Author Archives: parvusimperator

New Life for an Old Police Magnum

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When we last looked at my old 870, it had been through a ringer, and I changed a few things. I got a cool magpul stock and a magazine tube extension. Class notes gave me a few more things I wanted to change.

First: the sights, which entailed a new barrel with (bonus) fresh parkerizing. Basically, I wanted some sort of rear sight. I found myself dissatisfied with a bead (and no sight rib for the bead to sit on). I settled on a barrel set up for rifle sights that came from the factory with XS Express-style rifle sights. Perfect! These sights were originally designed for quick acquisition at close ranges while threatened by dangerous game on the African Savannah, and I can’t think of something more appropriate to what I want this shotgun to do. Plus, being barrel-mounted, they require exactly no gunsmithing of the receiver. Now I have a rear reference to avoid making elevation errors at range.

I could have gone with ghost ring sights, but those end up needing gunsmithing (to drill and tap the receiver), and I didn’t feel like doing that. A red dot would also have been a good choice, but that would have cost much more, and I didn’t feel like spending the money here. It would also probably have needed a gunsmithing trip.

Sights sorted, I next wanted to deal with the problem of illumination. I’m a firm believer of defensive weapons needing a light to identify targets. There are a bunch of ways to do this, and I settled on the most turnkey: the Surefire DSF-870 forend. It replaces the factory forend, and has a light and controls for said light built right in. Controls include momentary and constant on buttons, as well as a lockout switch so your batteries don’t run down in the safe. This solution isn’t the lightest or the cheapest, but it stands up to recoil pretty well and tends not to smash hands up.

So that’s that. And my shotgun is more or less done, aside from a likely future trip for some cerakote to refinish the receiver. Let’s take a brief moment to talk about something that isn’t on the gun: ammo saddles. There’s no cuff on the stock for ammo either.

For my purpose, I question the need for ammo on the gun. I’m not a law enforcement officer. I currently have a capacity of 6+1 shells. I really can’t see myself needing more than that in a defensive encounter. Shotgun shells are pretty good at making people stop doing whatever it is that they’re doing. Given that, plus the size of recorded home defensive encounters, plus the complete lack of relevant1 encounters where people run the shotgun dry has led me to skip the bother, cost, and weight of playing around with sidesaddles.

  1. For law-abiding civilians who are non-LEO. ↩

San Antonio-class BMD Ship

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Ballistic Missile Defense is tricky. It requires lots of radar power and plenty of missiles. Right now, you can use your Aegis-equipped ships like the Arleigh Burke-class for the job. But those weren’t designed for the role, and the current state of the art SPY-6 radar is as big as you can fit on one. That is still not ideal for BMD work. Could we do better? Could we make a big air/missile defense ship, preferably on an existing, proven hull? Huntingon-Ingalls has some thoughts on the matter. They currently make the excellent San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, and think it would be a great candidate for conversion. Let’s look at their proposal.

The San Antonio-class is a large, modern ship for amphibious operations. They are 684 feet long, 105 feet wide, and displace 25,300 tons. They have a large helipad aft for operating MV-22s and have a well deck to launch and recover landing craft or amphibious vehicles like the LCAC. They’re currently in production too. At present, armament is limited to two RIM-116 launchers and two 30mm cannons. They also have provision for a 16-cell Mk 41 suite, but are not fitted with those at present.

HII’s proposed conversion ditches the well deck and and sports a redesigned superstructure capable of mounting four 25’x35′ (WxH) S-Band AESA arrays for better search and discrimination of ballistic missile targets. Four X-Band Arrays would be fitted above the S-Band arrays for tracking and fire control. The large hull of the San Antonios allows the BMD variant to carry no fewer than 288 Mk. 41 launch tubes.

The large hull of the San Antonios allows for plenty of extra power generation and cooling equipment, so that won’t be a problem. The large hull also allows for a higher radar mount without compromising stability. One currently noteworthy limitation is that the San Antonio-class LPDs are only capable of about 22 knots. For the role it’s designed for, that’s not a huge limitation, but they’d slow a task force down if included in one. And the number of tubes would make them tempting to include in a task force.

