Tweet
An interesting read.
Taliban Gun Locker: The Frankengun of
Wardak Province
A mystery firearm recovered in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province.
Almost no matter the place or the year, whenever analysts and arms
researchers scrutinize infantry weapons circulating through a conflict, they
encounter predictable finds. Time and again, the same items turn up: AK
assault rifles, PK machine guns, RPG-7 shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons,
and, depending on the region, a smattering of M-16 variants, Fabrique
Nationale and Heckler & Koch weapons, and bolt-action or lever-action
rifles from yesteryear. There are oddities, including homemade jobs. Often
there are also stray vestigial arms from previous wars in the same region or
from particular arms transfers to a government on the same soil. But most
of these are outliers. Usually a researcher can write up a list of likely
candidates, then check them off while working the beat.
And then there are the surprises, like the weapon in the photograph above.
What are you looking at?
This weapon, formerly in local Afghan hands, is held by Task Force Bobcat,
an infantry unit in the First Armored Division at Combat Outpost Sayed
Abad in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province. A previous unit confiscated it some
time ago, and it has been passed to successive American military tenants
rotating through. It caught the eye of the task force’s assistant
intelligence officer, First Lt. Corey Young, who e-mailed photographs of it
to us this summer with a note indicating that this weapon is chambered for
7.62×39-millimeter cartridges – the standard ammunition of the Kalashnikov
assault-rifle line. Lieutenant Young wanted to know what it is.
He knew one thing for sure: It’s not a Kalashnikov.
So what is it?
Let’s look past that question for a moment, as a precise identification will
require substantial explanation. Instead, take note of a few practical and
stylistic points, as these are clues to this weapon’s lineage and say
something about its previous owner’s choices, as well as about the nature
and the effects of the seemingly perennial demand in Afghanistan for
infantry arms – the final point of this post.
So, then, a deconstruction.
As for this weapon’s practical points for a guerrilla fighter in the Afghan
war, its minimal barrel length and short sliding stock make it very
concealable, in the manner of the weapon at the bottom of this post.
(Concealment has been an important consideration for an Afghan carrying a
weapon in recent years, as the Western forces’ rules of engagement
typically require restraint against suspected foes unless a weapon is clearly
seen.)
Lieutenant Young’s e-mail also noted that this weapon’s magazine well
accepts the familiar magazines of the original Kalashnikov, also making this
firearm a practical choice in Afghanistan, where such magazines and the
associated cartridges are abundant. Because of its compatibility with the
available supply, this is a weapon that could readily be kept fed.
Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that whatever this weapon is, it has been
touched up and was apparently looked after by its previous owner. The
hand guard has been painted in olive drab, a gesture toward camouflage.
And the makeshift sling is a brighter green, a shade commonly associated
with Islam and a bit of dressing up often seen in weapons confiscated from
the Taliban.
But back to the question: What is it? To get closer to the answer, let’s
look within. Lieutenant Young sent a photograph of the weapons’ guts,
seen below, which tell us much.
The mystery weapon partially disassembled.
The operating system is based on a gas piston and bolt assembly strongly
resembling that of a Kalashnikov (though naturally shorter) and a return
spring of the same clear parentage. But the weapon is otherwise not a
match. Its external features borrow from other arms. Lieutenant Young
noted that the selector switch (the device that lets a shooter put the
weapon in its safe, semi-automatic or automatic fire modes) resembles a
Czech vz. 58, another weapon that fires Kalashnikov ammunition but is not
a Kalashnikov at all.
At War had its suspicions about what these indicators might mean, so we
sent the images around for confirmation. Some of this blog’s sources prefer
to remain off the record, but one of the blog’s most reliable friends,
Jonathan Ferguson, a curator at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds,
England, came through with an answer that can be reproduced here.
The quick version is that this weapon, a cross between an assault rifle and
a submachine gun, appears to be a product of the gun shops of western
Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, where gunsmiths have a long tradition of
churning out idiosyncratic firearms that appropriate design elements from
mainstream infantry arms.
For those who don’t know about this regional industry, one old but
instructive post here includes a reprint of a 1962 article in Guns Magazine
by William B. Edwards, a prominent firearms writer of his time. A BBC update
from 2006 is here, with a telling opening quote: “There is nothing we
cannot copy.”
Mr. Ferguson’s fuller explanation of Task Force Bobcat’s unusual weapon is
below. (Those not interested in the finer points of origin may skip a few
paragraphs. You’ll come to the arms-trade point.)
features that Mr. Ferguson described.
