KAC PDW

     Notes: The Knight’s Armament Corporation (KAC) is primarily known for its add-on accessories for existing small arms, particularly the AR-15/M-16/M-4 series (the M-4 SOPMOD Kit is largely based on KAC components.  However, KAC has in the past few years entered into its own small arms production.  Some of KAC’s small arms are already serving with the US military, such as the Mk 11 Mod 0 Sniper Rifle (a modified SR-25), and a further modified version of the Mk 11 Mod 0, the M-110 Sniper Rifle.  They have also begun to produce a new line of greatly-improved versions of the AR-15/M-16/M-4 series. Perhaps the most interesting of their weapons, however, is the KAC PDW concept.  Though the KAC PDW has just entered limited initial production, and wasn’t officially revealed until the 2006 SHOT Show in what was called a prototype form, KAC has been officially working on their PDW since early 2005 and possibly much earlier.  Designed in response to a request by a US government agency called the Technical Support Working Group, rumors abound of field and combat testing by US military and government agencies (none confirmed by KAC or the US government).  The KAC PDW is another one of those weapons that skirts the line between submachinegun and short-barreled assault rifle.

     The KAC PDW is based on KAC’s entry into the US military’s SCAR program (which was not approved by the US military).  Te KAC PDW is therefore loosely based on the M-16/M-4 design, primarily in the external design of the lower receiver and its control layout.  The fire selector switch is virtually identical to that of the M-16/M-4, but is ambidextrous; the external bolt latch and the magazine release button are slightly different in design from the M-16/M-4, but still in roughly the same place as an M-16 or M-4.  The shape of the lower receiver is also very similar to the M-16/M-4. The pistol grip shape is also similar to the M-16/M-4, though the design itself is different.  These features make it easier to train troops already familiar with the use of the M-16/M-4 to use the KAC PDW.  The upper receiver, however, is a totally different animal, bearing no resemblance to the M-16/M-4; it has sort of an octagonal cross-section, with an oversized ejection port mounted high on the upper receiver, a row of seven cooling holes near the end of the upper receiver, and total of four MIL-STD-1913 rails – a full-length rail atop the receiver, a rail extending from the end of the receiver to the magazine well underneath the barrel, and two short rails on either side below the cooling holes.  At the other end of the upper receiver is a skeletonized stock that folds to the left side.

     The KAC PDW is gas-piston-operated, firing from a closed bolt and using a rotating bolt design.  The gas piston system uses a pair of short-stroke pistons above and on either side of the bolt carrier group, with the recoil spring in between the pistons.  The bolt is similar in design to that found in the AK-47.  The entire bolt group, with recoil spring, is semi-captive and uses a separate frame from the bolt carrier group; when the KAC PDW is disassembled, the bolt group and recoil spring are removed as one unit, like that of most Kalashnikov rifles.  Presently, KAC’s site shows the fire selector as allowing for safe, semiautomatic, and automatic fire, but earlier KAC literature showed a fire selector allowing for safe, semiautomatic, 3-round burst, and automatic fire.  (KAC currently has no plans to produce a civilian version of their PDW.)  Barrels come in 7.5 and 10-inches (an 8-inch barrel was shown on KAC’s site late last year, but KAC’s site is now showing a 7.5-inch barrel instead of an 8-inch barrel) and are almost bull-barreled in profile, with a unique dimpled design that reduces weight without compromising strength.  The barrel is tipped with an interesting-looking muzzle brake based on an old Gene Stoner design (which he based on a muzzle brake that was tested, but not used, on the Nazi’s FG-42); the brake appears to have over twenty narrow slots around top and sides, but each of those slots actually have lots small holes in them though which muzzle gasses are vented.  The brake also contains a baffle that is used to reduce felt recoil.  This design is rather difficult to manufacture, but very effectively cuts down barrel climb and felt recoil and suppresses muzzle flash.  The muzzle brake can also be replaced with a compact suppressor designed by KAC for use with its PDW.

