The HK G36 Rifle

welcome to smaller solutions today we're looking at the g36 Bundeswehr rifle now this rifles history goes back to the mid 70s West Germany was equipped with the g3 rifle which was basically a enhanced version of the World War two rifles that were used by the Nazis as you can see from the look of it you have a lot of a look here of the stronger bear but you also had the later STG 45 more delayed blowback system now West Germany throughout the 70s and 80s was looking to replace the 7.62 by 51 millimeter rifle now throughout that time period they're assembled there were several things that were looked at now first we had the g11 the g11 was said was spent to the advanced combat rifle program which was a which is a four point seven three caseless cartridge a very very expensive rifle very very experimental that one was looked at in Germany as a replacement rifle as well however due to budget constraints and not to mention at that time we had the reunification of Germany that program was canceled the next rifle that was looked at was the hk33 the hk33 was basically what you see here but at 5.56 millimeter version the hk33 was selective fire 5.56 millimeter it didn't really offer a lot of the benefits of the newer 5.56 ability rifles so that one was overlooked as well another version that was looked at was the HK 41 which is a semi-automatic only version of the g3 which also was not what did what they were looking for with the unification of Germany they were looking to re-equip for an entire German military so the Germans wanted to look for a modern rifle there was NATO compatible so HK produced the HK 50 the HK 50 was destined to become the g36 the rifle obe we see here is for all intents and purposes the Bundeswehr g36 towers made in the US by tommy built for the most part there's not much telling difference it's basically the exact same rifle so we're musing this is a quintessential g36 the new g36 production began in 1996 for the for the Bundeswehr for the g36 now the g36 has lost similarities to the m4 carbine basically you had a standard rifle that was designed to be as lightweight as possible and is we're gonna learn a little bit later in this video the g36 and the m4 are gonna end up having some of the same issues in Afghanistan but taking a look at the rifle we're gonna go over some different things about this rifle and we're gonna see how it works and we're going over a little bit history of where the design comes from now this rifle makes extensive use of polymer extensive use of polymer you have actually very little battle on this rifle you're the barrel of trunnion which is a bulk carrier group but we're looking at here is a polymer receiver this is the particular site that we have on here can be changed out the site that we have on here is specifically specific to the Bundeswehr we have a side-folding stock that when closed the ejection port is open so you're able to fire with the stock closed we have a trigger pack that is very similar to that of the HK mp5 this one here is safe for semi-auto however this is a commercial rifle so the automatic does not work it's just safe and semi however you're the Bundeswehr head safe semi and auto just like any other HK type rifle you can have safe semi burst two shot three shot whichever configuration that you would like you do have a polymer trigger now the magazine well you see here is interchangeable we're going to go over the magazines here in a second but they use a proprietary magazine there's also a doctor available for this so you can use this to nag magazine you do have a fire cartridge case deflector now on the bottom here you do have a bolt catch by pushing upward on the bolt catch you have to lock the bolt to the rear now the traction handles on the top you have either left or right it is reciprocating so it did is it does go back and forth when the rifle fires now it also doubles as a forward assist when you push it out to the suicide and push it in it does react as a forward assist as well looking at the side we have an ambidextrous safety we have an AV d'etre scene release and an ambidextrous bolt release and in bolt catch now looking the magazine we have a coupling system as you can see we have tabs on each side now you can literally do these as much as you would want you could have three four five where you could have ten of these magazines if you wanted over two or three is more calm thirty shot magazines there's also available 25 magazines for these as well these magazines are relatively flimsy compared to anything else HK is put out I've actually broken a couple of these I use the same magazine in my cz Bren 8:05 now magazines are available from other company as well Magpul Magpul has offered a polymer magazine for the g36 which is definitely an improvement over the HK magazines now this is an 18 and a half inch barrel which we'll go over we also have a bayonet lug on here and standard flash suppressor the operation is short-stroke piston suck gram bumps 950 rounds per minute the overall length extended and the stock extended is thirty nine point three inches with twenty nine point eight inches closed now the barrel is a 18.9 inch cold hammer-forged barrel it's a one turnin seven twist for the nato cartridge is also a chrome-plated so sort of getting the best of both worlds the cold hammer-forged as well as the chrome plating however you do have a very thin barrel which we'll see when we get this thing apart this rifle is designed to be lightweight first and foremost now HK refers to this is a carbon reinforced polyamide imide polymer very durable polymer which again it makes up most of the rifle then we're gonna start doing now is we're gonna show you how this thing comes apart when I take a look at the inside so to take this thing this rifle apart you do not need any tools this is a complete tooless disassembly