Canadian Rangers to replace 120 yr old weapons soon.....

a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

Well... If you ever do, my advice is to tuck it very tight into your shoulder away from your collar bone before you pull the trigger.

a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

You've got to man. It's a rifle with the kick of a shotgun. There's a reason it's still being used. It's a damn good gun.

My Dad had one used in wwII. had strange hash marks carved into the stock with a knife/bayonet. wish he hadn't sold it at a gun show. one of the best rifles in history for accuracy and utility. hats off to the mounties for keeping an old hag as long as they have.

a reply to: howmuch4another

Pick your poison:

1- We ain't spending any money.

Or:

2- If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I like to think positively.

I gotta say with either the Lee-Enfield or the Mauser 98, well....

Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death....

a reply to: intrepid

I'll take #2. I've seen a nail driven at 50yds for giggles camping once. no joke. you aren't kidding about the kick of a shotgun either.

We dont use M4s... C8's are better. As for how it does in the snow, we have the C7 SFW which is indestructible but costs $6000 or something ridiculous... they use it in the most hostile conditions

I'd suggest going to the G3, people who think their composite stocks wont live in the arctic havent been to Norway... and its a nice powerful, ranged nato round, very accurate rifle. Many people still prefer it to the HK416

originally posted by: howmuch4another
a reply to: intrepid

I'll take #2. I've seen a nail driven at 50yds for giggles camping once. no joke. you aren't kidding about the kick of a shotgun either.

out to a thousand yards easy, under the right control/firing

a reply to: stirling

This is absurd.....those things were developed in 1895. WTF! I would say they need to be upgraded....Jesus.

originally posted by: masqua
a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

Well... If you ever do, my advice is to tuck it very tight into your shoulder away from your collar bone before you pull the trigger.

haha... I usually dont put any gun closer to my collar bone BUT, thanks for the warning! hahaha

originally posted by: intrepid
a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

You've got to man. It's a rifle with the kick of a shotgun. There's a reason it's still being used. It's a damn good gun.

Holy crap. A rifle with the kick of a shot gun? O.o

Well I must say that I qualified cross rifles and crowns on this weapon at fourteen....(cadets)
Many years ago......303
They switched to FNs after and I qualified same on those.....
My true love was the bren gun and I was on the competition LMG team......
Compared to 303 id prefer a 308 anytime...but even those have been replaced with Canadian Colt rifles....
I competed with M16 HB in 3 gun comp, and I have to say they are the bees knees......
If they only came in 243 youd really have a battle rifle that could reach out......same specs of ballistics as 7 mm mag....
223 is simply too light a caliber for up north....

Canadians need to wait for Laser rifles. Screw bullets.

I have a Mauser 98 rebarreled in 7.62×51mm NATO and with a good rangefinding scope that would be perfect.

These Canadian rangers are not front line troops but are forward observation units that finds the enemy and report location back to HQ.

Dressed in civilian clothing they would look like the people of the area and not seen as military by invaders.

Having what looks like Mauser hunting rifles with match grade 7.62×51mm barrels with good long range optics would let them blend in.
en.wikipedia.org...

but would give them a very good rifle for sniping the officers of the invaders.

Having military rifles while good would identify them as a military unit

I'm gathering parts right now for a number 4 enfield build. They are neat firearms but 303 ammunition is really the issue I'd bet. It's getting very expensive.

Which is why I've also bought several partial p14 and p17 enfields which I'm working to build up in a few different calibers including 303 Russian heh bonus points if you figure out the round I'm talking about.

I'll also be experimenting with much heavier rounds using a pair of p17 (I figure I may break one working out the round I'm wanting to revive and modernize). Simply put I'm not certain GDLS and their light weight 338 mg are anywhere close to ideal. Plus.... frankly their gun is laughable. An American engineer designed and built a 338 lapua precision semiautomatic rifle which is much lighter, handles recoil especially from single shots as good or better, and is much more compact with a massively lower parts count.

It would actually make an ideal DMR AMR or SPR for the rangers.

For a general issue rifle though I fear the rangers are very much stuck with a semiautomatic rifle. Truthfully a good Arctic ready bolt action would cost the Canadian people 4 to 6 thousand dollars U.S. EACH without optics accessories or spare parts!
Also, even a couple thousand rifles and a minimal spare parts inventory could take 2 to 5 YEARS to fill!

whereas in quantity there are several Arctic capable rifles that could be bought off the shelf or produced by diemaco with little delay.

Personally my choice would be contacting the Finnish government and Valmet to get their specifications for the NATO 308 RPK pattern rifle they made as well as technical data on the rk95 rifle the Finns still use today. A deal would easily come together where the Canadian government and diemaco manufacture their ranger rifle AND new build upgraded rk95 rifles for the Finn military. which is limited to existing stocks currently because the last commercial production line for them shut down so long ago that the Finnish government already had to pay IMI (now IWI who make the galil, which the Finn's covertly assisted development of) to build a run of new rk series rifles and spares. However that batch is rapidly reaching end of life.

At this point the Finnish government would face severe blow back from another deal with IWI. It really could have been a match made in heaven.

If such a program were to occur the optimum solution would be to start with the data from the 308 valmet / saco rpk and the 308 galil ARM.