Finally, let’s talk cost. To the good is that the San Antonio-class production line is hot. An existing hull is no small savings. On the down side, a fancy Aegis-type suite plus big radar that isn’t going to be cheap, and I know of no appropriately-sized radar offhand that would do the job. Radar development isn’t cheap. Overall, I’d say it’s a good idea if you’re really dedicated to BMD, but without actual price numbers, I can’t really give it a great thumbs up/thumbs down. My gut is that it’s a bit too expensive for what it is, given current budget priorities.

Parvusimperator and the Attack of the Pistol Caliber Carbines

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When first introduced, I, like many others, was not a fan of the PCC Division in USPSA. Frankly, I thought it was rather silly to shoot a carbine at a pistol match, even if the “P” in USPSA stands for Practical. Given some time, I’ve come to reconsider the division. And frankly, I could do with some carbine practice, even if that carbine is firing 9mm rounds. I love shooting carbines. It’s my first shooting love, if I’m to wax romantic for a bit. Anyway, this is an opportunity to get some carbine practice in, with the benefit that I don’t need a rifle-rated backstop. This allows me to get some close-in practice on pistol ranges, which are a bit easier to find in my current area. Plus they’re fun to shoot.

With my goals of ‘fun carbine practice’ in mind, let’s see what I’ll end up getting. I do need a competition-worthy PCC. Since I explicitly want this to drill carbine handling and shooting up close, I can ignore all of the faux-SBR “pistols” out there. I don’t have a desire to fill out a Form 1 on this. My goal, strangely enough, is to buy my PCC, add a red-dot sight of some sort, and get shooting. For once, I’m not looking to build or tinker my way to a solution.

So. Ignore the faux-SBRs and just about anything that isn’t intended as a turnkey-competition gun. And, non-SBR barrels are going to get me closer to the handling of my carbines, which are also not SBRs. I’m also going to require my PCC to use Glock magazines, because those are cheap and good and I already have a lot of them (yes, I have some of the 33-round mags). That disqualifies a lot of perfectly good guns, but I don’t care. These are my criteria.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? I’m getting a JP GMR-15. It’s AR-15 based, so the feel and controls are the same. JP makes really nice stuff, and their 9mm carbines ‘just work’. Like their other carbines. It takes Glock mags, and it even has a functional last round bolt hold open. Not that it matters for a competition gun, but it’s nice to have. Oh, and it can be had with a sweet trigger.

The GMR-15 is a blowback-operated gun, like most other 9mm AR conversions. Technically speaking, a gas-operated gun would be softer. But we’re talking about a 9x19mm round fired from about seven pounds of carbine. Recoil is not going to be an issue. We’re principally concerned with movement of the dot, which can be controlled by adjusting the weights of the buffer and carrier. If we want to.

All that it’s going to need is a dot.

Borgundy’s Helicopter for All Seasons

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Time to do a procurement post for something I have been putting off: Utility Helicopters. This is a really crowded market, and the fact that we can probably get rid of anything on the really large end as being to similar to the CH-47 that we’ve already bought doesn’t help us very much. Since there are so many plausible options, let’s look at what we need, and then throw on some nice-to-haves that could hopefully narrow the field. That’s a lot more interesting than a deep dive into costs, and much more practicable for me (in that I’m actually willing to write it and I don’t need to track down pricing data).

First, just to simplify things a little, we want a fully combat-ready helicopter that’s been purchased by at least one other nation. Probably obvious, but it needs saying. No reinventing the rotor for this.

Next, we want a capacity of about a squad’s worth of men. As I write this, it occurs to me that I haven’t talked as much as I should about organization, and I certainly haven’t talked much about light infantry. We’ll pick ten combat-laden men as the minimum required capacity. Somewhat arbitrary, but that should cover most squad options. Note the emphasis on combat-laden; this is not a question of overall passenger capacity, but immediately usable passenger capacity for men ready to go into the fight.

Cargo capacity isn’t a huge deal, mostly because we already have CH-47s. I have no particular requirements for cargo capacity, other than there should be some. Certainly anything that meets the troop requirement above will have sufficient cargo capacity for our purposes.

We would also require medevac capability, but that is also no great burden, as most utility helicopter models available already have the capability to be easily reconfigured for stretchers.

Clearly, our utility helicopter should also have the ability to mount door guns, but again, this is no great burden. That’s a pretty standard utility helicopter feature. It would also be nice if we could mount pylons with some rockets for some extra support/attack capability. Also no great burden.

