The Bravo Company Manufacturing SFW British SAS Rifle

welcome to small armed solutions today we're going to be looking at a gun that is probably not very well known but it's an extremely special gun many of you have heard of colt canada or early and i'm a co dimecaco actually is in Kitchener Ontario and I'm a co was the Center for Excellence for Canadian military small arms design development and manufacturing in the late 70s early 80s a home it was called the start program or the small arms replacement program to replace the FN FAL rifles that they had and they looked at the m16 are the m16a2 at the time and they thought that was a good baseline for their next service rifle however there were some things that the Canadians wanted that that were different from the american-made m16a2 in fact I think they had a much more realistic way of looking about it than the US military did looked at the m16a2 and found one of the benefits to it but there's a couple issues that they did not like first and foremost was the rear sight and I totally agree with this myself the a - rear sight system was completely impractical as a battle sight it was developed by the Marine Corps for the precision marksmanship that they do it at longer ranges the problem was was no the other branches actually learned how to use it so for the most part it was battle size 0 to 250 300 meters and that was it I can tell you from my training in the US Army that we never learned how to use the fully adjustable rear sight on our ABS we learned how to battle side zero so Mike and Ian looked at that they said why would I spend all that money at first sight that we're not going to use so they switched back to the a1 field site which is more practical the next big change was the barrel itself they did not want the actual button cut barrels they're quite fond of hammer forging up there so they specified a hammer forge barrel there's a couple other changes that they had - one with the stock and whatnot but the Kenyan government license from from Colt the rights to be able to produce the new c7 rifle and see a carbine the IBM 1682 platform so the licensing agreement wasn't between Colts and D'Amico and was between Colt and the Canadian military arcanine Department of Defense and I Mackin was the company that actually made it so throughout the throughout the years died maca played an interesting role in the development especially with Colt Emeco was a excellent engineering center they had premium-grade engineers who were who were actually what they did and Colt you know in the 80s and 90s had significant issues with R&D and he would manufacturing new to do strikes and you know having large large contracts not being able to donate the or dedicate the hours for the engineering and whatnot so they test die Matt goes again excellent engineering staff with many projects for instance the LMG the LMG actually was designed by Colts Henry Tatro but there at the time that gun came out there was no resources occult to do it so it was turned over to Colt or to the bank all the time in the Mac up to get over and later on there are some additional projects of the green magazine which ended up being the Lancer l5 which you know we've talked about in some previous videos another one was the Colt 9-millimeter they had done some work on that as well and as time got more further riding towards oh I would say probably 2000 to 2003 with the onset of the Global War on Terrorism the British SAS came out with an immediate requirement for a new rifle the sa80 was not suitable for their needs it did not have the accuracy nor the reliability that they wanted and do you think they also probably wanted to have good this is my personal interactions they wanted to have something that was significantly better and they were looking sort of before a family they wanted a carbine and also wanted a little of a personal defense weapon or a shorter barrel so the first place I went to was Colt and Colt for a couple reasons was unable to help them first and foremost the Canadian government could not I'm sorry the British government a British ml deal would not do business with any company that it was within bankruptcy within ten years so that immediately knocked Colt out and actually in the end it turned out for the best because coal was never really in the business of making specific rifles they were in the business of mass production and at this point they were just pounding out and forged as quickly as they could and first Farish new models burgers they're the last thing in the world they wanted to do was to come out with something that they felt would actually compete with their m4 carbine so with Colt being more of a mass production company at the time rather than not really an RD facility at all it was it was primarily for mass production the Canadian government was approached by Mayor died Mac it was approached by the British SAS or the UK MLD looking for a rifle this was an ideal project for coal Canada due to the fact that again they were a small company they were very Rd oriented and they were there to make those guns that were meet the specific requirements of a customer and out of this kingman was called the British or the SR the Mac OS at double your Special Forces support weapon we're gonna look at a couple different ones here of the first of all we have this upper receiver here which is an actual die Matco manufactured SFW upper receiver now this is really a unicorn these are not available in United States these barrels are unimportant to student ATF regulations so this is we say back where I'm from in New York thought the back of a truck this is probably one of my most valuable pieces of my collection in actual real SFW upper in