I WOULD NOT, however, keep the abysmal 308 round! I mean an 18 inch barrel rechambered ar15 can pretty seriously outperform the m80 round beyond 300 yards (right around 270 meters in civilized units of measure lol) all the way out to a klick and change! And that's without loads that require a super bolt and fit in a stanag magazine. That's using the 6.5 Grendel round of course. Now load a similar vld projectile into the longer envelope available in a 7.62 NATO size envelope.... really anything between 6.5 and 7mm bullet diameter could work plenty well.... Anyone who tries to say 6.5 is too small is unaware that the 6.5x55 Swedish round is to this day loved by hunters whose game of choice are the size of a subcompact car!! I lean towards doing some testing to find the optimal point where several main factors converge. The factors are flat trajectory (specifically mean point blank range), energy retention (for both terminal effect and ability to buck wind), barrel and other part lifetime (high energy high mv rounds tend to be hard on barrels and operating parts especially when it comes to throat erosion and extreme cold only exacerbates any weak or poorly designed components' failure rates), and acceptable recoil impulse levels. It should be noted that when diemaco and the Canadian military modified the m16 they made several changes including to the barrel steel, chamber design, and rifling which combined to drastically increase barrel life over American mil spec barrels. (Yes my personal rifles have these barrels and it's not hype! They are extremely precise AND accurate!! Actually my rifles are set up almost identically to the c7 rifle with 6 position stock and 20 inch barrel)

Once you have your ideal round selected and optimized for 18 to 22 inch barrels there's a short list of changes to the base galil/rk95 which will greatly increase functionality and utility to the rangers. First we're going to alter the weapon so that current issue Russian fcg components stocks small springs pins etc and possibly pistol grips can be used. However the rifle will come with a tunable 2 stage trigger in a semiautomatic only configuration most of the time. However a select fire group should be available which uses a 3 setting selector with safe burst semi settings (this mimics Russian military selector positions with safe being top position burst in center and semi on bottom. Russian army training was to sweep your bladed hand from safe to bottom setting which was single shot. The reason for this is based in the science of human adrenal response causing deterioration of fine motor skills essentially locking full auto setting when user is panicky!)

Now this will be controversial but I have impeccable reasoning behind this piece of my

(Continued)

As I was saying, due to the nature of the duties, situations, and potential lack of spares and resupply it would be foolish not to make this weapon specifically capable of quickly and easily switching caliber, adapters to take Warsaw pattern magazines, and salvaged barrels compatible with caliber change kits with minimal parts or specialist knowledge (it would be very possible to make this happen. An issue kit that fits in a soft sided hard case with similar dimensions to a 3.5 inch desktop hard drive enclosure to turn it into a portable USB hard drive holding supplies needed to convert 3 total 7.62 NATO or 7.62 Warsaw barrels with choice between ar10 (possible you'd need different set depending on which ar10 subspecies you want barrel from) "dragunov" psl m14/m1a g3/hk91/cetme fal (inch and metric not same adapter). And 4 total small version with choices of akm ak74 (and rpk variations of each, however like ar10 several subspecies exist that require very different dimensions) ar15 scar xcr etcetera.

Along with the quick change mechanism (which I hope you'll forgive if I do not share specifics of considering the effort and expense I have expended in design build and testing phase) I also mentioned magazine adapters. These adapters will be extremely light and simple interfacing with ambidextrous magazine release (full ambi controls standard on ALL rifles except eject direction). A hybrid gas system will be made available mostly for precision shooting configurations and or any configuration with longer barrel to curb excess weight and greatly increased innate accuracy potential similar to free floated direct impingement arms.

First generation rifles will have a receiver extremely similar in appearance to galil and valmet 308 rifles but taking advantage of advances in a number of areas from metallurgy to advanced coatings precision heat treatment and face hardening to shed some weight while gaining a bit of extension to the front end of the receiver to play host to a "dragunov" like accessory interface. This will come in handy for shooting on the move should a ranger formation come under fire. It will also offer secure and versatile options for tripods and other mounts capable of mitigating accuracy issues of cold bore high wind limited visibility situations.

There's a host of other specifics I would integrate into this firearm up to and including my design for a very simple yet universal self adjusting recoil system that will transition from too weak 5.45 or 5.56 to near proof load 7.62x54r all with no input from the user. Between wildly disparate temperatures humidity and in general the extreme nature of their area of operations these guys need a weapons suite that will just WORK!

In short the Rangers deserve and NEED a weapon that matches the men and women who live, work, and may just die fighting for a land as hard but awe inspiring as the people who call it home. The valmet/galil pattern rifle has the potential to be a rifle that could quite possibly serve ably and with distinction for another century!

I think its a mistake to replace those old rifles. In cold weather they are a lot less likely for freeze up. Unlike a modern rifle built to closer tolerances.

a reply to: Cyberspy

Actually spy the sako,valmet,galil,r4 family are EXTENSIVELY PROVEN in bitter cold conditions... well then there's also the fact that Enfield rifles are built to much tighter tolerance in the key areas that strongly influence cold related failure.

The valmet/galil rifle was also originally designed to function specifically in the Arctic. It then got a second round of extreme conditions reliability engineering done on it by the Israelis..... the Enfield does not have the benefit of having this level of extreme conditions reliability engineering done.

When you also factor in the better metals, quality control, coatings, heat treating, and parts compatibility without hand fitting.... you don't even have to mention better ergonomics, usability, or its better magazine capacity.... it's a no brainer.

don't get me wrong... I also believe the firearms industry in the west has in many ways forgotten how to design fundamentally sound firearms like the designers like Pedersen Browning etc. The commercial and military aviation automotive and many other fields have the same issues lately it seems. Also compensation for shoddy engineering with thousands of lines of code expensive materials and worse is accepted practice.

That being said.... the reactionary and totally hostile to new technology attitude of firearm enthusiasts is also a huge factor...