Mr. Ferguson added:
Because of its barrel length and relatively small mass over all, this weapon
would certainly be expected to be inaccurate beyond a very short range,
and would be difficult to handle. (The weight of its apparently solid-steel
receiver might offset some of its kick, to a degree.) Nonetheless, it could
be a menacing enough hybrid for many insurgent uses, though not of much
value in the longer-range firefights common in Afghanistan. Showing up
with this for that kind of fight, against a well-trained conventional unit,
would be a very good way to get dead.
But in a discussion about the arms trade, this weapon serves as a means
for making a point about the intensity of the arms demand in Afghanistan,
and the multiple sources for satisfying it.
Firearms are like any other product of the industrial age. With the right
machines, the right work force and the right raw materials, they can be
manufactured locally. These days, most people imagine military small arms
as the output of specialized factories and modern bureaucracies. That is
certainly true – in most cases. But before the cold war divided the planet
into a pair of militarized blocs, East and West, with small arms organized
around standardized cartridges and standardized firearms to fire them, arms
production often rested on the work of local gunsmiths and local gun
works. Pick your nation of yesteryear, and this was often how it kitted out
soldiers for war. The tradition has endured here and there, though its
output is less recognized and less often remarked upon than the output of
the sprawling gun works and the bureaucracies that support them, right
down to the brochures. (There are many curious examples of the
coexistence of these two very different manufacturing processes. Even
East Germany, under Communist rule and Soviet occupation, allowed some
of its formerly private gunsmiths to make components for standard arms
made in the centralized factory in Wiesa.)
Pakistan’s tribal frontier has retained this once international tradition, and
continues to produce an array of sometimes cannily reconsidered weapons
to satisfy regional demand, even as other nations import firearms in
conventional patterns by the tens of thousands for distribution throughout
Afghanistan.
And so Task Force Bobcat’s weapon is a reminder. Even if the arms trade
into Afghanistan was more closely regulated, and excess arms were
gathered up, and the inventories of state arms were more controlled, there
would still be weapons moving through Afghanistan. Demand is that high.
Local ingenuity is that persistent. Thus, this Frankengun.
An endnote: Task Force Bobcat’s holdings include other interesting arms as
well, returning the conversation to the predictable and the familiar. Below is
a solid-steel receiver Kalashnikov – an original AK-47, or a convincing
reproduction – with a date stamp of 1951. If this arm is authentic (and this
blog and Mr. Ferguson both thought it looked legit), it is the oldest verified
Kalashnikov At War has seen in the Afghan war. Given that mass
production of AK-47s did not begin until 1949, they don’t get much older or
more rare than this.
A solid-steel receiver Kalashnikov.
Below is another staple of Afghan wars, a reworked British infantry arm
from a few eras back. In this case, Mr. Ferguson said, it appears to be a
Martini-Metford cavalry carbine, which would make it, if authentic, a
product manufactured before World War I.
A weapon from another era. This rifle was recovered in Afghanistan and appears to be a
Martini-Metford cavalry carbine, a gun commonly used in World War I.
The weapon is missing its forward stock, rendering it difficult to fire, much
less to fire repeatedly. But perhaps it was once wrapped in leather or cloth,
which was removed before mounting. Note the makeshift sling, another
testament to local scrounging and ingenuity. “The bicycle chain,” Mr.
Ferguson wrote, “is a nice touch!”
The makeshift front sight? Less so. As persistent as weapons are in
Afghanistan, there are still behaviors, and decisions, that are grounds for
shaking your head. Not that that matters. This rifle was captured,
Lieutenant Young said, from an Afghan who applied it to the task of trying
to waylay a convoy. Some things do not change.
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...?smid=tw-share
These 'frankenguns' are a testament to Pashtun ingenuity during rough times. It is a pity that this ingenuity is not put to work so much to make other more worthwhile inventions.
Taliban Gun Locker: The Frankengun of
Wardak Province
A mystery firearm recovered in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province.
Almost no matter the place or the year, whenever analysts and arms
researchers scrutinize infantry weapons circulating through a conflict, they
encounter predictable finds. Time and again, the same items turn up: AK
assault rifles, PK machine guns, RPG-7 shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons,
and, depending on the region, a smattering of M-16 variants, Fabrique
Nationale and Heckler & Koch weapons, and bolt-action or lever-action
rifles from yesteryear. There are oddities, including homemade jobs. Often
there are also stray vestigial arms from previous wars in the same region or
from particular arms transfers to a government on the same soil. But most
of these are outliers. Usually a researcher can write up a list of likely
candidates, then check them off while working the beat.
And then there are the surprises, like the weapon in the photograph above.
What are you looking at?
This weapon, formerly in local Afghan hands, is held by Task Force Bobcat,
an infantry unit in the First Armored Division at Combat Outpost Sayed
Abad in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province. A previous unit confiscated it some
time ago, and it has been passed to successive American military tenants
rotating through. It caught the eye of the task force’s assistant
intelligence officer, First Lt. Corey Young, who e-mailed photographs of it
to us this summer with a note indicating that this weapon is chambered for
7.62×39-millimeter cartridges – the standard ammunition of the Kalashnikov
assault-rifle line. Lieutenant Young wanted to know what it is.
