short design had just this application in 

mind with its design. The ATN PS22 serves 

as a force multiplier when employed on the 

GII SASS. The forend also has side rails for 

mounting IR illuminators used in conjunction 

with the NVD device or intense 

tactical white lights if NV is not used. The 

GII SASS reflects modern trends of utilizing 

night vision with night vision devices 

easily mounted. 

Various .308 Win. loadings from 

Black Hills Ammunition, Federal, Winchester 

and Hornady provided the basis 

of accuracy tests. The Black Hills Match 

loads tested consisted of 168 grain Match 

bullets. The Federal chambering was the 

venerable 168 grain Match load. 168 grain 

TAP from Hornady and 168 grain Match 

from Winchester was also tested. The GII 

SASS’s 18-inch barrel with the 168 grain 

loads clocked 2,550 feet per second. As 

to be expected with quality ammunition, 

velocity figures within the different 

loads deviated very little from round to 

round. This is critical for predicable long 

range accuracy. 

The GII SASS shot all the premium 

168 grain loads tested into 1 MOA or better 

at 100 yards. Many will scoff at this as typical 

gun writer fluff. Obviously, the best ammunition 

brands and loads where utilized. 

Black Hills Ammunition, Federal, Winchester, 

and Hornady are industry leaders, 

which is what this type of rifle deserves 

to wring out its full potential. The testing 

was done off a bench supported by Harris 

bipod and Champion shooting bags. The 

Federal 168 grain Match, Winchester 168 

grain Match, and BHA 168 grain Match 

produced the best 100 yard average with 

all producing slightly over 5/8 inch averages. 

The accuracy figures are based on firing 

3 three-round groups and averaging group 

sizes. Another sign of an accurate, dependable 

rifle is how cold bore zeros compare 

over time and if the point of aim shifts 

after a few rounds heat up the barrel. The 

DPMS GII SASS showed no shifts in point 

of aim and cold bore zeros produced fine 

groups when overlaid together. 

Not much time was spent at the 100 

yard range. After verifying innate accuracy 

from the bench, field tests were performed 

at Echo Valley Training Center (EVTC). 

Echo Valley Training Center is properly 

set-up to handle extensive test firing of a 

precision tactical rifle like the GII SASS. In 

conjunction with the individual training 

bays, EVTC features multi-stepped target 

berms that are strewn with reactive steel 

targets, fluid drained automobiles, and 

moving targets at ranges varying from 

150 yards out to 350 yards. Echo Valley 

Training Center is further enhanced by 

the existence of prepared firing positions. 

This allows for more realistic prone and 

“dug-in” trench-style firing points consisting 

of concrete culverts turned on end 

and buried. These firing positions and target 

arrangements are ideal for all types of 


training scenarios with most types of 

weapon systems including precision tactical 

rifles. 300 yards and out is the more 

indicative test of a precision tactical rifle. 

The Federal 168 grain Match and BHA 

168 grain Match loads performing the 

best again. Another note of interest was 

how easy the Tremor 2 reticle inside the 

Schmidt & Bender made hitting targets 

at the 300 yard pit. A 100 yard zero easily 

translated into holding the first Mil-hash 

below the main horizontal wire directly 

on target causing hits at 300 yards. The 

benefit is obvious of holding directly on 

target versus an estimated hold over. Also, 

the Tremor 2 reticle is a great tool for 

range estimation and target engagement. 

The Tremor 2 offers more than a strictly 

Mil Dot pattern reticle. The Tremor 2 features 

various sized and spaced hash marks 

on the vertical and horizontal stadia for 

increased ranging precision, accuracy, and 

quick range estimating reference points. 

With the GII SASS proving it was more 

than capable of connecting with TacStrike 

steel targets arrayed along Echo Valley 

Training Center’s stepped berm out to 300 

yards, it was decided to try something out 

of the norm by working with the GII SASS 

inside EVTC’s 360 range. It was a simple 

matter of keeping the S&B optic in place 

and mount a Meopta MeoSight red dot via 

a Weaver 45 degree offset mount bracket. 

This allows a quick rotation of the rifle in 

the shoulder pocket a few degrees accessing 

the red dot optic with minimal effort 

or disturbance of handling. This made the 

GII SASS much more efficient at engaging 

targets at close distances. Drills started 



came away with a positive attitude towards 

the GII SASS delivering on its promise of 

being a lighter more maneuverable AR- 

10 type rifle. With that said, there is no 

mistaking that you have an AR-10 in your 

hands versus a svelte 6 pound AR-15. One 

can tell the GII SASS was an AR-10 even if 

you were testing it next to a 10 pound AR- 

15. This stems from balance and overall 

feel of the GII SASS due to weight distribution 

found in the receiver and bolt group, 

which is only magnified when a 20 round 

magazine of .308 Win. is inserted. This is 

not a knock against the GII SASS – just 

a fact of physics. Along these same lines, 

your shoulder and face come away knowing 

you have fired multiple magazines of 

.308 Win. compared to 5.56mm. On a positive 

note steel targets are struck with awesome 

authority when 150+ grains smack 

into them, especially from a close distance. 

The DPMS GII SASS covers the gamut 

of likely situations encountered by law enforcement 

or security conscience civilian 

with equal aplomb. This is a reflection of 

DPMS design tweaks in the GII series and 

use of the .308 Win. chambering. DPMS 

experience and industry leading developmental 

commitment is shown with the 

enhancements made to the GII series as 

typified in the SASS model. 

SITES OF INTEREST 

The DPMS GII SASS could be the answer to fulfilling a multitude 

of roles – precision rifle or general-purpose patrol rifle. The 

DPMS SASS was fitted with a Schmidt & Bender magnified optic 

and Meopta red dot sight for this T&E. A US Palm Gen 1 Multi 

Platform Attack Rack further supported testing. 

DPMS Panther Arms 

www.dpmsinc.com 

Black Hills Ammunition 

www.black-hills.com 

out slow working around simulated cover 

while engaging designated targets in and 

around range vehicles to allow evaluators 

to get a “feel” of the rifle. Scenarios where 

then set up to force magazine changes as 

well as moving to various firing points. 

Eventually, the GII SASS was moved to 

within vehicle confines where evaluators 

fired on targets from the range vehicles as 

well as quickly exiting the car while maintaining 

rounds sent downrange. While 

not your typical fare for an 18-inch barreled 

.308 Win. AR-10 type rifle, the GII 

SASS proved more than capable of sending 

rounds downrange quickly and effectively; 

certainly better than a five round bolt action 

rifle would be. This was done to verify 

if the SASS concept was valid in terms of 

providing extended range precision fire as 

well as volume of fire if pressed into use at 

closer distances. 

The DPMS GII SASS proved reliable 

and accurate throughout this evaluation 

with approximately 250 rounds fired, 

some of them rapidly, without cleaning 

during multiple range visits. Evaluators 

Echo Valley Training Center 

www.echovalleytrainingcenter.com 

Schmidt & Bender USA Inc. 

www.schmidtundbender.de 

Federal Cartridge Company 

www.federalpremium.com 

Hornady Mfg., .Inc. 

www.hornady.com 

Winchester Ammunition 

www.winchester.com 


VISION 

As computing power and speed increases, 

new weapons and technologies 

are being developed that 

employ artificial intelligence (A/I). 

Within the next ten years, the advance 

of “smart” technology will change 

the course of human conflict and mankind’s 

interaction on a quantum scale. The 

following subjects discussed in this article 

are a small sample of the emerging technologies 

that will likely be fielded within 

the next ten years. 

Cyber-attack. Strategic penetration 

of an opponent’s government, financial 

and military systems can be used to confuse, 

slow or stop an enemy. Cyber-attack 

targets might include public utility systems 

and everything else from power generation, 

to water purification and management, 

to fuel refinement and distribution 

throughout the country. 

Hacking into intelligence, industrial, 

financial and utility infrastructure networks, 

emplacing malware, and conducting 

cyber espionage is commonplace today 

and is on the rise. Formidable hacking 

attacks against opponent’s and potential 

opponent’s military and industrial complexes, 

financial system, power grid, diplomatic 

and political bureaucracy are discovered 

on a near weekly basis. Attribution 

2025 

WEAPONS IN 

The Future 

BY PAUL EVANCOE 

of these attacks is even more difficult to ascertain 

than the attacks themselves. 

On November 20, 2014, Admiral Michael 

Rodgers, who heads the National Security 

Agency (NSA) and collaterally serves 

as head of U.S. Cyber Command, told a 

Congressional panel, “The United States 

has detected malware on U.S. computer 

systems from China, Russia and elsewhere 

that affect the daily lives of every American.” 

In testimony before the House Intelligence 

Committee Rogers warned, “It 

enables you to shut down very segmented, 

very tailored parts of our infrastructure 

that forestall the ability to provide that 

service to us as citizens.” He also stated 

that nation-states and other actors are 

conducting “cyber reconnaissance” to seek 

out and identify U.S. vulnerabilities, thus 

providing them a means to catalog vulnerabilities 

and prioritize attacks. “We see 

them attempting to steal information on 

how our systems are configured, the very 

schematics of most of our control systems, 

down to engineering level of detail so they 

can look at where are the vulnerabilities, 

how are they constructed, how could I get 

in and defeat them. We’re seeing multiple 

nation-states invest in those kinds of capabilities,” 

he noted. 

In related testimony, FBI Director 

Robert Mueller recently stated, “The cyber 

threat will equal or surpass the threat 

from (radical) terrorism in the foreseeable 

future.” Both government and industry 

cyber experts predict a devastating cyber-attack 

resulting in significant loss 

of life and financial damage will occur 

against the U.S. by 2025 and it will be done 

through keystrokes and computers. Powerful 

firewalls, encryption and light-speed 

counter-attacks are the only countermeasures 

on the horizon. 

Automatous artificial intelligence will 

navigate, interact and operate side-by-side 

with humans in all manners imaginable. 

This will be coupled with various robots 

that can rapidly assemble-reassemble 

themselves into a variety of configurations 

by teaming with other robot specialists to 

meet specific operational requirements. 

The potential for warfighting applications 

are as infinite as are the applications to 

improve the human condition. As artificial 

intelligence advances exponentially, Japan 

is preparing for the mass commercialization 

of hyper-real robots (androids) that 

will, for example, replace TV news readers, 

receptionists, fast food order takers, 

restaurant servers, teachers and some categories 

of skilled workers. It is anticipated 

that, within the next ten years, androids 

will become so real, that humans will take 

them as sex partners and live-ins as these 

fully independent “humanoids” become 

nearly indistinguishable from humans in 

looks and behavior. 

TALOS. Before realizing mature 

hands-off artificial intelligence, TALOS 

will be fielded. TALOS (Tactical Assault 

Light Operator Suit) is a robotic exoskeleton 

that the U.S. Special Operations 

Command is currently working to field 

as soon as technically possible. Stated 

TALOS requirements are that it must be 

bulletproof, weaponized, have the ability 

to monitor vitals and give the wearer superhuman 

strength and perception. The 

1st generation suits currently being tested 

comprise interactive layers of smart 

material coupled with sensors that are 

externally powered. 

Development of the TALOS suit is a 

remarkably collaborative effort shared between 

the national laboratory complex, a 

variety of U.S. government agencies, numerous 

universities and industry. They 

are working to develop a climate controlled, 

powered exoskeleton that provides 

the wearer super-human strength, fullbody 

armor that can be scaled to defeat a 

particular threat level, and interactive 

situational-awareness displays. SOCOM 

plans to field a TALOS independently 


operational (internally powered) combat 

suit prototype system by 2018. 

Beyond unanticipated developmental 

costs, there are a number of scientific 

and technical development issues that may 

slow TALOS’s realization. Because some 

of the TALOS technologies simply don’t 

exist today, a number of scientists and 

engineers close to the project believe that 

TALOS, as envisioned, probably can’t be 

achieved before 2025. TALOS technologies 

needing development include next-generation 

full-body ballistic armor materials, 

powered exoskeletons for mobility and 

agility, conformable and wearable power 

generation, suit thermal management, 

computers, communications, antennae, 

and real-time combat-ready displays with 

non-traditional information presentation, 

as well as embedded medical monitoring 

and biomechanical modeling. Much of this 

technology must be invented and that is 

being achieved by a number of different 

developers. Interoperability of these newly 

developed components is also a challenge 

rivaling the modules composing the International 

Space Station. Power generation 

is perhaps the biggest problem, because 

there is currently no self-contained, lightweight, 

low-bulk, wearable, power generation 

system adaptable to TALOS’s anticipated 

power demands that keeps the suit 

light enough to remain agile. That said, 

we are optimistic that TALOS will become 

a reality, and in doing so advance the potential 

of cyborg and android warfighting 

robot specialists. 

Soldier-carried laser weapons. 

The future warfare environment demands 

the addition of effective non-kinetic weapons. 

That translated means a soldier-carried 

(non-kinetic) directed energy weapon. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency (DARPA) has funded national 

weapon laboratories like Los Alamos, 

Sandia, and Laurence Livermore, university 

applied physics laboratories, as 

well as private industry, to develop and 

weaponize directed energy technologies 

for battlefield use. 

Directed energy technology increases 

exponentially as does today’s computing 

power, its close relative. Many think 

of directed energy in terms of microwave 

beams or visible light spectrum lasers, but 

the directed energy weapons of tomorrow 

may consist of a mix of many, giving them 

effectiveness requiring countermeasures 

so sophisticated and/or expensive the enemy 

won’t attempt them. 

There are a multitude of directed 

energy possibilities that are being considered 

for use as a soldier-carried battlefield 

anti-personnel weapon (See www.acq.osd. 

mil/dsb/reports/ADA476320.pdf). Developing 

an affordable battlefield laser weapon 

small enough and light enough for individual 

soldiers to carry, challenges the Law 

of Physics that universally dictate what 

is and is not possible. These emerging 

technologies all have pros and cons with 

respect to capability, reliability, lethality, 

legality, portability, power requirements, 

sustainability, maintainability, produceability 

and cost. 

Electromagnetic rail gun technology. 

Unlike a coilgun, which employs 

a series electromagnetic coils wrapped 

around the gun barrel that are sequentially 

energized at precise times to move the projectile 

down the bore, a railgun uses two 

bus bars (rails) to conduct the current lineally 

along the barrel (not bore) through a 

cross-connector (armature) that turns the 

current from one rail and back down the 

other. The force generated is analogous to 

that of the hydraulic force that straightens 

a curved fire hose. Railgun-fired projectiles 

ride the inside of the launch barrel in 

a sabot - the projectile itself is not in contact 

with the barrel. As the projectile exits 

the barrel, the sabot is stripped away from 

the projectile by aerodynamic lift, and the 

60 to 80 pound hyper-velocity projectile is 

on its way to the target at speeds exceeding 

Mach 10. A typical target can be a missile, a 

floating platform or something land based. 

The importance of this emerging railgun 

technology to the future battle-space is 

that it provides a single weapon with a 

multi-role capability. Its elimination of 

propellant, high capacity (deep magazine), 

and low engagement cost, along with its 

minimum requirement for kinetic kill energetics, 

significantly reduces it logistics 

tail. Its precision accuracy in air and missile 

defense, counterbattery fire and surgical 

strike, additionally offer a low potential 

for collateral damage. 

Current railguns are large systems 

that require large power generators and 

capacitor storage banks. Using current 

technology, a land based system would require 

two mammoth M1070 tractor-trailer 

units that each carry generators, thermal 

management apparatus, a battery unit 

and pulse power unit. These two trailers 

plug into a third tractor-trailer unit that 

carries the railgun, ammunition magazine 

and fire control system. This railgun system 

is based on shipboard installation requirements, 

where volume is less precious. 


weapon 2025 

General Atomics is working to reduce the 

size of land-based mobile systems (Navy 

funded a shipboard application), but for 

now, it’s big, but it’s also “bad!” The Railgun 

can shoot a multipurpose projectile 

over a hundred miles with pinpoint accuracy 

several times a minute. Future versions 

can even shoot ballistic missiles out 

of their in-bound trajectory prior to reentry. 

The railgun’s long-range projectiles 

have a guided capability that gives them 

their pinpoint accuracy and allows them 

to adjust their path in flight. There are 

even special projectiles used for space targets 

that contain small maneuver-thrusters 

for steering/course correction in a 

non-air environment. 

