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The Small Arms Thread, Part 8: 2018; ICSR to be replaced by US Army with interim 15mm Revolver Cannon.


Khand-e

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Because countries like Vietnam, Pakistan, and Venezuela have dedicated industrial bases centered around that cartridge and don't want to change.

I was speaking to a Finn the other day about how they'd have to switch to 5.56mm NATO (among other things) if Finland were to become a full time NATO member, he said they should just make 7.62x39mm a NATO standard round. It took me a while to explain whyour this was a bad idea and would never happen.
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I was speaking to a Finn the other day about how they'd have to switch to 5.56mm NATO (among other things) if Finland were to become a full time NATO member, he said they should just make 7.62x39mm a NATO standard round. It took me a while to explain whyour this was a bad idea and would never happen.

 

Finland is actually one that has no strong attachment to the round, I think. They were set to switch to SCARs until recently, when they decided upgrading the bombproof Rk. 62 would be more economical.

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12565549_1020608414665419_20646414860827

 

AKS-74U (Krinkov) competitors in trials (early 1970s).

Most notable ones are MA by Dragunov which used polymer (!) receiver, TKB-0116 by Stechkin which used short recoiling barrel operation with rotating barrel lockup and "Smerch" which is a very efficient bullpup ... it managed to fit a full length AK-74 barrel into Krinkov overall length
.

 

(Stolen from some random dude's facebook. Miles Vining shared it)

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Shockingly, LoooSeR posted some pictures and videos of the internal workings of some of these weapons in this thread over a year ago:
 

 

http://weaponland.ru/load/malogabaritnyj_avtomat_dragunova_ma/21-1-0-661

 

It is gas-operated. Interesting thing about design is that bolt carrier and bolt are moving on a rail, attached to top 'dust cover'.

 

MA-3.jpg

 

MA-7.jpg

 

 

 

 

Dragunov's MA compact automatic carabine. 

 

 


I've never seen a picture of the Smerch that isn't a mockup.

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It is far more detailed than Sam Pikula's book. Ironically, the author notes that he wasn't able to find a copy of the Pikula book.

Yes, I spoke with him about that, and he said he wasn't worried that he didn't have Pikula's book, because he used the source material Pikula's book was based on,

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I'd say that Pikula was harder on ArmaLite's management, and justifiably so.  Was the Ordnance Corps playing dirty at times?  Undoubtedly, but that doesn't explain why the early AR-10 prototypes would go on to fail in other tests, spectacularly so in Nicaragua.  George Sullivan comes off as a snake-oil salesman with gimmicks like Sullalloy (standard 7075).  He routinely tried to steal credit from his designers like Gene Stoner and Art Miller, and he didn't even have the decency to quit his day job at Lockheed.  In later years, he even used Lockheed's corporate resources to try to market the AR-18.  You get the impression that A-I and Colt felt that they had been misled into buying underdeveloped designs.  

Using Mel Johnson as their representative probably closed more doors to ArmaLite than it opened.  Johnson had a notorious reputation for going off on test personnel when test weapons performed poorly.  Stoner confirmed that such an incident occurred when the AR-10's sleeved barrel burst at Springfield.  Frankly, I suspect that some cases of ill behavior by various test centers were acts of retaliation for Johnson's own antics.  ArmaLite's public PR campaign, complete with shameless influence peddling between Richard Boutelle and Curtis LeMay, probably had some in Army Ordnance wondering if they were not going to see a repeat of the Garand v. Johnson dustup of the pre-WW2 era.

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