He knew one thing for sure: It’s not a Kalashnikov.
So what is it?
Let’s look past that question for a moment, as a precise identification will
require substantial explanation. Instead, take note of a few practical and
stylistic points, as these are clues to this weapon’s lineage and say
something about its previous owner’s choices, as well as about the nature
and the effects of the seemingly perennial demand in Afghanistan for
infantry arms – the final point of this post.
So, then, a deconstruction.
As for this weapon’s practical points for a guerrilla fighter in the Afghan
war, its minimal barrel length and short sliding stock make it very
concealable, in the manner of the weapon at the bottom of this post.
(Concealment has been an important consideration for an Afghan carrying a
weapon in recent years, as the Western forces’ rules of engagement
typically require restraint against suspected foes unless a weapon is clearly
seen.)
Lieutenant Young’s e-mail also noted that this weapon’s magazine well
accepts the familiar magazines of the original Kalashnikov, also making this
firearm a practical choice in Afghanistan, where such magazines and the
associated cartridges are abundant. Because of its compatibility with the
available supply, this is a weapon that could readily be kept fed.
Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that whatever this weapon is, it has been
touched up and was apparently looked after by its previous owner. The
hand guard has been painted in olive drab, a gesture toward camouflage.
And the makeshift sling is a brighter green, a shade commonly associated
with Islam and a bit of dressing up often seen in weapons confiscated from
the Taliban.
But back to the question: What is it? To get closer to the answer, let’s
look within. Lieutenant Young sent a photograph of the weapons’ guts,
seen below, which tell us much.
The mystery weapon partially disassembled.
The operating system is based on a gas piston and bolt assembly strongly
resembling that of a Kalashnikov (though naturally shorter) and a return
spring of the same clear parentage. But the weapon is otherwise not a
match. Its external features borrow from other arms. Lieutenant Young
noted that the selector switch (the device that lets a shooter put the
weapon in its safe, semi-automatic or automatic fire modes) resembles a
Czech vz. 58, another weapon that fires Kalashnikov ammunition but is not
a Kalashnikov at all.
At War had its suspicions about what these indicators might mean, so we
sent the images around for confirmation. Some of this blog’s sources prefer
to remain off the record, but one of the blog’s most reliable friends,
Jonathan Ferguson, a curator at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds,
England, came through with an answer that can be reproduced here.
The quick version is that this weapon, a cross between an assault rifle and
a submachine gun, appears to be a product of the gun shops of western
Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, where gunsmiths have a long tradition of
churning out idiosyncratic firearms that appropriate design elements from
mainstream infantry arms.
For those who don’t know about this regional industry, one old but
instructive post here includes a reprint of a 1962 article in Guns Magazine
by William B. Edwards, a prominent firearms writer of his time. A BBC update
from 2006 is here, with a telling opening quote: “There is nothing we
cannot copy.”
Mr. Ferguson’s fuller explanation of Task Force Bobcat’s unusual weapon is
below. (Those not interested in the finer points of origin may skip a few
paragraphs. You’ll come to the arms-trade point.)
Your mystery piece (which reminds me of the post-apocalyptic
video game Fallout) is a Pakistani “Khyber Pass” design. Whilst
there are several short-barreled Russian and Chinese AK
variants of this basic form factor, none resemble this in detail,
and all (save the iconic AKS-74U and subvariants) are
chambered for pistol cartridges. This would be a bit of a
handful.
Instead, this is clearly inspired by the 5.56mm HK53 (essentially
an MP5 in an assault rifle calibre) – they’ve copied the sliding
stock, barrel length, pistol grip, even the basic style of flash
hider.
For comparison’s sake, the video of an HK53 below shows many of thevideo game Fallout) is a Pakistani “Khyber Pass” design. Whilst
there are several short-barreled Russian and Chinese AK
variants of this basic form factor, none resemble this in detail,
and all (save the iconic AKS-74U and subvariants) are
chambered for pistol cartridges. This would be a bit of a
handful.
Instead, this is clearly inspired by the 5.56mm HK53 (essentially
an MP5 in an assault rifle calibre) – they’ve copied the sliding
stock, barrel length, pistol grip, even the basic style of flash
hider.
features that Mr. Ferguson described.
