Australian Army Discussions and Updates

old faithful

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
IIRC, one of the comments made was that you dont see competitive shooters useing bullpups. you dont see raceing car drivers driving 4x4,s either. what i mean. is the original sight on the styer was not traditional cross hairs. It was cross hairs that met a o. When the rifle was zeroed, the fall of shot was gaurenteed to land inside the o. Which meant a hit. Its designed for quick reaction, snap shooting, and works very very well. As a small arms coach, i reckon i could take just about anyone off the street, and have them hitting a man sized target at 300m in a couple of hours.
 

PrOeLiTeZ

New Member
Everyone is taking this training issue from the point of other nations small arms. You may or may not know that assult rifles and the like are ILLEGAL to operate as a civilian in Australia, when you enlist in the army, that will be the only time you will ever use an assult rifle unless you join a specialist police unit. Australian soldiers are brought up on the steyr's they have nothing to compare it to, they learn to use it just as efficiently as their american counterparts, therefore the comparison between magazine changes isn't valid.
YES MAGAZINE CHANGE IS VALID!!! Switching from bullpup to conventional layout does affect the magazine changing training. I'm reffering to troops already used to AUG if ever having to convert to conventional rifle layout, its gonna be an issue so it is VALID!!! Frontline troops will get the conventional rifles first before reserves. The reserves will get either frontline troops rifles or new manufactured ones.
 

gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
YES MAGAZINE CHANGE IS VALID!!! Switching from bullpup to conventional layout does affect the magazine changing training. I'm reffering to troops already used to AUG if ever having to convert to conventional rifle layout, its gonna be an issue so it is VALID!!!
Magazine changeovers (???) are not the litmus test - it's tight groupings within nn timeframe. ie proficiency issues


Frontline troops will get the conventional rifles first before reserves. The reserves will get either frontline troops rifles or new manufactured ones.
relevance to bullpup vs conventional discussion?
 

Cooch

Active Member
IIRC, one of the comments made was that you dont see competitive shooters useing bullpups. you dont see raceing car drivers driving 4x4,s either.
I seem to recall an AWD Nissan Skyline doing some very hot laps indeed on the Mt Panorama circuit..... until the rules were changed.</OT>


what i mean. is the original sight on the styer was not traditional cross hairs. It was cross hairs that met a o. When the rifle was zeroed, the fall of shot was gaurenteed to land inside the o. Which meant a hit. Its designed for quick reaction, snap shooting, and works very very well. As a small arms coach, i reckon i could take just about anyone off the street, and have them hitting a man sized target at 300m in a couple of hours.
As a matter of fact, when I was shooting full-bore, ring-style front sights were de-rigeur for shooting out to 900 yards. The bull at 300 was a 6" circle. Ring sights of any type are designed to take advantage of the natural tendency of the human eye to centre objects within such a circle. This should apply equally to scope reticles,,, but I do not see the style of sight as being applicable to a discussion in the basic rifle design. If we are to determine whether one rifle is "better" than another, the sighting equipment should be identical, or as near to as makes no difference.

I do agree that a man-sized target at 300 yards (prone or rested) should be relatively simple. What did surprise me was a report from Afghanistan that in an engagement with (predominantly) American troops, enemy personnel could not be hit often enough at 600 yards to make them wary of fully exposing themselves. The writer (Australian) blamed the optical red-dot on his carbine (M4?) stating that the dot obscured the whole target.
Not that the general situation was favourable to the most accurate possible shooting.

Regards........ Peter (Never been under fire, and bearing that in mind.)
 

Cooch

Active Member
However, in very very simple terms, it was apparent from the evaluation date that comparative stats through things like the 3 stages of recoil on the Steyrs was very different to groups of newbies who went through and fired conventionals such as M-16 and the SLR.
<snip>

See above. Dunno myself ............. <snip>
Fair Enough.

As someone who grew up shooting 12g and has had to learn to shoot groups with various medium-bores, I tend to discount felt recoil from the 5.56mm and similar. Granted that felt recoil is largely subjective anyway, I'll go out on a limb and assume that recoil management in your field is more to do with controllability under full-auto and sight-picture recovery in rapid-fire.

I do know that muzzle-rise is reduced when the axis of the bore is more closely aligned to the COM of the weapon and the centre of effective area of the butt-plate. One aspect of bully construction is that the cheek-piece must be above the action, which acts to lower the barrel-axis in comparison with some more traditional arms which are constructed so as to place the face behind the action, rather than above it.

Pardon me for thinking aloud............ Peter
 

Chino

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
How come the SAS of Australia, NZ and UK - all bullpup using countries - prefer the conventional M4?

Although the number of new bullpup user countries grow every year, there are just as many who opted for non-bullpup new rifle options like the G36
 

IrishHitman

New Member
gf, I forgot to ask.

In what areas were conventional weapons found to be superior to bullpups for general use? Was it just magazine changes or was there more?
 

winnyfield

New Member
How come the SAS of Australia, NZ and UK - all bullpup using countries - prefer the conventional M4?

