Want to know more about the S.R.E.M. and other British bullpup rifles? Check out Jonathan Ferguson’s book on this subject, “Thorneycroft to SA80”:
https://www.headstamppublishing.com/bullpup-rifle-book
The Sniper Rifle Experimental Model (S.R.E.M.) was designed by the “Czech Section” of small arms designers who had taken refuge in the UK to escape German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The intention was to develop a scoped sniper rifle that could be fired and cycled without disturbing the shooter’s sight picture. The idea that the designers came up with was to use the pistol grip as a moving charging handle, similar to the Czech BESA machine gun already in British service.
In 1944, the Essex Engineering Works in the UK got a contract to make 22 sample S.R.E.M.s, although only 2 were actually made. Really, the whole concept was a bit of a red herring, as the recoil from 8mm Mauser (this was made in 8mm, expected the post-war the UK would be adopting it or another modern rimless round to replace the .303) would disturb the sight picture regardless of the mechanism used to cycle the action. The project was cancelled in 1945, and this example is the only known survivor today.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this rifle! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/national-firearms-centre/
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
As already noted British used said Mauser cartridge for tank machine guns, thus I wonder if they in 1944 have access to sniper-grade ammunition for that weapon? If yes how they did acquire it, if not did they attempt to test it for accuracy anyway?
Wikipedia notes British government manufacture of four types of 7.92 x 57 for the Besa MG, including Ball, AP, tracer and incendiary. I would guess that Kynoch or Eley had been producing some sporting or target rounds for the commercial market since World War One, and might produce a batch for testing of this item.
Did the British ever consider the 7.65x53mm Belgian Mauser cartridge for machine guns etc, if so how did it evaluate with the .303 and 7.92x57mm rounds?
I doubt it. The main reason they even had 7.92X57 was down to the fact that the Czechs designed the weapon around that cartridge, and they didn’t have time to figure out a redesign that could fire a rimmed cartridge.
The BESA was more a case of “Yeah, we gotta have something quick…” than anything else. Which is why it went the way of the Dodo not long after the war ended…
Specialized low-volume sniper ammo is such a massive non-issue in a nation with a functional arms industry that it isn’t even funny. Kynoch had been churning out 7.92X57 ammo for the African hunting trade almost since the day the cartridge was type-standardized, just as they did with 7X57 Mauser.
The thing I find interesting about these rifles is how the philosophy behind them shifted once reliable semi-automatics like the AR-10 came on the scene; also, what a genius Stoner was. Alone among the various 7.62X51 offerings, the Armalite was almost already a decent mid-range sniper rifle. Granted, it only took a couple of decades for the various idiot military procurement people to take note of that fact, but here we are. Just about everyone has issued a 7.62X51 variant of the AR-10 as their go-to mid-range sniper’s weapon, and the various bolt-action offerings out there are in things like .338 Norma for the really long-range shots. I think that the idea of a quick follow-up shot was valid, and it was only the lack of a really smoothly operated mechanism like that of the AR-10 that killed the idea.
Frankly, I find the idea of a moving pistol grip on a precision weapon to be extremely disturbing, even just trying to imagine that. On an MG, maybe not a big deal, but on a weapon where you need the intimacy and control? It’s an issue I think I’d have trouble with. Far better for them to have gone with something like the K-31, just not operated with the primary control hand.
After reading The Ultimate Sniper by John Plaster, and then other sources (some going back to the Napoleonic wars), I came to the conclusion that what was needed was a Unified Theory of Sniping. Because no two military formations, and not even no two people “in the MOS”, agreed on what the Hell a “sniper” was or what he was supposed to be doing.
Was he a military scout? If he was, he shouldn’t be shooting at anybody or anything; that attracts attention, which is not a good thing if you want to get back with what you learned.
Was he an artillery forward observer? Again, he shouldn’t be shooting.