order to be looking at for actual people can purchase this is a version of the rifle that's manufactured by BCM or Bravo Company they definitely saw that there was an interest in the SFWA so they went ahead and they made a version of it and it had a lot of similarities to the to the SFW so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna first go over a little bit more of the history with you we're gonna go over the barrel and where everything came from then we're gonna take a closer look at the BCM version of it the first thing we really want to talk about is the barrel itself the assay has had a requirement for accuracy that exceeded with that of the m4 was I believe that they wanted something that was accurate up to 600 meters but the sfw also had to be able to serve as a light support weapon and to be able to take the heat so there is an additional need for accuracy an additional need for heat both of which the the current m4 carbine could not offer so to meet the accuracy requirements makam went from a 14.5 inch barrel to a 15-point 9 inch barrel so with the split the suppressor you're going to get a sixth 16.9 inch barrel it's a heavy barrel it's it's heavy all the way through this actually is ass lead is put on there to mount a sight grenade launcher it actually opens from the side there's use that was used by the SAS on this particular model this utilizes they triad which was designed by the tobacco to offer rails for attachment of flashlights lasers and whatever to use that you had to go with the the small carbine handguards the larger and four hangers wouldn't work now some of them are issued like this but majority of them would have the m4 as on it which are the my rascal nature millions you actually use the Triad but even today you will see these rifles throughout the world including Canada cooking probably Denmark in everyone's several the company our countries that they've sold these guns to you'll see s fw s in this configuration just giving you a little bit of additional information this particular front sight base was changed relatively quickly because the grade launcher actually attached to the front sight base and they found with extensive use that the actual taper pins would actually snap they would cause the damage to the front sight base as well so tobacco actually produced a much stronger much stronger version of this front sight base that was more solid that eliminated that possibility so those are two of the actual changes you see that there's a pant look you can't slide update it on here - it will rattle a little bit the rear the receivers are more actually the mill stander 1913 of the this rifle yeah the four assists now everything on this rifle was marked with the dev techne we're gonna move in a little bit closer here and we're gonna take a look at some of the markings on this tobacco actually mark these rifles a little more a little differently than coltd or so many other companies you'll also see the same as the elk an optic I'm here now for Spurs the UH the l1 191 you would see many different optics on it the cave military uses the SFW and most the time you'll see you have an elk and type optic on it this is actually that the backup site it was designed to sit in front of the elk in it's a poem or backup site as you can see it's the a1 profile if this was actually fail you would just merely unscrew that unscrew these and and remove the optic then you'd normally want to move this to the rear wearing is one of a front sight radius as possible you'll also see this is the Canadian Amy Dexter's charging needle we removable bit closer here look at some of these details looking at the barrel you'll see there is a Tec d MP which again like called milspec rifles Minik particle and proof inspected you will also see 5.56 dislike she knows that's 5.56 nato and you'll also see a batch code dimecaco and now they've always been able to track both the bolts and the barrels as to when they were made so if there's ever any kind of issues they'll be able to to find it also if you don't take a look at the front sight post itself you'll see how this front sight post is round but it comes to a much sharper it's a much more narrow profile than either the original a1 or the square post of the a2 it's a much more precise sight I'm actually quite fond of these I wish I could get my hands on more of them you can see from the Triad you have both left and right side and you have the bottom as well now coal Canada does not use the F mark front sight basis on any of their guns there's c7 a one's c7 a Tuesda c8 a one's a 2s and so forth they you know they knew that it was never necessary to actually use the the extended feed ramps they changed the buffer out and that took care of the problem as I've stated before that the reason why colt uses the extended feed ramps is really just due to it was one more notch in their Bell first far-seeing m4 was their gun it was their technical day about the US government's because once Colt used the the H buffer in there it eliminated the need for that extended Phoenix however they front sight post the front sight post is longer than the average GI one so which is why they're able to keep their standard front sight basis now we actually take a look at the receiver itself you'll see the dev tech D and you'll see the the fortune coat on the right-hand side and taking a closer look at the front sight again you can see this is all polymer with the a1 it does have as you can see on the top two positions yeah the standard long-range aperture and then you had the larger short-range aperture this was a typical lkm scope that was used elevation is all done from the rear dial and then your windage was done from that from the