Now, let’s get on to some actual, difficult requirements. We’d like versions available with an aerial refueling probe. Specifically, we’d like this to facilitate longer-range search and rescue operations as well as long range special operations deployments. Fulfilling this is actually quite the tall order by the rules of our procurement game.

That gets us nicely to the UH-60 Blackhawk as our overall utility helicopter choice. It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s also not the most expensive, and it has the variants we want, namely the HH-60 with the refueling boom. And yes, that variant has been exported to South Korea. The Blackhawk is a proven choice, with plenty of export buys as well as good combat service. It also has an available gunship variant. As we’ll see in another post, it’s also one of the few utility helicopters to have an actual production electronic warfare variant. The Blackhawk is available with a bunch of integrated FLIR options (again, thanks HH-60), and there’s even a couple naval versions, should we want them.

Deploying the 6.8 mm SPC 2 Cartridge

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The 6.8 mm SPC cartridge was designed to improve the firepower of US special operations forces without requiring the issuing of an entirely brand new rifle. It’s one of many alternative calibers for the AR-15. While it had the backing of Remington, and was designed with the help of some active special operations forces, a number of issues have come up to get in the way of its popularity. These include (in no particular order) two different SAAMI specifications for the cartridge, more effective 5.56 mm cartridges, ready availability of 7.62x51mm carbines, a whole bunch of other important gear that’s not going to pay for itself, and the round not being a non-NATO standard has mean that it hasn’t been adopted by the organizations that worked to develop it. However, a middle eastern special forces unit has adopted the weapon as a compact carbine. Let’s take a look.

This unit contracted with LWRC for the gun, with the goal of having a very short barrel (8.5″) and plenty of firepower. Given a relatively large order of more than 30,000 carbines, LWRC decided to make some changes. To ensure reliable feeding, they worked with Magpul to design 6.8-specific magazines. These are wider than standard AR-15 magazines, and the magwell on the new guns was widened to accept them. The new magazines have that same great windowed PMAG design, hold 30 rounds, and weigh 1.32 lbs fully loaded.

Other than the aforementioned 8.5″ barrel, the rifle has a quadrail handguard, pistol-length buffer tube, PDW-length stock, and a short-stroke gas piston system. The top rail of the handguard is removable to clean or service the gas piston. The rifle is the SIX8-UCIW. A version with a longer barrel, as well as an SBR version are available for civilian purchase, though obviously without select fire capability.

LWRC also worked with ATK (the parent company of Speer) to get a round that would function well in a rather short barrel. ATK obliged with a special round that will do the job, even with military flash suppressants. And yes, it’s SPC II spec.

Ok, what do we think? Well, it’s a solid execution of the “PDW” concept for a protective detail rather than for rear echelon troops. A short, relatively light package with plenty of firepower is exactly what this will deliver. I’m not a big fan of ‘nonstandard’ cartridges for general issue (who, admittedly are not expected to have super-short 8.5″ barrels), but I like the thought process here. Another tool in the toolbox, and one that fills a useful niche at that.

Extra: Hudson in Trouble

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Original (Jan 24, 1249)

From SHOT Show:

This is the space reserved for the Hudson booth. It’s curiously empty.

If we dig, we can see why:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7754152/cambridge-valley-machining-inc-v-hudson-mfg-llc/

Hudson’s parts supplier alleges that they have not been paid. Hudson alleges that the parts were not to spec. It’s ugly, and the court filing goes back to September. I suspect that the parts supplier is too small to take the hit, and Hudson lacks the cash flow/line of credit to simply get parts elsewhere.

Regrettably, setting up a manufacturing business in the United States is very hard.

Update (Jan 24, 1308) (Fishbreath)

As it turns out, the first $15/quarter of PACER access is free, so I went ahead and registered, installed the RECAP extension to upload anything I view to the Free Law Project, and scored Hudson’s counterclaim. Here you go.

Journalism-ing.

Walther Q5 Match SF

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Not quite a “New at SHOT Show” piece, since it came out just before, but cool nonetheless. Walther has introduced a new PPQ derivative. They’ve taken their excellent Q5 Match and put it on top of a brand new steel frame. It’s aimed squarely at the competition market, combining the PPQ’s fantastic trigger1 with a lot more weight to soak up recoil. This gun is intended to compete with pistols like the Tanfoglio Stock II and CZ Shadow 2, now that IPSC changed the trigger pull weight rules. Let’s take a look.