As this technology is perfected, we 

will undoubtedly see it shrink in size, but 

will it ever become man-portable? The scientific 

answer is that this technology will 

be refined, and at some point, it will become 

smaller, lighter and modular. It will 

reach a point where the Law of Physics will 

limit the reduction of its size and it can go 

no smaller. Man portability may never be 

attained, but robot modular portability potentially 

could, if such a capability was seen 

as operationally justifiable and cost effective. 

More exciting however, is the likely 

refinement in its accuracy and capability 

through the use of super sophisticated fire 

control computers that are interoperable 

with other powerful target detection and 

direction systems. While General Atomics 

flatly refuses to discuss the potential (and 

understandably so), there is no reason why 

this gun couldn’t be used to shoot hostile 

satellites out of space orbit (with little to 

no attack signature). There is also probably 

no reason why, if fired from a sea 

based, or friendly country’s mobile platforms, 

it couldn’t be used to shoot down 

hostile ICBMs during the boost stage, or 

the orbital phase, or take out the launch 

facility all together. Again, the imagination 

is the limit for this technology. 

Rods from God. So you ask, what is 

a “Rod from God?” Quite simply, the rods 

are inert (containing no explosive) 20 feet 

long one foot diameter finned pole-like 

tungsten rods, launched from a spacebased 

orbital platform (God), that re-enter 

Earth’s gravity with tremendous velocity. 

They are guided by the launch satellite 

through re-entry and are capable of striking 

practically any surface or sub-surface 

target (land or sea) anywhere on the face 

of the earth. Their destructive force comes 

from the high velocity kinetic energy they 

deliver on target, comparable to that of a 

small nuclear detonation minus the radiation. 

Rods from God can easily penetrate 

hundreds of feet into solid rock and deliver 

a high-energy blast, along with hyper-velocity 

shock wave pressures, that effectively 

shatters surrounding rock or reinforced 

concrete for thousands of feet within the 

shock radius. Deep underground structures 

(DUGS) within the blast radius cannot 

survive no matter how reinforced they 

may have been designed. 

The satellite carrying multiple rods 

can change orbits and altitudes as necessary 

bringing the rods to bear above the 

targets selected for kinetic bombardment. 

It otherwise remains passively in orbit, 

waiting for the launch code. Once the rods 

are released, the time between re-entry and 

impact would only take a few minutes. Additionally, 

because the rods present a very 

small re-entry signature and they re-enter 

at hyper-velocity speeds exceeding Mach 

10 at very high angles, they are virtually 

impossible to defend against. Countermeasures 

for the rods once launched have 

yet to be developed. The only countermeasure 

is to destroy the orbital launch platform 

prior to its launch of the rods. 

While the 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation 

Talks between the U.S. and the 

Soviet Union led to mutual agreement to 

prohibit the deployment of third generation 

orbital weapons of mass destruction 

(nukes) containing Multiple Independently 

Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), 

it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional 

weapons. Neither is the Rods 

from God system prohibited by either the 

Outer Space Treaty that provides the basic 

legal framework of international space law 

specifically barring party states from placing 

weapons of mass destruction in Earth 

orbit, installing them on the Moon or any 

other celestial body, or to otherwise station 

them in outer space. 

Electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) 

weaponry. Within the grasp of most nuclear-capable 

states and non-state actors, 

an EMP weapon is an undeniable threat to 

modern electronic-dependent infrastructure, 

but is it operationally feasible without 

attribution and retaliation? The short 

answer is no. Nukes are exceedingly expensive 

to build and deliver and all have a 

specific origin of manufacture fingerprint. 

But can a non-nuclear EMP be generated? 

The longer answer is yes - and here’s how. 

There are a number of natural phenomena 

that generate EMP. Sunspots, lightening; 

even major earthquakes are some examples 

of natural EMP generators. Manmade 

examples are nuclear and non-nuclear 

EMP generators. While we’re all somewhat 

familiar with EMPs resulting from nuclear 

detonation and power grid surges, there is 

another non-nuclear means to explosively 

generate a sizeable EMP and you don’t 

need to be a nuclear power to build them. 

An explosively-pumped flux compression 

generator (EPFCG) is a device used to 

generate a high-power electromagnetic 

pulse by compressing magnetic flux resulting 

from detonating a small conventional 

high explosive charge. The compression 

process resulting from the explosion, 

transforms the chemical energy of the explosives 

into the energy of an intense magnetic 

field that correspondingly produces 

a large electric current electromagnetic 

pulse. Because an EPFCG is physically destroyed 

by the explosive charge that is used 

to generate its pulse, it can be used only 

once. A very formidable EPFCG package 

small enough to be easily man-carried can 

produce a pulse in the range of millions of 

amperes and tens of terawatts, exceeding 

the power of a lightning strike by orders of 

magnitude. Most EPFCG designs require a 

starting current pulse to operate, usually 

supplied by a bank of high capacity capacitors. 

One or more of these EMP weapons 

detonated in the heart of any major city 

will result in massive EMP destruction 

and/or interruption of all systems that are 

electronically reliant. 

Electro-muscular disabling 

technology. A potential less-than-lethal 

technology being pursued today by a 

small privately funded firm involves electro-muscular 

incapacitation. Their patented 

technology induces a very select waveform 

into the body’s spinal cord, shutting 

down the individual’s Sympathetic Nervous 

System’s “fight and flight” ability 

without affecting the higher portion of the 

Autonomic Nervous System’s (ANS) ability 

to keep a person’s heart beating or one’s 

respiration. Currently, physical contact is 

necessary to induce this waveform into the 

body but there is talk of using directed energy 

to induce this waveform. Obviously, if 

an attack on a particular part of the ANS 

is possible, they could likewise attack the 

part that controls the heart and breathing 

and like Star Trek, with a simple click of 

a switch, select a stun or kill mode. If this 

could be achieved using a directed energy 

beam, a weapon such as this could be 

as monumental to modern warfare as the 


atomic bomb was to WWII, especially if it 

could be adapted to wide area look downshoot 

down UAV aerial delivery. 

Man induced weather extremes 

as a weapon. California’s current 

drought is in its tenth year with no end in 

sight. Reservoirs and freshwater sources 

like rivers and wells are at their lowest 

levels in recorded history. Rationing 

of potable water has been imposed upon 

residents, and even sufficient quantities 

of non-potable water for farming irrigation 

is critically limited. Discounting the 

non-scientific climate change claims made 

by former vice-president Al Gore, these 

drought conditions are the result of weather 

patterns that man has no control over. 

But what if man could influence the weather, 

or, at least manipulate specific regional 

weather patterns to intentionally cause 

floods, drought and/or temperature extremes 

within an opponents’ home country 

or area of operation(s)? Perhaps, in the 

not too far distant future, man will be able 

to influence weather patterns by employing 

atmospheric chemical seeding and dynamic 

thermal energetic stimuli utilizing 

lasers and electromagnetic influence. 

In 1994 the U.S. Air Force revealed a 

master plan they named Spacecast 2020. 

Among several stated objectives, the plan 

includes the stated unambiguous goal of 

weather control. The plan openly acknowledged, 

“Using environmental modification 

techniques to destroy, damage or injure 

another state are prohibited.” The Air 

Force justified its weather modification 

research based upon advances in (weather 

modification) technology that “compels 

a reexamination of this sensitive and potentially 

risky topic.” In 1997, while at a 

high-level conference on weapons of mass 

destruction, U.S. Secretary of Defense 

William Cohen went on record with a revealing 

statement, “Others (nations) are 

engaging in an eco-type of terrorism,” he 

noted, “whereby they can alter the climate, 

set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely 

through the use of electromagnetic waves. 

So, there are plenty of ingenious minds 

out there that are at work finding ways in 

which they can wreak terror upon other 

nation. It’s real, and that’s the reason why 

we have to intensify our own efforts.” 

DARPA has considered a number of 

potential weather modification technologies 

over the last twenty years. Some of the 

open source reports point to manipulating 

lightening, hurricanes and earthquakes 

in projects code named respectively, Skyfire, 

Stormfurry and Prime Argus. DARPA 

also invested $30 million in a secret project 

(likely much more on the black side), 

code named HAARP. HAARP is short for 

High Frequency Active Auroral Research 

Program. It works by beaming more than 

1.7 gigawatts (1.7 billion watts) of radiated 

power into the electrically charged layer 

above Earth’s atmosphere known as the 

ionosphere. This literally boils the upper 

atmosphere and selectively displaces the 

surrounding ozone layer, allowing weather 

modification above a planned location. The 

weather extreme desired and the area targeted 

can be manipulated by the amount of 

energy used and the direction it is aimed. 

While HAARP’s official story characterizes 

it as an experimental antenna used for 

submarine communications (and it may 

well do that), but it has far more sinister 

applications the military isn’t revealing. 

There are many more technologies 

that can be explored. The technologies chosen 

for this article show both game-changing 

promise and future direction. It is our 

sincere desire that you find this thought 

provoking, disturbing, or even somewhat 

comforting. Perhaps there is a big picture 

somewhere out there in the ether. If so, its 

boundaries need to be defined. 



Weapons of the 

Republic of Korea 

Marine Corps 

by Gordon Arthur 

This Marine corporal from the 1st “Sea Dragon” Marine 

Division is wearing the old uniform. He is cradling a 

5.56mm K1A submachine gun. A product of S&T Motiv, 

the improved K1A entered service in 1982. 

Earlier in 2014, Small Arms Defense Journal attended 

a large-scale bilateral military exercise in 

South Korea. Exercise Ssang Yong (which translates 

as ‘Double Dragon’) involved some 14,000 

personnel from the Republic of Korea (ROK) and 

the United States. During the series of military drills, 

we took the opportunity to look more closely at weapons 

used by the ROK Marine Corps (ROKMC). As to 

be expected, the small arms they employ are mostly 

those in common with the ROK Army as well. Regardless, 

the exercise provided us an opportune chance 

to look at equipment of the largest Marine Corps in 

the Asian region. 

The ROKMC is not a branch of the ROK Navy, for 

it is a distinct service of the country’s armed forces. Its 

origins date to just prior to the Korean War (1950-53), 

when a Marine Corps consisting of just 380 men was 

established on 15 April 1949. Its first equipment was 

mostly leftover weapons from the Imperial Japanese 

Army, and soon the country was plunged into wartime 

chaos. One of the corps’ memorable moments was the 

Battle of Incheon, where 75,000 American and South 

Korean troops landed west of Seoul to send the North 

Koreans into retreat during the Korean War. Later, the 


ROKMC dispatched a brigade to South 

Vietnam during the Vietnam War. 

One might ask why South Korea needs 

an amphibious force, especially since the 

country’s military is geared almost totally 

to a conflagration with the Democratic 

People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), whose 

military looms threateningly across the 

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). In fact, South 

Korea is a peninsula nation surrounded by 

sea on three sides and with a number of 

offshore islands. Thus, the possession of a 

Marine Corps makes a lot of sense. 

Marines are charged with conducting 

landing operations in conjunction with the 

ROK Navy, as well as conventional ground 

warfare, special warfare and facility protection. 

Indeed, the country must guard 

against DPRK intrusions that might include 

Special Forces infiltrating by small 

craft or mini-submarine. Today the ROK- 

MC poses a behind-the-lines threat to any 

DPRK act of aggression, since it could 

make an amphibious lodgement on either 

the west or east coast of North Korea. To 

guard the maritime approaches to the 

capital Seoul and nearby port of Incheon, 

Marines are also deployed on five islands 

to the west of the South Korean mainland, 

including Yeonpyeong Island that was 

shelled in 2010. 

The Marine Corps Command has an 

estimated 27,000 personnel. Of these, 

many are conscripts doing 24 months of 

compulsory military service. The corps 

comprises two divisions (1st and 2nd Marine 

Divisions), one brigade (6th Marine 

Brigade located in the northwest islands), 

and the Yeonpyeong unit. South Korean 

marines are acknowledged as being among 

the best there are, and even their U.S. 

counterparts speak glowingly of them as 

being “very tough.” 

After this brief introduction to the 

ROKMC, let us turn our attention to the 

service’s small arms. The following is not 

designed as an exclusive list, but it does 

highlight the weapons one would typically 

expect to see within the Republic of Korea 

Marine Corps. These small arms are almost 

exclusively manufactured in South 

Korea by S&T Motiv, a company belonging 

to the Daewoo group. The company was 

established in 1981 (then called Daewoo 

Precision Industries Co. Ltd.) specifically 

to build small arms for the country’s 

armed forces. The company adopted its 

current name in 2012. As well as having a 

captive domestic market, S&T Motiv has 

also achieved considerable weapon exports 

to a variety of nations in Asia, Africa, 

the Middle East and South America. 

K5 9MM PISTOL 

The K5 9mm semiautomatic pistol 

from S&T Motiv is routinely carried by 

officers as a sidearm. The weapon is also 

used by tank crewmen, with the ROKMC 

operating both K1 and M48 tank types. 

The recoil-operated K5 was introduced to 

the country’s military in 1989 after its development 

from 1984-88. 

A special aspect of the pistol is its 

triple-action trigger, which includes a 

‘fast-action’ trigger mechanism. The latter 

permits the hammer to be decocked while 

the mainspring is still compressed. Thus, 

only a light trigger pull is needed to recock 

the hammer and fire the pistol in a conventional 

double-action mode. The advantage 

is that the first shot is more accurate 

because of the lighter trigger weight, plus 

it is safer because longer trigger travel is 

required to fire it. Alternatively, the hammer 

can be recocked manually to fire it in 

single-action mode. 

The K5’s magazine contains 13 

9x19mm Parabellum rounds. The pistol 

weighs 728g (without a magazine) and its 

total length is 190mm. The manufacturer 

quotes its range as 50m. 

K1A 5.56MM SUBMACHINE GUN 

The K1A submachine gun has been 

around for a long time, and its use is 

widespread in the ROKMC as its compact 

proportions make it easier to manhandle 

within the confines of an amphibious 

assault vehicle, for example. The K1 was 

the first modern firearm developed by the 


Korea Marine Corps 

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: View of the 5.56mm K1A submachine 

gun from the left-hand side. From observation 

of ROKMC units on exercise, the K1A is very widely 

used by infantry Marines. ABOVE: These marines 

armed with K1A submachine guns are part of a mortar 

team. They have dug their 81mm KM187 mortar 

into a shallow depression to give indirect fire support 

to a newly established beachhead. RIGHT: This 1st 

lieutenant of the ROKMC is aiming a K5 9mm pistol. 

Carriage of this weapon type befits someone of officer 

rank in the Marines. Note that the officer is wearing the 

latest digital-pattern uniform. 




country’s Agency for Defense Development 

(ADD), intended as a replacement 

for the M3 for use by Special Forces. Manufactured 

by S&T Motiv, the K1 entered 

service in 1981. These original weapons 

suffered from problems caused by a poorly 

designed flash suppressor, excessive recoil 

and a weak stock. 

However, these early troubles were 

soon solved in the follow-on K1A that 

made its appearance in 1982; this is the 

variant now in service. It is distinguished 

by a flash suppressor that has three holes 

in the top-right quadrant to reduce muzzle 

flip. While the K1 submachine gun shares 

development history with the regular K2 

assault rifle, they are different designs. 

The direct-impingement gas system of the 

K1 fires 5.56x45mm rounds. S&T Motiv 

has since developed the K2C, a carbine 

version of the K2 assault rifle. While it 

could be a potential replacement for the 

K1A, it seems destined for Special Forces 

use first. The K2C has been field tested 

by the ROK military, and an S&T Motiv 

spokesman told SADJ it is scheduled to be 

introduced in 2015. 

The K1A weighs 2.87 kg and its barrel 

is 263 mm long. The submachine gun 

measures 838 mm in length with its stock 

extended, or 653 mm when folded. The 

submachine gun’s effective firing range 

is given as 250 m (using M193 ammunition), 

and it has a rate of fire of 700- 

900 rounds per minute. The magazine 

holds 30 rounds. 

K2 5.56MM ASSAULT RIFLE 

The K2 assault rifle is the standard 

personal weapon of a South Korean Marine. 

Produced by the same company that 

makes the K1A, the K2 was inducted into 

South Korean service in 1984 as a replacement 

for the M16A1, which is still found in 

the hands of some reserves. Interestingly, 

the K2’s development commenced before 

that of the K1 (it actually started in 1972) 

even though it was introduced several 

years later. At the time, Colt accused the 

designer of copying its M16, an allegation 

that was not upheld. Indeed, few parts are 

interchangeable with the M16. 

