Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, please excuse the voice,
I'm getting over a bit of a head cold here. But today we are going to take a look at a Beretta AR 70/90. This is the improved pattern, as the name implies, of the Beretta AR 70. And well, I have a previous video on the AR 70 itself, so we'll skip the developmental story of that one. I'll link to it at the end of this
video in case you are interested. But the important thing to note is that
the ... Italian Army adopted the AR 70. But they didn't adopt it for everybody, it
essentially only went to elite special units. And the majority of the Italian Army
continued to use the BM-59 in 7.62 NATO. Now this would last until the 1980s. So in 1970 NATO decides that it needs
to standardise on a new cartridge. The US is now by that point equipping
its forces in Europe with M16 rifles, they are in 5.56, the NATO standard cartridge
is 7.62. This isn't good, this isn't going to work. But it takes NATO a full 10 years to finally
finish all of its testing and standardise on 5.56. Now it's not the American 5.56, it's the
Belgian ... SS109, adopted by the US as M855. And this would have some problems for a bunch
of countries, including the US and also Italy. Primarily that new standardised
cartridge was a 62 grain bullet that required a 1 in 7 [inch], or
maybe 1 in 9, twist to properly stabilise. The AR 70 and the original M16s
used 1 in 12 inch twist barrels, which didn't adequately
stabilise that new ammunition, they were designed for
55 grain ammunition. And so both countries would have to
retrofit their guns or come up with new rifles. That's where the M16A2
comes from in the US. And Beretta in the early 1980s began to
put together an improvement package, or an upgraded version, of the Beretta AR 70
to accommodate this new ammunition change, as well as make a bunch of
other improvements to the gun. So this was first presented
to the Italian military in 1985. It would go through a
bunch of ... competitive testing as well as endurance and
field trials testing on its own. There were two other competitors
for the new Italian army rifle at this point, although neither of them
were ... distinctly Italian designs. The Bernardelli Company
showed up with a copy of the Galil. And the Franchi Company showed
up with, it's unclear if it's a copy or if it was a straight just licensed
production version of the H&K G41, which was essentially the
HK33 using M16 magazines. Now the AR 70/90 would
win the competition ... and be adopted in 1990 as the name implies. Let's go ahead and take a look at what they did
to it, there are some distinctive features on here like this odd carry handle, and
some clever ones like the gas block. In putting together the AR 70/90 platform
Beretta changed almost everything about the AR 70 with the exception of
its fundamental mechanical system. The most important single change
that they made was that of the magazine. The AR 70 uses a proprietary
nose-in rock-back magazine. And that was changed to the
standard AR-15/M16 magazine because it's clear that that's what
all these NATO rifles were using. Now this is an American-made one, aluminium. Beretta did of course make
their own magazines for these because they were going to be
supplying them to the Italian Army. The Beretta ones are actually steel,
kind of like HK's 416 magazines. This carry handle is a very distinctive
element with that forward sweep to it. And it's a little bit odd because
it's a detachable carry handle, and carry handles don't really seem like
the most useful, necessary elements. Well, this in particular was developed
as a short-range rapid sighting system, in addition to just being a carry handle. So it basically has a set of pistol sights: we've got a
pair of dots on either side of an open notch back here, and a front post with
its own white dot up front. And the idea is you can line those
up for rapid close-range shooting. Now this carry handle is drilled
through here front and back, so that you can use your
standard aperture iron sights. There is a 250 metre and a
400 metre aperture sight there. You can use them through this carry
handle, but in my opinion not that well. You get a really claustrophobic sort of
sight picture trying to sight through this, it's really easy to mess up and like
look over the top of the aperture and see this as your rear aperture.
I frankly don't like the carry handle. And so I find it rather convenient that we can
push this button here, push the whole thing back, and just take the
carry handle assembly off. So there's the tunnel through it, there's your
carry handle sights. I don't like this thing. That carry handle mounts, by the way,
on a little trapezoidal bracket up here and a locking lug at the back. And this is intended to be an
optics mount, so they did make like a basic fixed
4x power optic for this which was pretty much completely
obsolete by the time it was even introduced. So much more commonly they
have a Picatinny rail that sits on this style of mounting blocks so that you
can mount modern optics on the thing. Originally that was also intended
for use with a night vision optic that fits proprietary onto this mount. So that's the purpose of those mounting blocks.
