The Interesting and Unusual Small Arms of Kurdistan and Ukraine w/ Neil Vermillion

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com I'm Ian McCollum and today I'm joined by Neil who has some cool and rather uncommon military experience in Iraq and Iraq and Ukraine and uh you are willing to come on uh on the show here and talk to us about some of your experiences and in particular today what I want to focus on is the weird and interesting Small Arms of those conflicts because of course this is forgotten weapons and I have a lot of questions for you but we're going to save a lot of those in fact I have I have a bunch of questions here from patreon and utreon supporters which is awesome but we're going to do those as a separate video because I want to talk about specifically the weird guns that you ran into now just to to kick us off can you give us a brief overview of what your military background is and where you were yeah so I joined the army at 17 in 2002 served in Iraq 2003 to 2004 2005 2006 2016 and then Ukraine in 2022 okay and your your time in Iraq was a little different between the Arts and the 2016. yes uh what was going on what had you in Iraq uh so I uh those of you who are obviously history people um will remember that Isis has invaded uh Iraq and Syria at that time and so um I went and joined a company called Sun Delivery International um and went to go train advise and assist the Kurdish peshmerga in their fight against Isis in 2016. okay and presumably something similar to that got you into Ukraine recently yeah actually same company um the guys uh sent me an email and said hey would you have any desire to come train Ukrainian troops and I said well let me see what my schedule looks like because I was working commercial fishing in Alaska at the time and uh just one does yeah you know casual no big deal are you sure your life isn't actually the disgusting Channel you can go from uh you know Deadliest Catch to deadliest war zones um but uh yeah so I uh I worked at a time frame that would be beneficial for me to go over there and work with them and they set up a very rigorous training schedule we were working between 12 to 18 hours a day working with different Ukrainian military units to get them dialed in not just for uh Hey so if this happens it's hey when this happens in two weeks you need to know how to do this so a little bit different than the normal sort of training one might do at home isn't it yes yeah all right so what a lot of people are have asked me about is like oh well when it applies to Ukraine like there's all sorts of crazy weird stuff showing up in Ukraine um obviously Max and guns have sort of made the news as the the unique weird old gun du jour of the Ukrainian conflict um but I think there's a lot of mystery surrounding what guns were being used by the peshmerga we saw like I saw g3s g36s coming in from the Germans what what was the standard Armament for them and what was some of the Oddball stuff that they did also use so standard is a very loose term that we're going to use today for both for both Wars um like you said we did see live g36s because when I was there the Germans had did that big push of the Farm's ammunition so g36s g3s um akms uh czvz-58 cities um uh enfields uh mp40s mp5s um I'll try to think anything of the weird things came up I mean you get saws you get m4s uh Glock 19s um your standard U.S military uh Iraqi army stuff pkms pkcs lots of things that had been um I repurposed so and I'm sure everybody's seen like the technicals with the the 25 or 30 millimeter in the back um you know anti-aircraft guns they're using in in ground support um the six million different variants of RPGs and Panzer files and at4s and all those different anti-tank when you say pens are Faust I know the German Army still runs something that they call a pounding house the updated that not the not the not the forgotten weapons version the the modern day one but it didn't say mp40s yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh Fair very fair um uh you know uh uh mozenegant's uh pps's uh or ppshs I look I look at stuff and go that's from World War II you look at stuff and go that's exactly what this is um so with a case we'll just pick one place to start was there any particular type or model or nationality that was well liked disliked had weird stories associated with it um outside so akm specifically um they do not like the Chinese ones for no other reason than we like the Chinese ones and then the reasoning in America I don't understand because it doesn't sit valid with myself it's just my knowledge um they don't like the czs the czs okay vz58s which I think are phenomenal Firearms seem to be yeah but they they could not get rid of those fast enough they were like we need akm so we need this AK and like was that like they didn't have parts interchangeability or magazines or there was no valid reason given to me and why like it shoots the same bullet just as fast just as accurately the manual Farms is fundamentally the exact same okay uh so I've seen things with the Chinese AKs uh they don't like the uh either I don't know if it's considered Chrome or in the raw the bolt they think that's just absolute garbage they want a blue bolt and I'm like I don't understand why that is um fuddler can take hold in anywhere yes yeah okay yeah how effective were the peshmerga in general I assume there was a range of quality of troops but like on the scale on the scale of um Liberian guys who run the the rear sight all the way forward to give it more power to like American Delta Force where where did the peshmerga generally