Was his task to eliminate enemy officers? This version goes back the franc-tireurs (Literally “free shooters”) of the post-Revolutionary French armies, and is probably the most basic form of “sniping” there is. As James Burke put it in Connections (1979);
“The job of these musketeers was to act as individual marksmen, and to harry the enemy formation from whatever position they chose. They could take cover as they saw fit, advance or retreat as the situation demanded. As soon as their efforts had created maximum confusion in the enemy lines, the giant mass of men behind them would advance and literally roll over the opposing forces by the virtue of sheer weight of numbers.”
–Connections, p. 230
Actually, calling them “musketeers” is a misnomer, as they were generally armed with sporting rifles taken from the gunrooms of nobles who no longer were around to argue the point. A policy that surfaced again in Germany twelve decades later.
During the American Civil War, “sniping” meant sharpshooters. And Berdan’s regiment was pretty much all there was. Confederate “sniping” was as disorganized and a capella as most everything else in the South. When the CSA did get around to trying to organize it, copying Berdan’s doctrine, it was too little, too late.
Sniping pretty much did not exist again until the First World War. Partly due to a lack of areas where it could be effective, but mostly because nobody in command thought it worth bothering with. The nearest anybody came to it was the siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), and there it was again mainly an unorganized affair.
Sniper “training” was instituted by first the British, then the Germans, and finally the Americans in World War One. The result, in both tactics and optics, was so unsatisfactory that the result was John Unertl Sr. emigrating to the U.S. from his native Hungary in 1919 and creating his own company to manufacture telescopic sights that would “get it done”. They were good enough that two decades later, German Army and especially SS snipers preferred pre-war imported Unertl scopes to the best that German firms like Herrlitz and Voightlander could make.
During World War Two, there was almost no organized sniper training, anywhere. The Russians made a big thing of sniping for propaganda purposes, but their effect in combat was minimal. And PS, the Great Stalingrad Sniper Duel between
Vasili Zaitsev and Erwin Koenig never really happened, because there was never a real “Erwin Koenig” to begin with. (Take that, Enemy at the Gates.)
The U.S. forces have followed the same pattern repeatedly since 1941. Get into a war, realize that snipers are needed, create a training program, use OTS rifles and optics- and once the war is over, forget about it and don’t bother allocating any resources to it. It sounds bad, and it is, but it’s also the way every other army does it, if they do “sniping” at all.
The USMC Scout/Sniper training cycle is more about the “scout” side than the “sniper” side. You really don’t get actual high-skill-level snipers out of it; just good enough shots to win at Camp Perry, which doesn’t have much to do with actual sniping.
To see how the U.S. Army handles it even today, look up Chris Kyle. Again, it’s basically individual initiative.
Military sniping is an ephemeral thing that almost nobody bothers to even try to understand. Ultimately, pretty much every formation falls back on noticing who the best rifle shots are in AIT, and asking them “would you like to be a sniper?”
Maybe that’s the least-worst way of doing it, at that.
clear ether
eon
Good to see others are underwhelmed by “Enemy at the Gates.”
It’s about like any Hollywood effort…
Theater kids should never, ever be allowed to do anything portraying actual historical events. They will always distort everything in the name of drama and “ain’t it cool”.
Because of this, if you go into anything produced by said theater kids expecting to see anything remotely close to real history, you’re the rube in that transaction. Sad, but true. I have never once seen anything that rang true to me, in terms of portraying the realities of military life or war. About the closest anything came that I can remember was Hamburger Hill, and even that was questionable. Guys who were there will give the movie props for making the attempt, but they will also tell you that it didn’t capture all the reality very well at all.
E.at the Gates was not an Hollywood effort, still, some “facts” are irritable, as the famous 2 man 1 rifle opening scene;
I liked war movies at the era, but the dubious impact of it was that I’ve seen it only once, when it was recent on VHS (or it was a TV broadcast? cannot remember) almost 25 years ago, and had no wish to ever rewatch it.
The reviews at the time were also so-so.
