Caracal 9mm

Here is a new 9mm from a UAE company called Caracal. I can't find anything else about this company or the pistol.

www.militarytimes.com...

Thank you for posting that. The only thing I do not like is the vibrant orange strip on the grip.

To much like a Glock for me.

Nice looking 9mm polymerframed service pistol, but i seroiusly doubt that it will be able to get a decent market share. The service pistol market is very filled with these kind of pistols. (Glocks, P99, P30, 90two)

Yup, looks like a Glock knock-off. More rounded features.

I would like to get a look at one, hold it in my hot little hand. Send several rounds down range.

Ain't nothing wrong with a Glock, I competition shoot with them and win.

Roper

Seems like a reasonable enough design, although modular grips are fast becoming the norm - so it's a little misleading to claim to have a "one size fits all" grip. Logic dictates that such a thing is impossible.

Not bad though, I like the fiber optic front sight - pity about the marginal caliber.

Retseh
How is the worlds most popular service caliber marginal?
just wondering...

Ps. Roper, i don't like Glocks, but i've lost to a glock shooter enough many times that i respect it a lot.

Pps. My choise is a CZ-75b

[edit on 6-4-2007 by northwolf]

I wonder if things would have been different had they aimed at the .45 ACP market.

Other than that, good looking pistol; but it really does look like a relative of the a glock.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by northwolf
Retseh
How is the worlds most popular service caliber marginal?
just wondering...

Well I would say that the World's most popular service caliber is 7.62x39mm, 9mm would be the World's most popular pistol caliber IMO.

As for the "marginal" piece, I start from the perspective that all pistol calibers are underpowered and very poor performers even with a JHP bullet design, when you factor in the restriction of using FMJ for the military, things get even worse. When you then restrict yourself to a small caliber FMJ, things get very poor indeed, and that's where the 9mm sits.

On the other hand you can take a look at any of the reports on the performance of the Beretta 92FS in Iraq. Actual combat usage is showing that at least 5 torso hits are required to have any effect on enemy combatants.

Armed forces learned a very long time ago that you need a large and heavy bullet moving at a modest velocity for optimum effectiveness in pistols - .45ACP and .455 Webley didn't happen by accident.

Caliber discussion has a few threads going allready.
I still wonder why americans are the onlyones displeased with 9mm Para, it has worked fine out here, ever since 1918...

The point is not what works "fine", but what works "better, and no offence, but I doubt the Finns shoot that many people, nor do they have the luxury of choosing from different calibers to compare results nationally - I imagine it's 9mm or nothing.

In FMJ, 9mm Para will achieve roughly 60% one shot stop efficiency, and while not massively more effective, .45ACP will always have the edge.

Actual shooting statistics link below:

www.firearmstactical.com...

Why shot 3 bullets ( 9 mm ) to do the job of one ( 45 ). 9mm is ok if you can fire off a burst, but for a hand gun...

As far as the Glock goes, I guess it is reliable and it's supposed to be accurate. Maybe after you tweek it with after market it would do what it is supposed to do. :-) Oh yeah... and get rid of that trigger safety. My personal favorite is the HK USP 40 or 45, take your pick. After that, the 1911. Mr. Colt is one of my heros.

9mm has always worked for soldiers on this side of the pond. It seems that it is only Americans who have this strange worship of the .45ACP round.

However European military 9mm rounds tend to be loaded a bit more potently than our colonial brethrens' equivilant. I found this out quite recently when in the 'stan speaking with a few yank troops on a range. We were firing our Brownings, and they had M9s.

We decided to do a bit of a swap to compare pistols for the afternoon. The Yanks immediately found that recoil was a lot snappier with our shooters. We all put it down to the weight/balance of the weapons until we mixed ammo. The M9s were kicking a lot more with our rounds, and the Brownings were much more comfortable to shoot with Yank rounds. Maybe the higher velocity of European loadings makes up for the small round diameter. After all, velocity is an important part of KE.

BTW, this is just my experience. I don't claim to be a ballistics or physics ninja.

[edit on 12-4-2007 by PaddyInf]

You're correct paddy, our army 9mm parabellum loads are at least 50m/s faster than the any commercial loads i've seen and they're loaded with a 8g bullets. Originally similar loads were used effectively out to 200m with Suomi SMG. I assume UK loads are on par with ours.

The British use the 9mm L7A1 FMJ round which is loaded for subgun pressures - I have a couple of boxes lying around somewhere. This ammunition is subject to an ATF warning in the US because it is loaded to CUP pressures which grossly exceed +P, and it is easily capable of damaging guns (and shooters). Stupid in my opinion, but as an ammunition collector of sorts, interesting, at least for me.

Increasing the power of 9mm ball is futile if you're shooting people, as penetration is already excessive. Even a low pressure 9mm FMJ will zip right through the average torso, wasting the energy of the round and causing very little damage unless it hits a major structure or organ, bleeding is what kills, and for that you need a big hole, it really is as simple as that. You can load 9mm as hot as you like, and the terminal ballistics will not differ because you need to "dump" the energy into the target. For civilians and police this is achieved via the use of expanding ammunition - in the military, your only option for increasing the frontal area of the round is by increasing the caliber. This requirement was not understood when 9mm para was invented in 1902, but it was learned in World War I when we actually started shooting people with handguns.