     Ambidextrous sling swivels are provided; three sets are used to virtually any sling or sling system to be used.  Removable flip-up sights are provided; the standard rear iron sight is adjustable for elevation, while the front is adjustable for windage.  The KAC PDW, however, is primarily meant to be used with CQB-type optical sights mounted on the top MIL-STD-1913 rail. The upper receiver, lower receiver, and the stock are built from aircraft-quality 7075T6 aluminum alloy, with operating parts and the barrel being made of steel and non-metallic parts )such as the pistol grip) of polymer.

     The original KAC PDW experiments used a 6x30mm round, but this was quickly increased to a 6x35mm round with greater power.  The case is based on the .221 Fireball case, while the bullet is based on the .243 Winchester.  Current KAC PDW magazines use two-piece aluminum-alloy bodies with ribs for an easier grip, but KAC’s plans to change to translucent polymer magazines in the future.

     Twilight 2000 Notes: The KAC PDW does not exist in the Twilight 2000 timeline.

*If the KAC PDW has the current safe/semiautomatic/automatic trigger group, subtract $120 from the price.

KF-AMP

     Notes: This is an assault pistol designed for counterterrorist forces, SRT teams, and other troops that need to fight in close-quarters environments.  It did see some use in that role, particularly by police SRT units in the US and Mexico, but also turned up quite often in the hands of terrorists, gang members, and organized crime figures, particularly the bodyguards of crime family heads.  It is available in three calibers, with and without a foregrip, and magazines ranging from small to huge were designed for use with the weapon.  The muzzle is threaded for use with a suppressor.  The KF-59-AMP and KF-54-AMP have a foregrip and use longer barrels, while the others do not. 

LaFrance M-16K 0.45

     Notes: Based on the standard M-16K, the 0.45 M-16K is heavier and has a longer barrel to deal with the higher recoil and lesser accuracy of the .45ACP round.  The 0.45 M-16K was designed for special operations, and can fire the .45HLR and .45XHLR rounds.  A four-pronged flash suppresser eliminates muzzle flash even when firing high-performance ammunition. 

     Twilight 2000 Notes: A surprising amount of US, NATO, and South Korean troops, especially special operations, used this weapon. 

M-3/M-3A1/OSS M-3 “Grease Gun”

     Notes: This weapon was meant to rival the British Sten for cheap and quick manufacture and ease of use.  It is built simply out of a set of large steel stampings, and has very few component parts.  Production started in 1942, and by the time production stopped, over 650,000 of them had been built in the US and overseas.  They were used by the US as late as the 1980s, and are still in use by many countries around the world.  The first model was the M-3; this was replaced by the M-3A1, built using simplified manufacturing methods and incorporating a number of improvements for users.  The OSS M-3 was a silenced variant for special operations; only about 1000 of these were built; and their quietness was questionable.  Some of the M-3s and M-3A1s were made with flash suppressors, but most weren’t.

     Twilight 2000 Notes: This was still a common weapon in the world, even among US units, where they equipped National Guard vehicle crews and some rear area units.  Refurbished examples were supplied to CivGov and MilGov militia units alike.

M-42

     Notes:  The M-42 was designed by High Standard, and built by the United Defense division of Marlin Firearms.  It was first chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge with the hopes of sales to the US military, but the Army and Marines declined.  Marlin then changed the caliber to 9mm Parabellum and sold 15,000 of them to the OSS and the portions of the Dutch Army stationed in the Dutch East Indies, as well as local militia levied by the Dutch during World War 2.  The M-42 was basically a victim of bad timing; it was a reliable, and robust weapon (if a bit overly complicated), but it arrived on the scene just after the Thompson was approved for use and the military gave a verdict of “no requirement” to Marlin.

Marshall Arms PDW

     Notes: This weapon was designed for use by troops requiring a lightweight, compact weapon, like helicopter pilots, vehicle crewmen, and bodyguards.  The interest in such PDW’s (Personal Defense Weapons) has grown in recent years, particularly with the conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chechnya, where pilots got shot down and were essentially defenseless compared to the enemy troops hunting them until aided by rescuing troops.  The Marshall Arms PDW is one of the designs being tested for such a role.  It is essentially a large machine pistol (or a small submachinegun), small enough to be easily carried and pointed (like a pistol), but producing a large volume of fire (like a submachinegun).  The magazine is located longitudinally on top of the receiver to further decrease the size of the weapon while allowing a decent magazine capacity.  The Marshall Arms PDW now fires 9mm Parabellum ammunition, but variants are being contemplated that fire 5.7mm FN and 4.6mm HK PDW ammunition, and statistics for these possible variants are presented below.