“(…)During World War Two, there was almost no organized sniper training, anywhere.(…)”
Please explain why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Women%27s_Sniper_Training_School does not count as organized sniper training.
It counts as organized propaganda theater, like most things the Russian Army did back then.
Plaster attributed a lot of things to Russian Army “sniper doctrine” that just were not real. Ultimately, the Russian Army was as clueless about sniping as everybody else.
The bayonet mount on the business end of the SVD rather underlines that point.
cheers
eon
“(…)Plaster(…)”
I do not know how this building material is involved there, but I found actions of Кольчак hard to classify of being just organized propaganda theater
https://vk.com/@soldiers_of_fortune-centralnaya-zhenskaya-shkola-snaiperskoi-podgotovki-v-podols for example
Шаг за шагом, иногда рискуя жизнью, под огнём противника изучал Кольчак боевую работу воспитанниц и свои недостатки, недоработки. По возвращении в Москву он дополнил программу обучения снайперов многими элементами, подмеченными на фронте, составил памятку “12 заповедей снайпера”. Документ сразу получил признание у командиров рот, взводов, отделений, политработников. Это был пример той оперативности, которая была присуща Кольчаку.
that is
Кольчак risking his life, under enemy fire, found experience and identified lacks. This what then used to prepare 12 заповедей снайпера pamphlet, which was highly appreciated by commanders.
@Daweo,
eon is referring to the author of that book he referenced in his first book, John Plaster.
Bayonet good idea; everone involved, charge! Kill the enemy. Bayonets are good, thats why the British keep them. Your Yankee “Rabble” would benefit from adopting them again, properly if we are going to fight Russians. They’ll use them, unlike the Taliban.
Revolver bayonets ww1 everyone “Involved” to kill.
@eon,
If there was one consistent factor across all the various and sundry Infantry/Armor formations I ever supported in the US Army?
They didn’t know how to use support elements or even their own organic assets like sniper sections.
Every time, we’d go to their staff meetings, and all we’d hear from them is Infantry this, Infantry that, and “Well, I guess we have to take you with us…” You’d go to the exercise with you, and about all the average commander could come up with for his Engineer elements were to have us clanking along at the rear of the formations while they moved with elan and Patton-like vigor across the countryside. The whole time, we’d be talking to their ADA, their snipers, and everyone else who was along for the ride, pointing out the insanity of it all. We were literally used as bait, on more than one occasion, or sent in ahead of the Infantry guys in order to trigger ambushes.
The perennial complaint of the sniper sections was that “Nobody knows how to use us…”, and the one time I ran into an Infantry commander who was a former sniper section leader himself and who knew exactly how to use his snipers…? The sniper section was run by a super-inept junior officer and an utter dolt of a senior NCO, who couldn’t get out of their own way.
I think that the way the US Army does things, by having organic slice elements that only marry up with maneuver elements for training exercises or deployments is problematical. The major issue is that the key leaders of the major maneuver units don’t have the opportunity or the incentives to learn how to use his combined-arms slice elements past the “Tanker/Infantry” level, and its a major detractor.
Now, the other school of doing that crap is the one espoused by the Soviets, wherein every little element is a unitary combined arms team, where the commander has all his stuff, all the time, in garrison and in the field. This seems like it might be better, but the reality is, from what has been related to me by veterans of those sorts of formations, that all anyone ever does is play infantry; specialized skills are hardly ever trained effectively or well. You could kind of see that with some of the Russian failures early on in Ukraine.
You’re in a Hobson’s choice situation, if you’re the commander of these units. Either you learn to use the slice guys effectively, or you don’t, and hardly anyone ever sees the results of “not learning” until the shooting starts, and then it’s all of a sudden OJT time.
