The CMP Board of Directors has discussed at length how the sales of 1911s would be handled, if the CMP were to ever receive them from the United States Army.

Our recent series of articles on submachine guns and semi-auto carbines that have come out from ForjasTaurus during the past few years comes to an end with the .40 S&W CTT40C, apparently still in production and in service with some State LE agencies, including those of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina.  Its designation comes from Carabina Tática Taurus 40 Compacta (Taurus Tactical Carbine 40 Compact), but it is, essentially, an SMT40 submachine gun firing in the semi-auto mode, only. So, the “Tactical” features the same dimensions (barrel length, 200mm – 6 grooves, RH twist, 1:420mm pitch; max overall length, 760mm; length with stock folded, 470mm; sight radius, 270mm) and weighs 3.3kg with an empty magazine. Other design details, common to the subgun variant, will be shown in the many captioned photos that follow in this closing assessment.

Recently on The Firearm Blog we talked about one of the great might-have-beens, the German caseless G11 rifle developed by Heckler & Koch during the 1970s and 1980s. Today we have a video from 1990 filmed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds of a demonstration of the G11K2 on the firing range.

As I’m sure you’re already aware the M17 replaces the M9 pistol over the next decade or so. The 101:st Airborne just laid hands on their new pistols and the Screaming Eagles are the first to shoot them.

It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed thinking about small arms. I’m trying to put everything out of my mind so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning, go to the range, and bring you some raw ballistic data. So of course what pops into my head is an almost complete article about just why the Army’s latest whizzbang rifle program is doomed to collapse in a heap. All I have to do is write it.

Is the US Army pushing for a new high-powered 6.Xmm caliber with their new NGSAR program? Recently, the listing for the NGSAR industry day in December was updated with a document describing in part the agenda of the second conference. Scheduled for 9:45 in the morning in the document is a 15 minute long presentation on “Ammunition Data – Surrogate Projectile and Specs”, presented by Todd Townsend, David Charowsky, and Mark Minisi. Minisi’s name may not be well-known, but it will be familiar to astute students of recent wound ballistics literature: It was Minisi who developed the finite element analysis-based tissue damage model, which has been refined over the past decade at ARDEC through PM Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS). Mr. Townsend is also likely representing PM-MAS, now under the leadership of Colonel Hector Gonzalez. 

The first holster to be issued with the US Army’s new Modular Handgun System, including both the M17 and M18 pistols, will be a variant of the Safariland 7TS holster, featuring both ALS and SLS locking systems. The holster is the first of at least three holsters to be procured as part of the MHS program, to be followed by a variant that accommodates an aiming laser/light module, as well as a concealed holster for the M18 compact variant. The holster was procured through the tailored logistics program, and the vendor selected for its ability to meet MHS’s timeline, according to a Military.com article written by Matthew Cox.

The US Army has announced a decision to field the M17 MHS as a sidearm to more soldiers than were previously issued M9 handguns. Where previously only senior leadership were authorized to carry handguns, with the new M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System squad and team leaders will be authorized. The move is intended to give those leaders greater flexibility in close quarters battle. Military.com reports:

Fortunately for the former, Cimarron has added another choice to their 1851 Percussion Revolver lineup: The 1851 Navy “Laser Engraved”.  Per Cimarron:

Together with the previously-described SMT9 (9x19mm) and SMT40 (.40 S&W) submachine guns, Forjas Taurus also created more compact versions of both, a really simple affair involving the use of a shorter (165mm instead of 200mm) barrel, with no flash hider, fitted to very same weapon body. The stockless guns, designated SMT9C and SMT40C, had an overall length of 410mm, empty weight being 2.6kg. All basic features were maintained, such as the firing modes (semi-auto, full-auto, and 2-round bursts), sight radius, Picattiny rails, etc. They were ready by 2011

You’ve heard the old saying “everything old is new again”. Well, that applies to the tried and true Remington 870 shotgun. The 870 is probably the most popular police shotgun ever. Remington has given the 870 a facelift with several new magazine fed models which would serve just about any shotgunners needs.

Tactical flashlights worn on the wrist, known as wristlights by SureFire, have continued to develop since TFB first reported on them in 2013. At that time, the adornment was little more than a flashlight with a max output of 180 lumens with a steep initial price of $495. That particular light-only variant evolved significantly in both quality and consumer price – now seen on SureFire’s website for $169.

Whatever the next infantry small arms configuration is, I hope it does away with the failure that is the belt-fed Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). Why? Let’s talk about it.

In this episode of TFBTV, James gives you an overview of the Molot VEPR-12-04. This gun is unique in that it is a factory-configured short barrel shotgun, and it isn’t being imported into the United States anymore. James takes one out to the Nevada desert along with a representative from FIME Group, the Vegas-based importer of these shotguns.

Due to Smith & Wesson’s recent  acquisition of Crimson Trace it didn’t take a crystal ball to predict that we’d be seeing more Crimson Trace accessories bundled with Smith & Wesson products, and this example falls into that category.

Every year, the historical firearms reviewing wizards at C&Rsenal create a  high quality educational firearms poster. [Note: This fund-raiser expires on Wednesday, December 6th 2017]. This is the 4th-such poster produced by C&Rsenal, two having been done for the WWII era, and now two for the WWI era. If you ask me, they keep getting better.

On November 8th, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the organization that houses the excellent Cody Firearms Museum, announced that Timney Triggers has decided to donate $500,000 to CFM’s reconstruction effort.