fall under both extremes okay um so I'm sure you've seen and I think you've actually talked about before the sniper button oh yeah on the M16 that's a that's that that story has 100 I have seen firsthand accounts of that okay um and I don't know where it started um like you so you have that ends like the guys that I worked with um when we first doing started doing uh Farms instruction they could not hit something that's probably six feet by six feet from 50 yards wow could not do it but then within sister units or um the acaiis which is the Kurdish secret police if you will of uh the Iraqi Kurdistan um you know they have legit sniper teams with three sweet lipo Magnums and they're reached out touching people so there's it's a wide variety of of skill sets within there um and it's not even really unit to unit it's uh what is unit to unit but it's also individual to individual they treat it a lot like um best way to describe it like an American militia we're like okay we'd only have a finite amount of time to teach you guys how to how to do things so you have an innate ability to shoot distance so we're going to give you a dragon of our PSL and you're going to just go do that and here's maybe 50 rounds here's 20 rounds or maybe here's 400 rounds who knows what our um uh our supply chain is looking like right now uh then there's the guy that is just happy to be there that's a warm body that he gets a pkc that is has that doesn't have stock so it's got like some rebar welded onto it and he gets a belt of ammo and that's it and all right you go forth uh so it's a very hodgepodge of it then there's some guys that have dual tube nods they've got m4s they've got some sort of ir laser device some suppressors and they're they're very dialed in and and good to go so okay how obviously those guys are going to take their training very seriously for the more typical run-of-the-mill forces how how much interest did they take in improving their own skills were they excited to get training from like really competent people or was this just a waste of time or so without going into story time um we would love to hear it yes we can absolutely we don't need to turn this into just Tall Tales all day but I know people would love to hear interesting anecdotes and stories uh so uh with the group that I worked with when we showed up I'd been there I was there for two weeks before we got into our first major incident and uh those two weeks leading up to it they were very excited for Western advisors and trainers to be there they were extremely thankful but if you yelled at them if you made them do any sort of accuracy oh you mess up now you're doing push-ups you're doing sit-ups you're doing flutter kicks any sort of the traditional US military style of corrective training and corrective actions um they're like no no no you can't talk to me like that like we're Brothers we need to be like this Brothers I'm like okay no we are brothers I get this but like we are in an active war zone right now we can walk 100 yards that way and fire a bullet in that direction and then more bullets will come back towards us like this is this is not a brotherly love kind of moment we need we are in an active combat zone uh and they're like oh no it's fine everything is fine inshallah no no it's okay okay that's that's not how this is supposed to work so we um about two weeks after I was there we were overrun by about 300 Isis Fighters Navy Seals had to come bail us out um Charles Keating was unfortunately lost in that incident um his local Arizona guy from Arcadia and after that they took things deadly serious okay um and it was the proud moment I had from that was we got separated from half of our unit and they of course as you see in Middle Eastern military they love they've got their gun and their camera at the same time and they're like basically trying to live stream stuff on Facebook and um watching their CQB skills their their street awareness their muzzle awareness their their movement everything was textbook how they should have been doing for the last two weeks it didn't do it in training but somehow when it really mattered they did it wow and I was I couldn't have been more proud of them but then they when they came back after that in the weeks and months of training after that they were they were dialed in and they were like okay do you guys know what you're talking about it kept us alive what else can you tell me what else can you teach me I want to be a spun for everything you're giving us and so that was that definitely set a benchmark of of training with them nice did you see a difference in that attitude between the peshmerga in 2016 and I don't know how much contact you had with the Iraqi forces in 2000 three four five six um did they have a similar attitude if applicable um so the Iraqi forces so I had an interesting experience so we were part of the ICDC um in 2003 2004 which is the um I don't know what the exact acronym stands for but it's a recruitment of the Iraqi police in the Iraqi Army when we were trying to stand them up after the invasion and those guys for lack of a better term were a giant um like you see the videos of guys like who can't in sync do jumping jacks like that kind of level of like oh no and if something went wrong or some sort of anything dangerous actually happened where they had to do their job not just collect a paycheck they just quit and they went home and that was the end of that um the peshmerga don't have that they didn't have that um that luxury because the towns that we were fighting in are their homes and that you know they were trying to push back