     Twilight 2000 Notes: This weapon does not exist.

MK Arms MK-760

     Notes: In its base form, the MK-760 is a close copy of the Smith & Wesson 76 submachinegun.  The MK-760 was produced because the SEALs and police departments were faced with the fact that Smith & Wesson had discontinued the S&W Model 76 and they still needed spare parts and, on occasion, whole weapons.  The MK-760 was also sold to civilians in the days before the Gun Owner’s Protection Acts of 1986.  Semiautomatic and pistol versions of this weapon were also produced; the semiautomatic version was basically the same weapon without the full-auto provision, while the pistol version was simply the same weapon without the folding stock. 

     After the Gun Owner’s Protection Acts, MK switched gears in its production of the civilian version, making the MK-760 into a semiautomatic carbine with a 16-inch barrel.  It was well-known (especially to the BATF) that this new version of the MK-760 could easily be modified to fire fully automatic; therefore, another redesign was made, making it virtually impossible for the new MK-760 carbine to be converted to full-auto.

Reising M-50/M-55

     Notes: Produced for the US Marines for use in the Pacific in World War II, the Reising quickly developed a reputation for jamming at the wrong moment, and was discarded in favor of the Thompson. Most Reisings eventually found their way into police armories in the US, where their intolerance to dirt was not important. A few can still be found in police armories, but most are collectors' items. The M-50 has a fixed wooden stock; the M-55 has a folding wire stock. 

Ruger MP-9

     Notes: This weapon is a joint venture between Ruger of the US and the Israeli designer Uziel Gal (developer of the Uzi, Galil, and Negev).  It has been tested by US special operations forces and acquired by some South American countries.  It is basically an updated Uzi, based on an Uziel Gal design known as the Model 2201, which was an an unsold design for an Uzi firing from a closed bolt.  The weapon is made largely of Zytel reinforced plastic. 

     Twilight/Merc 2000 Notes: As Notes, but in the Twilight 2000 World, the MP-9 has been issued to troops levied late in the war and to militia units of MilGov.

Saco M-683

     Notes: This weapon was designed specifically to be easy to use, maintain, and manufacture. Manufacturing the M-683 mostly takes a few steel stampings and plastic castings, and the plastic castings could be easily replaced by more steel stampings (though this increases the weight of the weapon).

     Twilight 2000 Notes: Though it had little success before the Twilight War, the ease of manufacture caused CivGov to ask Saco to manufacture the weapon for its armed forces and militia in its surviving facilities in Maine starting about a month after the November Nuclear Strikes.    

     Merc 2000 Notes: This is mostly a collectors’ weapon.

SerLea ACE 

     An unusual double-barreled 9mmP submachinegun, the SerLea was featured in the action movie “Direct Hit.”  A Lebanese immigrant to the US who was a gunsmith and veteran of Beirut street battles developed it.  The SerLea was designed to provide a high-burst-rate weapon for street fighting.  The weapon features twin barrels, twin magazines, and twin bolts, with a synchronizing mechanism to turn the weapon into a single high-rate-of-fire submachinegun.  The Los Angeles police department showed interest in the design, but by 1997 the weapon remained primarily in specialized gun collectors’ hands.  The weapon may fired one barrel at a time only if one magazine is inserted. 

     Twilight 2000 Notes: Other than the two that the LAPD has, and isolated original copies in civilian hands, some 30 or so of these weapons were used by US special operations forces.  In addition, some 4 dozen or so were made during the war and passed out to friends of the designer.

     Merc 2000 Notes: Only 4 of these weapons exist, two in the hands of the LAPD SWAT unit.