The K2 is a gas-operated, long-stroke 

weapon with three selectable firing modes: 

semiautomatic, three-round burst and 

full automatic. A couple of variants have 

been developed and trialed, including the 

A private first class protects a beachhead after coming 

ashore aboard a KAAV amphibious assault vehicle near 

Pohang. He is armed with a K2 assault rifle, the standard 

personal weapon in both the ROKMC and ROK Army. 



LEFT: Another view of a K2 assault rifle, a 

5.56mm weapon manufactured by S&T Motiv. 

Observe the hinge for the folding buttstock that 

reduces its overall length of 110 mm to 780 

mm. ABOVE TOP: On a beach near Pohang 

on the east coast, this Marine is wielding a 

K2 assault rifle fitted with a K201 40mm under-barrel 

grenade launcher. It is essentially 

the same as the U.S.-manufactured M203. 

ABOVE BOTTOM: The author did not see the 

K11 Dual-Barrel Airburst Weapon in the hands 

of Marine battalions participating in Exercise 

Ssang Yong 2014. However, South Korea 

will gradually introduce it more widely into its 

armed forces.


launcher that is modeled on the ubiquitous 

M203, but which S&T Motiv claims 

is its own independent design. The K201 

fires a 40x46mm grenade. In a typical 

nine-man ROKMC or ROK Army squad, 

there are two dedicated grenadiers who 

carry K201 grenade launchers mounted 

on their K2 rifles. 

K11 DUAL-BARREL AIRBURST WEAPON 

aforementioned 3.77 kg K2C carbine with 

a shorter barrel (310 mm compared to the 

standard 465 mm), extendable buttstock, 

a Picatinny rail and Dong In Optics red dot 

sight. Destined to be the K2’s eventual replacement, 

the K2A is an enhanced version 

that features a Picatinny rail and foregrip. 

A company representative revealed two 

stocks will be available – fixed (but foldable) 

or extendable. Until it is introduced, 

the K2 will continue as the mainstay 

weapon of personnel in the ROKMC. 

The 3.37 kg K2 assault rifle fires a 

5.56x45mm round from a 30-round magazine. 

The rifle is 970 mm long, which reduces 

to 780 mm when the butt is folded. 

The K2’s range is claimed by the manufacturer 

to be 460 m (with M193 ammunition) 

and its rate of fire is 700-900 rounds 

per minute. 

K201 40MM UNDER-BARREL 

GRENADE LAUNCHER 

The K2 assault rifle can be fitted 

with a K201 40mm under-barrel grenade 

While the K1A1 and K2 have been 

around for many years, the small arms 

inventory of South Korea’s military has 

been partially modernized by the introduction 

of the K11 in 2010. This weapon is 

innovative in that it is an assault rifle cum 

grenade launcher. Dubbed the Dual-Barrel 

Airburst Weapon by manufacturer S&T 

Motiv, the K11 can fire both 5.56x45mm 

bullets and 20x30mm airburst smart grenades 

via a single trigger. 

The grenade launcher is mounted 

above the rifle barrel, and grenades can 

employ one of three settings. One is detonation 

upon impact, and another is a 

timed fuse after impact. Alternatively, the 

weapon’s electronics can program the grenade 

to detonate a few meters from the 

target. Such an airburst effect above or to 

the side can kill enemy soldiers within a 6 

m radius. The K11’s operator simply has 

to enter the range at which he wishes the 


ound to explode, meaning the round does 

not have to directly hit the target to score 

a kill. To achieve this, the K11 has a laser 

rangefinder, ballistics computer and night 

sight in its fire control system, this being 

produced by EOST (Electro-Optic Systems 

and Technology). An electronic scope is integrated 

onto the K11 with a digital display. 

The K11 was the world’s first such airburst 

rifle to be issued as standard to soldiers. 

However, it is not widely issued yet, 

and the first place to see it so far has been 

in the inventory of ROK United Nations 

peacekeeping troops. However, it is surely 

destined to reach the ROKMC. It will not 

replace the K201 40mm under-barrel grenade 

launcher because of its high price and 

its less-lethal round compared to the K201. 

Defects showed up in the first K11 rifles, 

which halted production in 2011. Production 

later resumed, with 4,000 K11s manufactured 

by the end of 2014. 

The rifle can accept a 20- or 30-round 

5.56mm magazine, and a five-round 

20mm grenade magazine. The two types 

of grenades available are the K168 training 

round and the 100g K167 high-explosive 

round. The effective firing range for both 

systems is quoted as 500 m. The K11 is 

860 mm long and it weighs a hefty 6.1 kg 



without magazines. The 5.56 mm barrel is 

310 mm long, while the grenade barrel is 

405 mm long. 

K3 5.56MM LIGHT MACHINE GUN 

Whereas the K1 and K2 were the first 

indigenous weapons to reach the ROK 

Armed Forces under its national self-sufficiency 

policy, the gas-operated K3 light 

machine gun was the third such weapon 

developed at home. Manufactured by 

S&T Motiv since its induction in 1989, it 

was inspired by the FN Minimi and it replaced 

the incumbent M60 machine gun 

that served as a universal machine gun at 

that time. South Korea, heavily influenced 

by U.S. doctrine, introduced the K3 as it 

followed the USA’s introduction of the 

M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) 

in the 1980s. 

The K3 fires 5.56x45mm rounds supplied 

from either a 30-round box magazine 

that feeds from the left, or a 200-round 

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: The K3 light machine gun of 5.56mm caliber is similar in 

design and intention to the FN Minimi. The yellow band on the bush hat of this Marine 

signifies he is an opposing forces (OPFOR) member. OPPOSITE PAGE BOT- 

TOM: As this picture taken at the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition 

(ADEX) in 2013 shows, the K4 automatic grenade launcher is a copy of the Saco 

Defense Industries Mk 19. ABOVE TOP: The K14 has taken up position as South 

Korea’s first ever indigenously designed sniper rifle. Firing 7.62x51mm ammunition, 

the K14 has a maximum range of 800 m. ABOVE: Good view of a standard 5.56mm 

magazine inserted into the feed of a K3 light machine gun. The weapon can also be 

fed from a 200-round belt. Note the Minimized Thermal Weapon Sight (MTWS) sight 

produced by EOST mounted on this weapon. 


disintegrating-link belt. A 70-round box 

magazine may be encountered on rare 

occasions. The K3’s maximum effective 

range is 800 m. 

At 7.1 kg, it is significantly lighter than 

the M60, although its 5.56mm firepower 

is correspondingly lighter too. The K3 is 

usually fired on a bipod mount, but it can 

also be fitted on a tripod for sustained fire 

utilizing its maximum 1,000 rounds per 

minute rate of fire. A built-in carry handle 

eases the task of changing a hot barrel. The 

barrel is 483 mm long, whereas the entire 

K3 measures 1.046 m in length. A shortened 

and lighter (6.3 kg) K3 Para variant 

also exists (953 mm long with its buttstock 

extended), and this features a rail accessory 

system. A squad typically contains one 

K3 light machine gun. 

K4 40MM AUTOMATIC 

GRENADE LAUNCHER 

Even just a cursory glance at the K4 

40mm automatic grenade launcher (AGL) 

produced by S&T Motiv reveals it is closely 

modeled on the Mk 19 from the U.S. The 

K4 was introduced to South Korean troops 

in 1993. It fires 40x53mm grenade rounds 

(in high-explosive dual-purpose (HEDP), 

RIGHT: The M67 recoilless rifle dating from the 

1960s is still alive and well. Here, two OPFOR 

Marines have set up a bipod-mounted 90mm 

M67 to defend the coast against ‘invasion’ during 

an exercise. OPPOSITE PAGE: This mortar 

team was inserted by MV-22B Osprey aircraft 

during Exercise Ssang Yong 2014. The team is 

operating a KM181 60mm mortar produced by 

Hyundai WIA. This weapon’s maximum range is 

just shy of 3,600 m. 

high-explosive (HE) or target practice (TP) 

types) at a rate of 325-375 rounds per minute. 

The K4 AGL’s effective firing range is 

1,500 m, and it weighs 63.9 kg (with tripod) 

or 34.4 kg (without tripod). It is often 

vehicle-mounted on an M4 pedestal, 

or it can be mounted on an M3A tripod for 

ground use. 

Ammunition is carried in a 48-round 

or 24-round box, and the manufacturer 

claims the K4’s rounds can penetrate 2 

inches of armor at a range of 2,000 m. The 

grenades have a 15 m blast and fragmentation 

effect. A KAN/TVS-5 night sight can 

be attached to the K4 as well. The AGL is 

1.072 m long. 

K6 .50 CAL. HEAVY MACHINE GUN 

The K6 .50 caliber weapon is clearly 

a locally manufactured version of the 

Browning M2HB heavy machine gun, 

modified so its barrel can be quickly 

changed. This weapon that is license-built 

by S&T Dynamics entered South Korean 

service in 1990. It weighs 38 kg and 

the manufacturer lists its effective firing 

range as 1,830 m. 

Within the ROKMC the 1.654 m-long 

K6 is typically found fitted on armored vehicles 

such as the K200 armored personnel 

carrier, K55 self-propelled howitzer 

and K1 main battle tank. However, the K6 

machine gun can also be tripod-mounted 

for ground use. Its rate of fire is 450-600 

rounds per minute. 

K14 SNIPER RIFLE 

For a long time the South Korean 

military lacked a sniper capability, but 

U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

as well as its own combat deployments, 

convinced the South Korean military that 

it had to address this capability gap. Two 

types of sniper rifle can now be found in 

the ROKMC – the K14 and Steyr SSG3000. 

The former is – predictably – produced by 

S&T Motiv, meeting a requirement delineated 

in 2011 for bolt-action 7.62x51mm 

rifles. After its development period, the 

K14 was duly accepted into service in late 

2012 as South Korea’s first general-issue 

sniper rifle. The author has not yet spotted 

it in ROKMC service, but its arrival 

seems inevitable. 

The rifle comes with a four-way Picatinny 

rail handguard plus a bipod. Foreign-sourced 

scopes such as the Schmidt 

& Bender PM II or Leupold Mark 4 are 

currently favored over domestic sights. 

The K14 is fed from a detachable magazine 

containing five rounds, although an 

optional ten-round version is also available. 

The rifle measures 1.15 m long and 

it weighs just 7 kg with an optical sight 

fitted. Its maximum range is listed as 

800 m. Understandably, as the country’s 

first domestically developed sniper 

rifle, it is a no-frills weapon without too 

many exotic features. 

KM181 60MM MORTAR 

Marine infantry battalions have fire 

support available in the shape of two mortar 

systems – one of 60mm caliber and 

one of 81mm. The KM181 is produced by 

Hyundai WIA, a company that specializes 

in producing artillery and mortar systems 

for the ROK Armed Forces. 

The maximum range of the KM181 

is 3,590 m (minimum is 67 m), and up 



to 20 rounds can be fired per minute for 

a sustained period of ten minutes, according 

to the manufacturer. The complete 

mortar weighs 19.5 kg and the barrel 

is 987 mm long. 

KM187 81MM MORTAR 

The larger brother of the 60mm 

KM181 is the KM187. This 81mm mortar 

is also produced by Hyundai WIA. 

Weighing 42 kg, the mortar offers a minimum/maximum 

range of 78 m to 6,325 

m. The KM187 offers a rate of fire of 20 

rounds per minute for the first 1.5 minutes, 

and after that a sustained rate of 

ten rounds per minute. The barrel of the 

KM187 is 1.55 m long. 

ANTI-TANK WEAPONS 

Several anti-tank weapons such as 

the TOW missile, Metis-M missile and 

Panzerfaust 3 are available to the ROK 

military, but it is worth mentioning one 

interesting weapon here – the M67 90mm 

recoilless rifle that dates from the Vietnam 

War era. This American system was actually 

manufactured in South Korea, and 

it remains in modern-day use within the 

ROK Marine Corps. The breech-loaded 

weapon is fired from a bipod resting on the 

ground, or shoulder-launched. The M67 

can be used against armor, fortifications 

or personnel, but it is notorious for its 

large backblast. The M67 requires a team 

of three to operate: a gunner, assistant 

gunner and ammo bearer. 

Also of interest, South Korea has deployed 

the Spike NLOS missile with 20 km 

range on its northwest islands to help protect 

against hostile DPRK acts. 




Secret 

The 

Life of the Dror 

Part TWO 

By Terry P. Edwards 

For reasons never made clear, Slavin 

took his dream to Toronto, Canada, 

a city directly across Lake Ontario 

from Buffalo, New York. Samuel J. 

Zacks, a Toronto financier, art collector 

and Zionist, helped organize the 

Toronto support, and enlisted the help of 

Norman Grant. Grant had been the General 

Manager of Toronto’s York Arsenals 

during the war. Under his supervision, 

millions of bullets and shells were dispatched 

toward the enemy. The only public 

trace of the company during the war 

was the occasional newspaper mention of 

the intrepid girls’ soccer team. York Arsenals 

vanished at the war’s end, cloaked 

in secrecy in operation and forgotten as 

soon as the doors closed. A small postwar 


LEFT: Where the Dror springs were made. ‘Israel,’ the boss, stands in the doorway. (Carl E. 

Ekdahl) ABOVE: Where the Dror stampings were made. (Carl E. Ekdahl) RIGHT: ‘Maxie’ Brown 

holds a Dror at the factory. This may be one of the smuggled prototypes. (Carl E. Ekdahl) 

booklet picturing the plant’s products and 

the corporate directors is sole testimony 

along with a fragment of the plant that 

serves as a grocery store today. 

Grant also wondered why Slavin 

chose Toronto and suspected it was the 

lower wages of machinists. Keeping the 

project away from prying eyes probably 

played a role, but, Slavin was also an unapologetic 

and vocally self-styled “stereotypical 

Jew,” begrudging the cost of every 

coffee billed to his homeland. When Slavin 

had sent Alper around New York on various 

missions, he specified circuitous 

routes on subway and bus; very seldom 

a cab. Alper never doubted the careful 

routing was for security. He learned much 

later that the long routes, the crowds and 

the confusing transfers were actually to 

save a few pennies. 

Satisfied Toronto was the place, 

Slavin called for Alper and Ekdahl to 

join him. Local connections found them 

space. Working over a luxury car showroom 

on Bay Street, their separate entrance 

and the constant noise of cars and 

car repairs was a perfect cover. Industrial 

Research Labs could set up as soon 

the landlord saw their references. 

Once again, Levine stepped in to 

co-sign the lease. 

Throughout the war years, 

for miles around York Arsenals, 

sub-contractors turned and formed 

parts for bombs and shells. The 

most highly skilled workers sculpted 

precision tools. Most now 

thrived in peacetime. Grant knew 

them all. Ekdahl and Slavin pored 

over the gun’s design to identify 

what would be changed. Grant recruited 

Max Brown and they began 

ordering the custom tools for the 

1,500 steps to make The Gun. They divided 

the work between the machine shops so no 

outsider could see the whole picture. Parts 

that couldn’t be explained away had to be 

made over the showroom. As the orders 

came in, parts were made and assembled. 

The Gun had to be ready to build on 

arrival; there could be no experiments in 

Palestine. Slavin determined to build six 

prototypes with all the tools made, proven, 

labeled and coded for shipping. 

There were a few hitches. Everything 

outside the tool room seemed to need community 

approval and local businessmen, 

Rabbis and others hovered around the 

clandestine work. Toronto’s Jewish community, 

terribly curious, was anxious to 

help the cause, but proudly avoided ‘shop 

talk’ at lunches and suppers with the mysterious 

strangers. All the attention came 

to a head one winter night when police 

stopped a truck on the highway and looked 

in the back. 


Secret 

ABOVE: Among Carl Ekdahl’s mementos from his 

time in Israel is this inscribed desk set. (David 

Nordin) LEFT: Inside the notebook, Israel thanks 

Carl Ekdahl. (David Nordin) 

The result was the next day’s news – 

and a hint of the storm to follow months 

later at the border – the truck carried surplus 

Bren gun parts. There was nothing 

illegal in this, but the community leaders 

threatened to pull the plug on IRL. The 

British were practically at war with the 

Jews in Palestine at the time and the Toronto 

leaders feared the disapproval of the 

Canadian government. In a loud meeting 

with Slavin, a handgun supposedly appeared 

and the nervous members acquired 

a new, quiet, resolve. The feared Canadian 

disapproval never materialized, but the 

work was only allowed to go on if Slavin 

stayed out of sight. 