into their if they weren't already in their Hometown the next town up or two more towns up to reclaim was their home where their grandmother was or their their family is so they're they're a little more motivated to get things right certainly understandable um so that was the big disparity same thing in 0506 and we were in telifar and we had up in sinjar we had a training facility and it had already been established for the Iraqi Border guard same thing those guys just didn't care they were there to collect a paycheck as soon as anything went sideways as soon as they were mistreated or yelled at or disrespected they're like I quit I'm out I'm gonna go join the Insurgent Force which that that's a whole other conversation of politics that we want to get into um but they're they're the motivation between the the the different um time frames and different cultures was was massively I was gonna ask if you think that's a cultural thing or it was a situational thing I think it's cultural um the Kurds are extremely proud extremely proud like they are they are Kurdish and they will let you know and everybody else like the cultural equivalent of CrossFit or private Pilots yes yes that's so true oh no I know one of those two is a friend of mine um that got way too real um yeah so they're they're um you know in the Kurds have notorious not notorious uh have historically been very proud and same thing you know we saw during the the first Gulf War and you know we let them down when all all that happened but uh they were willing to stand up against Saddam and they're like well it's a no-fly zone like you guys stay on your side of the line and we will stay on ours and we will shoot you if you come across but we'll still sell you oil that is technically yours but it's ours like that that kind of thing um so I I definitely think that there's a a level of res a personal responsibility that the Kurds have more so than I saw with the Iraqi military not and all of the things that we talk about this is my personal interaction experience I'm not speaking for anybody in any any way because I definitely did see Iraqi soldiers that like we in 2010 it doesn't late 2005 we were hit by a suicide bomber while we were doing an Iraqi Army Recruiting uh in telifar and the the next day or the day after the next day we had like open recruiting nobody showed up one guy walked up and his legs are bandaged from ankle up to like below his nipple almost any and they'd hit us like have you seen the movie Swordfish yeah um where they they had the the vest with the ball bearings and so this dude has ball bearing holes all through his lower body and he's still there like I want to help my country and I was like bro go ahead they're gonna they're gonna kick you back because obvi obviously but that's impressive like go like do you like if you need anything like you need some water like like what do you like what can I do to help you now because this is that's one of the kind of things that we you know we needed that time in that country yeah okay um shifting gears a little bit you're you described a wide variety of firearms and their ammunition requirements how much logistical trouble was it to have five five six seven six two thirty nine 54 Rim 308 nine millimeter toker Ave it's very very um so for for us we would we had an allotment from the Iraqi military uh and the The herbal government um and then we also do the political things going on there's there's different groups in each group has different sets of power so not everything gets distributed equally uh so we would have to actually Source from Syria more ammunition to bring that you know basically the Isis would have captured in the captured mosul they would bring to Syria smuggers would bring it back from Syria into Iraq and then we would use it against Isis as this weird cyclical uh cyclical thing um we would get the the German powder fast Rockets we would get Chinese rockets and boosters and all the stuff needed for that um you could get link 762 uh 54R you could get 76 by 39 or you could go to Black Market in herbal um you go buy it there or outside of town um uh it's funny that same firefight for the ballot telescope or uh yeah telescope um the seals came up to us and they had no idea we were there in the first place they which was dead that's a whole different story but hey guys you guys have any linked 762 and I'm like bro we got a case I got I got nothing for you and he's like well we're about to be black on ammo we got to get out of here I was like well thanks for showing up like and using all your ammo but um it's there's a there is a very big problem having non-standardized ammunition choices um I mean I would expect so and that continues on even to Ukraine as well okay what were mp40s doing there I mean it's just leftovers from North Africa I couldn't tell you the historical provenance of how they end up there um but you could you could walk into a black black market gun store in herbal and you could have an RPD a PKM an MP5 an MP40 an Enfield a Nagant all on the wall for sale wow and you're like well that's really cool man can I see it like oh yeah you look at it you're like okay thanks and go about your day um but yeah I mean it's what did those sorts of guns cost relative to you know food gas so and this is this is 2016 so all these things have changed um at that time they were very expensive um because the I like the Isis threat was so strong that when I got there in a mid-april of 2016. um probably I mean I think within the last six months Isis was at the gates of herbal and they had been like with inside of the airport proper