H&K Mk23 SOCOM .45 Development

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm in McCallum and I'm here today at hk's gray room in Ashburn Virginia where we're taking a look at some of their particularly interesting firearms and specifically today we're going to look at the gun that became the the mark 23 mod 0 in service with the US Navy and US Special Operations Command this began in 1991 as the offensive handgun weapons system programmer offensive handgun weapons program basically the relatively newly formed in the night 1986 I believe US Special Operations Command wanted to standardize on a one sidearm system so of course the US military had adopted the nine-millimeter beretta the beretta 92 shortly before this in the 80s and prior to that of course the US military had 1911's and when Special Operations Command went through and looked at what their various units were using for sidearms they came up with this just kind of bewildering bewildering array of different guns platforms Ammo magazine systems kind of a logistical nightmare and they wanted to just compile this all down into one ideal what they considered an offensive handgun so the idea with this was in a generalized military setting a handgun is considered a last-ditch backup defensive weapon you know the guy who has what pilots carry handguns officers will carry a handgun as well as their their main weapon it's it's a backup however with a Special Forces type of mission profile there would be a lot of conceivable circumstances where the handgun would be the primary weapon either because something happened to the other different primary weapon a machine gunner or rifle conceivably even ran out of ammunition you're on a long mission you can only carry so much with you what happens when you run out you don't want to be stuck with you know a jframe revolver and of course there are situations where maybe there was no other standard weapon being carried so SOCOM wanted an offensive handgun so they set out a whole slew of requirements limitations on size couldn't be more than 250 millimeters long for the gun and 400 millimeters long with a suppressor that's about 12 inches and 16 inches had to be 45 caliber that was actually a big part of this they looked at the cartridge effectiveness and they decided 45 gave them a lot better options than 9-millimeter did and specifically this was a gun that was going to be primarily used with 185 grain plus P 45 caliber ammunition so we're talking something a little bit different than the standard original 230 grain ball ammo and this also meant well that plus P designation on there means 10% over the standard maximum pressure and this this was a big part of the reason why they weren't looking for an upgraded 1911 the 1911 frame just isn't really built to handle that type of of pressure and continuous usage and this is largely why we saw problems with ten millimeter 1911's and SOCOM just wanted to avoid that entirely so they wanted a 45 caliber pistol it had to have at least a 10 round magazine it had to have a whole bunch of different safety options had to be able to be both D cocked and carried cocked and locked initially they wanted you to be able to of course you had to be able to mount a suppressor that was a big part of it but they also wanted you to be able to lock the slide so that the gun wouldn't cycle basically turned it into a manually operated pistol because with a good pistol suppressor the like the major the primary source of noise when firing is now once you have a suppressor the sound of the action slamming back and forth if you think about it it's the same amount of noise is you would get dry cycling the gun and in the absence of a gunshot that's relatively loud so they wanted you'd be able to walk the slide so you can really make it a very quiet pistol to shoot had to be able to incorporate and visible and Infrared both light source and laser aiming module and then of course it also had to be reliable and durable to standards that were really pretty excruciating so phase one of this program began in the middle of 1991 and that was basically where SOCOM opened this up to the industry and investigated options that were provided to them you know companies could submit pistols and SOCOM would look at them and and consider if they seemed appropriate or not and then the winners of phase one were were companies that prepared something that looked like it showed promise and those companies who were given paid development contracts so this wasn't something that so common the Navy the US Navy expected a company to foot the bill for they were willing to pay for the development work that would go into this pistol by the end of phase one however there are only two companies that actually met the requirements and had something that even looked like it could be compatible one was cold and if you're interested in Colts design I have a video on the Colt offensive combat weapons system which I will link to at the end of this video or you can just search for take a look at that if you want to know more about the Colt entry HK really kind of had a leg up on this because they were already well into development of a new polymer-framed service pistol and they had initially done its development in 40 Smith & Wesson which is substantially more mechanically difficult cartridge to work with the nine-millimeter you're working with more force and more pressure in 40 than you are in nine so developing the system around 40 gave them a very good platform from which to to change over to 45 ACP to meet this SOCOM requirement so HK and Colt ended up being the only two companies that would go forward HK delivered its first batch of 30 pistols for the phase 2 program of the trial in 1993 and from there they would go through a just really pretty excruciating