Smith & Wesson M-76

     Notes:  This weapon was designed in 1966 for service in Vietnam.  Though the US had a quantity of Carl Gustav M-45 Submachineguns, the Navy SEALS and River Rats wanted some too, and Sweden’s neutrality with regards to the Vietnam War meant that they would sell no more to the US.  Smith & Wesson was therefore contracted to produce a US copy of the M-45, which was the M-76.  Production ramped up in 1967, but by then, the Navy was no longer interested in such a weapon.  Only a few thousand were manufactured, and most of them were bought by police, mercenaries, or collectors.  The M-76 is an almost exact copy of the M-45, and is basically an unremarkable weapon. Alert fans of B-movie science fiction may recognize the M-76 as the weapon used by Charleton Heston in the post-apocalyptic movie, The Omega Man.

     Twilight 2000 Notes: Due the ease with which the M-76 can be manufactured, it was produced by CivGov for its troops after the November Nuclear Strikes.

Viking

     Notes: Viking Systems Inc. is (or was; I have not been able to determine Viking’s status as of present) a company headed by well known firearms designer Dale Toler.  Perhaps its first military-type product was the Viking submachinegun (which also had the unofficial nickname of “Vixen”).  The Viking was designed to be a small and easily-concealable submachinegun for users ranging from bodyguards and protection details to military vehicle operators; it is, in fact, smaller than the Uzi at a mere 14.2 inches in length with the stock retracted and 22.8 inches with the stock extended.  Though some sales were reportedly made (to groups including the Secret Service, US Customs, some special operations units in various places in the world, and the Egyptian Presidential Guard), no official sales of the Viking have actually been made (as far as I have been able to find out).  The Egyptian Army in particular conducted grueling tests with the Viking, some of which went as far as putting the Viking in a mudhole and then firing a full magazine through it and dropping a cocked, locked, and loaded Viking from a height onto the ground!

     Though the design of the Viking submachinegun can hardly be called innovative; it uses a simple blowback operation, fires from an open bolt, and uses the telescoping bolt principle to reduce length, with a rather heavy bolt to reduce the cyclic rate.  Feed is from a magazine inserted into the pistol grip; the 36-round double-column box is intended to be the standard magazine, but 32 and 20-round magazines are also available.  (The 20-round magazine is optimal for concealment, as it fits flush with the bottom of the pistol grip.)  Construction is largely of heavy steel tubing, and the parts are made to be as seamless as possible.  The pistol grip is made from polycarbonate plastic, with a swing-down foregrip made from the same material (which doubles as a conventional handguard when in the upwards position.  The 8.5-inch barrel is normally tipped by a flash suppressor similar to that of the M-16A1, but the muzzle is threaded to allow a number of other muzzle attachments to used.  The selector switch (actually a slider) has fire, semi, and auto settings.  The magazine release is a bit peculiar; it is on the left side, and one can easily release the magazine by simply sweeping downwards with the left hand.  In addition to the safe selector setting, the Viking has several passive safeties, including a grip safety on the pistol grip.  Sights are elevation-adjustable flip-type aperture sights in the rear and a windage-adjustable post in the front, both with protective ears.  The top of the receiver has a mount which was purpose-designed for the Aimpoint laser aiming module, but can be used for other such sights or items like ACOG sights. 

     Twilight 2000 Notes: The Viking saw wide issue in the Twilight 2000 timeline, most notably to the special ops units of various countries, USAF Security troops, and the Egyptian, Saudi, and Kuwaiti armies.

Weaver PKS-9 Ultralight

     Notes: As the name suggests, this weapon was designed to provide a lightweight firepower package; and it was a light weapon at the time of its design.  It is largely made of simple castings of aluminum alloy.  Though spent casings are ejected as with any other automatic firearm, the design does not actually use any part specifically designed for extraction; the casings are ejected as a by-product of movement of the bolt. 

     Twilight 2000 Notes: The PKS-9 is easy to care for, making it popular with new civilian militia forces raised by MilGov, though Weaver was forced by the Mexican invasion to move its production facilities to northern California from Escondido to continue making them. 

     Merc 2000 Notes: This is mainly a collectors’ weapon.