Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Central Ballistics Lab of the French National Gendarmerie, the IRCGN, taking a look at some of the interesting guns in their reference collection, like this, which appears to be a Tavor TAR-21, it is actually a Ukrainian Fort 221. I don't know a lot about these, information is very
difficult to come by for probably obvious reasons. But there ... aren't a lot of resources
out there showing these guns up close, so I figured we'll at least take a close look,
I will tell you what I can about it. And then speculate
as to what I don't know, and perhaps we can find some more answers
from people who have more detailed knowledge. So to begin with, this is manufactured
by a company called RPC Fort. Fort stands for the State
Research and Production Association. It is a manufacturing conglomerate,
it is the primary ... small arms at least manufacturing conglomerate in
Ukraine, located in the west of Ukraine. It was formed as a company in 1991 when Ukraine got their independence
from the crumbling Soviet Union. In 1998 it became a state-run enterprise, and
it continues to be a state-run enterprise today. By the way, a big thanks
to the Armourer's Bench, Matt Moss has probably the most
informative video out there about the Ukrainian production
Tavors in service in the war. So if you haven't seen it, you should definitely
check out that video on the Armourer's Bench. Anyway, in 2008 Fort got (and this
was all pretty widely publicised) they got a licence contract to
manufacture IWI small arms. And it was a huge variety
of them, not just Tavors, and by the way it was both the TAR-21
and the Tavor X95, the shorter version, as well as other Israeli
designs like the Galil ACE, the Galatz (which is the .308 original old school
Galil), the Negev light machine gun and others. It's unclear to me exactly how many of
these designs actually went into production, but we know the Tavors actually did. Now ... these were listed on
Fort's website, they were available. I don't know how much of the
intention was to make the guns for the Ukrainian military and how
much was to make them for export sales. Because they were purchased by the Ukrainian
military starting in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. But in relatively small numbers, they were
purchased by some Special Operations units and also by some Ministry
of the Interior security forces. It wasn't like a huge wide-scale adoption. Obviously there aren't tons of these things floating
around Ukraine, but you do see them these days. On the other hand, with its current invasion
Ukraine is willing to use (presumably) any really effective modern
small arm that it can get its hands on. Especially ones in 5.56 that are
going to be ammunition compatible with ... the other guns that they are using. So 2014 to 2016, we start seeing
the guns in Ukrainian service. Don't know exactly how many were made,
what the original purpose was. So let's take a closer look at this. It is an exact clone of the TAR-21, so
there's not a whole lot for me to show you. But we'll at least take a look at the
markings and some of the features. So here's the whole thing. By the way, the
Magpul is a random magazine that I put in this. I don't know exactly what magazines Fort
was manufacturing or supplying with the rifles, so don't consider this
as canon or current use. The only actual evidence we have here that
this is a Ukrainian rifle are the markings here. That's Fort 221 in 5.56 millimetre. Serial number of course
and the Fort production logo. Now 221 is the designation for the TAR-21. There ... is discussion of these
being manufactured in 5.45 as well. And I know the Tavor was made in 5.45, but was it purchased by Ukraine,
was it licensed by Ukraine in 5.45? I think so, but I can't
speak to it for sure. The other commonly recognised
variation here is the Fort 224, that is the copy of the
Tavor X95, so the shorter gun. Now in theory there's a 222 and a 223. And by the way, Fort has a wide variety of other
designations like this for all sorts of other guns, because they make a ton of stuff
outside of just licensed Israeli products. So is the 222 the TAR-21 in 5.45? I don't know. It is worth noting that ... what we have
here is sort of the DMR version, I believe. We have a slightly longer
than normal barrel on this, and we have a Picatinny sight rail that is
raised up more than the regular normal Tavor. We do also have the
military sights on here, so you won't see these on the
American civilian versions of the TAR-21. We have a folding front sight, right there.