top here taking a look at the actual charging handle itself this is actually just a latch that's put into a standard charging handle that they but this was designed for the the the c7a to program or the midlife upgrade part of the midlife upgrade was to make the rifle as a an indecorous as possible looking at the bulk carrier itself one of the interesting things to note is here's they have a very unique way that they do the they could be crimping or the sticking of the carrier key if you notice how these are offset rather than side by side this is something that they have always done die Matco and felt this was a better way it's actually staking so that's one thing that they have I have done throughout the years we're gonna close this off change it over here here you can take a look you'll see the tub tech D for dimecaco and if you notice here you'll see MPD is there their code I get medical proof tested D for died Mac oh and you'll also see the batch code on there as well so the bolts were able to be tracked just like the barrels were a barrel life on these has been ecstatic my first peoples to go up as far as 50 or 60,000 rounds these barrels and again these barrels are cold hammer-forged they're cold hammer-forged and they're chrome-plated which is really you're getting the best of both worlds the chrome hammer or the crew of the hammer forging gives you that additional reliability and durability then the chrome plating just makes it that much more durable by making the plating harder than the actual barrel itself so you're increasing life on both so this rifle has been extremely successful during the trial is that was interesting that the SAS actually spent more money on the trials and they did the actual guns that they bought that was that was very interesting but they were very specific and what they wanted and dime a CO was able to give them the exact rifle that they wanted this probably did burn coal test a little bit to the fact that you don't get much more of a prestigious contract than the British SAS they are literally one of the most elite units throughout the world so I'm sure that's a sale that the the cold would like to had but it was not in the cards for them at all around 2010 or $2,000 in that time period their cult saw the benefits of die maca they saw that they had an excellent engineering staff and that was something that the cult in the later part probably later part of 2000 or more towards the middle part cult was in suit was seriously lacking a effective engineering department they were not coming out with new products they were they were sitting stagnant and I do believe that cult saw the major benefit of having that that particular team up there you know to work with and cult also I thought that they would because of the m4 contracts and everything being so busy that they could use a cult or used tobacco as a subcontractor to provide guns to the Ellie Ellie in commercial markets so Colt actually bought Dinoco and now it was hence called Colt Canada well an interesting thing happened was they found that the ability for them to use coal Canada as a subcontractor to manufacture rifles was not that good reason being was the way the ATF rules were with importation of firearms it was extremely difficult to import complete rifles barrels and lower receivers from now called Canada there was a very small run of rifles brought in they were the le 6920 the air 1482 government model the air 43 tactical rifle and there may have been in le 6920 as well they were actually manufactured in cold Canada cult of Colts manufacturer Colt defense provided them only with the hammer and trigger mechanisms because the trauma trigger mechanisms for the one sending rather than the one five five the rest of the gun was actually manufactured up in Canada by coal Canada using the hammer forged barrels the guns were marked on the side made in Canada well they end up having to sell most a lot of forestation season and dropship them drop you to the agency they couldn't be imported and distribute by Colt now colt was able to import certain components in fact dime a co prior to any mean coal Canada was a major supplier upper receivers just stripped upper receivers with the mil standard 1913 rail rather than the Canadian Weaver they will bring in bolts and bolt carriers but yeah there were no barrels so it didn't really work out too well for subcontractor parts however the R&D was a mate was a major part coal Canada and Colt offense it split the world up a little bit you know chemical Canada was responsible for England and some parts of Europe it was sort of sort of split up these t8 sfw which we have here was two configurations again the 15.9 then there was I believe it was a 10.5 as well so those are the two models that were bought now the sfw also would go on to have a l1 198 - which is usually the new I you are one piece upper receiver so the gun continues to be used now the SAS hit was not new to the Cole Canada tobacco rifles their spoiler was out there showing SAS during the Gulf War one with the original with the original c7 rifles with grenade launchers on them as well so it's not was never uncommon to see the British SAS with these guns the l1 29 I'm sorry the l1 1 9 happened to be extremely effective rifle it was reliable there's a lot of rumors that the lot of people throughout the mo D were pissed off because why does the SAS get guns at work and they didn't I know there are people out there who do like the SATs or Elio or l85 majority of people who I've spoke to interviewed and our research they did not like it the gun was not gonna Center and reliable and also the accuracy wasn't up to par with a rifle of this of this type so like anything is used in