Q5 Match SF

Let’s talk through the features. It’s got the same slide as the regular Q5. So it’s got slide cuts to look cool, catch your eye in the display case, and keep the slide weight down so they can still use the same recoil assembly as the regular PPQ. It also has a really excellent optics mounting plate setup that’s very sturdy. It’s great at keeping the optic of your choice securely mounted. Factory sights are fiber optic front and black rear, in case you want to compete in a non-optics division.

That steel frame is the kicker, upping the empty weight to 41.6 oz. from the 21.9 oz. of the standard Q5 Match. Weight fights recoil. For competition, weight is good. The most popular pistols for Production are steel-framed CZ 75 derivatives. Even in Open, where compensators and porting are allowed, all of the top ten shooters in Open Nationals (and a whole lot more besides) have opted for a steel grip to add weight.

The stock trigger is about 5.6 lbs. or so. At least according to Walther. It’s smooth and nice though, so you’ll think it’s lighter. And if you actually wanted lighter, it’s a simple matter to swap two springs to get the pull weight down around 3 lbs. Contact Springco if you’d like a set.

A factory magwell is available for the Q5 Match SF as well, should you want one and be permitted one in your competition of choice.

Walter’s PPQ magazines are well-designed as well. For those of you interested in loading up, here’s a recipe that should get you 23 rounds. Start with the Walther mag body. Order the Grams spring and follower kit for a P320. Shave the tab off the follower that engages the P320’s slide stop, and it’ll fit wonderfully in your PPQ mag body. Add at TTI baseplate and you’re ready to shred.

As for the price, MSRP is a little high, but not unforgivably so at $1,399.99. A bit pricey, but it is a niche market that they’re going for. It’s roughly what you’d pay for a Shadow 2 with all of the Cajun Gun Works goodies.

And yes, I want one.

  1. Fishbreath and I agree it’s the best striker-fired trigger on the market. ↩

Shorter 3-Gun Rifles?

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The “traditional” multigun rifle has an 18″ barrel and a rifle gas system, to create a soft-shooting rifle with plenty of velocity for longer range shots. Is this really necessary?

If we’re looking at matches, a large number will be organized under 3 Gun Nation rules or United Multi-gun League rules. Both of these tend to favor bay matches, with lots of shortish (100 yards and in) shooting. Often, this will be offhand position (i.e. standing, unsupported).

As always, there’s a tradeoff here. Lighter weight will swing faster. Heavier will be more stable, but it will also fatigue you more. Also, where the weight is matters. Weight out at the end of a longer ‘lever arm’ (like a long barrel) will be more fatiguing than weight on a short lever arm.

Now, everyone is going to bring up the long-range component. However, our first point is that there really isn’t much in most 3GN/UML matches, especially if the match director doesn’t want to screw over the PCC folks. Second, you can shoot fine out to longer ranges. If you don’t believe me, go look at Loose Rounds taking an M4 Socom barrel out to 1,000 yards. And that’s without a low-power variable optic with some sort of BDC/MOA-dot/mildot reference for holds. As ever, if you know your dope, you can get your hits. Long barrels are not required for long range work. It will be a little harder with less velocity, but 3-Gun scoring is based on hits; there are no extra points earned for putting rounds in the proverbial X-ring.1

Going with the shorter barrel optimizes for more of the common shots and handling. Most of the time in most matches governed by one of the competing rulesets will be spent shooting up close, and a shorter barrel makes that better.

How short should we go? Well, certainly 16″ is becoming increasingly popular; and that’s the minimum non-sbr length. 14.5 is shorter and lighter still, though that requires either Form 1 paperwork for an SBR or a pinned-and-welded compensator. Shorter than 14.5″ is almost certainly going to require being a registered SBR. Which may or may not be worth the trouble. That’s for the rifleman to decide.

14.5″ has some weight benefits, but it does require being happy with your choice of muzzle device. These days, I don’t think that’s a tremendous burden. There are lots of really effective muzzle devices out there. Picking one and just practicing with the damn rifle is a good idea. Doubly so if you’re an inveterate tinkerer like me.

  1. Which the three gun targets don’t even have. ↩