Several months into the work, Ekdahl 

received a secret offer. Egypt offered 

him $100,000 to do for them what he 

was doing for the Jews. Being the honest 

man he was, Ekdahl discussed the offer 

with Slavin. Being the business-like man 

he was, Slavin admitted it was a good 

offer. Carl talked it over with Hilda and 

turned it down. 

In December, 1946, two months before 

the first gun was completed, Slavin 

was called back to Palestine. Ekdahl originally 

thought the project would take six 

months. With the new restrictions and 

Slavin’s absence it took a year. 

Home in Palestine, Slavin took stock 

of the small arms in hand. Many of the 

Haganah guns were salvaged by Bedouins 

from the abandoned World War Two battlefields 

of the North African desert. The 

demand for guns had sent prices soaring 

for even battered relics. 

The British Army had helped, albeit 

unofficially. With ridiculous frequency, 

British soldiers reported truckloads 

of ammunition and supplies bloodlessly 

ambushed or mysteriously stolen. Rifles 

and machine guns were lost by the appalling 

carelessness of patrols. In one case, a 

guard failed to notice a gang of strangers 

empty his unit’s entire armory. The man 

in charge of such matters later said Jewish 

agents spent over a quarter million dollars 

assisting various British friends. 

There were some home-made guns of 

various quality. Ta’as even produced artillery 

as well as Sten guns. The Lehi, one 

of the several armed Jewish bands, made 

over 600 highly serviceable copies of the 

Sten. An underground (literally) plant 

churned out 9mm ammunition. The lack 

of raw material was partly overcome by 

a large purchase of lip-stick tubes. These 

were forged into casings. 

Finally, a deal was struck in Czechoslovakia 

by Ehud Avriel, another of Ben 

Gurion’s gun-getters, to import thousands 

of small arms and millions of rounds of 

ammunition. The deal thankfully took 

the pressure off the immediate situation, 

because the news reaching Slavin 

from Toronto was bad. 

Max Brown had been released on 


LEFT: Outside the Dror Shemen factory. (Carl E. 

Ekdahl) BELOW: Looking through the gate into 

the Shemen Dror factory yard. (Carl E. Ekdahl) 

BOTTOM OF PAGE: Maybe the first picture to escape 

the Dror factory; before any public mention of 

the Dror. (Carl E. Ekdahl) 

bail, which was small comfort. After all 

the months and work and worry and money, 

The Gun was in mortal danger. Parts 

had been seized, Industrial Research 

Labs raided, Grant arrested and the tools, 

drawings and remaining parts seized. 

And that, Slavin feared, might be 

merely the start. If the police took a closer 

look, they’d see Harry Levine had signed 

the IRL lease in Toronto. If they looked 

closer at him, they’d see he also signed 

for the Machinery Processing and Converting 

Co. in New York. If the two were 

put together, the entire arms smuggling 

effort would be revealed. U.S. Customs 

only had to check their files and they 

could hand the British a list of ‘machinery’ 

shipments from MPC, and, their destinations 

in Palestine. The raids that would 

follow in Palestine could uncover dozens 


DroR 

of Jewish underground arms factories 

and storage sites. 

A very short time later, in Washington, 

DC, two anxious leaders of the American 

Jewish community sat down with FBI 

Director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover listened 

patiently as the men explained the devastating 

consequences of further investigation 

into the border incident. Hoover 

then asked them if the United States were 

being imperiled in any way. Satisfied 

with their ‘no,’ Hoover nodded and the 

meeting ended. 

So goes the story. In all likelihood the 

massive Jewish effort to arm was already 

well known to Hoover. Ekdahl family lore 

tells of a railway car meeting, where government 

agents not only approved of Ekdahl’s 

work, but, came close to ordering it. 

The captured gun parts were portrayed 

as the work of a few enthusiastic Canadians, 

impressive and clever, but nonetheless, 

minor. There was back-patting 

in court as the contrite Brown belatedly 

confessed his sins. A suspended sentence 

followed, and the entire issue deflated with 

a boys-will-be-boys shrug. 

After the Toronto workshop and its 

contents were restored, to the utter disbelief 

of their owners, the clandestine work 

went on to package and ship, not merely 

a handful of guns, but the tools needed to 

turn out enough guns to arm a nation. And 

still, The Gun didn’t even have a name. 

Finally, the finished guns, parts and 

tools were packed onto a private yacht. 

They sailed across Lake Ontario and into 

the U.S. The passengers sipped cocktails 

and tipped their glasses in friendly greetings 

to Customs. The planned test firing 

had to be skipped and the materials went 

straight to Schalit in New York for shipment 

to Palestine. According to the participants, 

75,000 carefully jumbled pieces 

left, all so meticulously recorded, it was 

said, that not a single part was misplaced. 

But, after all the delays, it was too 

late. On November 29, 1947, the United 

Nations voted the State of Israel into existence, 

to take effect the 15th of May, 1948. 

If there was to be an Israel a week later, 

the fighters needed weapons and ammunition 

today. Manufacture of The Gun would 

need a real factory with concrete floors and 

high-voltage. At the time, a major Ta’as 

factory was akin to an underground car 

garage. Slavin had to focus on current production. 

The Gun had to wait. 

In Palestine, the British Army 

pre-empted the date for Independence 

and began their pull-out a day early, abandoning 

police stations and installations 

throughout Palestine and marching swiftly 

to the coastal ports for evacuation. To 

the North, the East and the South, Arab 

armies closed in. Many Palestinian Arabs 

fled, encouraged by the surrounding Arab 

countries. Knowing there was no retreat 

and no surrender, Israel struck back. The 

Arab armies were stopped, battered, demoralized 

and defeated. The Palestinians 

who fled found themselves unwelcome. 

Their descendants remain refugees and 

fighting continues today. 

The Gun finally saw daylight after the 

1948 war. More than most nations, Israel 

needed to develop a self-sufficient arms 

industry. Israel was surrounded by enemies 

who would cut off resupply in war, 

and, they feared, their friends were not 

the most reliable either. Considerable investment 

in engineering, sweat, risk and 

expense had been put into The Gun. Men 

like Ben Gurion himself wanted to see the 

project bloom. 

Schalit’s packing crates were opened 

in a Ta’as factory in Shemen, an industrial 

district in Haifa. The Gun would be the first 

post-war product of Ta’as. Yisrael Galili, 

later to co-design the Galil rifle named after 

him, was in charge of production. Galili 

soon found that the careful organizing of 

parts and tools was more wishful thinking 

than reality. In fact, he said years later, it 

was all a mess. 

Max Brown and Carl Ekdahl arrived 

in Israel in 1948. The Gun at last 

began production. A grateful Israel sent 

them home with their thanks for all 

they had done. By now, The Gun had 

a name; the Dror. Literally translated, 

Dror means Freedom. 

The first guns made on the Toronto 

tooling are close copies of the Johnson 

Model 1944, but in .303. Some less critical 

parts are made crudely, and the finish is 

hard to pin down, but it is a well machined 

and crafted gun where it counts. The 

combination folding monopod fore-end 

of the M1944 is replaced with stamped, 

folding, bipod legs. 

The problem is, the gun is still a pig 

to use. It is all points and edges, hard to 

hold and hard to love. The loaded mag is 

quite noticeable as a visual distraction and 

an off-balancing weight. The folded bipod 

becomes the forward grip, but the legs are 

a lousy hold, too widely spaced with too little 

surface. When fired, the Dror is a sharply 

loud and busy gun: It kicks with great 

zeal and the straight in-line design seems 

influential mostly in theory. 


OPPOSITE PAGE: Melvin Johnson Jr. graciously 

thanks Carl Ekdahl. (Courtesy of 

John Ekdahl) ABOVE: Magazine housing 

on the first model Dror. (Author) 

One report said less than 400 first 

model Drors were made, another says between 

800 and 1,000 before production 

was halted. Two reasons for the halt are 

given. The first cites a number of weaknesses 

in the design, the other, and deciding 

factor, recognizes the large amount of 

8mm ammunition acquired from Czechoslovakia. 

The design team had just gotten 

the .303 working well when the unwelcome 

order to change caliber came through. 

The Dror underwent a thorough redesign. 

Whether the second version was 

an improvement or not it was, nevertheless, 

different. The switch to 8mm made 

sense for logistics alone, but, in fact 8mm 

is far better suited to automatic weapons 

than .303. The other major changes are 

still argued about. The barrel, left exposed 

by Johnson for cooling and balance, was 

now wrapped in a full-length barrel jacket 

for protection. The bipod was heftier and 

mounted near the muzzle. A muzzle booster 

was added to pump up the muscle and 

improve reliability. The feed system, that 

singular feature of the Johnsons with the 

lips built into the gun, was dumped in favor 

of the BAR magazine, possibly from an 

8mm FN BAR Model D; and that was now 

mounted under the gun. The awkward job 

of replacing the side mounted magazine 

was now an awkward job of replacing a 

bottom mounted one with not enough 

space under the gun to do it. The resulting 

gun was even less handy, and, the 8mm 

also kicked like a mule. 

Several tests pitted the .303 and the 

8mm versions against the German MG 34 

and the British Bren. The guns were compared 

on accuracy, usability, durability 

and most importantly, reliability. 

The earliest test has the singular positive 

comment that the Dror was the most 

accurate in the single-shot mode. In automatic 

fire, the Dror kicked and sprayed 

more than the competition, throwing 

groups across 30 inches and more at 

200 yards while the Bren and the MG34 

did half that. 

The Drors lacked interchangeability 

of magazines and had many hand-fitted 

parts. The familiar complaint of the 

Johnson’s tricky stripping and the potential 

loss of critical small parts came up. 

The gun didn’t do as well as the Bren or 

the MG 34 when it came to withstanding 

immersion in sea water or exposure to 

dust and sand. The troops said it was difficult 

and uncomfortable to carry and not 

much fun to shoot. 

Mostly, though, it was simply a gun 

that missed its time. The Dror’s strongest 

point was to be there when there was nothing 

else, but, the War of Independence was 

over before the gun came to be. The handiness 

and versatility that made it ideal for 

the guerilla and the settler are never mentioned 

in the post-war tests. 

Nonetheless, the Dror was fully explored. 

Even a rifle version was apparently 

produced in minute numbers. Production 

wrapped up with the completion of 

1,000 of the second model guns. These 

were issued to training units and the 

Navy, where it was hoped they’d never be 

called on. Even this was done reluctantly. 

None saw combat. 

The test reports slammed the gun and 


Secret 

proclaimed short-recoil operation inherently 

less reliable than gas operation. The 

government was advised all future development 

should be of gas powered weapons. 

The decision to begin full production 

of the unproven Dror was roasted as irresponsible. 

Of course, with names like David 

Ben Gurion and Haim Slavin behind 

the project, it is hard to imagine how anyone 

could have stopped it. 

In the U.S., Johnson continued development 

of his rifle and LMG after the 

war, melding them into sleek and evolved 

models that unfortunately met little commercial 

success. There is no indication 

Johnson knew about the Dror. Johnson 

Automatics filed for bankruptcy in 1949. 

The auction of equipment took place in 

March the same year. Some machinery 

and tooling may have made its way to Israel 

to supplement the Toronto contribution. 

Johnson moved on to development work 

on several other military projects. 

The Johnson guns might have been 

still-born were it not for Holland’s all-important 

order. A generation later, a Dutch 

firm would produce the AR-10, which used 

the multi-lug locking system from the 

Johnson. Johnson himself helped develop 

the AR-10. Without the AR-10, the AR-15, 

the M16, and the M4 family still in use, 

would not have evolved. Considering this, 

Holland and Johnson had a remarkable influence 

on American weapons. 

The existence of the Dror was a secret 

until well into the 1950s, and by then, a 

mild embarrassment. By the time the Dror 

became public, the lawyers were baffled. If 

the ownership of the patents was not muddied 

by bankruptcy, there was the question 

of who to sue: Israel didn’t exist when 

the Dror was hatched. Considering the 

failure of the gun and the fact production 

was cancelled, it isn’t surprising no legal 

action is recorded. 

EPILOGUE 

In 1950, the Dutch Johnsons were deployed 

in the Philippines against the Hukbalahap 

Rebellion and by the Philippine 

Expeditionary Forces to Korea. 

Hilda Ekdahl caught tuberculosis 

tending a sick relative and died tragically 

in 1949. Sadly missing her, Carl Ekdahl followed 

in 1952; but, according to his daughter, 

C. Elise, he died a man ‘happy with his 

legacy.’ A hundred years after he arrived in 

America, Carl’s descendants span America 

from coast to coast and north to south. He 

is remembered in Israel. 

Melvin Johnson Jr. died in 1965, still 

working, of a heart attack. His memory 

and achievements are preserved by the 

Johnson family and known to millions. 

Norman Grant, credited with running 

the Toronto operation, moved easily into 

manufacturing lighting. 

Haim Slavin retired from Ta’as and 

kept on engineering. He developed some 

of the pre-fab concrete housing techniques 

seen throughout Israel today. 

Yisrael Galili became known as the 

‘Father of the Rifle’ in reference to the Galil 

rifle designed by himself and Yaacov Lior. 

He died in 1995. 

Max Brown went to Palestine to serve 

in the War of Independence. He worked 

for Ta’as, likely with Ekdahl, then returned 

to Toronto and founded a chain of appliance 

stores. He passed away in 2013 in Miami. 

He is buried in Israel. 

Between 1965 and 1969, Leonard 

Slater researched and wrote The Pledge 

recording the details about the development 

of the Dror and the broader effort 

to arm Israel prior to the 1948 war. Slater 

worked with NBC, Time and Newsweek, to 

name just a few. He died at 84 in 2005 at 

his home in Mission Hills, California. 

Bruce N. Canfield, with Robert L. 

Lamoreaux and Edward R. Johnson, published 

Johnson’s Rifles and Machine Guns 

through Andrew Mowbray Publishers in 

2002, illuminating the long untold Johnson 

story. Canfield, a premier authority on 

American small arms, continues to write. 

However the story ended, the Dror is 

an incredible achievement by a small dedicated 

band led by Haim Slavin and Carl 

Ekdahl. Drors still exist in museums and 

the hands of collectors in Canada where 

the few released were sold as ‘Converted 

Automatics’ in the mid-1980s. Others were 

broken down for parts. 

As a footnote, I dropped the butt 

of my .303 version on my foot, painfully 

blackening a toenail. In recorded history, 

this may have been the most significant 

wound inflicted by the Dror. 

(Acknowledgement and thanks are 

due to Leonard Slater, author of The 

Pledge, Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre, 

authors of O Jerusalem and to Bruce 

N. Canfield, author of Johnson’s Rifles 

and Machine Guns with Robert L. Lamoreaux 

and Edward R. Johnson, (Andrew 

Mowbray Publishers). A special thanks to 

Carl Ekdahl’s descendants, John Ekdahl, 

David Nordin and Kirsten O’Brien for 

their guidance, information and photos of 

their Grandfather, to Richard Collins for 

providing the 2nd model Dror, Charles 

Taylor of Movie Armaments Group in 

Toronto, Canada for use of the facilities, 

Graham Robertson for his photo, and G. 

N. Dentay, Paul Wassill and R Blake Stevens, 

Collector Grade Publications, for 

their invaluable editorial input.) 


Family of Multi-Purpose 

Infantry Munition Systems 

MPIMS 

By Thomas Campion, Hannu Hytti, & Tomi Pesonen 

Photos by Forcit Defense 

Business side of the Full Scale MPIMS 

Area denial and protection has been a 

key factor in most combat missions 

from the beginning. For more than 

50 years the product of choice for 

this mission has been the M18 Claymore 

mine and its derivatives. Extremely 

impactful at its onset, with 700 steel balls 

flying 1,200 meters per second, ground 

units were happy to have it in their arsenal. 

Over time though, especially as operations 

have focused more on precision 

engagement, our forces became very selective 

in its application. Though directional 

in theory, this is debatable. Ask any soldier 

where the nearest “safe zone” is when employing 

the system and they will tell you, 

“behind the closest hard object!” Slight 

upgrades have been made to the product 

since its inception like a plastic case and 

bi-lateral priming locations. Significant 

strides have been made in the past decade 

in regard to insensitive explosives and munitions, 

reliability of detonators, as well 

as other technology advances that have 

made it possible to develop a much more 

Force on Force MILES/HITS Compatible Trainer 


effective and safe product line. Enter the 

Multi-Purpose Infantry Munition System 

(MPIMS), a family of products developed 

and produced by OY Forcit AB of Hanko, 

Finland, that spans the full spectrum of 

applicable requirements. 