Although the number of new bullpup user countries grow every year, there are just as many who opted for non-bullpup new rifle options like the G36
Lots of factors, although increasingly the differing requirements by SF and regulars are becoming smaller.

The biggest reason is probably history (tradition matters). Aussie SAS and commandos have been using the M4/5.56mm long before the Steyr was introduced.

Their mission are different, often much more specialised (AR-15 very good modular platform - blame the big civilian market in the US) and lighter than the regular military. A rifle in the hands of a regulars is more likely to be abused than in the hands of SF.
 

old faithful

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
One of the reasons SF dont use styers as standard, is that it is piston operated. if the weopon is drowned and the piston cylinder fills, the weopon could mafunction. The M4 dosnt suffer this problem. however , the M4 suffers from having a shorter barrel, reducing the standard 5.56mm ammos effectiveness over ranges of 100m.
 

Grandstrat

New Member
Labour just promised to extend the 3% real increase per year by an extra year, and for the next four years swan says it'll be close to 4%.

In the budget if you watched.
 

Todjaeger

Potstirrer
The M4 has a better effective range than that. I think its more in the area of 500m around the same as the M16.
I could be mistaken, but I believe the "effective range" the Old Faithful was referring to was not the effective/lethal range of the 5.56mm round. Rather, the discussion was about at what range did the rifle no longer have accurate grouping based off the sites used, etc.

-Cheers
 

old faithful

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Really was talking about the hitting/killing power of the standard 5.56mmm ammo fired from the M4. im not saying it wont stop a man past 100m. Im saying that its hitting power is reduced once the round passes 100m, compared with a longer barrelled m16A2 or styer. i base this on a spec warrie mate, who i have known for 23 years, 19 of them he has spent with SF, and he has just returned from the Gahn.
 

the road runner

Active Member
I have read in "Australian and new zealand defender" magazine that a number of M4 rounds did not pentrate the targets of a number of terrorists,who were fighting at altitude and were wearing woolin garments(3+layers of clothing in the cold afghan mountains).Supposidley the 5.56 mm round had alot of dificulties in penetration chararistics at altitude<<<dont know if it is fact tho?
Maybee someone in the forum has info on this and can clarify this point for me.:unknown

Also regarding 4RAR and SASR using M4 wepons,i was under the impression that these wepons were used for the advantage of having a common weapons type with our major allies(US and UK) so logistic support would be common for all spec forces nations.This is because our SASR and 4RAR usually fight with special forces of US and sometimes the UK.
I thought that the M4 was so all spec forces had common logistic support for the M4.i.e same ammo and wepons parts<<<?:confused:

MEEP MEEP
 

gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
i was under the impression that these wepons were used for the advantage of having a common weapons type with our major allies(US and UK) so logistic support would be common for all spec forces nations.
Not so with respect to weaponary. They (SASR) have license.
 

Chino

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
I don't know if Andy McNab is the real deal, but on one Youtube video he heaped praises on the M4.

Could it be SF favours M4 because:

- they prefer a conventional platform?
- its ergonomics is still unbeatable?
- can mount a GL better than a bullpup?
- lighter than bullpups as well as most other conventionals?
- they don't need the longer range that a bullpup with full-length barrel can afford?

I have the impression SF usually don't hang much gadgets on their M4s. So I don't think that would be a big reason for choosing it?
 

lobbie111

New Member
YES MAGAZINE CHANGE IS VALID!!! Switching from bullpup to conventional layout does affect the magazine changing training. I'm reffering to troops already used to AUG if ever having to convert to conventional rifle layout, its gonna be an issue so it is VALID!!! Frontline troops will get the conventional rifles first before reserves. The reserves will get either frontline troops rifles or new manufactured ones.
What's your point, its not like its learning to shoot again, I have shot an M16 after I shot he steyr both with magazine changes, nothing essentially that different just where you put your hands and the release button is... you can pick it up in a couple of hours, to get fully used to it...

but as Gf said not relevant.

Red dots in low light and night situations tend to flood your eyepiece with the light from the LED they are only really effective in the day,

Using the G36 as an example, the german army originally had the G3 non bullpup, the G36 is made from Hecklar and Koch, with no expeirience on making bulpups, they stuck to a safe design for them.

Whereas Australia who for the past 20 years or so has been working mainly on Steyr's, we are sticking to a safe design for us.

AWD is different from a 4WD (there is a difference you know)

SF, are a specialist unit, they follow their own doctrines and rules most if not all of the time, they have totally different mission profiles and as a rule do not participate in the same roles as conventional troops, different horses for different courses...
 

kato

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Using the G36 as an example, the german army originally had the G3 non bullpup, the G36 is made from Hecklar and Koch, with no expeirience on making bulpups, they stuck to a safe design for them.
Bad example. The G36 was selected specificially as an intermediary stopgap design, after the funding for the (bullpup) G11 was dropped.
 
Top