Germany To HK: You Suck, And We Hate You
Posted at 7:47 am on September 10, 2015 by Bob Owens
Tired of G36s with zeros that wander more than Josh Duggar’s eye at a family reunion, the Bundeswehr is giving their current-issue assault rifle
the heave-ho:
Germany has decided to entirely replace the recently troubled Heckler & Koch (HK) G36 as the country’s service rifle, Katrin Suder, German State Secretary for Defence Procurement, told the defence committee of the German parliament on 8 September.
Suder told the committee that the decision to fully replace the rifle was based on the fact that “the G36 was procured with a service life of 20 years in mind, which will be reached in 2016. Furthermore, the current forces’ requirements by far exceed the potential of modifications that could be made to the G36”.
IHS Jane’s understands that, with the decision to replace the G36 taken, the German Ministry of Defence (MoD) is planning to introduce a new service rifle by 2019. To this end, the Defence Procurement Office (BAAINBw) has issued a note to industry and is already evaluating and screening the assault rifle market for a replacement.
The move comes after a technical evaluation by the government-funded Fraunhofer Research Institute reported in late March that the G36 failed to meet accuracy requirements both through “self-induced” heating (for example by firing the weapon rapidly), as well as increased climate-related temperatures in simulated environments.
Since 1996 HK has delivered 178,000 G36 rifles, which fire the NATO 5.56×45 mm round, in a range of variants for the Bundeswehr.
German soldiers have
long complained that the G36 suffers from wandering zero when:
- it’s hot outside
- the rifle is fired enough to get hot
- it’s a day of the week ending in “-y” in any country ending in “-stan”
HK at first denied there was a problem, and
blamed the ammunition.
It appears that the German M0D is looking for an existing COTS (commercial, off the shelf) system to replace the G36 from existing assault rifles on the world market.
If you don’t “get” the headline, it comes from a
snarky letter dropped on a gun forum by author and gun nerd Larry Correia.
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HK admits old design was a turkey in holiday message
11/28/16 | by
Chris Eger
In a mildly disguised attempt at self-deprecation, German firearms powerhouse Heckler and Koch poked fun on Thanksgiving at a revolutionary design that had come full circle.
“Happy Thanksgiving! How long do you cook your Turkey for?”
posted the company on social media over a meme of one of their classic 1970s VP70 pistols in an oven, next to a similar picture of a newer model VP9 and the words “44 years at 350 degrees.”
The VP70, or
Volkspistole 70, you should remember was the company’s polymer-framed, striker-fired 9mm handgun of the disco era. While it beat Gaston Glock’s G17 to the “plastic pistol” market by a generation, it never really caught on and was something of, well, a turkey. It plodded along until it was quietly discontinued in 1989, only garnering a few sales to third world military forces and limited import to the U.S. as the VP70Z.
HK went back to the drawing board and came up with the VP9/VP40, which so far as seen much more success. It was introduced in 2014– 44 years after the VP70’s debut.
Still, a used but not abused VP70Z, which were imported through 1984, are valued at about $750 in the latest Blue Book, which is a lot of cranberry sauce.
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