United States - Forgotten Weapons

Ambient Arms EXO 5.56 Suppressor: Does it Really Stay Cool?

April 3, 2026 Ian McCollum 3

Ambient Arms has recently released a suppressor which pulls cool air into the body of the can in several places, mixing with combustion gasses to (among other things) keep the can from heating up as […]

TRW Low Maintenance Rifle: America’s Roller Locked Flechette Rifle

March 30, 2026 Ian McCollum 58

TRW’s Low Maintenance Rifle seems to have been the result of a program to use a blank slate and a modern space age scientific mindset to develop a rifle that would be more reliable and […]

M15 Automatic Rifle (aka T44E5): Adopted But Not Produced

March 23, 2026 Ian McCollum 59

When the US replaced the M1 Garand, the plan was to adopt both a select-fire infantry rifle and a heavy-barreled support weapon on the same platform. During development, both the T44 (later M14) and T48 […]

US Army M68 Close Combat Optic aka Aimpoint CompM Series

March 16, 2026 Ian McCollum 4

When Aimpoint entered the competition for a US Army standard-issue combat optic in the 1990s, they really didn’t expect to win. The other finalists were Trijicon and Meprolite, and it seems like a safe bet […]

Eugene Stoner’s Future Assault Rifle Concept (F.A.R.C.)

March 6, 2026 Ian McCollum 57

After developing the AR-15 with Armalite, Eugene Stoner worked for a number of different companies. In 1972 he cofounded Ares Inc, where he and his partners worked on a wide variety of weapons platforms. Their […]

Civil War Gwyn & Campbell Carbines (aka Cosmopolitan, Union, & Grapevine)

March 2, 2026 Ian McCollum 10

The first version of this carbine was the Cosmopolitan, designed and patented by Henry Gross in 1859 and manufactured by Edward Gwyn and Abner Campbell. It is a single-shot .52 caliber carbine that loads from […]

Reproduction GX-607 and XM-177 Moderators: Do They Work?

February 6, 2026 Ian McCollum 2

When the first carbine variants of the AR-15 were developed by Colt (the Model 607 initially, and later the XM-177E1 and XM-177E2), one of the complaints was that they were painfully loud. This should not […]

The Real T26 “Tanker” M1 Garand

January 5, 2026 Ian McCollum 11

Check out Headstamp Publishing’s extensive catalog of excellent books: https://www.headstamppublishing.com/home-forgotten The name “tanker” has been applied to shortened M1 Garand rifles for a long time and today we are looking at one of the rifle […]

Grendel P10 and its Stripper Clips at the BUG Match

January 3, 2026 Ian McCollum 34

The Grendel P10 is a .380 ACP pistol designed to use 10-round stripper clips in a fixed magazine. Specifically, it used M16 clips – the case head of .380 is nearly identical to that of […]

SAP M10: RPB Makes a Semiauto MAC-10

December 26, 2025 Ian McCollum 6

When Wayne Daniels took over control of RPB in 1978, he introduced a semiautomatic pistol version of the iconic MAC submachine gun. Called the “SAP” (Semi Automatic Pistol), there were three versions; .380, 9mm, and […]