FORCIT DEFENSE, HANKO, FINLAND 

Forcit Defense is one of the forerunners 

in Insensitive Munitions (IM) 

technology, manufacturing IM defense 

products with its own Plastic Bonded Explosives 

(PBX) product family. It is part of 

OY FORCIT AB – a Finnish based company 

that has explosive expertise since 1893. 

Forcit Defense has been developing and 

manufacturing innovative defense systems 

for armed forces globally since the 1920s. 

Since the early 1980s Forcit Defense has 

been serving western defense forces as 

well as International defense product 

manufacturers with world class IM 

PBX products. The product range covers 

a wide variety ranging from special 

forces/combat engineering charges to 

underwater systems. 

MULTI-PURPOSE INFANTRY MUNITION 

SYSTEM (MPIMS) 

The family of MPIMS consists of a 

squad/platoon trainer, A MILES (Multiple 

Integrated Laser Engagement System) 

integrated Force on Force simulator, two 

less lethal systems, and two lethal Directed 

Fragmentation Charges (DFCs) that may 

contain either stainless steel ball bearings, 

tungsten ball bearings, or a combinations 

of both. The MPIMS takes the legacy system 

anti-personnel mine and transforms 

the idea into a system of munitions, exponentially 

increasing the soldier’s, sailor’s, 

marine’s or airman’s capability as well as 

increasing his safety and that of his unit 

and other friendly forces. The MPIMS 

family allows the operator to escalate the 

level of force needed at any given time on 

the battlefield. MPIMS has already proven 

itself in combat, being deployed to and 

used in Afghanistan, and has been selected 

by the NATO Industry Advisory Group 

(NIAG) as the “next generation defense 

system for area denial and protection.” 

SQUAD AND PLATOON 

TRAINER MULTI-PURPOSE I 

NFANTRY MUNITION (MPIM) 

The SQD/PLT Trainer version of the 

MPIMS family meets the requirement 

for training and qualification on the system. 

The SQD/PLT trainer is a simple, 

low-cost training system that mimics the 

actual functioning of the MPIMS family, 

spanning from force on force trainer and 

Mini-MPIM on spike mount 


less-lethal to full lethal versions. The trainer 

allows leaders and trainers to verify that 

soldiers are trained on the system, validate 

the correct employment and initiation of 

the system. Once the system is functioned 

correctly an audible and/or visual signal 

(depending on future maturation of the 

SQD/PLT trainer) is emitted, allowing 

the trainer to know that the soldier, sailor, 

marine or airman has employed the 

system correctly. 

FORCE ON FORCE TRAINER 

(FOFT) MULTI-PURPOSE INFANTRY 

MUNITION (MPIM) 

Until now, the Army has been unable 

to simulate the M18A1 in Force on Force 

training situations. With the addition of 

the capability of the FOFT, all military 

units will be able to simulate the effects of 

a directed fragmentation charge (anti-personnel 

munition effects) during force on 

force training. The FOFT upon initiation, 

emits a Class I “eye-safe” laser, transmits 

weapon ID and simulates wounded 

in action (WIA) or killed in action (KIA) 

based on personnel inside the kill zone. 

The “lethal” footprint in the “kill-zone” is 

approximately 60 degrees and extends to 

approximately 300 feet. The FOFT uses 

the same MILES/HITs equipment already 

standard issue at the National Training 

Center (Ft. Irwin, CA) and Joint Readiness 

Training Center (Ft. Polk, LA) in the United 

States and at the Joint Multi-National 

Readiness Center in Hoenfels, Germany. 

When fired, the FOFT presents both 

audio and visual effects and there is an 

interface for pyrotechnic devices such as 

the Improvised Explosive Device Effects 

Simulator (IEDES) fielded by the Program 

Manager for Live Training Systems (LTS) 

that is currently available and used at the 

MPIMS 

Training Centers and some home stations 

locations. The FOFT uses a rechargeable 

3.6 Li-Io battery and provides a minimum 

200 hours of functionality. The FOFT has 

the capability of being sighted directionally 

to provide simulation fragmentation 

lethality over a specific area of 0 to 100 

meters and a spread angle of 60 degrees. 

The simulator can adjust the range coverage 

based on varying vertical sighting by 

the operator on emplacement. The MPIMS 

FOFT comes with a realistic firing device 

and is manually detonated. Soldiers can 

now train as they fight using the FOFT 

to simulate ground combat utilizing an 

anti-personnel munition. 

LESS-LETHAL / NON-LETHAL MULTI-PUR- 

POSE INFANTRY MUNITION (MPIM) 

The Less-Lethal / Non-Lethal (LL/ 

NL) variant is the variant where the most 


growth potential exists in the MPIMS 

family. The vision is to use the FOFT body 

and develop a “plug and play” system, 

where by modules containing kinetic and 

non-kinetic payloads that can be used to 

engage threats at different ranges and with 

graduated or “scalable” effects. The payloads 

that are envisioned in the non-lethal 

realm are forms of lights or “dazzlers” at 

varying strengths, spot lights, sirens, and 

loud speakers with pre-recorded messages 

based on the threat level. The payloads 

envisioned for the Less-lethal MPIMs are 

sting balls and flash bangs. It is important 

to note that the LL/NL is the least developed 

munition in the MPIMs family, but 

has the greatest area for growth. The objective 

of the LL/NL family is to develop 

the “plug and play” system that will be able 

to accept lethal, non-lethal, and less lethal 

modules, depending on the threat identified 

in the area of operations. 

DIRECTED FRAGMENTATION CHARGE 

(DFC) MULTI-PURPOSE INFANTRY MUNI- 

TION (MPIM) 

Impact zone for Mini-MPIM 

mature product, combat proven in Afghanistan 

by NATO forces, using MPIMs 

under Directed Fragmentation Charge 

(DFC) nomenclature. The DFC has been in 

full rat production since 2009. The DFC is 

at a TRL 9 and is a COTs product. A single 

DFC has 924 stainless steel pellets, which 

have an initial velocity of over 2,700 m/s 

in detonation. The DFC has been optimized 

for a 50 meter wide – 2 meter high 

“impact zone” at a distance of 50 meters 

based on the distribution pattern that ensures 

5-7 “hits” per square meter. DFC can 

be effectively used against non-armored 

or light-armored vehicles up to 50 meters, 

and personnel beyond 100 meters. 

The defined fragmentation pattern greatly 

increases operator safety as no fragments 

are found left or right of the pattern. It 

could be called a “precision” fragmentation 

charge due to this attribute and could 

safely enable friendly force movement forward 

of the device, something that does 

not exist presently. In addition, there are 

no fragments that “fly” rearward from the 

device due to the booster to main charge 

firing train, which has been captured in 

numerous arena tests. The repeatable distribution 

pattern significantly reduces collateral 

damage. 

MINIATURE MULTI-PURPOSE INFANTRY 

MUNITION (M-MIPM) 

M-MPIM is a ~40% scaled variant of the 

original Directed Fragmentation Charge 

(DFC) and is based on a design developed 

for a special operations requirement, but 

has application for all ground forces, including 

mounted troops. It is extremely 

light, and highly effective. It can be used 

in hit-and-run, ambush, base camp protection, 

force multiplier, and area access 

control scenarios. It can be employed offensively 

and/or defensively. It can be 

combined with other M-MPIMs to expand 

the coverage area or turned on its side for 

narrower coverage in urban scenarios. 

It is truly a versatile weapon that can be 

incorporated into existing perimeter defense 

systems such as the XM-7 Spider anti-personnel 

networked munitions system. 

There is no other munition that equals the 

The Directed Fragmentation Charge 

MPIMS (anti-personnel configuration) allows 

the operator the capability to engage 

more efficiently and with a larger area than 

any present legacy devices. DFC can be 

used as part of base camp protection with 

other MPIMS applications (less-lethal and 

anti-vehicular configurations) to provide 

the response required by the force to meet 

threat escalation. The DFC (anti-vehicular) 

application uses tungsten ball bearings 

and penetrates up to 4 millimeters of 

Rolled Homogeneous Armor (RHA) at 80 

Meters at P/100 (penetrates every time at 

80 Meters). The DFC’s lethal zone is over 

twice as large as the M18A1 Claymore. The 

DFC can be used in ambush, static defense, 

base camp force protection, force 

multiplier and area access control scenarios. 

It can be employed offensively and/ 

or defensively. The DFC MPIM is a fully 

Full Scale MPIM Directed Fragmentation Charge 


performance of the Mini MPIM. In detonation, 

M-MPIM sends out 315 spherical 

steel fragments with a muzzle velocity of 

2,300 meters per second in a repeatable 

fragmentation pattern. The M-MPIM has 

been optimized for a 20 meter wide – 2 

meter high “impact zone” at a distance of 

30 meters based on the distribution pattern 

that ensures 5-7 “hits” per square 

meter. The steel or tungsten projectiles 

remain effective to more than 100 meters 

against a man target. As with the DFC, 

this defined fragmentation pattern greatly 

increases operator safety and operational 

effectiveness. All lethal MPIMS have a 

rearward safety zone of 7m, based on concussive 

effects. This in itself is a dramatic 

change compared to the legacy system. An 

excerpt from the Army Field Manual (FM 

23-23) that applies to the M18A1 states: 

“Danger Area of Backblast and Secondary 

Missiles. Within an area of 16 meters 

to the rear and sides of the mine, backblast 

can cause injury by concussion (ruptured 

eardrums) and create a secondary missile 

hazard. Friendly troops are prohibited to 

the rear and sides of the mine within a radius 

of 16 meters. The minimum safe operating 

distance from the mine is 16 meters. 

At this distance, and regardless of how the 

mine is employed, the operator should be 

in a foxhole, behind cover, or lying prone 

in a depression. The operator and all 

friendly troops within 100 meters of the 

mine must take cover to prevent being injured 

by flying secondary objects such as 

sticks, stones, and pebbles.” 

Warfare Experiment (AEWE) Spiral J 

Live Fire where soldiers and marines present 

witnessed the effects from an “open” 

(unobstructed) distance “significantly 

less” than they would for the legacy device. 

The M-MPIM’s repeatable fragmentation 

pattern significantly reduces the possibility 

of collateral damage. Using the existing 

aiming device on the device proved highly 

effective during the AEWE demonstrations 

and there are discussions ongoing 

about incorporating a miniature laser aiming 

device that shows the impact zone. The 

Mini MPIM was granted a “Safety Release” 

(SR) by the Army Test and Evaluation 

Command for the AEWE live fire event. 

All lethal variants of the MPIM are the 

only Insensitive Munition (IM) compliant 

fragmentation charges available today. 

The M-MPIM is a basic device that stands 

ready to incorporate whatever accessories 

the war-fighter should desire, from stands 

to mounts to male-female attachment 

points for linking multiple devices together. 

A comparison of the Mini-MPIM vs the 

legacy system is below. 

TECHNICAL 

M-MPIMS 

M18A1 

SPECIFICATION 

Gross weight 1.9 lb 0.9 kg 3.5 lb 1.6 kg 

Net Explosive Quantity 1.1 lb 500 grams 1.5 lb 680 grams 

Width 4.2 in 106 mm 8.5 in 216 mm 

Height 3.3 in 83 mm 4.9 in 124 mm 

Depth 2.0 in 50 mm 1.5 in 38 mm 

Amount of fragments 315 315 700 700 

Fragment type Steel, round Steel, round Steel, round Steel, round 

Fragment diameter 13/64 5 mm 1/8 in 3 mm 

Fragment weight 0.02 oz 0.5 grams 0.015 oz 0.3 grams 

OPERATIONAL SPECIFICATION M-MPIMS M18A1 

CONCLUSION 

Effective range Over 50 m 50 m 

Penetration 2mm steel 40 m 35 m 

Muzzle velocity 2,300 m/s 1,200 m/s 

Fragment distribution equal un-equal 

Rear safety area 7 m 16 m 

Lifecycle 25 years No info 

Operational Climate Categories B3-C2 (-46°C to +71°C or -51°F to + 160°F) No info 

Hazard Classification 1.1D (1.2S and 1.2.3D upcoming) 1.1D 

Insensitive Munitions compliant YES NO 

The Multi-Purpose Infantry Munition 

System family gives the United States 

Military (and other foreign militaries) the 

capability to train and engage with an escalation 

of force needed at a specific time, 

in both offensive and defensive scenarios. 

The SQD/PLT trainer provides a realistic 

training device that replicates the MPIMs 

in every way. The MPIMS Force on Force 

Trainer (FOFT) provides a force on force 

training capability that until today, has 

not existed in the Military Training Centers. 

The Less Lethal and Non- Lethal 

MPIMs versions will provide a scalable, 

selectable, “plug and play” capability that 

can be tailored based on war-fighter requirements. 

Finally, the lethal versions 

provide a vast array of options, from large 

DFC with Tungsten or stainless steel 

ball bearings, to the Mini MPIM, that 

provide state of the art technology and 

unprecedented performance. 

MPIMS 

Mini-MPIM showing size relative to hand. 


SHOW COVERAGE 

10th Edition 2014 

By Dan Shea 

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is host to the SOFEX military 

trade show held every two years in Amman, Jordan. Regionally, 

this is one of the most important shows that concerned people 

can attend. It’s not just the juxtaposition to current combat areas; 

Jordan has always been a meeting ground for concerned military 

groups. Vendors report a lot of success if their products meet the current 

threats, but the Jordanian Armed Forces have always looked at 

different possible solutions to the threats, and tried many alternatives. 

In other words, if you have an innovative weapon or military product, 

the odds are that there will be people in authority willing to give it a 

test. And, those people are definitely at the SOFEX show, looking to 

talk with the vendors. 

This atmosphere attracts a lot of interesting companies, thus, 

SOFEX has become a gathering place for interested end users as well. 

A lot of exhibitors were from U.S. companies, as always. This doesn’t 

mean that the Russians and Chinese aren’t heavily represented; they 

are and have their own buildings. It’s just that a plethora of U.S. small 

arms manufacturers were there at the show, with real weapons on display 

instead of just posters. That tends to draw more interest. Poland, 

Bulgaria, Serbia, France, and the UK also had heavy representation. 

Every two years SOFEX coincides with the annual KASOTC Warrior 

Competition with SADJ attending both. While the SOFEX show 

has a concentration of vendors in a variety of buildings around a central 

parade ground, with outdoor exhibits, there is also an air show, 

and numerous demonstrations of tactical skills. The heliborne assault 

that is presented is not only visual, but a crowd pleaser. Special Forces 

troops ride in to rescue “hostages” in a very high speed and theatrical 

manner. So, the show is broken up for the attendees by outdoor events 

that are right on premises and don’t take the attendees away from the 

displays for very long. All in all, a very satisfying event, and SOFEX, 

while a mature show, shows all the signs of continuing to grow. 


Beretta’s ARX160 5.56x45mm rifle was on display, and has been purchased 

for testing by Jordanian Armed Forces. Of course, the ARX160 is available 

in other calibers and with the 40x46mm underbarrel grenade launcher. 


SHOW COVERAGE 

ABOVE: ADS (Advanced Defense Systems, 

Inc.) had a variety of targeting systems and 

optical systems. OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: Barrett’s 

M107 series is the standard in long range 

rifles worldwide. Here it is shown with suppressor 

and BORS sniper system. RIGHT: Dillon 

Aero has had quite a few contracts with the 

Jordanian military, and hopes to continue that 

relationship in upgrading more of the weapons 

platforms in use there. 




SHOW COVERAGE 

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: Karl Lewis (center) introduced the new LMT 

stand-alone mount for the M203 40x46mm grenade launcher. What 

makes this launcher stand out is that it can be ordered with the ability to 

mount a standard M203, not just a rail mounted one. OPPOSITE PAGE 

CENTER: Bob Landies III and Jerry Hurd of Ohio Ordnance Works 

show the tactical HCAR rifle – what might be the final evolution of the 

venerable 1918 BAR. Caliber is .30-06 with all the range and capability 

that implies. OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM: Steve Herberth has done 

a lot of business in Jordan, and brings the AA12 fully automatic select 

fire shotgun to the demonstrations there. ABOVE: Aselsan from Turkey 

had their remote weapon system with M2HB .50 caliber machine gun. 