Mr. Ferguson added:
As an aside, I note that the AK is of course gas-operated, the
HK53 is roller-delayed blowback. The channels for the sliding
stock are the rails that the rollers run on inside the gun – so
with this Frankenstein’s monster “AK53,” they’ve had to mill/file
solid metal channels and attach them to the outside. Far
simpler would have been to utilise an existing AKS under-folder
or AKS-74 side-folder stock, or to replicate either of those as
we know they do. What I’m getting at is that they are aping
the HK53 for style points, basically! I can’t speak to how
effective the finished product might be – if they’ve spent time
on getting the gas system right, there’s every chance it’s
functional.
And that leads to a question: Will this weapon work? And if so, how well?HK53 is roller-delayed blowback. The channels for the sliding
stock are the rails that the rollers run on inside the gun – so
with this Frankenstein’s monster “AK53,” they’ve had to mill/file
solid metal channels and attach them to the outside. Far
simpler would have been to utilise an existing AKS under-folder
or AKS-74 side-folder stock, or to replicate either of those as
we know they do. What I’m getting at is that they are aping
the HK53 for style points, basically! I can’t speak to how
effective the finished product might be – if they’ve spent time
on getting the gas system right, there’s every chance it’s
functional.
Because of its barrel length and relatively small mass over all, this weapon
would certainly be expected to be inaccurate beyond a very short range,
and would be difficult to handle. (The weight of its apparently solid-steel
receiver might offset some of its kick, to a degree.) Nonetheless, it could
be a menacing enough hybrid for many insurgent uses, though not of much
value in the longer-range firefights common in Afghanistan. Showing up
with this for that kind of fight, against a well-trained conventional unit,
would be a very good way to get dead.
But in a discussion about the arms trade, this weapon serves as a means
for making a point about the intensity of the arms demand in Afghanistan,
and the multiple sources for satisfying it.
Firearms are like any other product of the industrial age. With the right
machines, the right work force and the right raw materials, they can be
manufactured locally. These days, most people imagine military small arms
as the output of specialized factories and modern bureaucracies. That is
certainly true – in most cases. But before the cold war divided the planet
into a pair of militarized blocs, East and West, with small arms organized
around standardized cartridges and standardized firearms to fire them, arms
production often rested on the work of local gunsmiths and local gun
works. Pick your nation of yesteryear, and this was often how it kitted out
soldiers for war. The tradition has endured here and there, though its
output is less recognized and less often remarked upon than the output of
the sprawling gun works and the bureaucracies that support them, right
down to the brochures. (There are many curious examples of the
coexistence of these two very different manufacturing processes. Even
East Germany, under Communist rule and Soviet occupation, allowed some
of its formerly private gunsmiths to make components for standard arms
made in the centralized factory in Wiesa.)
Pakistan’s tribal frontier has retained this once international tradition, and
continues to produce an array of sometimes cannily reconsidered weapons
to satisfy regional demand, even as other nations import firearms in
conventional patterns by the tens of thousands for distribution throughout
Afghanistan.
And so Task Force Bobcat’s weapon is a reminder. Even if the arms trade
into Afghanistan was more closely regulated, and excess arms were
gathered up, and the inventories of state arms were more controlled, there
would still be weapons moving through Afghanistan. Demand is that high.
Local ingenuity is that persistent. Thus, this Frankengun.
An endnote: Task Force Bobcat’s holdings include other interesting arms as
well, returning the conversation to the predictable and the familiar. Below is
a solid-steel receiver Kalashnikov – an original AK-47, or a convincing
reproduction – with a date stamp of 1951. If this arm is authentic (and this
blog and Mr. Ferguson both thought it looked legit), it is the oldest verified
Kalashnikov At War has seen in the Afghan war. Given that mass
production of AK-47s did not begin until 1949, they don’t get much older or
more rare than this.
A solid-steel receiver Kalashnikov.
Below is another staple of Afghan wars, a reworked British infantry arm
from a few eras back. In this case, Mr. Ferguson said, it appears to be a
Martini-Metford cavalry carbine, which would make it, if authentic, a
product manufactured before World War I.
A weapon from another era. This rifle was recovered in Afghanistan and appears to be a
Martini-Metford cavalry carbine, a gun commonly used in World War I.
The weapon is missing its forward stock, rendering it difficult to fire, much
less to fire repeatedly. But perhaps it was once wrapped in leather or cloth,
which was removed before mounting. Note the makeshift sling, another
testament to local scrounging and ingenuity. “The bicycle chain,” Mr.
Ferguson wrote, “is a nice touch!”
The makeshift front sight? Less so. As persistent as weapons are in
Afghanistan, there are still behaviors, and decisions, that are grounds for
shaking your head. Not that that matters. This rifle was captured,
Lieutenant Young said, from an Afghan who applied it to the task of trying
to waylay a convoy. Some things do not change.
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...?smid=tw-share
These 'frankenguns' are a testament to Pashtun ingenuity during rough times. It is a pity that this ingenuity is not put to work so much to make other more worthwhile inventions.