In the style of bullpup - Bushmaster M-17s
Studying history the creation of various weapons, including rifle weapons, with bitterness you begin to understand how many brilliant ideas of inventors and designers have not been finalized, not brought to a logical end. Indeed, as soon as the thought of a man of genius becomes the material embodiment and display of his ideas, some invention comes to light.
The history of the creation of the Bushmaster M-17s rifle
It all started in 1982, when a small firm Armstech from Australia made an application to participate in the competitive selection. This was the task of designing a new automatic weapons for the Armed Forces of Australia under a single "NATO cartridge" caliber 5,56 mm. For the presentation of the draft of the weapon, the designers of the company designed and produced the necessary design calculations for their offspring, assault automatic rifle (compact machine). The idea was good, the 5.56 mm assault rifle was designed for the NATO cartridge. The rifle was conceived in the “bullpup” layout, but the victory in this competition was won by the product of the Austrian gunsmiths - the Steyr AUG rifle, which was later adopted as the standard weapon of the Australian army under the alphanumeric code F88.
Despite the failure in the qualifying round of the competition, Armstech did not abandon a promising project, but continued to work. However, incorrect documentation has undermined the company's financial stability. Faced with the threat of bankruptcy, a package of documents for a rifle was sold to another company from Australia, Edenpine, which set out to enter the US arms market with this rifle. At the beginning of 90 –s of the 20th century, Edenpine made a deal to transfer the rights to refine and manufacture this type of weapon to Bushmaster Firearms Inc. (USA). In 1994, Bushmaster entered the American arms market with the M17s self-loading rifle, a refined and improved model of the Australian project that was intended to be used as a weapon by cops and civilian paramilitary units, rangers and security forces. To the surprise of many experts, the rifle after all the improvements turned out to be quite good shooting characteristics. In such an arrangement, it successfully combined a sufficiently long stem, general proportionality and relative compactness. This was accompanied by ease of handling and reliability in use. Despite such positive characteristics, Bushmaster closed the project for mass production of the product, throwing all the money to manufacture the Ar-15 / M16 rifles that are more in demand in America. Any explanation is hard to come up with, with the exception of the unpopularity of such weapons among Americans.
Bullpup layout
The bullpup-style layout (bullpup) is a variant of the arrangement of the mechanisms of the product, in which the trigger and the holder are structurally integrated into the applied part behind the trigger. This makes it possible to make the barrel length longer without changing the dimensions of the product, which increases the range and accuracy of shooting.
The main motive inducing designers to use such an arrangement of weapons mechanisms is the desire to make the length of the product shorter, which is very important in a limited space (car, tank, self-propelled gun, armored personnel carrier or infantry fighting vehicle). In this case, the size of the rifle vertically, as a rule, becomes larger, because it is necessary to make the sight higher, and the trigger also occupies a certain place.
The device and principle of operation of Bushmaster M-17s
Bushmaster M-17s is an individual weapon in the form of a rifle, which uses the principle of removal of gas after a shot. The gas piston remains in the up position with its short stroke. The channel of the barrel is locked with a seven-stop bolt. The powerful frame of the shutter moves on two metal rods. Near them are placed spring return. Directly the bolt and barrel are arranged in a trunk box made of light-alloyed metal. Bottom to the box of the barrel it is attached box USM, made of plastic in a single composition with a handle for shooting, the receiving part of the holder and the butt plate of the applied part. On the upper plane there is a handle for moving the armament on which the mount for the “optics” is located. The back of the handle to move the weapon is made functional and serves to cocked the bolt. The safety button is located in front of the trigger guard.
Performance characteristics of the rifle
Caliber: 5.56 x 45mm
Product length: 760 mm
Length of the barrel: 546 mm
Weight (without curb): 3.72 kg
Clip - standard from M16 / AR15
In 2005, the Bushmaster M17S release program was closed.
Information