SHOW COVERAGE 

BELOW: NAMMO presented their standard shoulder fired anti-tank 

and anti-bunker systems like the M72 series, but also 

showed some thermobaric capabilities. OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: 

SIG Sauer’s new MPX series submachine guns, along with their 

rifles and suppressors, proved popular with the attendees at 

SOFEX. OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM: ResQmax presented some 

very versatile air tools including this grappling hook launcher with 

multiple line-throwing capabilities. 



SHOW COVERAGE 

SHOW INFO: Sofex 2014 

DSA’s Designated Marksman Rifle entry. The 

“DMR” is dressed with an ACOG 4-32, and the B&T 

bipod and foregrip. 

Location: 

King Abdullah I Airbase in Amman in the 

Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. GPS Coordinates: 

+31° 58' 19.64", +36° 0' 15.62" 

Show website: 

www.sofexjordan.com 

Promoter contact info: 

iinfo@sofexjordan.com 

Telephone: +962 6 562 7301 or +962 6 

5605089 or +962 6 5650198 

Fax: +962 6 569 1137 

P.O. Box 6384, Amman 

11118 Jordan 

Date & Location of next show: 

10-12 May, 2016 in Amman Jordan 

Focus of show: 

Special Operations weapons, equipment, 

and training. 

Dress: 

Business casual when away from the 

booths, but business or military dress 

should be adhered to for best appearances. 

Temperature will be warm in Amman; 

the show buildings are air conditioned but 

open to outside. 

Hotel hints: 

There are many modern hotels in Amman. 

Westerners should look for “Western” facilities, 

en suite, and should not have trouble 

finding this. Check in with the tourism 

site for more information. There is a very 

nice Intercontinental with reasonable 

rates, as well as most other quality chains. 

Power & Plug types: 

220volt 50cycle. UK three prong style, 

but European outlets are generally 

available in hotels. 

Country warnings: 

As in most Muslim countries, there are 

travel restrictions on Israel and Palestine, 

which border with Jordan. It is not recommended 

to cross borders without paying 

attention to what is on your passport. 

Visas are required, and may be obtained 

at the airport. If you plan on leaving Jordan 

for a day or two, you should arrange 

a multiple entry visa. Syria is to the north, 

visas are needed, Saudi Arabia (visa) and 

Iraq (visa) are also bordering countries. 

Do NOT travel to Syria if you have Israel 

on your passport; you will not be allowed 

to enter. 

Cultural hints: 

Jordan is a country that traditionally has 

had a respectful way of looking at others. 

There are large Christian communities as 

well as Jewish ones that commingle with 

the Islamic community. One primary concern 

for Westerners is women’s clothing. 

Jordanian women generally cover their 

arms, legs and hair. Western women are 

not subject to these customs, but very revealing 

clothing is never appropriate, and 

conservative dress is advisable for both 

men and women in the old part of Amman 

(downtown), and outside the cities. Shorts 

are rarely worn by either sex, and would 

be out of place in downtown Amman area. 

Religious sites will require a shawl for all 

women who wish to enter, the same as in 

any European religious site. 

Show food: 

There is a large tent on the back side of the 

parade grounds, opposite building 6, that 

has a number of excellent options with 

Döner, sandwiches, a full buffet, and many 

salads available. 

Tipping: 

Not required for taxis other than a “roundup” 

to the next Dinar and baggage tip. 

10% should suffice in restaurants, which 

have usually included it, but a good 

rule is one JD at breakfast, two JD at 

lunch and dinner. Tip one JD per bag at 

airport and hotel. 

Currency type: 

Jordanian Dinar are generally worth 

about 1.40 USD, 1.04 GBP, and 1.10 

Euro each. Check www.xe.com/ucc/ for 

currency rates. 

Getting around: 

Driving is done in the U.S./Euro style on 

the right-hand side of the road. There are 

plenty of petrol stations, but if you travel 

south to Petra or further, be sure to have 

a full tank and plenty of water. There are 

new, modern service areas on that route 

now. Taxis are abundant in Amman; most 

hotels have reasonably priced limo services. 

Tour guides with limos are available 

for day trips in almost any language. Be 

sure to arrange for your transport from the 

show at the end of each day, there are now 

buses to the hotels so be sure to coordinate 

ahead of time, but no official taxi line. 

Military Museums to see: 

There are many sites in Jordan, but there 

is one exceptional museum that you must 

get permission to enter, the new Altala al 

Shaeed Museum in Amman. It is worth the 

effort to look up. 

Tourism: 

Visit the website www.visitjordan.com for 

an excellent look at the many tourism opportunities, 

from the ancient city of Petra, 

to the Roman ruins of Jarash, as well as all 

of the historical sites that are seminal to 

the basic formations of Islam, Christianity, 

and Judaism. Jordan is a tourist friendly 

country. Also, be certain to visit the Royal 

Automobile Museum in Amman www.royalautomuseum.jo. 

It is a superb collection. 


KASOTC 

The Warrior Competition 

“The King’s Challenge” 

By Dan Shea 

“We have to understand that it is 

called “international” terrorism, 

however, we as Special Forces, special 

operations units all over the 

world are not yet international. The 

bad guys always work together, have always 

been coordinating, and have always 

been international. The good guys never 

have been. Progress has been made in intelligence–sharing, 

thus, we have to work 

together in order to defeat the bad guys’ 

will. Soldiers know better than anybody 

whether their training is good or not. Soldiers 

will always know if the instructor 

coming in their country is showing him 

100 percent of what that person knows, 

or just showing him a bit. Our philosophy 

in Jordan is to share everything we 

have with our brothers and counterparts 

around the Middle East and beyond. At 

the end of the day if your partners are 

strong, you are strong.” 

– King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein 

of Jordan 

Brigadier General Aref Alzaben, the 

General Director King Abdullah II Special 

Operations Training Center (KASOTC), 

welcomed the teams and their support 

groups to the 6th Annual Warrior Competition 

at KASOTC and began a five day 

competition that all would remember in 

a spirit of brotherhood and camaraderie. 

SADJ has attended several of the competitions 

and watched them get better every 

year. This year, there were 38 teams from 

18 countries. KASOTC has always been a 

special project of the King – he’s a special 

operations trained fighter himself. From 

all accounts, he wasn’t cut any slack in any 

of that training or operations, and won’t 

allow it for any of the Jordanian forces. 

The preferred rifle for most teams was an 

M4 variant in 5.56x45mm with a variety 

of optics. Some of the teams preparing 

for the Precision Rifle course were Chinese, 

U.S., Jordanian, Palestinian, and 

Kuwaiti. One member would switch to a 

sniper rifle for some of the long runs. 


KASOTC 2014 

The opening ceremony is on the parade 

grounds. The airplane used to train for hostage 

rescue and assault is in the background. 

KASOTC is one of the most advanced 

training facilities in the world, and many 

countries send their special operations 

groups for training there. This author has 

been involved at various times with their 

training and is always impressed with the 

commitment of the staff and support. 

The Warrior Competition is also one of 

the King’s special interests. He attends and 

reviews the teams, and watches some of the 

competitions with great interest. It’s easy 

to envision this competition growing in size 

and stature in the community. 

“IF YOU’RE THAT GOOD, WHY 

AREN’T YOU HERE?” 

One afternoon after the competition 

while we relaxed at the cantina and pro 

shop, we watched the Malaysian team run 

around the football field (soccer to Americans) 

with their team members on their 

backs. Five times, then they switched so the 

man on the bottom was being carried, and 

five more trips around. Then, calisthenics... 

and more running. The Snow Leopards 

were doing similar workouts. This was all 

after a hard day of competition. Overheard 

on a cell phone conversation to one of the 

guys back home, “Yeah, well if you’re that 

good, why aren’t you here?” We all had a 

chuckle over that, because it was obvious 

someone back across the pond was waxing 

poetic about how strong a competitor they 

were, and just got schooled. They need to 

watch those exhausted Malaysian teams 

cowboy up and put the hammer down… 

One of the most inspiring things 

about this competition is the spirit that 

is shared by the teams that are there. It’s 

not unusual to see an exhausted team running 

in to a new competition and see the 

other teams from countries cheering them 

on –even though that team might be from 

a country that has a negative relationship 

to the others. It’s all about the Warrior. 

These competitors push themselves to the 

absolute limits at all times. It’s evident 

on their faces. 

Shooting skills are a heavy part of the 

scoring, from handgun to carbine, from 

rifle to machine gun. As most soldiers 

know, you’ve got to be in top shape to get 

to where you can use that weapon, and the 

competitions are set up to challenge all of a 

soldier’s skills. 

We look forward to attending each 

year, and hope to bring more coverage of 

a special “Weapons Master” event that has 

been discussed. It should be noted here 

that there are vendors and sponsors at the 

competition. The tables are set up outdoors 

under cover by the Pro shop, and while it’s 

not a “Show” there are certainly opportunities 

to meet with the end users who are 

competing from many countries. Revision 

and many others are regulars. 

COMPETITIONS AT THE WARRIOR 

COMPETITION 2014 

1- Last Easy Day 

2- Carbine Candy 

3- Trail of Tears 

4- Urban Assault 

5- Commando Selection 

6- 3-Gun Gauntlet 

7- Shock-n-Awe 

8- Molan Labe 

9- High Angle Drive By 

10- King’s Challenge 

11- Top Gun 


Most competitors in the Precision Rifle competition used the M4 

carbine, many of the Colt manufactured as in this case. Sighting 

was simple and fast, with a variety of tactical optics used. Precision 

Rifle required a 1/4 kilometer run uphill, engaging targets at 300 

meters, clear the weapons, then run downhill for the under-100 

meter target range with a variety of engagement ranges. 


List of Teams 2014 Challenge 

COUNTRY 

UNIT 

1 Palestine National Security Forces 

2 Palestine National Security Forces 

3 Jordan Gendarmerie - Unit 14 

4 Palestine Presidential Guards / PGIG 

5 Slovakia ISHCH LEST, MOS SLOVAKIA 

6 Jordan Special Police Command ( PSD 1) 

7 Canada Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) 

8 KAZAKHSTAN KAZAKHASTAN SFG UNIT 32356 

9 KAZAKHSTAN KAZAKHASTAN SFG UNIT 22750 

10 Afghanistan GDPCU 

11 Brunei Special Forces Regiment 

12 Lebanon Internal Security Forces 

13 Netherland NLMARSOF, Maritime Special Operations Force 

14 USA San Mateo County Terrorism Counter Assault Team (TCAT) 

15 Lebanon I.D.S.F (Information Department Special Forces) 

16 Lebanon Black Panthers 

17 USA 22d MEU - Team 1 

18 USA 22d MEU - Team 2 

19 China Snow Leopard Unit of The Chinese People’s Armed Police Force 

20 China Special Operation Unit of the PAPF Xinjiang Corps 

21 China Special Operation Unit of the PAPF Sichuan Corps 

22 UAE Abu Dhabi Police - Department F 7 

23 Russia Force Police Unit “LYNX” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 

24 Kazakhstan Kazakhstan NSCSF 

25 Palestine Palestine Police Forces (SPF) , “SPF 194” Team 

26 Iraq Iraq Special Operation Forces 

27 Malaysia Malaysian Armed Forces Special Forces 

28 Pakistan Northern Light Infantry Light Commando Battalion (NLI LCB) 

29 KSA Brigade 64 - Special Forces - Team 1 

30 KSA Brigade 64 - Special Forces - Team 2 

31 Jordan Royal Guards 

32 Lebanon Lebanese Armed Forces - Team 1 

33 Lebanon Lebanese Armed Forces - Team 2 

34 Bahrain Royal Special Forces 

35 Jordan 71st Special battalion 

36 Jordan G.I.D 

37 KSA Royal Guards 

38 Iraq MOI 


KASOTC 2014 

BELOW: After finishing at the 300 meter Precision Rifle 

range, competitors have to run downhill to the 100 meter 

range and engage targets. Below Right: It’s a grueling 

course, with the High Angle tower waiting at the other end. 


KASOTC 2014 

TOP LEFT: Members of the PLA special operations team relax. TOP RIGHT: Kuwait 

team prepares for the 300 meter precision rifle course. BOTTOM LEFT: Jordanian team 

prepares for the carbine course. BOTTOM: US team ready to go for Precision Rifle. 



SHOW COVERAGE 

Land Forces 

By Kyle Shea 

Australia, known as the land down 

under, is hard for Americans not 

to think of it without the image of 

Crocodile Dundee appearing in your 

mind or the famous song from Men 

at Work, Land Down Under, whispering in 

your ear. You probably think about it when 

you go to a Zoo or watch a wildlife documentary 

and see a kangaroo or a koala 

bear or a platypus. You think of the famous 

accent or the words Wombat or Vegemite. 

And of course we think of the cartoon Tasmanian 

devil, Taz, a native of the island 

that bares its name, Tasmania. 

But the real Australia is far from the 

stereotyped image. There are modern cities 

here as well as old; famous cities like 

Sydney, with its Opera house and Melbourne, 

Darwin, Perth, and the new capital 

Canberra. And then there is Brisbane. 

Between Sept 22 and 25, Land Forces 

2014 was held at Brisbane Convention 

& Exhibition Centre. It is considered the 

leading land defense forum for Australia, 

Asia, and the Pacific, with over two hundred 

vendors throughout its hall. Though 

not as large as IWA, Eurosatory, or 

MSPO, it is still quite impressive. Among 

the most prominent vendors there were 

Boeing, H&K, and General Dynamics. 

Mercedes-Benz was present with some 

new armored vehicles for the armed forces. 

Even the government of Queensland 

had a large booth, containing small 

companies from that state. 

The show had no shortage of vehicles, 

both miniatures and real life. Most 

were armored personnel carriers and large 

trucks to carry heavy loads. At the entrance 

was a 155mm Lightweight Howitzer 

as well as a few other vehicles on loan from 

the Australian armed forces. Both Boeing 

and General Dynamics had their own infantry 

personnel carriers. There were also 

Above: H&K 5.56x45mm rifles (top to bottom): HK416 rifle with 40x46mm underbarrel grenade 

module; HK416A5 with 11-inch barrel; HK416A5 with 14.5-inch barrel and Flat Dark Earth color; 

HK416A5 with 11-inch barrel and suppressor. 


Part of Defence Australia display. 


SHOW COVERAGE 


lesser unknown companies like Supacat 

with their HMT 600 and ATMP, and Polaris 

with their Sportsman 4-wheelers. 

If children were allowed into the hall, 

it would be torture for them. There was 

no end of the miniature vehicles, be they 

trucks, ships, or fighter jets. Many of these 

were impressively done models. Lockheed 

Martin had the most of these on display, 

showing off their newest designs, including 

miniatures of the HELLFIRE Missile 

System and the M270A1 (Multiple Launch 

Rocket System). Also, South Australia the 

Defense State had miniature displays of 

complexes they were planning on building. 

This is an effective method of showing 

a company’s products without having the 

expense of shipping the full size models of 

everything in their line. 

The remote control (CROW system) 

mount was prominently on display at this 

show, mostly with the M2HB .50 caliber 

machine gun. One could easily control this 

from inside a vehicle using a “joystick,” 

firing at enemy combatants from relative 

safety. The booths these were seen at the 

most were Kongsberg and Elbit Systems 

of Australia. Rheinmetall, however, upped 

the ante and used an H&K GMG 40mm 

Grenade launcher. Some of these were on 

the vehicles in the hall as well, like the light 

infantry vehicles. 

As for firearms, there was plenty 

to see. H&K had a large display with 

its latest collection of weapons, as well 

as their own GMG 40mm Grenade Machine 

Gun. Colt, Barrett, SIG Sauer, and 

Beretta were present as well, all showing 

their newest products, including Barrett’s 

award winning MRAD. 

Other vendors showcased body armor, 

ammo, knives, mortars, targets, and 

drones as well as a missile from Diehl Defense. 

One thing that stood out was from 

Australian Target Systems. They had a 

device that held four targets. Each target 

had on one side a soldier minding his 

own business, while the other side had a 

soldier holding a gun in front of them, 

aimed at the shooter. At random, the targets 

turned back and forth between sides, 

showing the shooter when to shoot and 

when not to shoot. 

M777A2 Lightweight 155mm Howitzer. It is equipped 

with a GPS and digital fire control system. It can be 

towed or transported by large rotary or fixed wing aircraft. 