endurance test a 30000 round endurance test which the gun passed with apparently no parts breakage and still meeting the rather stringent accuracy requirement at the end which is really very remarkable the Colt entry by the way didn't make it through phase 2 it failed those tests there was then a a last phase 3 of the project where there were a couple of modifications that were requested to the gun basically whatever they found in that initial testing that they wanted tweaked or changed or fixed HK would then fix that they would go through one more iteration of test and then procurement so I'm sorry I think I'm getting these a little bit ahead of myself here phase 1 was the first endurance test phase 2 was the second set of testing and phase 3 was the final pistol which was procured so we actually have here a phase 1 HK pistol a phase 2 HK pistol and the phase 3 the final procured version of the gun so let's go ahead and take a look at those up close we'll start here with the phase 1 pistol so this is the very first or an exemplar of the very first batch that HK delivered to the Navy for assessment and testing and this is a freaking huge gun people have complained about that a lot in what I've read about the mark 23 but I think it's important to remember that this really is kind of part of the purpose of the gun it's not supposed to be a concealable gun it's not supposed to be a compact gun it's supposed to be a large easily controllable high-capacity and and multi-purpose without one of those purposes being concealment fire intended to be capable of being a soldier of fighter and operators sole weapon so just for comparison's sake here is a standard 9-millimeter USP which is really pretty much service pistol sized and this thing really kind of dwarfed said we'll go ahead and start with some of the elements of the gun it is mark US government caliber 45 and the grip symbol e says hk45 serial number on this is simply number 5 that 23 is a suffix or prefix denoting the the type of pistol so this is phase 1 prototype number 5 now our controls here include a decocking lever and a safety you are able to carry this cocked and locked and by the way the the SOCOM requirement also was very specific that the downward position had to be the fire position so swipe the the the safety down to make the gun ready to fire you had to not be able to decock the pistol while it was in safe mode so if you wanted to carry it cocked and locked there was no chance of accidentally decocking it once it's on fire then you can decock the system using this lever the safety is ambidextrous although the decocker is not the magazine release is also ambidextrous this is the same system that H case started using in their pH P 7 series of pistols where you push this lever down and it pops magazine out this was a 12-round magazine the the requirement the Navy requirement was 10 HK did one better well two better I suppose by making it a 12-round magazine these early pistols had vertical creation on both the front and back strap of the grip that would change but we'll get to that in the next variation and then there is this little switch in the front of the trigger guard and that is the slide lock you can see the little cutout right there if I pull the slide just slightly back I can lift this switch up that engages this little block which locks the slide makes it impossible to move the slide but it can still be fired and that's of course for maximum well minimum noise when you're firing with a suppressor speaking of which the suppressor on this first pattern of gun was in HK proprietary design they came up with this thing and it's an interesting kind of unorthodox suppressor so it's threaded on take it off here once you take this off we can then take off this locking collar and then you will see that we have kind of a typical suppressor sort of design underneath and this is just an extra additional expansion chamber so this is going to reduce the noise signature of the suppressor by just a little bit more notice we have this little two tooth thing plate on the front of this extra piece and this ring on the front the idea there is that once you tighten this thing on to the gun you don't know exactly what orientation this expansion chamber is going to end up in so by loosening this locking collar up you can put this on the gun and then rotate it into the proper vertical orientation and then lock this color down to hold it in place now this didn't prove to be a particularly effective suppressor and one of the problems with this is that the pistol is a typical browning type tilting barrel and when you hang a big weight on the end of it that tends to impact its reliability and as well Colt actually kind of did a better job on this than HK did at the beginning because what they did was contract this out to Knight's armament who designed a suppressor that was really better suited for it and so we'll see that in the phase two gun in a minute before we get there though one last thing to point out on the pistol the phase one gun had had front gripping serrations on the slide that will also change over time and then there's this giant laser aiming module device thing so this is set up to be multifunction it has both an illumination lamp and a pair of lasers this can be set to either visible light or infrared and you have both an infrared and visible laser so you can use this for illumination and for targeting both you know with the naked eye and with image intensification or night vision goggles yeah you'll notice right there that's that's not really how you want the suppressor to stay so go ahead open this up and I can pull that back and I can line it up there nice and vertical tighten that back down and there we go now we're good to go note that the the line of the iron sights these