Biggest laugh I ever had was one of the assholes we used to work for during training going into Bosnia as a company commander, a guy who’d never treated his Engineers as anything other than an impediment and burden, come up to me at the National Training Center when he was a staff officer and I was an Observer/Controller. Once he confirmed that yes, I was one of his former Engineer bubbas, he actually apologized to me for how he’d behaved towards us back when we were supporting him. He’d apparently had a “Come to Jesus” moment in Bosnia, and having realized what he was screwing up, he was now a huge believer in combined arms.
His snipers still complained about being misused, though…
And, to be honest? I’m unsure if there really is an effective doctrinal solution to “sniper operations”, mainly because if you do everything that the snipers want, then it becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog. About like EOD and the way they think they’re gods on the scene whenever there’s something going on involving them, never mind the overall tactical situation.
The US Army does not do “Everybody play nice together” very well. There are all these stovepiped organizational structures out there that think they’re the most important thing going, and they refuse to act like they aren’t. Some of the EOD guys I worked with and around were great, but some others were total prima donna assholes who thought they outranked the Area of Operations commanders they worked for, refusing to acknowledge that they were supporting operations and not the sole point of said operations…
In the Seventies, the various police departments who came down with SWAT Envy all wanted “Countersnipers”. There was even an article that became their bible, called “The Science of Killer Control”- in the August 1972 issue of Guns and Ammo. I’m reasonably sure it was Plaster’s starting point for the half of his book about police sharpshooters.
Everybody referenced the New Orleans Howard Johnson’s case as Case Zero. Not realizing that like the University of Texas- Austin case in 1966, it was a black swan event. Put simply, very few deranged individuals with guns behave that way.
The Las Vegas mass attack in Oct 2017 was more typical. Except that few such individuals try to do it from a fifth-floor window.
“Police countersniping” tried to adapt military sniper doctrine to police tactical team support. It failed miserably because nobody grokked that there has never been a consistent military sniping doctrine, and anyway SWAT can’t call in arty or CAS, which has always been the FO’s final word on the matter.
In the end, SWAT or whatever it’s called today has boiled down to “let’s play soldier with all the fancy toys”. They still don’t really understand WTF the mission is, let alone how to go about it.
Of course today, every cop in a cruiser is armed and armored up like the Third Herd.
To judge by the tattoos I see on arms, some of them may even know how to use the equipment. In Fallujah.
On a street in an American city or out on the four-lane, no so much.
clear ether
eon
I spent a bunch of time in close proximity to an Infantry NCO who’d spent the majority of his career doing things like sniper, recon, light infantry, and Ranger. Very cool guy to just be around, everything was a lesson and he had a lot to teach…
That said, with all that experience? His funniest take on everything “sniper” was how he and everyone else in his sniper element bitched incessantly about being “misused an misunderstood”, a perennial complaint of theirs.
Then, one day, completely out of the blue, he got put in charge of the section and started attending staff meetings during a pre-deployment run-up to a major exercise area, the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He was suddenly “the man”, and since he had extensive light experience and all that in a unit that was “mech infantry” specialized (they were going to JRTC in order to train up for Bosnia…), he was suddenly in demand and listened to. So, for the entire train-up and rotation into JRTC, he was a Staff Sergeant acting as a Sergeant First Class, one level up, and since the officer who was supposed to be in charge of snipers wasn’t around (school, I think…), he was literally “da Man” for the entire thing.
As he ruefully related it, a couple of years later, the whole thing remained just as messy as it had always been, just as dysfunctional. Mostly because the things he and the other snipers had mistaken for “neglect and stupidity” about how to use them were actually more systemic problems with “OK, how do we get the snipers into a position where they can do their jobs, and how do we do command and control…?”
His favorite story about that deployment was how he and one of his sniper teams spent days working their way into position, being stealthy all the while, to do some overwatch on a big meeting between the Coalition forces and the local militia. Day of, they get walked up on by the local kids, after the whole thing is over, they get walked up on by the local kids who’re looking for the usual stuff they were used to getting from GIs. They’d apparently been “made” from the minute they’d dropped off the back of the trucks that’d been used to drop them off in the area, and the only reason they hadn’t been visited by the kids earlier was because the militia leaders had told everyone to leave the nice Americans alone until the meeting was over…
He said he learned two things from that: One, that we needed to do one hell of a lot better at training for work in an environment where there were a lot of civilians wandering around, and two, playing “Sneaky Pete” was a lot harder than it looked.
