Courtesy of DSA, I’m out at the range today with a Vektor CR-21 to see just how it handles compared to a regular Galil…
Semiauto pistol
Musgrave 9mm: A Gun for the Black Market
In the brief couple of years between the election of a new black-majority government in South Africa in 1994 and the dissolution of the Musgrave company, it attempted to produce a new 9mm pistol to […]
Book review
Book Review: Firearms Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa 1949-2000
FIREARMS: Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa 1949-2000 Until recently, there has been very little published information on South African and Rhodesian firearms outside of a few sporadic magazine articles – but that is no […]
Commentary
Overview of South African Gun Laws
Basic gun ownership in South Africa – what does it involve and how does it work? Dedicated collectors, sportsmen, and hunters? Self-dense and concealed carry? Well, when I was in South Africa I figured I’d […]
what SIGHT DO HAVE ON YOUR G3/CETME ?
Interesting video “I thought that looks jumpy” Then the author mentioned it, I then thought “I suppose the mass compared to a normal Galil is less balanced; towards the muzzle” Which the author then alluded to… Which as an advocate of bullpups “Increased barrel lengths” I was somewhat surprised I had not already registered that; I then remembered others had mentioned it. Some sort of bias eh on my part; closing my eyes, to whats real he he.
Ok… Heavy SA80 (Limited full auto experience) but noted, that wasn’t great at the time. Maybe that was “jumpy thus” Sooo… Em2 less/same/or more jumpy than equvilant cal non bullpup? If same/less; suggests it is overly short bullpubs Sa80/this etc, as oppose L86 type length ones albeit that had a bipod; was only a fan of that though in semi as a DMR type thing I suppose. I developed a theory it was in the wrong cal for support, but perhaps that was later; maybe it was jumpy also and I was not impressed thus, but failed to correlate the bullpup part.
Interesting anyway, to me, he he. Still quite an attractive sort of “Lazer gun” type look; if you could put a mag into it this Cr-21…
I think bullpups should have a 24+” barrel though, for them to have a purpose; said purpose being same oal as normal guns but with a longer barrel, as oppose short stumpy things that may be “jumpy” as a consequence.
Take that Sig Spear, that (furry) round would likely gain; from being in a bullpup configuaration with a longer barrel for the same oal. Yet they knocked it up as a non bullpup which I just find somewhat perplexing; That is not an “Assualt” rifle is it, semi auto only is it? So like, why not get the extra barrel length via a bullpup… Is all I mean. Anyhoo, meh. He he.
Em2, Lsw, M16 all sort of 900mm’ish; 35″ approx vs Fn Fal at 43″ which even I think is too long for practical use, yet it was used. But 35″ is it too long really? If you get some tangible benefits. Suppose what my “Sort of ponderable question” is, is; if an Sa80 had the same barrel length as an Lsw but minus the bipod etc, would/could it deliver a similar performance; a noticble improvement over the shorter barrel at range. Or is it the bipod etc on lsw, prone that makes the difference with or without the barrel; probably with, but… And with the same sights. I mean being able to pop the Chinese etc, further away seems a good idea to me given there are alot of them. For a slightly longer gun, no?
I am just going back to the Em2; I presume they thought the bullpup was an idea because you could get a longer barrel in a not overly long gun – Tick! I.e. Good. Thus how did that then turn into the stumpy fat fucking Sa80. Think housewifes in Razzle readers wives? I mean if you had a choice, why? Taller, slimmer, more graceful from say Bern in Switzerland vs a short, fat, headbutter from Middlesbrough.
Anyway it perplexes me, don’t know about you; live your own lives.
I assume that by “Em2” you mean Rifle, Automatic, caliber .280, Number 9 Mark 1, if this does not hold ignore this answer entirely.
Its’ challenger was EM-1, see 2nd image from top https://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/great-britain-assault-rifles/enfield-em-2-eng/
which was more futuristic than it, which might be influence choice.
“(…)Sig Spear(…)round(…)non bullpup(…)”
If you wish to combine high-pressure cartridge with bull-pup layout then use new Thales 6.8 x 51mm fire-arm, see photos https://soldiersystems.net/2022/10/04/land-forces-22-thales-6-8-x-51mm-prototypes/
“(…)less balanced; towards the muzzle”(…)”
Designer of 7,62-A91M elected to use over-barrel grenade launcher to move point of center of mass forward, see 1st photo from top http://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/russia-assault-rifles/a-91m-eng/
“(…)Sig Spear(…)round(…)bullpup configuaration with a longer barrel (…)”
Considering that this is new cartridge, they might design it to get stipulated ballistic using barrel short enough to fit into classic layout.
Well you can see that the bullpup version of the Spear is more, well. It has a more practical/useable overall length; and if that delivers tangible benefits… Well no brainer to me, which to use.
Over barrel grenade lark, I can see what you mean…
There’s more to a rifle than mere “compactness”.