The carry handle is sort of an afterthought. Both the AR 70 and the 70/90 have built-in
folding bipods. I like this sort of feature. The downside to this one is that the bipod is
mounted directly on the barrel, it is not free floated. So if you try and put a lot of pressure on this
bipod, you will absolutely deflect the barrel and you'll lose your zero at long-ish
range. But I still like having it on there. Both the 70 and the 70/90 are
also set up to launch rifle grenades. So this is our 22mm NATO standard
rifle grenade muzzle device. This is a gas cut off.
When you lift it up you've got this nice obvious hood over
the front sight, that cuts off your gas so that you're not battering the bolt
carrier when you fire rifle grenades. What the 70/90 adds to the system
however is a two position gas regulator, which was not on the original AR 70. So the way this thing works, this is open,
this is closed. Closed gives you more gas. And if we look in up close here, there are a series of
vent holes around the diameter of this gas piston. These are the excess gas vents,
so once the piston moves this far whatever remaining gas is in there is vented out
here to control the overall velocity of the piston. There is then one hole
up here at the front. And when I have this set in the
open position, that hole is open, and it will vent additional gas
before the piston starts moving. When I change it to
closed that hole is shut off. So essentially "closed" is the dirty
or adverse or higher gas setting. "Open" is intended to
be the standard use. This, by the way, was not
developed around suppressors, this was just regular rifle
and very dirty rifle. Most of the controls on the 70/90 are
ambidextrous, which is pretty cool. We have a four position regulator
here, so this was originally safe, semi-auto, 3 round burst, and full-auto. This one of course is semi-auto only, so those
extra two positions don't actually do anything. But we have a lever there
and on the left side. And that's got a nice big thumb pad
on it that's pretty easy to manipulate. A little harder when you get all the way
around to full, but for a rifle like this that is just semi-auto, pretty
easy to go from safe to semi. Standard magazine release right there.
And it is not particularly easy to use, but it is an ambidextrous
magazine release over on this side. Fortunately for me I'm left-handed and so this one,
which is the easier one to use, is the one I'll be using. A few of the other changes include the use of a
rubber butt pad, instead of metal as on the AR 70. The profile of the pistol grip was changed a bit,
there's still a ... storage compartment in the base here. That's nice and easy to get into, you
can keep whatever you want in there. There is a folding trigger guard
for winter trigger use with gloves. That has a little spring-loaded pin there. Push that pin in and you can
fold the trigger guard down. It's got this little detent that more or
less snaps into the pistol grip there. So now you can fire this
with heavy gloves or mittens. The receiver profile changed
to sort of a trapezoidal shape instead of being a bit
more square on the AR 70. And the handguard here is different
than what you typically see on the AR 70, but this is actually an upgraded
handguard that was designed by Beretta originally for the AR 70 in 1983. Retrofitted onto some of the early
guns, and then used on the 70/90. A quick look at the markings before we take it
apart, Beretta AR 70/90, calibre 5.56 NATO there. Back here we have the serial number
and the manufacturer markings from the guys at Brimstone who made this
for me, we'll talk about that in a few minutes. And on the other side a
"Made in Italy, Pietro Beretta" mark. Now disassembly starts with a pair
of pins just like an AR, more or less. Pop that pin out, and it is captive. And we can pivot the receiver open. The front pin is held in place by little wire
clip, I'm just going to leave that one in because there's not a
whole lot for us to do in here. The fire control group is rather
different than the original ones because it has had the burst and full-auto
mechanisms removed to be a legal semi-auto in the US. There was a carbine version of this
just like there was of the AR 70 that used a two tube side-folding stock,
but this is the standard infantry model. The recoil spring for the AR 70/90 is (like the 70)
located in the gas piston above the barrel. So to remove the bolt I actually
have to remove the charging handle, which locks the bolt carrier
to the recoil spring assembly. And I can do that by pulling
back on this little tab. This is intended to be done
with the nose of a cartridge, but I've got a nice set
of pliers here to do it. So you pull that back and