There have been numerous cases of people being shot with 9mm in the US and not even noticing. The Amadou Diallo case in New York highlighted the poor performance of 9mm FMJ which was all that NYPD could carry at the time. Diallo was shot 19 times at close range, many to center of mass, and was still alive when arrested - only to die some time later. NYPD were forced to change to JHP ammunition and today carry the Gold Dot.

You need to approach this from the perspective that all handguns are fundamentally underpowered, even the .45ACP - a lot of people have yet to gain that understanding. The US went to 9mm FMJ for commonality with NATO, and since then, continual combat reports from soldiers who have never used any other handgun caliber in combat consistently claim a near total lack of effectiveness for the round.

The M9 is in use in huge numbers in the US military, our soldiers routinely carry a pistol as a backup, I have not seen this as commonly with other nations where pistols are typically the preserve of officers only, i.e. the US forces have a great deal more exposure to 9mm usage in combat.

If we take the UK as an example, the fact that your Browning Hi powers are still servicable after 50 years doesn't so much testify to the qualities of that otherwise fine pistol, but rather to that fact that you don't really train your troops to any great extent on the use of that weapon. In that situation 9mm is probably a better bet.

9mm handguns make excellent pocket pistols or concealed carry weapons, but for duty sidearms there is no need to compromise either on size or power. With the new generation of hicap .45s such as the Springfield XD45, HK45, and the Glock 21 - the question I would ask is "why stick with 9mm"?

[edit on 14-4-2007 by Retseh]

The Caracal pistol, new service pistol that appeared at IDEX 2007, is not a copy of Glock. It has been designed by Wilhelm Bubits who had previously designed the Steyr M9.

www.caracal-consulting.com...







[edit on 22-3-2008 by Edmond]

in order to answer to a few questions I received:

1) Yes, the Caracal pistol has a fully supported chamber.

2) The holster seen in Visier and a few other magazines is the Ghost III modular system holster

Ghost III modular holster for Caracal

Fix this text box entry system, I just spent more than 1/2 hr crafting a response with lots of points only for it to vanish when I went to an earlier paragraph to redact something, the result was a few thousand characters vanished and I'm not going through that again anytime soon, pass this to the webmaster as there is a glitch somewhere.


Quick points:

What's all this Glock worship? Every service pistol from now on is going to be plastic due to weight and maintenance considerations, it is simply de rigeur. If any plastic failures start to occur then that trend may stop but as the Glock's been around for ages without major problems that is unlikely.

As for a tricksy trigger, well again it has simply become standard so it's hardly surprising to see it on a new service sidearm. Look to the P7 for tricksy alternative to a lever or button for safety and remember who 's using these things, not necessarilly the brightest of users.

And again look to the P7 if you want to see where the Caracal really gets its inspiration from. The P7 is legend, now you can get a modern lighter version with other enhancements.

As for the orange stripe, that is to do with identification, it is interchangable with numerous others to suit your personal taste or other requirements.

I had alot to say about 9mm vs 45 but have lost the will apart from:

The 9mm is a tumbler and that is why it became THE sidearm round of the century along with ammo commonality for secondary armament.

Conversely pnetration is the rage these days, hence the development of PDW ammo. If the 9mm us inherently a good penetrator, that bodes well for AP loads.

The reason 9mm Brownings still work is the 9mm round doesn't stress components (or users) as much as a 45. Much rather be able to shoot a bandit rather than nurse a sore wrist and miss, have the gun jam or worse and then have plenty more shots left in the mag to continue.

They learned that one in Europe during WW1 as we had 455 Webley and 45ACP, finding it took too much training to use the cartridge effectively, whilst Gerry used the 9mm. We moved to 9mm (.38). It took the Yanks another world war to catch up finding the Tommy and Grease Gun falling apart (well jamming in a fight) under stress of the 45, after which they seemingly dropped the SMG altogether. THe FBI tried it as well with the 10mm but found their limp wristed agents couldn't handle it, 1 shot drop is fine though pretty useless if the user can't keep up, or the gun stay together. Then there's the matter of having to hit more than one target or handle consecutive engagements.

Indeed the world followed, completely contrary to Retseh's comments, WW1 saw movement AWAY from large bore stuff. The Allies saw that Gerry had a better solution (magnaminous in victory) and the Soviets eventually followed too moving up from their smaller calibres. Doubtful they all did this to make killing more difficult, less effective.

UK 9mm rounds being more powerful doesn't make much sense, there is no way the MOD would risk such a thing. More likely USA 9mm is simply underpowered and USA 9mm's underspecificed, I recall incidents of USA produced slides failing on certain hadguns.

Back to penetration - PDW ammo is going the other way, even smaller penetrators. If that is the future why wallow with the trogoldytes with 45's.

SOCOM use 45's because they TRAIN with them ad nauseam (see Webley point above) and need swift closure in an engagement. The 45 is also v slow so can be suppressed easily, another SOCOM requirement.

Well there's more than enough to be getting on with.

Look for the Caracal to reach the US by mid 2009

Well here it is guys..I am in the U.S. Airforce and i am currently deployed to the u.a.e. I had the chance to shoot the caracal 9mm and it seems to be a pretty sound weapon. I also fired their .22 and put about 200 rounds through each with no hang ups, and the quick load feature on the magazine came in very handy. But the pricetag is outrageous. I can find guns that will do the same for much much less in the states. These guns also did not have that orange stripe on them another reason i would not buy the stateside version. Overall i love the feel of the gun and would like to own one but like most jus cant afford it. I hope this has helped somone because forums on this gun are hard to come by.