so we're going to make sure we're empty HK makes use of the same types of pins they have on their g3 systems on the g36 so to remove the handguard we push forward on the pin pull the pin right out and on the stock is provided the same holders for the pin so the pins aren't lost now we can pull the handguard right off the front exposing the gas system next we're gonna remove the magazine well and the fire control group by pushing forward we remove the rear pin we have a pin to remove the magazine well so we have the fire control group this is an assembly so you can place any system that you want safe so my animal states that my birthday is on my to chef first three shot burst whichever you require to remove the magazine while you push forward on the magazine latch comes right out its previously stated there is a separate magazine well that can be installed so we'll taste in Ag magazines to remove the stock we closed the stock we're gonna pull down and pull back and we're going to remove the recoil spring assembly and the bolt carrier group so now we're gonna take a look at some other interesting aspects of this rifle of where that comes from because this is not what you refer to as a new design so to remove the gas system we're gonna pull back on the operating rod assembly and we're going to pull that right out and we have the piston and this as far as we're gonna go on the receiver next thing we're gonna take a look at is the bolt carrier group when you remove the recoil spring assembly now for disassembly you could be utilized a bullet tip or any kind of a tool you remove the firing pin retaining pin the firing pin and we have a makeshift camp pen and you remove the bolt and now you have the bolt carrier rule now I'm gonna go over some of the history of where this system comes from this is a direct derivative of an American design the american ar-18 AR 180 now this rectly here we have a separate video on it's called the most successful failure in the last century which is very very true the rifle never made any headway itself however its design would be seen as some of the most modern rifles that we have today g36 the xm8 the Tavor the FN SCAR they would all go true to this operating system so we're gonna take a look at this real quick and we're going to show you exactly where this bolt and this operating system coming from first part we're going to take a quick look at is the bolt mechanism you can see a nearly identical carrier and you can see a nearly identical bolt this is where could even get more interesting we're gonna disassemble the bolt in the exact same way push outward and the retaining pin you can move the firing pin the same kind of camp pin and now we're gonna take a look at the bolts bolts have a very very big similarity to don't they now we're gonna take the bolt from the AR 180 and we're going to drop that into the bolt carrier of the g36 that sucker fits that shows you have basically an indirect copy of the AR 180 air 18 bolt carrier when we look at the the carrier we can see we have the same location for the hold differences as we use dual recoil springs in the AR 18 a or 180 versus one spring on the g36 okay we can see dual holes and for the bolt on the rear and when you look at the bolt carriers as you'll if you take a look at the original video we showed you on the AR 18 year 180 you're gonna see the direct descendants you're gonna see a book carriers of several different rifles that show the lineage of the AR 18 a or 1e now looking at the operating systems you'll see we have very very similar systems here things are rearranged a little bit we have on top the AR 18 a or 180 operating around operating rod spring and instead of having a two-piece system where you have an intermediate rod on the AR 180 you have a single so basically you have HK has done some modifications to the Pistons itself they're utilizing gas rings which require less gas but however you have a system is very very similar so when you look at the overall operating system for far as the bolt carrier group as well as the the operating system you see a heavy heavy resemblance to the American I'm white AR 180 so we're gonna do now if we're going to reassemble the g36 we're going to install the bolt carrier and a bolt into the bolt carrier extractor to the right install the campaign a little bit harder to do when you have really big hands install the retaining pin from the left hand side now looking at the barrel here or something you can see we have a very thin pencil type barrel we see we have a bayonet lug which is pinned in place and you have your gas black which is also pinned in place with a spring pen so the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to install the the piston into the gas block we're going to install the operating rod into the receiver so now we have our operating rod in place take our handguard take one of our pins then we're going to take our bolt carrier assembly make sure the bolts in the unlocked position flip it over we're going to install our magazine well pushing forward on the magazine well now take our pistol grip assembly install it in place take our pins take our front pin and write this all our our recoil spring assembly and you can see we have a tip on here so underneath like so take our last pin to the side function check put it in safe nothing should happen semi you tell it click there you go next thing we're gonna take a look at is the optic optic we have here on here is a standard zeiss it's a 3/4 power dual optic sight we have dual optics on top we have a red dot on the bottom we have a 3 power magnified sight now with the magnified epic sight we combined is a three part magnifier sight design for 200 meters but we'll have bull drop compensation 200 400 600 800 meters for the red dot optically have on here we have a lever where it can be activated by