Following its long bi-national design-origin experience with Italy (Beretta) and Chile (FAMAE) in the manufacture and marketing of submachine guns, Forjas Taurus finally decided that it was high time to go ahead and walk alone. The whole thing appears to have started in 2002, when the first of a series of computer-generated design configurations began to take shape within the Engineering Department at the company’s facilities in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State. Gradual design refinements involving both the mechanical and the ergonomics aspects of the new guns finally led to the first glimpse at the first prototypes in 2010, with more detailed views and information becoming available during the 2011 and 2012 editions of the LAAD Defense Exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro. Official Brazilian Army product certification was granted in 2011, thus leading the way to production start up and sales of the SMT9 (9x19mm) and SMT40 (.40 S&W) models. Yes, the designation comes from SubMetralhadora Taurus (Taurus Sub Machine gun).

In the comments section of my recent Brief Thoughts article regarding caseless ammunition, there was a discussion about whether the cookoff issues of caseless would also be problem for LSAT-style polymer cased telescoped ammunition. Based on conversations I have had with subject matter experts regarding polymer cased ammunition in general, I noted that a lower cookoff threshold is one of the challenges I would expect CT ammunition developers to face. However, after some back-and-forth in the comments, I decided to contact LSAT/CTSAS program officer Kori Phillips regarding this issue (as it was not something I covered in my three-part interview with her), and she kindly agreed to allow her comments on the matter to be published here on TFB. They are below:

The US Army’s embattled CSASS program has moved forward slightly with a sources sought notice posted to the Fed Biz Opps website, seeking manufacturers who can make many of the accessories that equip the M110A1 rifle. The notice isn’t itself for a contract, but will help determine which manufacturers are able to provide a second source production capability for CSASS accessories.

The US Army will be holding a second Industry Day for its Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle program, which seeks to replace the M249 light machine gun with a new longer-ranged, lower signature automatic rifle. The Industry Day will be held at Picatinny Arsenal on December 12th and 13th. The Army is also accepting white papers concerning NGSAR by January 16th, 2018. The updated NGSAR listing is available here.

Those who expected the slump in the gun market to extend to the buyingest day in the year will be surprised: Black Friday, November 24 shattered the record for most NICS checks in a single day by over 17,000, reports USA Today. The total? 203,086 background checks processed, up from 185,713 in 2016 and 185,345 in 2015.

A warning against romanticism in military planning.

In episode two of a three part series for TFBTV, James shows TFB readers and viewers his H&K MP5 and SIG MPX and compares each to the other. Both of these pistol caliber carbines are configured in short-barrel-rifle format. Both of them are 9mm. Both of them have roots with respected manufacturers. But each of them has a few tricks up its sleeve that the other doesn’t. However, today, James tells us five ways that the H&K MP5 is superior to the SIG MPX.

Following the collaborative program with Chile’s FAMAE – Fábricas y Maestranzas del Ejército covering the manufacture and sales of the MT40/MT9 submachine guns and the CT40 carbine in Brazil, Forjas Taurus was still to try an additional – and final – venture with that State-owned company. The resulting weapon was another direct descendant of the Swiss SG 540/542/543 family of military rifles, whose full design and production technical material, plus machinery and tooling, were available to the Chileans. It was just a matter of (short) time until they came out with a semi-auto carbine chambered to the .30M1 round (7.62x33mm), a weapon that appeared to adequately fit the requirements of some Brazilian LE agencies seriously considering the use of that intermediate cartridge at that time.

In the world of “might-have-been” small arms, a world of .276 Garands and NATO-standard EM-2s, none flew so high nor fell so far as the Heckler & Koch G11 caseless hyperburst assault rifle. Designed to out-match any contemporary small arm in a Cold War shootout across Central Europe, the G11 combined the aesthetics of a scifi plasma rifle with complexity of a Swiss watch. The result was a bullpup caseless wunderwaffe with a 2,000 round per minute hyperburst setting, and a price tag that, as the joke goes, compared unfavorably with reconstructing East Germany.

Texas company True Velocity, LLC, has released the first images of their advanced lightweight polymer composite cased ammunition design via Instagram. Training company BAT Defense sent out an image of what appear to be 12.7×108, .50 BMG, and 5.56mm rounds made by True Velocity, saying that the ammunition was originally developed to reduce the weight of ammunition carried by light helicopters (such as Littlebirds).

Earlier this month, the Serbian Army debuted a new 6.5 Grendel weapon system, developed by Zastava. The rifle, called M17, is a heavily modified variant of the M70 AK family that has been developed by the company for decades. It incorporates a number of significant new features and improvements detailed below. The new rifle comes as part of an infantry upgrade for the Serbian Army which includes new 7.62x54R rifles, optics, helmets, and load-bearing equipment. This development marks the first adoption of the 6.5 Grendel round as standard by a national military force. The new rifle is advertised to be half a kilogram lighter than the previous rifle, although it’s not clear whether that is supposed to be the 7.62x39mm M70 or the 5.56x45mm M21. Reportedly, the rifles and the new caliber have not yet been adopted, but are still in testing.

Having manufactured its MT-12, MT-12A and MT-12AD 9x19mm submachine guns for several years, Forjas Taurus started looking at new designs to replace those weapons generally based on the Italian Beretta M12 that had been created by Domenico Salza and entered production in the early 1960s. Once again, the Brazilian company’s eyes turned to an out-of-the-country source, this time, Chile’s FAMAE – Fábricas y Maestranzas del Ejército.  That State-owned company signed an agreement with Switzerland’s  SIG – Schweizenche Industrie Gesellschaft  concern in the 1980s covering the license manufacture of the 5.56x45mm SG 540-1 and SG 543-1 rifles as well as of the 7.62x51mm SG 542-1 model, the whole set of engineering drawings and production machinery being  provided.

Franklin Armory just announced a limited edition version of their popular BFSIII binary trigger. The AR-S1 will be available on Black Friday.