and had been pushed all the way back um to outside of uh mosul and basically telescope was the last friendly town that we were in and then there was tokies I think was the name of the where they they were um but it because that threat was so real and everybody like legitimately needed Firearms ammunition they I mean same thing when you know election season comes everything prices go up I heard stories like that about the Balkan wars were at the beginning people are selling their car to be able to buy an AK and at the end AKs are essentially worth nothing because the war is over and nobody's really interested in them anymore yeah like we were um in like the 0304 time frame like you could trade like a pack of chem lights for an AK which would have been the equivalent of like five dollars yeah and like they were that was the street value and like it wasn't just for the gun it was the gun and two crates of ammo geez and it's like okay and like oh you want a PKM like okay that'll be like two cartons of cigarettes so it's uh that is definitely something I've seen but it went the other direction they weren't they weren't needed and then they weren't needed and I'm sure now um they are definitely still needed because Isis is still a problem in in Iraq and Syria but it's not as much of a big deal okay um one last before we move on to Ukraine but if I assume AK is for the predominant weapon over with the peshmerga what would you say the generalized percentage was of this many P this this percentage had AKs and this percentage had everything else put together like how how rare was the non-standard stuff uh so if we're using like Soviet Weaponry as our standard um the non-standard would be the high speed guys the guys with Western weapons for the most part so the guys running nods the guys run m4s the the government-funded well-trained those guys um definitely had the non-standard weapons and they had access to the non-standard ammunition supply chain uh the rest of them I would say it's like an 80 20 split okay but then also within that split there is just like an Afghanistan back uh during the Soviet Afghan war um the ak-74u was the hotness so same thing to G36 was the hotness so that's what the Battalion commanders had that's what the company commanders had if you had a G36 you you commanded Authority okay you had a G3 you're not quite there but you're not the AK guy um you know and so it kind of it there was a tier system of the firearms and then um if you had a scoped rifle you're automatically a sniper no matter if the scope zeroed or not you were considered a Kanas and um which had pluses and minuses to it I suspect there were guys who took that scoped rifle seriously and made sure they knew how to use it and there were guys who just reveled in the the bravado of having it yes because everybody has their little their their peshmerga patch with their sniper and they've got their thing and they've took in a a one-week course online on YouTube that they were like I am now a sniper because I have a scope rifle um and then you know you go way down to the old dudes and this so what's funny about all this is is you have the guys that are wearing Kurdish traditional Kurdish Garb with their g36s commanding everything from a little bit far back with their radios uh you've got the front line guy who's got um probably you know usually some combat pants uh a traditional shirt a load-bearing vest with some mags and and his rifle uh and then you've got uh the old dudes that don't care about anything um that will roll up with a lien field or a Nagant uh with their very traditional they've got their I think it's called a Keef they're they're um red and white checkered with the the tan Kurdish outfit with the belt and I mean they look like they're going to like a formal event and they'll come up to a gunfight like that and you're like okay with an Enfield and ammo yeah but in there yeah in their in their little the World War II vintage pouches that they've had for that they you know and it's it's a it's a dichotomy of of wow it's like a giant history lesson were any of those guys competent was it like oh that's the old man watch out is that beware the the man with one rifle because he knows how to use it or is that this guy's a total liability they're both okay um so there there's there's a couple old guys that were I wouldn't want to be in the receiving end of and there's a couple guys that we would call them the inshallahs so which was God willing and uh like we had one dude in the middle uh we're gonna like we're behind hiding behind hiluxes and this guy pulls up in the Land Rover and I mean and we're in active gun fight we're returning fire and Fire's coming in down the road we're out like you can watch around skip off the ground and this dude stops in the middle of the road steps out of his car grabs his M16 with ACOG not behind cover his side mirror gets shot off he's taking not he's still not behind cover takes off his scope caps to his ACOG puts in his Hunter round beta mag drama oh good lord and all all just still just in the open we're like come here come here come here he's just like and then he like saunters over and then crosses them hey guys we're like good Lord I mean I guess inshallah works because you're still here but like I don't I don't understand what just happened it works until it doesn't yeah right yeah Oh I thought you were gonna say he like switched it to full auto and just dumped that man from The Hip I don't think he fired a single round that whole day he just had all the Gucci stuff and didn't use anything wow okay all right so let's switch over