the user on and off and on top here we have a photo sensor which indicates ambient light and it will also turn it on automatically with the outside the global warning tear the Bundeswehr had had hidden operations in Afghanistan with other UN forces and the rifle was developed in the calm of no war the rifle was was utilized during peacetime some peacekeeping operations but never saw any kind of heavy combat however that was to change once the Bundeswehr entered Afghanistan in April 2012 reports came in from Afghanistan from the Bundeswehr of g36 rifles that were overheating and it was effectively making the rifle in act and accurate at 100 meters and it was basically called the rifle was unsuitable for battle conditions in February 2014 it was discovered that the issue was not necessarily the rifle that was the ammunition the rifle was in fact heavily overheating which would cause failures to extract but the accuracy issues were mostly because of the ammunition the a mission that was used on the German spy 5-6 NATO it was extremely the Jackie was extremely thin so the ball was disintegrating once the barrel heated up at a hundred yards if the bullet held together you were able to hip a bunch beyond that the bullet would come apart however that was one issue but the other issue came with the overheating and Gino 2014 production of the g36 was halted by the German Ministry of Defence a direct quote from the german ministry defence the german army will stop using the plastic assault rifle that cannot shoot past four temperatures increased 86 degrees Fahrenheit on rifles that heat up during a firefight now this is where there's a parallel between the g36 and the m4 the detriment of this rifle according to the Bundeswehr was its light weight utilizing a lightweight barrel the m4 was also receiving many reports of an overheating in combat now both of these rifles were designed for extreme lightweight they weren't designed for heavy fire schedules and the m4 would end up having some changes that were made for it to make it into an assault rifle the m4 is it was developed and as it was issued was not to be a front-line combat weapon it was to be used by rear echelon personnel who needed more power more firepower than a pistol but couldn't carry a full sized rifle it was not designed to be used in heavy combat but it was thrusted into that position g36 was designed for a standard rifle not for sustained fire when it was found with both rifle systems as both of them are being used beyond their capabilities they're being used for sustained fire which when you go with a lightweight light barrel they're not good for that the m4 corrected it by going with the heavy barrel a at the m4 SOCOM heavy barrel and that took care of the issues of making it so it would function at a sustained capacity g36 those changes were never made to it but the Bundeswehr mystery defense I didn't really go after HK in a lawsuit saying that these rifles weren't defective and they want to go after them for the money that it would cost to replace it however the german course' found that HK was not responsible because the rifles were being used behind their design parameters and if so these were not meeting in the requirements the requirements are not clearly stated by the government to k so H&K never did have to pay for any of the issues that went along with the g36 however the rifle was no longer being produced now the German military was off to look for a new rifle so currently as of as a as at this time the German military is looking at two different weapon systems to replace the g36 first off was the HK 433 now the original HK 48k 416 which the government was looking at was just too expensive there was absolutely no way the German government was going to pay for the hk416 so HK went ahead and designed a new rifle that was less expensive for specifically the German Bundeswehr trials which is the HK 433 and the next rifle that was is up in the running right now les dije nel mark five five six which has a lot of similarities to the hk416 so right now there is not a defined winner yet throughout the Bundeswehr so we're still waiting to see what the German army decides to go with now this rifle is a standard combat rifle did quite well when you weren't trying to make it run like a like a belt-fed machine gun however I can give you some examples of my experience but I think well first what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this one to the range order and see how it shoots [Applause] I like fired about 500 rounds out of this rifle one of uh one of the viewers from nine home review loved it to Henry overnight overview for review and he loved it to me as well I have to say that you know it was reliable you know if I find the rounds we had no issues whatsoever with reliability now the group best group that I was able to get was with a black Hill 77 Reno TM which is the best ammunition you can probably get in the industry and that group was two point two six inches so when you compare this to your standard m4 or m16 type rifle this was not nearly as accurate as a standard m4 also the trigger having a lot of polymer components in it the trigger trigger was horrible it's very similar to the beretta arx100 where you have a very heavy trigger because of the heavy use of the polymers and now for as far as the sights were concerned I will say I did not care for the German Bundeswehr sights whatsoever first off if you look at the the top the the red dot you have a very very small aperture on here and you have a bluish tint to it and that bluish tint I don't care for I've seen similar optics over the years in the early years of development of red dots that had that that similar issue I find it very distracting and it does hide out some of the brightness of the of the the dot that's in there now for starters the magnified optic