In any event, the rueful admission he had to make to me was that life wasn’t necessarily better for snipers with a real sniper running things… A lot of the problems they face are just friction of trying to integrate two very different styles of operation.
Cops as snipers…? Can’t really speak to that, although I will freely acknowledge that there is a circle there to be squared: The US is woefully lacking in some sort of force like the Gendarmeries of Europe, a police/security force midway between calling in the Army/Marines and the local beat cop. If we ever have a Mumbai- or Beslan-like event in this country, we’re going to feel the lack of this sort of thing badly. Note the issues they had getting local cops to go after that kid-killer in Texas; that wasn’t necessarily the individual cops at fault, but it did show up a systemic problem with relying on those sorts of men and training to get the job done.
I guarantee you that there’s nobody out there, today, in the National Guard who has thought through and prepared themselves for dealing with a Mumbai-style attack. There won’t be, until it’s too damn late, because nobody sees the need.
Personally, I think the FBI ought to be replaced with a semi-Gendarmerie that has the tools and dedicated manpower for the quasi-military operations that such things as Mumbai call for. How you’d work it? No idea, but there has to be something stood up and ready, or a lot of people are going to wind up dying.
I think it’d be a good idea for there to be regional Federal forces that mostly consisted of local cops seconded to their jobs in those forces, rotating in for experience and training. The Feds can’t do anything outside of an emergency unless the local judiciary and law enforcement ask for help, and have to be accompanied by them, so as to prevent the things that the arrogant FBI has become famous for. Something like SLED, I suppose… The cops we got from them in Iraq were pretty impressive dudes, and didn’t seem to be like the FBI agents, at all. Everyone ought to be sourced from actual beat cops, so they retained some damn common sense… The lateral promotion of guys coming in from college? Nope, no, and nope again: You need to have the humility and have paid the tuition you only get from actual street experience.
Or, so I think from where I sit.
@ Kirk;
We’re on the same page of badly off-key music here.
U.S. law enforcement has been trying to get a handle on this subject (which we cannot call by name because the posting system won’t allow it) since the 1970s. Munich ’72 was the inciting incident, when somebody realized that there really was a “network” that did this sort of thing.
(P*O does a “favor” for B***k Sept., R***o S******n does one for P*O, B***k Sept. in return does one for RS, and so on.)
Unfortunately, all their efforts ended up with the kind of dog-and-pony show John Ringo described in his novel A Deeper Blue. Forty-eleven different little “Central Commands” run by NG colonels who think they can solve all the problems by talking them to oblivion;
I can think of a lot more than one “issue” in that paragraph, and yes, I have had to sit through literally hours of such “buzzword bingo” IRL.
Everybody wants to “deconflict” without actually hurting anybody. Like Bradford Dillman as Capt. McKay in The Enforcer (1976), their mantra is “I didn’t tell you to use violence!”
That’s where “they” laugh at you- just before You Know What.
I suspect the “lockdown” stupidity did have one “good” side effect. It pretty much put paid to indoor shopping malls. If not for that, at least one if not more would likely already have been the scene of a major “incident” as described in The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy. Malls were inherently “target-rich” environments.
Today, I expect cruise ships to be the most likely venues for such “incidents”, like the Achille Lauro only more so.
As for a quasi-military group that could actually do the job, we already have one. It’s called the U.S. Marshal Service.
We really just need to “disestablish” several of the Three Letter Agencies and give the Marshals their budget.
But don’t make them accept those agencies’ personnel.
The personnel are the problem with those agencies.
cheers
eon
I can remember sitting in some of those interminable staff meetings where you could play “buzzword bingo”, and since I was reading a memoir by a French officer who had gone through the 1940 campaign as a staff officer…?