You also have to factor in things like balance points, ease of handling controls, visibility and accessibility of the action, and a bunch of others.
Bullpups have great “compactness”. The rest? Not so much.
So long as you have to cope with ejection of a cartridge case, I don’t think the bullpup format is ever going to take off or achieve real acceptability as an actual combat weapon. All of the ejection systems I’ve seen fall down on the accessibility and simplicity issue, along with the clearance drills and all the rest. You can easily deal with most cartridge ejection and feeding problems on a conventional design quite quickly and easily. A bullpup like the F2000? Lordy-lord-lord, have mercy on me. Imagine dealing with the complex jam a friend of mine had on the range with his, under fire? Nothankyouverymuch…
There’s a use-case for the bullpup, I’m sure. I just don’t see where it might be. An awful lot of armies that have adopted them have rethought the concept in fairly short order, and I think it’ll be looked at as another one of those inexplicable fads like bayonets on light machineguns, in a couple of generations.
Figure out caseless, or some other mechanism? Then, the bullpup configuration will likely come into its own. Right now? Fuhgeddaboudit.
If you need bull-pup fire-arm which does not eject cases then use Armtech C30R https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Armtech_C30R
Apparently, there were still other issues introduced by doing away with cases…
Materials science and energetics ain’t quite there, as of yet. When they are, I suspect we’ll probably be using some other basis entirely for the small arms role… Because, that’s the way it usually goes.
“I tried it both ways…” Ian McCollum, 2023.
A dual configured weapon could make some sense, particularly for armored infantry – which is seemingly the reason all the countries who adopted bullpups did in the 1st place. Light infantry, motorized infantry could continue to use the longest of the long bois, while their armored brethren could use the same action, bbl, mags, & ammo from a much shorter bullpup configuration. Now if only someone could figure out how you could fire a bullpup THROUGH the armor of an IFV…
That was sort of the point of the M231 FPW. Which everybody quickly realized needed a brass catcher RTFN.
Then everybody realized that fireports were weak points on the Bradley’s armor, and the entire issue became moot.
What apparently never got through was the concept of “Infantry should unass the IFV and fight dispersed with the IFV hanging back to provide support”. Mainly due to too many Mech Infantry O-4s and higher with Rommel complexes.
We keep discarding what works in favor of Ideal Concepts. M2/M3 halftrack + M24 worked. M113 + M41 worked. Who cares if we stole the concept from the Germans with Panzer IV and SdKfz 251?
Sorry to state but Matilda/Valentine + Universal Carrier did not work. UC = tracked Jeep, just too small for the job.
IFV /= Tank Destroyer.
clear ether
eon
“(…)UC = tracked Jeep, just too small for the job. (…)”
If Universal Carrier is too tiny for you then use Oxford Tracked Carrier https://tank-afv.com/coldwar/UK/oxford-carrier.php
The problem was there were never enough Oxford or Windsor Carriers to go around, and what there were mostly were needed as artillery prime movers.
Lend Leased M3 halftracks were also detailed off, mainly as PMs for the 17-pdr AT gun, until Sicily when they just couldn’t get them up those hills. My uncle from Engineers gave the Canadians and British a helping hand there with his CCKW 353s.
The problem was finally solved just in time for D-Day with the Crusader Gun Tractor;
https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/material/vehicles/crusader-gun-tractor
Which was pretty much a Windsor on steroids.
cheers
eon
Said it before, so I’ll say it again: The entire “Infantry Fighting Vehicle” idea is shiite.
Never once in my entire time as an Observer/Controller did I see a tactical situation such that the infantry and the vehicle could be deployed together effectively. You either had the vehicles delivering their fires from positions where the infantry were useless and debarking them meant advancing under observation and fire, or you were moving your guns up to drop infantry where they could do some good and getting shot the hell up in the process.
Infantry does not belong with armored firepower. Period. If you’re taking them with you into the combat actions where the armored vehicles are, all they really amount to is padding for the casualty lists. If you use the armor+firepower to get them where they can do some good as infantry, then you’ve unnecessarily risked the bulk of your fires potential on delivering a peripheral (to them…) asset somewhere.
The infantry should be in a purpose-built protective vehicle that very deliberately isn’t equipped for more than local security. They should be coupled with dedicated combat vehicles that can be lower, more heavily armed, and carry more ammo than if they’re also forced to carry around a fire team’s worth of grunts, which is all they’re gonna manage these days.
The way things are evolving, anyway? They’re going to do this. The crew compartments are getting smaller and smaller; the tables of organization are de-emphasizing the infantry more and more, and it won’t be long before the vehicles are capable of carrying no more than two or three “dragoons”. Which means that basic infantry operations like occupying and taking small bits of broken ground aren’t going to be possible without bringing in outside support, which… Basically means that what I’m suggesting is going to get back-doored into operational and tactical operations anyway.