don't look like they're particularly tall sights however they do clear the suppressor so you don't need any special adjustment to your iron sights to use this and that's probably part of why HK added this expansion chamber below they couldn't make the suppressor any larger in diameter than it currently was without interfering with the sights but they needed more volume so they added it under under the existing suppressor now the phase one pistol went very nicely it passed a thirty thousand round insane endurance test but there were a few things that needed to be changed the suppressor for one and this laser aiming module needed to change but in Phase two they actually didn't worry about this they'd come back to that with the the final procurement and HK wouldn't actually be building the final aiming module itself anyway so that would be subcontracted out to insight technologies at any rate they made a few changes to the gun and a big change to the suppressor in addition to getting rid of that weird extra block underneath and just making the whole thing a little bit longer they also added these springs and this is there to improve reliability of the pistol with the suppressor attached so again because this is a Browning tilting barrel type of action you can see the barrel drops down there you've got this big weight hanging on the end of the barrel that's going to really mess up the balance and the harmonics of this thing trying to cycle properly so what they did and I believe this is actually this actually came from knight's armament I believe this is a Knights Knights production suppressor although it's not the final version they added basically a little gas a gas trapped chamber sort of and these Springs so that when you fire this can actually slide forward this one's there we go this one's a little bit stiff and sticky but the net effect was basically the gas coming out the muzzle would give a boost backwards to help tip the barrel and cycle the pistol and this made a big difference in reliability of the gun with the suppressor attached it was a much better system in addition to that they changed the relatively shallow vertical striations on the grip to really heavy-duty checkering here on both the front and the backstrap that slide locking functionality that's gone someone realized you know what this really isn't a big deal just just get rid of that so as of phase two that was gone they also extended the bottom of the magazine well slightly to give it a little bit of beveling so the magazine's kind of changed just slightly as well this is a get these where you can see them this is a Phase two magazine you'll notice there's this step section to the base plate this is a phase one magazine so the phase one magazine doesn't go far enough into the Phase two gun to lock and if we take the phase two magazine and we put it into the Phase one gun you can see there it it locks with a little bit of extra space so that was done to make reloading a little bit a little bit faster and a little bit more more sure they also added a new finish to the slides so that the frame here is polymer the slide is steel all steel want milled from one big block of steel and it's and this is kind of funny to me so some people will think that oh boy here we go it some there's got to be something French involved with every gun right well in this case what the Germans what HK ended up doing was coming up with a system of Parker izing the slide and then coating it in a black lacquer paint that is what they found to be the best best combination for environmental resistance one of the tests that this phase two gun would go through was a 96 hour salt water and sand immersion test they were shaking these guns up underwater in salt water with sand for 96 hours so what four straight days before test firing them and that is an extremely difficult test to pass that's a really harrowing test so the fact that this is the system that the finish system that HK came up with really says something and it's also the same system that the French came up with for their rifles in the 30s the French had been looking for what can we what can they do to give their guns the best durability in part the hot and humid climates of Indochina and they ended up settling on Parker izing topped with a railroad locomotive grade black lacquer paint so almost the exact same thing which is a cool historical connection there this phase two gun is still marked US government caliber 45 this is now serial number 42 the grips are still just marked HK 45 and now we come to the final iteration this is the phase three pistol and this is the final version that was actually procured in quantity by the US Navy and US Special Operations Command so there are a couple more changes that were made you can see the front gripping serrations on the slide have been deleted they're just gone they're not necessary you're not really gripping the slide up here anyway especially if you've got that aiming module on there so gone most of the rest of the gun pretty much stayed the same the checkering stayed the same on the grips what we see more here is a final final development on the suppressor and the aiming module the suppressor that was ultimately adopted and used was a knight's armament design and it's got that same reciprocating functionality to it that the phase two suppressor had although this is far smoother and and better to use the laser aiming module is a far cry from the gigantic bulky thing that started out in phase one this is made by insight and it maintains the same basic functionality it's a visible light and infrared light a visible laser and an infrared laser so you can use that laser for aiming both at night and during the day or with and without night vision equipment and you can also use it for illumination with