Let’s just say that the parallels on display were highly disturbing. You could read a passage describing what was going on, look up at the people around you as they discussed the latest “staff action plan”, and… Yeah.
The biggest complaint I had about my time in the service was how networking and computers in general enabled the forces of evil, in the form of that sort of staff officer who delights in formatting documents and twitting others for improperly format work. Time was, it was effectively impossible to micro-manage; with the implementation of computers, micro-managing crap became not only possible, but endemic. Leadership by walking around got replaced by leadership via memo and email; nobody ever came out to actually check on things anymore, being ensconced in their offices behind a screen and keyboard.
This is something that I understand is also a “thing” out in civilian life, both in business and governance. The temptation to live and “manage” at a remove, through a mediated reality produced by the screen, is something we’re going to have to deal with in the future. Either that, or someone is going to find the remnants of our civilization buried beneath a heap of computer-aided stupidity.
I’d love to be able to take some of the Operations Orders I used to have to help produce and run them through something like ChatGTP, just for grins and giggles. My suspicion is that the verbiage would choke any AI out like the Boston Strangler, and then said AI would either go insane or throw up its little hands and surrender…
@Kirk 2;
“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster.
https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
Written in 1909, but I believe accurately predicts where we’re going to end up.
cheers
eon
My take on that whole “Machine Stops” sort of thing is that the real problem is that we haven’t really adapted to the use of computers and networking at all well. I was around to observe the early days of it in the Army, and the one thing I remember about the initial stages was “What the hell is this good for…?”
The syndrome is fairly well developed; they can get the information, so they demand it. Never mind whether or not they can do anything useful with it, by God, we want it.
So, you wind up in an informational spiral; track this, track that, and before long, all the lower levels of leadership are more worried about gathering information to satisfy the insatiable demands of higher.
Which means that they themselves cannot do their jobs… The follow-on of which is that the lower levels of an organization become increasingly dysfunctional at doing anything at all, let alone their purported functions.
Swear to God, you sometimes got the feeling that your primary purpose as a soldier standing on the line with everyone else was to provide data to the staff, never mind actually accomplishing anything positive. You spent more time filling out reports than you did turning wrenches in the motor pool, and instead of being out there on the line helping junior mechanics and mentoring, the most experienced guys wound up sitting all day in interminable meetings about maintenance, rather than actually… Y’know… Doing it.
It only increased in velocity as the computer penetrated things. In the early days, we had just one GRiD laptop in the company HQ, and that was used to do basic word processing and tracking of rosters. Some training scheduling was done on it, but not a lot.
Further we got into it, the more that was demanded of us, and the less sense it actually made. I mean, OK… We can program training out six weeks in advance, right? But, what the hell happens when something changes at the last minute? Before, when it was done on mimeograph machine, it was far more ad-hoc, and you had a lot more leeway as a junior leader to make sensible changes to things based on events. Then, when the computers came in, it was all “You’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing…”, which often just didn’t make a lick of sense. I mean, OK… I’ve got myself and my driver left, today, when I’m supposed to be doing a squad-level task training event. Everyone else is either at sick call with dire cases of the flu, or doing odd jobs for the Post Commander, as mandated by our divisional HQ. How the hell am I supposed to train a squad that isn’t there…?
You may imagine that when that state of things was discovered and investigated by the Deputy Divisional Commander, it did not go over at all well. However, that was the representative of the same system that locked our training schedules into iron-clad straight-jackets, soooo… It was just a tad hypocritical for him to go find my commander and chew his ass.
There’s a book to be written about what I’d term “Information Discipline”. The Army had a concept called “Supply Discipline”, wherein you weren’t supposed to request more than you really needed or could use; a similar mindset needed to be implemented after the computer came in, because the lack of restraint in that arena led to a hell of a lot of problems.