8 to 10 men are required to crew this weapon. It 

weighs 4,445 kg, has a 26-42 km range and can fire 4 

rounds per minute for 2 minutes or 2 rounds per minute 

sustained fire. 


The Australian Land Forces provided a large display of armored vehicles. 

The Demo Disarming IED Robot 

at this show was impressive. These have 

been quite useful on the battlefield from 

helping deactivate bombs to firing on enemy 

combatants with whatever weapon 

is attached to it. 

The show was not open to the public. 

Most of the visitors were military personal 

and other defense contractors, as well as 

members of the press. A few units from 

the Australia armed forces were allowed 

in. The food in the hall is really just hot 

dogs and burgers. If you prefer something 

else, the Exhibition Centre is not far from 

some great restaurants near the Brisbane 


Land Forces 

River. Indian, Chinese, Thai, Turkish, Italian, 

and even Eastern European cuisines 

can be found within walking distance 

from the show. 

As for Brisbane itself, it is a very enjoyable 

and vibrant city to visit. It is the 

capital of the state of Queensland and 

its largest city. It has a wonderful history, 

great beaches and some good museums. 

The best, in this writer’s opinion, is 

one a little ways down the river from the 

show called the Maritime Museum, with 

its main attraction being the HMAS Diamantina, 

a frigate from 1946. Across the 

Brisbane River is a large shopping area 

called Queen Street Mall with smaller 

shopping centers in the surrounding area. 

There is plenty to buy there and no shortage 

of restaurants, including the Australian 

brand of Burger King known there 

as Hungry Jack’s. As for a suggestion on 

a good place to eat, the Black Hide Steakhouse 

is a must. 

As for what is outside of Brisbane, 

there isn’t much. It’s too far from the 

outback, as well as the southern cities of 

Sydney and Melbourne. There is a large 

zoo not far away, as well as the local rainforests. 

Also not far away is a city called 

the Gold Coast, Australia’s sixth and fastest 

growing city. One can find the tours 

to these places by just walking down the 

street and you will find a few tourist agencies 

easily. And for Scuba divers, the Great 

Barrier Reef is unsurpassed. 

The people of Brisbane are friendly 

and quite helpful. They speak English so 

if you are visiting from the United States 

or another English speaking country you 

should be alright. If not, try and learn a 

few words, just in case – Aussie English 

can be a bit strange sometimes. Brisbane 

is a safe city with few problems and low 

crime and if you are in Queensland, Australia, 

be sure to pay this city a visit. 


SHOW COVERAGE 


Above Left: Ruag produces some of the best sniper and accurate ammunition in the world. They 

attended Land Forces 2014 and showed their new .338 Lapua Magnum sniper round. Above: Saab 

Bofors from Sweden is heavily involved in anti-tank systems, and their M3 Carl Gustav 84mm launcher 

is well known and highly respected. The full line of munitions is seen on the floor in front of the M3. 

Right: NAMMO-Talley presented their shoulder fired rocket systems, with a variety of the M72 series 

that has been modernized. Below Left: Top to bottom: HK G28E 7.62x51mm with 20-inch barrel; 

HK417A2 7.62x51mm with 16.5-inch barrel and 40x46mm underbarrel grenade Launcher; HK MG4E 

belt fed 5.56x45mm light machine gun; and HK MG5 belt fed 7.62x51mm machine gun. Below 

Right: Top to bottom: HK G36C 5.56x45mm; HK169 40x46mm grenade module with standalone 

stock; HK MP5 9x19mm submachine gun; HK MP7A2 4.6x30mm Personal Defense Weapon; HK 

MP7A1 in Simunitions blue to signify training only with Simunitions ammunition. 


Land Forces 

Eurocopter’s Tiger Attack Helicopter as used by the Australian 

Army was a frequent focus of the display and aero review. 

Here it is shown armed with seven shot Hydra-70 (2.75 inch) 

rocket pods, what appear to be two Hellfire missiles on the inboard, 

and a Giat 30 cannon in the chin turret- in 30x113mm. 



SHOW COVERAGE 

Gulf Defense & 

Aerospace 

By Dan Shea 

This was the second biannual Gulf 

Defense & Aerospace show held in 

Kuwait City, Kuwait. It’s always difficult 

starting a new show, and the 

promoter has to have enough vision 

to choose not only the right place, but the 

right venue and the right time of year. 

The GDA first edition show in December 

2011, like all first time shows, had its bugs 

to work out. There were surprisingly few, 

however, and the professionalism of the 

organizers and their staff shown through. 

The biggest issue at that first show was the 

Kuwait government was in a bit of chaos, 

and many people did not attend any events 

at all that year. Most of the exhibitors had 

enough quality meetings as well as the 

experience to understand being a “Plankholder” 

at a show like this was important 

for future business. It’s also important to 

remember that most foreign companies 

need a Kuwaiti partner to bid on projects 

in Kuwait. 

The promoter’s attention to detail appears 

to have paid off very well for many at 

this second show. The promoters brought 

in a very strong showing of Kuwaiti government 

decision makers, and all together, 

the 2013 edition of GDA went very, very 

well. This is a regional show and there 

were 106 exhibitors from 21 countries. 

Total visitors were 2,589, with Embassy/ 

Military attaches from 24 countries, and 

visitors from a total of 50 countries. 

December 10, 2013. Kuwait Deputy Prime Minister and 

Minister of Defense, Sheikh Khalid Al- Jarrah Al-Sabah, 

along with the Undersecretary of Defense, and the Chief of 

Staff at the opening of the GDA 2013 exhibition. 


General Directorate of Border Security, Kuwait had a 

variety of their weapons on display including an M4 carbine 

and a Saco Defense manufactured M60 GPMG. 



SHOW COVERAGE 

Al Sada General Trading & Contracting, a Kuwaiti firm 

started in 1985, represents a number of foreign brands 

including PWS, Laser Devices, and Camelback to 

name a few. SADJ Editor-in-Chief Dan Shea (right) 

met with them and discussed Al Sada’s regional plans 

for expansion and their connections with the Kuwait 

Military. (www.alsada-gen.com) 

In the Kuwait Commandos Brigade 25 display, there 

was a Russian OTS-03 SVU bullpup style sniper rifle in 

7.62x54R caliber, and we were able to photograph the reticle 

in its optic. The integral “suppressor” is actually a flash 

hider system, although it undoubtedly has some effect. 


SHOW COVERAGE 

The General Directorate of Security Forces of Kuwait had a threat display that showcased weapons, 

mines, bombs, and improvised devices encountered in the First Gulf War and actions since that time. 


SHOW INFO: GDA 2013 

Location: 

Kuwait International Fair, 

Street 1, Kuwait 

GPS Coordinates: N29°16.077’ 

E048°58.078’ 

Show website: 

www.gulfdefense.com 

Promoter contact info: 

TNT Productions LLC 

USA +1 (703) 406-0010 

gulfdefense@tntexpo.com 

Date & Location of next show: 

December 8 - 10, 2015 

Kuwait International Fair, Kuwait 

Focus of show: 

Military and law enforcement equipment, 

as well as air force and naval. 

Dress: 

Business dress, military Class A uniforms: 

this is an Islamic country and modest 

dress is strongly suggested. 

Hotel hints: 

Most of the Western type chains are represented 

and there are many 4- and 5-star 

hotels available. Shop around a bit to get 

your best rates, but do it well in advance 

of the show. 

Power & Plug types: 

220 volt 50 cycle, with the European style 

two-prong “C” type and the British three 

flat prong “G” type the most common. 

Most hotels have U.S. style available. 

Country warnings: 

None to speak of at the present time beyond 

common sense. Don’t attempt to 

cross the Iraq border without a proper visa 

and knowledge of what you’re doing, and 

stay away from any “Iran tours.” Other 

than that, Kuwait is a very safe place. 

Cultural hints: 

Kuwait is an Islamic country, and it is wise 

to wear modest clothing even though the 

country is very advanced and fashionable. 

Pay attention to religious mores. 

Show food: 

There was ample food available from different 

venues on site. 

Tipping: 

Taxi - round up to next bill; restaurants 

10-15%; bellhops equivalent to 

$1USD per bag. 

Currency type: 

Kuwaiti Dinar (KWD) at press time, 1 

KWD = $3.56 USD, €2.56, and £2.13. Visit 

www.xe.com for up to date conversions. 

Getting around: 

Taxis and hotel cars were the best methods 

of transport; check if your hotel has a shuttle 

to the show. 

Tourism: 

The official government site is www.e.gov. 

kw and the site is pretty inclusive and 

a great resource. Go to “Visitors” for a 

lot more information. Tripadvisor.com 

also has a lot of good information on 

places to go. 


Accuracy International 

By Miles Vining 

Over the summer of 2014, Small Arms 

Defense Journal received the unique 

opportunity to tour Accuracy International’s 

production facility in 

southern England. SADJ also got 

a chance to sit down and talk with Dave 

Walls and Tom Irwin about the company’s 

history and future. 

Small Arms Defense Journal: Explain 

the beginnings of Accuracy International 

from your perspective. 

Dave Walls: I was a qualified toolmaker 

making various press tools and fixtures 

along with my work colleague Dave Caig. 

I was a competitive target shooter and represented 

my local rifle club, my county, 

and eventually I qualified to join the national 

squad and shot for Great Britain in 

international competitions. Dave Caig was 

also a club and county shooter and represented 

Scotland. We both repaired our 

own guns; our engineering backgrounds 

enabled us to design better components to 

replace existing weaknesses in our rifles. It 

didn’t take long before other club members 

noticed that we had done modifications to 

make our guns shoot well. And when they 

needed work done they would ask if we 

could do what was necessary to get them 

up and running again. We worked through 

lunch breaks and after work to make the 

parts needed to repair other club member’s 

rifles. Our payment for this was for 

them to buy us a beer at the local pub. Before 

long we were repairing guns for shooters 

all over Sussex, Hampshire, Essex and 

other neighboring counties in the UK. We 

received so many repairs it became impossible 

to do them all for drinks so we had 

to start charging. The work demand grew 

so much that we could no longer continue 

to operate during our lunch breaks, as the 

demand was too great, this progressed into 

us buying our own machinery to install in 

my garden shed. The demand for repairs 

continued to grow more and more, taking 

up most of our time outside of our full 

time jobs, we had reached a breaking point 

where we were in it full time or pack it all 

in and have our lives back. We decided to 

see how much money we were earning part 

time to determine whether this would be 

enough to support one of us at least in a 

full time job. So over a three-month period 

we kept a record of our earning, and 

were surprised to discover that we were 

making more money part time than in our 

full time jobs. 

SADJ: You made a decision to venture 

into a new career? 

Dave: I wasn’t happy with my full time job 

because due to staff shortages the company 

decided to move me from my tool making 

position to work on form grinding on a 

surface grinder, which I knew long term, 

would be bad for my health. My boss at 

that time told me that he couldn’t find anyone 

skilled enough at form grinding but 

he could replace a toolmaker more easily. 

This gave me the hard shove I needed to 

persuade me to give in my notice. It was a 

big decision to make quitting a good job, 

going into the unknown. I had a mortgage, 

a wife and two kids, but I have never ever 

had a reason to look back. On the day I left, 

my boss said to me, “You’ll never make any 

money by just selling a few guns.” A statement 

that has proved to be far from the 

truth. Dave Caig and I started a business 

partnership and traded under the name 

of C&W products, which stands for Caig 

& Walls. A few years later at a three positional 

rifle shoot we met up with Malcolm 

Cooper, at the time he was one of the best 

shots in the UK, and later became a twice 


Dave Walls posing with the rifles he brought into the 

precision rifle community. The L96 (top) was Accuracy 

International’s first major contract and brought 

them into legitimacy. Although the rifle has substantially 

evolved since this first model, many of the features 

that were introduced in it remain the same such 

as the flat bottomed receiver, shape of the bolt, and 

thumbhole stock (available as an option on the AICS 

stocks). If the L96 brought the company legitimacy, 

then the Arctic Warfare (middle) brought it onto a 

world stage by winning a contract with the Swedish 

military. A few changes from the L96 are a lighter 

chassis, folding stock, contoured butt stock, and an 

improved bolt. The rifle below the AW (bottom) is the 

AE, which didn’t fare so well, being a lower cost rifle 

intended for police forces in the United States. 

shot. Malcolm said, “I’ll get you any gun 

you want, if you want to have a look and 

see if you can get any ideas from them.” 

He produced about 8 rifles and I discarded 

about 5 of them. 

SADJ: What ended up as the design of 

the magazine? 

Dave: Initially I settled for a Springfield 

magazine, basically because it was easier 

to fit in my gun than any of the others. I 

designed the magazine port in the underside 

of the action body around this magazine 

and it seemed to work quite well. 

Then Malcolm submitted this weapon to 

both the SBS and the SAS who were also 

interested. After the trails on these weapons 

were made an order was placed for 42 

rifles with aluminum chassis’ with a wood 

covering this was the predecessor to the 

later developed L96A1. Then we found a 

company that would make honeycomb-like 

stocks with a hard surface on the outside. 

SADJ: Where are those 42 original 

rifles today? 

Dave: Well some went to Hereford and 

some went to Dorset; I don’t know where 

they went from there. They might even still 

be there. Following on from this after the 

Falklands War the British infantry got interested 

in tendering for a new sniper rifle. 

This contract was for 1,212 rifles plus 

spares. We decided to enter the tender, but 

we didn’t think we’d ever win, but we could 

use the trail to obtain feedback on our 

product. At this time we were still working 

from a garden shed and we didn’t think the 

British Army would be interested in our 

rifle. We literally went ahead, submitted 

Olympic Gold medalist and world champion. 

After the match we all went to a barbecue 

where he was told about the replica 

Colt pistols that we had made, he was very 

interested and asked if he could see them. 

I lived less than a mile from the barbecue 

so we left and drove to my house. After 

seeing the pistols he said to me, “You’ve 

got the potential to design your own rifle.” 

To which we replied that we already had 

been designing our own action for a target 

rifle. Malcolm wanted to see the action and 

after looking at it he asked us if we would 

make him one, which we agreed to do. He 

later shot a new 300 meter world record. 

Malcolm at that time was the owner of a 

gun shop in Portsmouth. Dave Caig and I 

formed a mutual agreement to do repairs 

and re-barreling for him, as we did for 

several other gun shops. Trade was building 

up along with our reputation. Soon 

we were taking in repairs and tuning of 

rifles from top international competitors 

from all over the world. Malcolm was approached 

by a contact in the British Army 

about a tender (contract) for a new sniper 

rifle and he came along to discuss with us 

the possibility of putting a magazine in one 

of our target rifles. We had never made a 

magazine fed rifle before as all my interest 

was in target shooting which was single 

Today, unlike in the 1990s, the company is not in any sort of debt, 

and all the machinery in the factory is paid off in full. From a meager 

2 CNC machines in the late 90s, one of which wasn’t even 

working, the company now boosts over 30 of them in addition to 

various other modern machine stations. 


This machine is using electricity going through a wire 

and cutting the receiver to the correct specification 

shape. It is computer controlled and automatically 

cuts as many as 6 receivers in a single setting. The 

liquid inside the container is sterilized water. 

our tender for this trial along with 17 other 

companies, most of them American and 

European with Remington, Winchester, 

Walther, Browning, Mauser, Beretta, BSA 

and Parker Hale among them. 

SADJ: Some of these companies had been 

in existence for a hundred years already. 

Dave: Of course, and they make hundreds 

of guns a week, whereas between us if we 

were lucky we’d probably get only one rifle 

every 4 or 5 weeks. We were a very small 

business in comparison. We submitted our 

trial rifle and surprisingly enough the army 

actually quite liked it. From 17 rifle entries 

it went down to about 8, and we were still 

in it. Then it went from 8 to 5 and we were 

still there again. Then we began to have 

some worries that we might win this. The 

worry was what would we do if we were to 

win. The next elimination process took it 

down to 3 and we were still a contender. 

BSA was eliminated from the group, leaving 

Parker Hale and ourselves to take part 

in a shootout to win the contract which 

we won with the provision that it would 

be manufactured by a company with the 

approved quality standards. 

SADJ: They must have found out that all 

you had was a garden shed operation? 

promoted the rifle in his name as he had 

world recognition for being a world champion. 