to Ukraine um you were there we should we should put a little bit of context in this we are filming this in late June of 2023. um when were you there I was there the end of 2022 and I was there for roughly a month so it was a very short training push um the whole idea was to go go train come back not be an active combat and not do any anything like that that uh obviously as we will discuss more throughout these conversations I've done enough of that and that's not longer not something I want to be part of it not so excited to to do the inshallah thing yourself no Okay so what were the standard Small Arms AKA 74s okay so now we're going now we've switched from 762 by 39 to 545 by 39 which I think is the superior round um yeah and I will stand by that statement um so yeah so the once again we're gonna you're gonna have to school me a little bit on the definitive models of the 74s but we had the standard six stock 74 we had the side folders We had 74 U's and then which I find is going to be the best thing from the cloner market for Instagram and Facebook and YouTube um everything in between okay and a hodgepodge of suppressors and rails and no not nothing standard so you've got zeniko stuff you've got a crook stuff you've got um some random chinesium stuff you've got uh the bulb cup kits that you can get from I think Storm Shadow company you've got oh those are I found one of those that was weird um I mean there there's no standardization from unit to unit but within the units themselves for the most part they were pretty standardized all right so like the guys the first unit I worked with extensively they had 74 side folding 74s with modernization kits that had M4 stock adapters pick rails full four-sided pick rails up front and Sarah has Optics which is going to be a um their Ukrainian manufactured red dots but they look a lot like the nephrolight rds2s okay um the collimator sites or they would be running the Trijicon oh I don't know the model number but there it's a the tube and then the front of it has the reflex side in it yeah I don't remember the model number but I know them or not and we're actually looking at a picture of it right now I imagine yeah hopefully right here um and uh and then also rail top covers and then extended charging handles uh extended mag releases uh extended safeties uh so I mean they basically it looked like a full auto three gun rifle okay for lack of a better term like if you were to take a catalog put it in there through the whole catalog and then run it in a match like that's all the stuff you'd want oh okay um uh by the way before we go further you you said AKA 74us there's the krinkov which is the really short sub gun version and then there are also a number of like the Intermediate length like 12 inch barreled patterns um which which one were you seeing uh I'm seeing so when we talk about intermediate we're talking like more like the 100 series okay so none of those uh the old the crank um either with the thumb hole lower stock wooden piece or um those have been all replaced with like a quad rail uh and then with a usually a suppressor directly threaded to the to the barrel okay all right um so really only one caliber to work with was there much Oddball stuff outside of the 74s yes um so and I'm just I'm gonna speak on this unit specifically because they're the ones I spent the most time with um but we could go down to rabbit hole with other units um this one has 74s for most guys um their sniper teams had uar tents which is the their uh Ukraine local Ukrainian made AR-10 basically okay um with the night Force optic night vision capabilities and uh suppressors nice um and those guys were held to a standard a high standard of shooting that a lot of people in the U.S could not meet which was pretty cool they'd also worked with uh some of our friends in the north on a training mission for a few months so they were already pretty dialed in um and then going the whole other direction uh they also had maximum machine guns okay all right we've seen a lot of those in Ukraine show up but not something you'd think with special forces you know would have no that does surprise me a bit like I pictured maxims as static defensive in placed guns and by the way I'm going to put in an aside here on my own I see a lot of people talking about like oh look how you know how incredibly under equipped they are they have maxims from World War II as an in place weapon the Maxima is fantastic in fact I think it's arguably better than a PK for a lot of that that specific thing now were these guys like we're gonna you know dynamic entry with a circle of amount Maxim what were they using them for no um I don't know what they really planned on using them for we integrated them in our training plan of um rolling them into place for trench assaults providing covering fire um you know and and using them as their intended purpose that they're made for that's years ago literally what they were made for 100 years ago uh and you know they also did have pkms in small amounts they didn't bring those out too much until they deployed because there was no real purpose because that we weren't training them to employ ptms in any other way outside of the way that they're supposed to have been used okay um but I remember they brought out the maxims and I was like oh what like are we are we fighting a real war or like is this Call of Duty or like what I don't like my whole brain just went into 6 000 different thoughts at once and it just kind of like you're like are you good I was like oh I'm fine I just don't understand what I'm looking at right now um and and