The IFV was a failed Soviet idea that we copied to “keep up with the Jones’s”. Nobody has really made it work very well, over the years. Even the Soviet heirs, the Russians? Note how most of their troops refuse to ride around actually inside their vehicles? There’s a reason for that… Which should come as a bit of a clue.
interesting observation about the bullpup versions being more jumpy
I’d previously been thinking that having the mass of the bolt moving closer to the support of the firer’s shoulder, would give less movement than if it was doing its moving 16 or so inches further out from the shoulder
I’m beginning to see that that isn’t how it seems to be working
I think there’s something else going on with these specific bullpups; what, I don’t know. The examples of the Austrian AUG that I’ve fired didn’t exhibit the same firing characteristics that the L85 did, with regards to the recoil impulse. Before now, I’d kind of attributed that to the plastic stock, but…?
I think there’s something to be said for starting from the ground up with a design; if you intend to build a bullpup, start from a clean sheet and work from there. Adapting an existing design like the AK or the AR-18 is likely to result in some oddities carrying over.
I honestly can’t think of why these rifles are exhibiting this behavior, but if it’s consistent? There has to be something going on.
There’s a lot to the subjective experience of firing a weapon that isn’t amenable to capture by instrumentation; you can, with enough experience, get to the point where you can pretty accurately diagnose what’s going wrong with a particular platform. You can also get to the point, somewhere before that, where you can “feel” something wrong, but be unable to put a finger on precisely what is going on with the weapon.
I remember a range where I was doing double-duty as the armorer and a range safety; soldier came up to me and said his rifle wasn’t shooting right. I looked at it, couldn’t find a problem right off the bat, and then did a test-fire on it. I’m two rounds into that, and I’m going “Oh, yeah… This ain’t right…”
Took a detail-strip of the rifle, but there was a chunk of brass jammed well into the gas key on top of the bolt carrier that was sorta fluttering and not allowing proper flow of gas. You could feel the rifle choking, but until I got that flake of whatever the hell it was out of the keyway, it wasn’t readily apparent that there was anything at all wrong with it. With a clean keyway, that rifle went right back to normal operation.
Quantifying a lot of these things past “It don’t feel right, Sergeant…” is difficult, a lot of the time.
I suspect as long as we have to eject cases, the bullpup is going to be a problem. even downward ejection like the S&W Light Rifle 9mm carbine of 1940 can be a problem when firing prone.
Also, every mechanism seems to have a natural frequency at which it “runs” smoothly. For the old MG34, that was about 800 R/M. The MG42 worked perfectly at 1,200. The M2HB worked like gangbusters at 450 on the tripod, 800 on the AA pedestal, but put the fixed-mount buffer in it for 650 and it better be bolted down solidly.
It seems to me that taking “conventional layout” designs like AR18 and AK and “bullpupping” them would likely result in changed resonance, with the attendant problems.
cheers
eon
At a guess, I’d surmise that the “bullpupped” weapons demonstrate those resonant changes because of where/how you’re putting the things to shoulder. There’s a hell of a difference between having that stock on there vice the back of the receiver nestling up against the shoulder pocket.
That’s where I’d start looking, anyway. One of the many things I think we could do better at would be capturing data from fired weapons; the flex of the receiver, the way that interacts with the barrel and furniture… One thing that I think makes the AK series particularly vulnerable to issues along these lines is the sheer mass of the moving parts. Stoner did his best to minimize that mass, with an eye towards accuracy and lightness. Kalashnikov, on the other hand, actually chose to include mass in the reciprocating parts as a way to ensure reliability…
Not sure who had it right, but there are the two competing schools of thought, there: It’s notable that the most “snappy” of the bullpups are the ones based on AK actions and principles, while ones like the AUG and M17 don’t seem to have quite as much of an issue with this.
I think it would be interesting to watch a full-flow “CAT scan” of what’s going on in a weapon as it fires; like a lot of the surprises you get from watching high-speed video slowed down, I bet it would be fascinating to watch the forces as they transfer and flex the parts. It’s too bad the science isn’t there, but I’m sure it will be, one day.
“(…)AUG(…)”
According to http://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/austria-assault-rifles/steyr-aug-eng/ this weapon does …uses a short piston stroke…Gas piston has its own return spring… therefore one might expect lesser distance of movement of center-of-mass point in comparison to AKM due to 1st named feature and lesser knocking when moving parts reach rearmost position.
L85 gas system is more like the AUG than the AK, yet it demonstrates a lot more of that weird recoil/muzzle flip. I think it’s more than just the mass, but I’ve no idea what.
This is one of those odd areas that aren’t well-studied or defined; the user “feels” the issue, the lab-coated wonk can’t find a logical cause, denies its existence.
It’s kinda like that deal with the weird noise in your car that you can never quite get to demonstrate itself while the mechanic is looking at it… You know it is there, but…?
There’s a lot of this stuff that is sadly still in the realm of “We just don’t know…”