(Actually, I think you do see that on some of them.) But we also have an interesting folding
rear sight in its own lug right here. It's a rear aperture sight like so. Only that centre hole actually goes through,
the two holes on the side are blind so you don't have to try
and pick a rear aperture. And then we have this assembly
on here as well, which ... is all plastic. It is a locking clip here
and a round mounting post. These are intended for a
magnifier for a red dot optic. These are typically ... issued with
Meprolight M5 and/or M21 optics. So the DMR version with the extended
Picatinny rail, you probably won't be using this, but it's moulded into the hardware for
the gun anyway, so it's just on there. Worth noting we have our barrel locking
cam here, "L" and "O", locked and open. Those are the same markings as you'd
see on all the standard Israeli ones. Same goes for the selector settings: "A", "R"
and "S" are the standard Israeli markings. The Fort 221 does not appear
to be any different in that. I do also have a standard Israeli version
that we can do a quick comparison with. I will point out, 39 million
serial number range compared to the Fort being a 40 million
serial number range. ... To me, this is a distinct possibility that
the guns were both manufactured in Israel and either supplied to Ukraine with
their own polymer marked pieces, or part manufactured
in Ukraine, part in Israel. Again, just don't know for sure though. As far as I can see, essentially
all of the details here are the same. The selectors are the same (if we put them in
the same position), barrel length is the same, there's a slight difference in muzzle devices
which I'll show you up close in a moment. But all of our detail elements
back here mag release, bolt release, like there just aren't any changes. Here we have the other side, same thing. The buffer's the same, all the contours on
the back of the stock are exactly the same. We do have two slightly
different optics set ups here. So the Ukrainian one has the ... backup rear
sight and has the longer higher Picatinny rail, compared to the Israeli one
with a lower shorter rail, that actually does not have the rear iron sight.
It does have the front ... plastic sight on it. And there are the muzzle devices, so
you can see just a slight change in profile. And that could be from
any number of different factors. Alright, now my suspicion here is that Fort got the licence to manufacture these
but never actually tooled up for them. And the guns that Ukraine did get
were actually manufactured in Israel. So the reason that I think this is
if we look at our Israeli example here, first off, our serial number is 39.8 million and then
we have this moulded-in information, IWI, Tavor etc. Moving over to the Fort, we have a serial
number that's essentially in the same range, it's 40.8 million, so yeah, it's a million off. But this ... doesn't seem to me to be the
beginning of a Ukrainian serial number range. Then the Fort 221 marking is a metal
plate that is in the same place as this moulded polymer. So I think that was cut out and had a metal
plate put in with Ukrainian information. And then our logo here is the
exact same polymer stamping, but the Fort logo is actually engraved into
the plastic instead of being moulded in, and we have basically a
milled out little section here where originally on the
Israeli guns it says Tavor. So I think this is the exact same piece
of polymer as the Israeli production gun. This is not uncommon for licensed
production: for the original factory to supply the first batch of guns to help
the licensee get set up for production. We are not aware of any large
pre-war orders for the Fort 221s, and I suspect Fort was going to tool up
when they got their first major order. I suspect they didn't get
a major order as such and thus when the war began they basically
didn't have access to new examples any more, and so they pulled IMI and ... the
Tavors off of their own website, they weren't available
any more - that's my suspicion. Alright, so that's pretty much everything
that I can tell you for sure about these. Now in the spring of 2021 Fort removed
IWI and removed the Tavor series guns from its website, suggesting they are
no longer available for export sale. Now does that mean they are not exporting
them because they are not exporting anything because everything needs to be kept in
Ukraine for fighting the Russian invasion? Does it mean that Israel cancelled the licence? There are plausible reasons
that they might have, but maybe they didn't,
I just really don't know about that. Are these in active
continued production? Were they ever in complete
production in Ukraine, or were ... some parts made in Ukraine,
some parts imported from Israel? That's the way licensing
agreements will often begin, is the first batch of guns
are made by the host factory to help the licensee get tooled up and
get into production, but again I don't know. These are really, as far as I can tell, basically
exact copies of Israeli production TAR-21s. So maybe that means they just got tooling as part
of this licensing deal and that's why it's identical. Maybe it means some of the parts were made by the
Israelis and shipped over, ... that I really don't know. So if you know more about these and if
it's not considered classified information, we don't need this to become the War Thunder
forums, but if you know more about these and you'd like to share it, please do consider
adding a comment down in the comments. Or if you'd like to email me directly, my
address is admin@forgottenweapons.com. I'd like to give a big thanks
to the French Gendarmerie for giving me access to this particular
example to show to you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