Malcolm then asked if we wanted 

Fame or Fortune: “If you want fame, we 

do it in your name. If you want fortune, we 

do it in mine.” I didn’t have any money at 

that time and neither did Dave Caig so we 

settled for fortune. Malcolm promoted the 

weapon in his name and that’s the way it 

began. We then started assembling the rifles 

ourselves in a company in Portsmouth, 

which was the start of Accuracy International 

Ltd. The company expanded and we 

started purchasing machines. I managed 

the production, programming and running 

the machines along with my son who had 

recently done a CNC programming course 

at college. More machines were purchased 

along with the increase of employees to six 

people working on the machine shop floor. 

After we had completed the MOD contract, 

we tendered for the Swedish contract and 

won the trial, which would become the 

Arctic Warfare System (AW Rifle). This 

was soon followed by Holland, Belgium, 

Denmark and Germany and was followed 

by several other nations that could not 

afford extensive trials and were happy to 

follow on the judgment of other countries. 

In 1999, Accuracy International was sold 

to a group of investors and Malcolm Cooper 

retained 10%. Accuracy International 

now had new people running the business 

and maintained the normal running of the 

company until 2001/2002 when they decided 

to outsource everything made in the 

machine shop and shut down the manufacturing 

side of the company. They only 

kept two machines and these were to make 

stock sides and sold all the other machinery. 

Tom Irwin was appointed as sales and 

marketing manager. In 2005 the company 

went into receiverships and within 

the first minute it was announced, I stood 

up and said, “I want to buy it back.” Tom 

immediately walked over to me and said 

I’d like to join you, so we got together and 

did it. Since we took the company back it’s 

gone in leaps and bounds. My focus has 

always been on making the guns shoot 

well and my target background married 

up with the military side extremely well. I 

Dave: Yes, they realized that and told us 

that it would have to be made by a reputable 

company and overseen by us. So 

we were sent to a company in Dartford, 

which was chosen by the Ministry of Defense 

(MOD) to manufacture the rifles. 

We would oversee the production for the 

first batch of rifles helping their production 

manager with our knowledge. Before 

Accuracy International Ltd. was formed 

Malcolm suggested to us that we would 

stand a better chance of success if we 



ABOVE TOP RIGHT & ABOVE: Tom Irwin demonstrates features of the magazine well on an AX .308 chassis; particularly how a shooter or spotter can insert 

a magazine from the left without moving the rifle and maintaining the rifle on target. Notice the modularity of all the external parts on the chassis. If any of these 

parts become worn down or broken, shooters can swap them out with new ones. Borrowing a concept from polymer handgun designs, the pistol grips can be 

swapped out for different size swells to accommodate different shooters. ABOVE TOP LEFT: Putting a .338 Lapua AX through its paces in the factory 100 

meter range. The scope is a Schmidt & Bender, a world renowned scope for an equally remarkable rifle. Notice the amount of KeyMod slots on the frame. LEFT: 

Various bolt housing groups in line for further finishing and assembly. Another feature of the design was the short 60 degree bolt throw open, allowing more rapid 

bolt manipulation. This was especially evident during the test fire of the weapon system in the 100 meter range, the bolt being especially smooth during operation. 


Top left, Caig and Walls’ third prototype rifle from 1981. Bottom left, a target rifle design from 1984. Top right, standard and original L96 sniper rifle. Notice the military iron sights 

and the transition from the gentle curves of the target rifles to the rigid lines of the military rifles. Middle right, Arctic Warfare cutaway. Notice on all three of these contract rifles, 

the different muzzle compensator design changes. Bottom right, German G22 .300 Win. Mag. Even in 1997, the need for Picatinny rails has already become apparent as is 

evidenced by this rifle’s scope mounting systems. Also notice the night vision optic in front of the scope. Because making optical mounts such as these was so difficult and cumbersome 

to pair up with the various other mounts on the market, Picatinny rails and KeyMod slots on the AX rifles did away with the headaches of the different configurations. 

needed somebody that had a better head 

for business than me and Tom fulfilled that 

role. I rely on Tom’s judgment on that side 

of things. 

SADJ: So how does this affect the management 

of the company? 

Tom Irwin: We’re both in charge; we 

don’t have a present managing director or 

CEO that runs the company. We share the 

responsibilities. 

Dave: We have a mutual understanding 

that if we don’t agree on an idea we will 

not do it, but we will find a solution to the 

problems that we can both agree on. 

SADJ: This has been working since 2005? 

Dave: Yes, that’s when we bought the 

company back. 

Tom: Yes, I was mostly in the States but 

then I got involved over here, always on the 

selling/sales side. After 2005 then there 

were four of us originally, Dave Walls, 

Dave Caig, the original designers and 

founders of the company, and then there 

was a finance guy and myself. There were 

four of us that literally split responsibilities 

and then Dave Caig retired so we bought 

back his shares. The other person remains 

as a shareholder but is no longer involved 

in the management of the company. It is 

now Dave and I and we did a further split 

of responsibilities. It works well. 

SADJ: Now that the company has a phenomenal 

military contract success rate, 

has there ever been given any thought to 

a target rifle? 

Dave: This whole time I’ve enjoyed hitting 

small targets at long range. I would think 

we could go back to our beginnings but this 

is more of a passion more than a business. 

We stayed away from assault rifles as we 

know our expertise is making accurate bolt 

action rifles. There’s no point of us trying 

to get into a market that is already saturated 

with loads and loads of companies 

making that sort of thing, trying to compete 

with people who have been making 

this stuff for years and years. We’ll stick to 

what we’re best at. 

SADJ: Where did you get the idea for the 

thumbhole? 

Dave: Target rifles. I used to shoot with 

thumbhole stocks and the angle of the 

hand was better than a traditional cranked 

wrist sort of thing. It puts the trigger in line 

so you can pull the trigger back in a direct 

line. Lots of target technology went into 

the development of that stock. A competent 

engineer with a reasonable amount of 

firearms knowledge could design a rifle but 

to design one to force someone into a good 

shooting position by the design of the stock 

is not that easy. Between Malcolm Cooper, 

Dave Caig and myself we had a vast experience 

of shooting and stock design. We’d 

come up with stocks for all different builds. 

I was the tallest, so we would modify it to 

suit me, then Malcolm was the shortest. So 

we could actually model the stock for the 

three different builds of shooting. 

SADJ: Much has been written about the 

L96’s “flat bottomed receiver.” Can you 

shed some light on this? 

Dave: There are a lot of articles that have 

been written about this, explaining the 

stress factors of the steel are stronger and 

all the tremendous mechanical advantage. 

I looked at these articles and thought to 

myself, “What a brainy guy they think I 

am!” The actual fact is that when designing 

the L96, I went to the steel rack and 

I didn’t have a round bit of metal, I only 

had a rectangular piece and everybody 

started copying it. The design turned out 

to have a lot of advantages, but they were 

tripped over by accident. One of the advantages 

is that it lends itself quite nicely to 

a double row magazine whereas if it was 

a round action, a double row magazine 

wouldn’t work as well. Another advantage 

of a square action body is bonding it on to 

the chassis. When it comes to machining, 

it makes life a lot easier because you have 

a nice flat base to hold on to, and easy to 

check because of square sides. There are 

lots of advantages to what we did, but it 

was tripped over by accident and not as 

scientific as people think. 

SADJ: What do does AI think of the Precision 

Sniper Rifle (PSR) Contract? 

Tom Irwin: The probability of winning it 

was low; we certainly tried as hard as we 

could to win and we came up with a product 

that was good enough to win. But to 

be realistic about it, I knew when you’re 

up against Remington in the USA it was 

always going to be difficult. When we won 



the British MOD contract, which became 

the L115A3, we said, “We are going to win 

this and we are not going to let anyone 

take this contract.” We’re not going to let 

some overseas company come into the UK 

with this. It would look really bad for us. 

Remington took the same position with 

the PSR contract in the United States. If 

Remington had lost that job, it would have 

been bad for them, with all of their facilities 

and home grown political support they 

get. We’ve got 10 people, including myself, 

and 4,000 square feet in the U.S. When 

you compare that to Remington’s facilities, 

we’re small fry. We didn’t expect to win it 

but what I expected to get out of it was a 

new product, and that’s what we’ve got. 

Even before the results came out, we went 

into production with that and sold over a 

hundred of them on a special limited edition 

run of the PSR contract rifle kit. It 

gave us an opportunity to get the rifle into 

full production and today we have a complete 

range of AX rifles directly as a result 

of the PSR solicitation. There are many 

features in all of our rifles, including the 

AX50, which came about because of the 

PSR contract so it helped us change our 

product range. 

SADJ: With the PSR contract, some of the 

companies were incorporating powered 

rails. What does AI think of that? 

Dave: This is the trouble with modern 

weapons; everyone wants to look like Rambo. 

It makes them feel good when they are 

carrying this stuff but it doesn’t help the 

shooter and it doesn’t make the rifle shoot 

any better. Designs are being changed really 

considerably by individuals that think 

for instance a powered rail would be a legitimate 

thing to have but when you come 

down to it from a shooting point of view, 

in some cases it’s not practical at all. For 

example, I’ve been designing a new bipod 

and I’ve been told that customers would 

like the bipod to lock solid, but I would 

say it’s better to have a certain amount of 

movement. This would be more favorable 

on lose ground when you fire a shot, one 

side of the bipod sinks in the ground. If 

you have it locked you would have to reach 

forward and unlock the bipod and lock it 

again, but with a certain amount of tension. 

But not locked you can just twisted 

the gun back to position, unfortunately 

people are saying it has to be locked. 

SADJ: How has the marketing approach 

changed in the company? 

Tom: Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, 

the marketing approach was completely 

different than today; they would not have 

been sitting here, talking to gun writers. 

There was involvement with movies and 

TV dramas but not anywhere near the 

level we are doing today. It was the same 

with articles, magazines and advertising. 

The approach was that we make the best: 

people know that and they’ll just come 

to us. They didn’t promote themselves as 

the best sniper rifle in the world. Around 

the world, with military government contracts, 

there are contractual requirements, 

which include penalty clauses, and bonds, 

which the prior management would not 

enter into. Upfront payments were a part 

of doing business back then. The main 

competitor products were customized 

hunting rifles. Now, fast forward to today. 

If you didn’t put bond money up front, 

if you didn’t sign up for penalty clauses, 

and if you tried to get upfront money, you 

would not get any contracts. Those days 

have gone! If you look at the competition, 

there are a number of companies using the 

same concept of an aluminum platform 

and several of them have flat bottomed receivers. 

Most of the competitive rifles are 

designed for tactical use and none of them 

are customized hunting rifles. There is a lot 

more competition around today. Our approach 

is to be the leader, stay ahead of the 

competition and we make the best sniper 

rifle in the world. We are not going to be 

catching up; others will catch up with us. If 

we were still making only the AW and AE 

today we would be going downhill rapidly. 

We invested in facilities, people and products 

and that is why we are at the point we 

are today, where we have no qualms at all 

in saying we make the best sniper rifle in 

the world because we believe that. 

SADJ: How has legal legislation changed 

the picture of civilian shooting in the UK 

since you began the company, in both the 

political and social aspects? 

Dave: Politically it’s almost impossible for 

a company to get into firearms manufacturing 

today, in the UK, because of all the 

government red tape. Socially the sport is 

going away. One of my friends from my 

competition days recently stepped down 

from coaching the national team and when 

I asked him why, he said, “There’s no new 

people coming into shooting, all the old 

guys like us are dying out.” and he’s absolutely 

correct. When I was young and 

in my teens, I would go down to my rifle 

club and those old guys on the range would 

teach me the finer points of rifle shooting. 

Now that generation is dead and there are 

no rifle clubs that kids these days can go 

to because they’ve all been shut down after 

the government has made it almost impossible 

to continue operation due to the 

restrictions. 

SADJ: What does the future hold for Accuracy 

International? 

Dave: Old age. (Laughter ensues...) 

Tom: Well due to the fact that we literally 

just changed our product line to the AX 

and AT, then the immediate future is making 

sure we can get the product as good 

as it can be. So for the near term future, 

which you can say is the next 5 years, that 

is our focus and right now we’re not planning 

on anything beyond that. We spent so 

much getting to this point and we’ve done 

enough to keep us growing for the short 

term. That’s where our focus is. 

SADJ: Thank you for taking the 

time to speak with us today – a truly 

amazing story. 

ACRONYMS: 

AW- Began out of the Swedish trials and 

stands for Arctic Warfare, 3 lug action. 

Later made in .338 Lapua. 

AE- Entry-level rifle for law enforcement 

agencies in 2001 as well as being an economically 

priced rifle. 

AS- AS50, semi auto .50 caliber rifle. 

AT- Improved AW. 6 lug action and quick 

release barrel with an AW action. 

AX- PSR contract rifle. AX multi caliber, 

.308 NATO, .300 Win. Mag., .338 Lapua. 

AX 308 separate. 

AICS- Accuracy International Chassis 

System, AT AICS, AX AICS, AW AICS. 

Aimed at the civilian market and upgrading 

existing law enforcement rifles either 

for the Remington 700 action or the Accuracy 

International actions. 

L96- Original company production rifle 

designated L96 in British Army and nick 

named “The Green Meanie.” Later replaced 

by the .338 Lapua L115A3. 




Advertising Directory 

108 CHIPOTLE PUBLISHING, LLC 



30 CLARION DEFENCE & SECURITY LTD. - DSEI 

112 DEFENSE & SECURITY 

5 DRD TACTICAL 

31 EMERALD EXPOSITIONS - MARINE MILITARY EXPOS 

56 EXPODEFENSA 

7 FORCIT DEFENSE 

3 GUN MOUNTIAN, LLC - PHOENIX DEFENCE 

10 HURRICANE BUTTERFLY RESEARCH COMPANY 

57 MSPO - KIELCE TRADE FAIRS, LTD 

2 POF USA 

114/115 SITDEF PERÃŠ 

109 SMALL ARMS REVIEW 

4 SMALLARMSREVIEW.COM 

64 SPYDERCO, INC. 

54 TAR IDEAL CONCEPTS LTD. 

111 TNT PRODUCTIONS - GDA 

116 TRIJICON INC. 




MACHINE GUN MEMORABILIA 

by ROBERT G. SEGEL 

Australian gold gilt and enameled veteran’s 

pin for the 2/1 Machine Gun Battalion Association’s 

50th anniversary. Enameled grey, 

black and yellow triangle insignia of the 2/1 

Machine Gun Battalion topped with a white 

enameled “50” with two Vickers machine 

guns along each side and a yellow enameled 

banner below marked “Machine Gun 

2/1 Bn. Assoc.” The rear is stamped with an 

ID member number 195 and maker marked 

Millers Ltd. Sydney. Pin back. The 2/1 means 

it was the second 1st Machine Gun Battalion 

formed during World War II. The 1st Machine 

Gun Battalion was formed in World War I. 

French CSRG Chauchat officer’s team member 

shoulder patch. Interwar period (1920s). 

Gold bullion stitched image of flaming bomb 

above a Chauchat Machine Rifle M1915 on 

a wool French Horizon Blue uniform background. 

Worn on upper left arm sleeve. 

World War I British shoulder title for the Royal Horse Guards, Machine Gun Guards. 

White stitching on red wool background with Royal Horse Guards arching over M.G.Gds. 

A very rare should title, the four Machine Gun Battalions (the three Household Cavalry 

Regiments, 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards and the 4th Battalion 

Machine Gun Guards joined and was renamed the 4th (Foot Guards) Battalion in 1918. 

Gold Coast Territorial Force machine 

gun officer’s silver plate collar badge 

(circa 1920s-1930s). White metal 

trumpeting elephant atop gold colored 

banner with “G.C.T.F.” to center 

atop silver plated crossed Vickers. 

Rear marked “Firmin London” with 

two lugs to rear. The Gold Coast was 

a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea 

in West Africa 

World War II Russian poster “Shoot To Kill!” by Nikolai 

Zhukov, 1942. Rendered by one of the major 

20th century Russian artists, this original 1942 small 

(10 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches) poster is a rare first edition 

of this widely reproduced poster. It is one of the best 

known war-time images in Russia of a determined 

Russian soldier firing the M1910 Russian Maxim. 

Additionally, from a poster collector’s viewpoint, it is 

very rare that a poster shows another poster within 

the content of the image as is done in this case with 

the poster on the wall behind the soldier. It shows 

a mother and child at bayonet point with her plea 

below, “Soldier of the Red Army - SAVE US!”

SADJ 7#3

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