then the bolt handle comes out. And then I can pull the bolt carrier
out of the back of the receiver. There's our bolt carrier, we've
got a two lug rotating bolt here. That's locked position, that's
the unlocked. And just pull it out. Note that the firing pin is actually
connected to the bolt carrier, it is held in place by this
cross pin right up there. So if I want to take that out,
I have to push out that cross pin. Once again, the nose of a cartridge is an
ideal tool for this if you don't have pliers. So pull out that pin. That is not captive,
that is going to be easily lost. Not something you would necessarily
have to do very often in the field. There's the firing pin, there
is no firing pin spring in this. You can see we have ... NATO stock number
parts on some of these components. Next up I can actually just pull off the
whole gas block assembly, like so. So, we've got the gas port in there. The cut off. All of
that hardware comes off. The bipod assembly has
this spring-loaded arm on it. And to take the bipod off
all I have to do is lift up this and squeeze the two legs of the bipod
together like so, and it just opens up. So this is a pinch sort of mechanism. So it locks in the open position
and I can pinch it closed. So you can take this off if you just don't want
to have it on the rifle. Really a cool system there. Next we'll take the handguard off, this is very
simple, it just has a metal spring clip up here. So snap that over the gas tube and the
barrel and it just slides off the bottom. There's a little sheet metal hook there ... that locks around this cross pin. That's actually the cross pin that
holds the lower onto the upper. Next I can take off the gas tube, which is
just a friction fit in place. So that comes off. And then to take out the recoil spring
I have to push it in slightly, rotate it 180 degrees and lift it out. It has ... this locator pin
that locks it in place. So it's normally like this, you push it in, rotate it so
the pin is up, and then it will slide out of the receiver. Go ahead and take
the lower completely off. If we take a closer look at the upper here, it does
have a sliding spring-loaded dust cover up here. So that's just going to reciprocate
backward behind the bolt handle. You can see it right in there. This is a stamped sheet-metal upper that
has a milled trunnion riveted in the back. And a milled trunnion
riveted into the front. You can see our locking ... shoulders, right there
is one of them, the other one will be on this side. The barrel is held in
place by this barrel nut. Really a pretty simple design
and a pretty reliable one. And there is the whole thing field stripped
out for you, one Beretta AR 70/90. Once this was adopted in 1990 it did
become the standard Italian Army rifle, replacing the BM-59 in service, and tens
of thousands of them were manufactured. They remained the standard
service rifle for about 20 years. Until circa 2010, 2008 or 2010
(I'm not sure on the exact date), the Beretta ARX160 was
adopted to replace these guys. So these were extremely rare guns in
the United States for a very long time, well, pretty much until just a couple of years ago. There were semi-automatic factory
versions of these made by Beretta, but they were never exported to
the US because they post-dated the various bans on
importation of rifles like this. So there are some pre-ban AR 70s floating around the
US which are very cool and tremendously expensive. But a couple of years ago parts kits for these
started to show up, a relatively limited number. I grabbed one because I knew it was a cool rare rifle. I didn't know exactly what I was
going to do it with it at the time, but shortly thereafter I ran across
Brimstone Arms in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And they built this one up for me as an
American-made semi-automatic only copy. Basically made a new receiver for it,
assembled the parts kit onto that. They did that in relatively small
numbers for me and some other people. I know there are other companies
out there who also did the same thing. When the parts kits showed up that provided
the incentive for people to figure out how to make the receivers, for people to make
the barrels and make these into complete guns. So a big thanks to Brimstone. They didn't
give me this rifle, I paid for the build process and all the parts in it, but I really
appreciate them taking on the project. So this coming weekend
I'm going to go ahead and use this along with the Bernardelli PO18S that we
took a look at in our previous video this week. I'm going to use both of those in a two gun match,
see how the Italians do in the desert on the clock. So stick around for that video,
it should be a lot of fun. Thanks for watching.