the military there does come a commercial following now the Canadian rifles there is a lure the United States because we couldn't get him up here but anybody who has filed the m16 weapons platform Col Canada was going to be taking very very seriously while writing black rifle - I definitely wanted to research that Mac oh that Mac whole time it was not Col Kantos tobacco and I be perfectly honest with you I didn't really expect to see much I figured I was gonna go up there and see the Mackenzie brothers sitting in front of the cocaine is saying we made guns eh well once I got into that facility I saw what was in there I was shocked I found a first-class first-rate manufacturing facility completely modernized in fact if you were to compare the diam attica facility to the Colt factory you would see that Colt was very primitive in their manufacturing techniques and equipment compared to one time a co they had all brand-new CNC machines hammer-forged machines all brain is all brand-new equipment it was it was very very impressive and what I actually got a chance to go out and shoot some of these nose and see what they were they were just extremely impressive so I was trying to get my hands on one of their c7 a one-upper 3 years and just was never able to do it but the SFW uh definitely said you know it was a very prestigious rifle so people have heard of it so there was definitely an interest up here in the United States about having having one BCE on the Bravo Company his purpose actually manufactured a upper receiver that actually duplicates for the most part the SFW the only difference is as a barrel for instance instead of it being fifteen point nine inches it's 16 inches so actually extended the barrel just so there was no legality issues now just like the Canadian counterpart it is a cold hammer-forged barrel which is chrome-plated now this rifle here has been modified slightly from the original configuration the original configuration came with the gunfighter stock inside of the gen 2 system Eric Colt dimecaco when they adapt their rifles they didn't go with the with the standard stock that we use right now the standard m4 stock according to the Canadian military they found that this stock here was much easier to decontaminate when it was a chemical or nuclear environment so they actually the contamination processes itself and that was actually the reason they went with this smooth surface rather than going with all the grooves and everything in the standard m4 stock so this was added also the pistol grip that there's also a gunfighter pistol grip that really wasn't it's very comfortable I definitely will give you that but if you want to have a as sfw type rifle you want to put the original a2 back on there the magazine here is an actual Canadian thermal type magazine this came this was the second or third generation after the original ones the original magazines were a complete disaster in fact when the c7 was adopted by a Canadian military the Canadian military did test the polymer magazines and they failed miserably so the key military actually went and adopted the aluminum magazines after that time a go at colt Canada they've sold the Palmer magazines all over the world to many different customers but they just did not make the the great for the cane military at the time this originally came with m4 hand guards and it came with the m4 double heat shield hang guards and it did not have the Triad on it so I replaced the hand guards with the actual small hangers I put on an actual Dinoco manufactured triad system this does have the standard a2 front sight post instead of the round a much more fine one so this rifle is very similar to the actual to the actual rifle I just took a few extra things to put to put on it to give it more of that look to it but you know all in all you have the same length barrel there just a little bit longer you have a cold hammer-forged barrel so the many things that make it very very important you know bc i'm did a wonderful job i'm very anxious to get this thing out to the range and see how it does shoot you know you do notice when you have an s fw that it is bear will have you but if you had to put this rifle on fully automatic this would do an awesome job at being a little out of lead without overhang the original lightweight barrels they're not designed to fire that kind of a volume this one here just serves so many different different opera different roles you know have you barrel for accuracy heavy barrel for extended extended fire or a higher rate of fire this trike was very early it was really prior to the rad systems that this came out but the British did officially decided to go with the right systems as they were delivered this rifle has had a really excellent combat record not just with the British SAS but Canadian services and their other customers well fortunately my neurosurgeon has cleared me to shoot rifles and pistols now so I'm very anxious to get back out to the range we're gonna take this rifle out with the the L can and we're gonna see how she does we're gonna shoot the BCM version of the tobacco sfw or cocaine and NSFW specifically designed for the British SAS the ambition was provided by Jeff Hoffman over at Black Hills this is some p7 green open tip match [Music] this engineer admission here is Hornady barrier 62 ring why kill 77 green otm tit m855 balls city I hope you enjoyed this video on this very rare topic if you liked it please click like and please subscribe thank you

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 56,144

Rating: 4.9509377 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: vv_q_dauouk

Length: 29min 26sec (1766 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018