I think similar problems abound throughout everything; medical documentation, for example. My local clinic has more time and more people devoted to paperwork than they really have doing health care, and it’s all down to documentation for the insurance people and government than it is anything else. You have to wonder just how much of the economy is basically filling out unneeded paperwork and moving it around…
@Kirk 3;
Early in my chequered career, I actually did a pie chart of my workload on a typical case. It broke down like this;
Time
10% Scene processing and evidence acquisition
15% Evidence processing in laboratory
20% Court testimony (not including time spent waiting to be called to the stand)
55% “Documentation” (Paperwork)
And that was when the only computers around were IBM mainframes programmed in FORTRAN with punch cards.
Judging by the recent BS I’ve been through with my insurance company, I conclude it’s worse now.
clear ether
eon
Quicker 2nd shots maybe it was, less a “Sniper” more DMR idea, in an era of open sights.
Watching this, I kept thinking of the similarities to the modern (well, 25-year old) Sommer & Ockenfuß (Ockenfuss) Griffrepetierer bullpup rifle which had a similar method of cycling the bolt, using the pistol grip. It has a substantially strong bolt lock-up, robust receiver, which allowed it to be chambered in several hefty cartridge options.
It was also very accurate – however, what killed it was a goofy/clunky grip safety mechanism, and that the trigger stayed stationary in its seated place as the cycling grip and trigger guard went forward and back around it through a slot cut out for the trigger. The side magazine insertion and seating process was equally clunky in certain cartridge options, while others worked fine. The contraption as a whole could be quite awkward, lacking intuitive/instinctive long-honed gun operational and handling norms.
Probably 1000 to 2000 manufactured between years 1998 and 2000.
For some reason, default or for the love of the weird and odd, seeing ‘curio & relic’ being made in real-time – I ended up with 4 different variants of the gun years ago, in 4 different cartridges, for pennies on the dollar as people were ditching them when the U.S. ‘Assault Weapon Ban’ initiated in 1994 has sunset in year 2004. All 4 are like new in the box, because it’s just not something you are going to take the range and run it through its paces.
It would certainly make a good subject to analyze for a ‘Forgotten Weapons’ episode and even link it to this one!!! – HK
Judging by this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nqtu6djyVg
It first of all has the drawback of most bullpups, being a right-shoulder-only proposition.
Second, when operating its bolt by that pistol grip, you have to change your grip every time to avoid engaging the grip safety. And incidentally, that’s the only safety on the rifle, so when it goes into battery it’s “off safe” and ready to fire.
Another problem? If in rapid fire you forget to take your trigger finger out of the trigger guard every time, you’re going to get it trapped between the guard (which moves) and the trigger (which doesn’t). A setup more like the old Winchester Model 88 lever-action (or the even older Besa HMG) would have made more sense from a safety standpoint.
As for the calibers, the one in the video was apparently a 7x64mm Brenneke, which is an odd choice in 1998-2000, even in Europe. I’d say .308 Winchester or even .30-06 would have been a better all-around choice.
It might be a technical tour de force, but as practical sporting or anything-else rifle?
Very questionable.
cheers
eon
Anyone know anything about hydrogen fuel cells? “Condensed, if you do; as I don’t.” Is americium 241 not, Hydrogen gas… In away?
Could be a thing that, aye… Bayonets, bagpipes, Russians. Once more. Stand and fight! A different world. Not a good one; but certainly possible… Not a world for Ar’s held by trannys, who expect a cyber attack. No. Anyway, timing, we’ll see.
Trained troops eh, Russians… Trained’ish now eh, compared to us; with being trained about 20 odd years of shit.
Hmm…
My “Mate” Vlad doing something evil, preparing all his troops for an actual war; well anyway in the days of the founding fathers I think as puritan but non conformist it would have been Rhode island for me; folks are going to have tranny birds no point getting upset about it, what? I am being banished from Connecticut. Tut, one day somebody in Pennsylvania will use lightening to electrocute Turkeys and appear on our banknotes. I’d say.