the magnified optic due to the fact that it the aperture is so small I found it very very narrow I found a very narrow field of vision did not care for that and with it being only 3 power it didn't really give you a great benefit I think for as far as longer range shooting you know you look at the mean and that magnified optic which is supposed to be used up to up 200 meters then 100 meters and above you would use the magnified optic or I found that it was it didn't work for me whatsoever quite frankly if I was had this rifle I probably would remove this whole system and put on either a regular like a conic type scope or geotech or something along those lines with a for power magnifier where I could disengage it engage it this system here you can see they want try to go both ways it really really didn't work for as far as I was concerned I don't care for it but they've issued many of these and you know the Germans maybe they like it so I guess sometimes it's up to opinion of what you like and what you don't like and what works for you and what doesn't work and we're gonna be doing another review on a rifle similar to this this built by Tommy built the g36 was never they were never brought into the country for commercial sales they didn't have an SL 8 which was a commercial version which was it was horrible the SLA looked nothing like the regular g36 it proved to be a very poor seller and you know it was it was just never very popular however timing belt they were t able to take those rifles SL s which had the basic g36 components and build American made components to turn it into what you see here which is a g36 type rifle now timing belt we're just going to go over them a little bit right now because we're gonna be doing a whole video on those guys later on down the road but they manufacture the receivers the receivers you can buy it for eight hundred and forty nine dollars to build the rifle they manufacture most all the components on here they can either do a basically a complete American built version or they can do a conversion from the SLA parts to the g36 they also offer a version of the xm8 as well that includes the stock stock assemblies the pistol grip the internal components of the bolt bolt carrier group person RS a quality difference between the two compare this one compared to the standard g36 that I've shot in the past which were German military wins I don't see much of a difference at all myself of course the German ones I had shot and then the least in the past we're all selective fire this one was some aromatic only but for as far as the finish the feel they felt about the same the triggers just as horrible on this one as it was on the German one so this is a really good rendition of it now timing build offers a very quite a few versions of this rifle they offer various barrels yeah for a nine point four thirteen age sixteen point five inch barrels they offer tanker miles they offer pistols they offer came Adil's they have a very big variation of what they offer in these rifles this particular one was built specifically to be a complete copy of the German Bundeswehr rifle right down to the to the optic the optic itself is extremely expensive to have on this just for authenticity but it's a very interesting rifle now here in the States this is a very this is a very much a unicorn you know we just don't see them and you know quite frankly you know because of the cost you're never going to see them for those of who do want to invest in the money to to have their very own g36 Tommy built is you're pretty much your only option and he does a wonderful job but the g36 has been another one of those failures throughout the throughout the years and sometimes when guns fail they're not due to the gun themselves it's due to miscommunication between the military and manufacturers of what the gun is supposed to do this rifle performs the role of a combat rifle just fine but once you take a rifle this design to be this light and you tried to put it into a role where it's being used as a light support weapon it will overheat it will have failures to extract women when it gets hot you do have the issues with ambient temperature before it even fires especially you know and like an iraq where you have 120 degrees you know ambient temperature in sunlight where everything so there are consequences to having lightweight weapons sometimes that can be a detriment to to it and the biggest benefit of this rifle was this biggest weakness as was one yet with the m4 you know the m4 was it was right in love because it was lightweight but it was not designed to perform there all of the light support weapon and if this was the case with both governments the US government and the German government they should have loved HK know in this case the carbonyl that colt know that we're going to use this as a fully automatic weapon and we're gonna have it for heavy sub heavy support light support weapon status which the US government would have put the heavy barrel on like they're doing mouth lit since we've had all the issues of Afghanistan and Iraq with the m4 and the Germans would have done the same thing with this rifle they were gotten rid of this lightweight barrel and put out a heavier barrel but the heavier use of polymer with the g36 was also an option it was an issue there'd been videos where it's shown destruction testing on these rifles where the polymer caught on fire so you know it's very difficult to bridge that gap between light weight and combat reliability and combat durability I hope you all enjoyed this video if you do please click like please subscribe it even better Sheriff thank you

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 23,991

Rating: 4.943212 out of 5

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Id: zDrpEt8TYTg

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020