or without night vision equipment in fact there's your your little control stick so visible illumination visible laser off infrared illumination and infrared laser and with final procurement the slide markings changed to HK and then mark 23 u.s. SOCOM caliber 45 and we now have serial number.a 2085 here so this was probably after the final batch of pistols or at the very end of the batch same marking on the grips maintaining the whole way through hk45 this this wheel here by the way is the retention system that locks into a threaded hole in the front of the trigger guard so if we unscrew this we can there we go we can slide the whole aiming module off the gun and get rid of it interesting to note that this isn't actually quite a Picatinny rail because there's no cross hatching on here if we go ahead and disassemble this there are a couple interesting mechanical features inside let's take the suppressor off first to simplify things no disassembly is pretty typical of a Browning style pistol we're gonna pull the slide back until that get rid of the magazine to pull the slide back to here all right about there then we can pop out the slide stop then slide comes off the front of the frame we have a pretty typical hammer fired fire control system here not a whole lot to get into there and basically all polymer frame assembly with a couple little metal inserts here the more interesting bit to me is the recoil spring system in order to get the required endurance lifespan of 30,000 rounds one of the main things you have to do is reduce the battering of the slide on the frame every time the gun cycles and that largely comes down to a function of recoil spring so if we take this out it is captive here on the first iteration guns the first phase guns it actually was not captive but also note that there is first off this is a pretty big chunky recoil spring and then there's an additional buffer spring at back end so this is going to cycle down like this and once it's compressed all the way you then have an additional spring to further decelerate the slide before it impacts on the back end of the frame so that I think is a really key part of what made this gun so successful now of course we can pull the barrel out the barrel is chrome-lined for for a better better lifespan corrosion protection it does use HKS polygonal rifling so you can see some rifling in there but nothing sharp that's not because the rifling is worn out it's because that's how it looks from the very beginning and then of course you'll notice it has this weird green thing that is actually a carefully formulated rubber o-ring and its purpose is to Center the barrel in the slide exactly the same way with every shot this is their equivalent or their replacement for a barrel bushing and it was there to to make the guns more accurate there was a pretty strict accuracy requirement for these pistols alongside the the longevity requirement and that's how they did it so this little o-ring has a lifespan of 20,000 rounds which isn't quite that of the entire pistol but still really quite impressive you can see here at the front there is no separate barrel bushing that oring just sits right there inside that front portion of the slide when the guns locked up and in battery and it's a very simple mechanical principle but that will very effectively Center the barrel precisely for each shot the locking services right here on the front of the chamber that locks into the back of the slide surface so no need to cut locking lugs in this area like a 1911 the back end here with the firing pin there is really yeah real pretty pretty Orthodox and typical not really anything special we need to look at there this project having started in 1991 ended in 1996 with the successful delivery of 1950 mark 23 mods zero pistol systems complete with suppressor and laser aiming module to the US Special Forces Command our Special Operations Command at the same time HK also released this pistol on to the commercial market as the HK mark 23 and that's what you see here where it met with actually some commercial success it is an expensive pistol it's a huge pistol but it is a pistol that because of its Special Forces connections and actual adopted use by various high-speed low-drag elements of the US military it was a pistol that had a lot of interest from a lot of well from the US consumer market so they released these and these are still actually out there and available and overall as far as I can tell it was a very successful program for HK they certainly developed one of a pistol that went through one of the most stringent sets of durability and endurance and reliability testing that I've ever read about so really a pretty cool accomplishment especially all within just a 5-year envelope so by the way Colt to this day has still never produced a pistol that would meet the initial really the initial requirements of of this program much less the pass all of the durability testing anyway I'd like to give a big thanks to HK for giving me access to the gray room where I can bring you the actual all three different phases of the prototype the experimental pistols so hopefully you enjoy the video thank you very much for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 1,736,136

Rating: 4.9566669 out of 5

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv, hk, heckler, koch, h&k, mk23, socom, offensive handgun, special forces, us navy, 45, colt, owcs, sidearm, laser aiming module, lam, silencer, suppressor, knights armament, knights, us socom, delta, seals, operator, 45acp, 185gr +p

Id: 1lJeTkgMKqo

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Nicksanni]

Kept ya waitin huh?

[u/JoshwaarBee]

Further reading!

M1911 ('Operator' from MGS3)

H&K PSG-1

Mosin Nagant Sniper

[u/TheImmenseData]

Praise be Gun Jesus!