that was that was that unit specifically um other unit that we'd worked with though there was a government a high government level was uh I mean they had m4s mp5s all suppressed um mp7s um but these are these would be the equivalent of the FBI HRT if I were to find a U.S okay equivalent um but in a much more martial given the situation yeah that in a lot of European countries there is a a governmental federal police agency that is actually part of the military yes the gender Marie sort of thing yeah yeah did you do any work with like the territorial defense guys the lower end of the spectrum equipment wise so um I didn't personally but our group had a couple weeks prior uh and so I had heard secondhand stories and they were not good um they they were good in the they were people were motivated to be there they're motivated trained they're motivated to learn but they're equipping at that time was not fantastic okay um and in a like I brush shoulders with them throughout the time but like my my direct working was not with them and um my opinion of them is high but they're making do with the bare minimum that makes sense yeah which is unfortunate because some of those guys are the ones that are actually getting pushed on when the Russians I'm not surprised yeah so it's it's uh it's it's it's tough to see and think about that you're not getting all of the training that you need because there is no time and it's going to cost you um and it's a very sombering thought to like look at somebody and know that within the next 30 to 60 days you might be dead and there's a pretty high chance of that given I mean if given the op if if the option presents itself your survival your numbers are low if nothing happens obviously right it's probably 100 but this isn't your weekend National Guard training in the US where yeah you know it doesn't matter if you don't do that well or if you don't get to learn everything this is like in 30 days you are going to the front yeah it's the question is not if it is when and the when is probably tomorrow um you know not to uh oh it's that it's a line similar to that in Starship Troopers where it's like uh you know one's invasional Clan have to like some say soon and you know the little say now you know or something like that um and so that's with the training guys that was the big the big difference of conversation was um it's not if you're going to do something it's when you do this so when the Russians come like you have to think of okay when the Russians come with tanks where do you go into a building not in the bottom three floors because that's where the tank uh Barrel can Traverse to from a street level so you have to go to floor four and above well how many stories are there is there four is there eight well now you get too high now you gotta worry about artillery come down the other direction then you lose your your field of view like there's all sort of different Dynamic things that people don't think about that even if you are a military and you have been trained for a long time you you do learn those things but as a trainer if you forget to let somebody know one of those facts because you just think it's normal uh that everyone should know it but they don't because they're not military trained and it's your job to do that um it's a it it's hard it can matter yeah yeah um I think I kind of digressed a little bit on a tangent but uh so looking back the tdf guys um poorly trained not by their own fault there's just not enough trainers to be there because there's not supposed to be a lot in the country because NATO is not doing things in Ukraine we're doing things out of Ukraine so there's not a lot of Western guys there boots on ground training tdf guys there's not enough uh Ukrainian veterans with enough experience to train the tdf guys because they're they're needed out the front training their guys and bringing them up to speed of their Replacements because they're losing guys fast enough that you know they've got to keep the Bodies Warm so it's it's just at that time it was a very fluid situation for that but it was at the end of the year uh getting better no comparatively to like when my team showed up probably six months prior four months prior maybe even earlier than that uh they were I mean that was when they were handing out rifles and ammo to everybody and like I remember you have a heartbeat like here's a machine gun here's some ammo and you want an RPG too you know um so that's why it's important why people remember this conversation goes on about when we're filming this yes when I was there and how Dynamic the situation has come even in the last six months and then even in the three months prior to that and even while I was there the situation changed so it's context is key in this do you have any insight into how the Small Arms situation has has progressed since you left between late 22 and now middle of 23. uh Small Arms not so much I know heavy arms has you know they've got the Bradleys now they've got the leopards they've they're they should be getting Abrams relatively soon um you know there's a talk of the f-16s there's some we've Tran we I think pull one transferred some stuff um so I mean they're they're small arm stuff is you kind of get what you get and it's a odds positive I mean I've seen friends I've like rent two CZ Brands yeah yeah not not the yeah British Brands yeah um you know we've seen Brands you've seen ogs you've seen HKS you've seen m4s M16s m14s I carried one of those for a while uh uh AK-47s or yeah some some guys has 47s most guys had 74s the 74 used the bolt bolt gun B and T bolt guns um uh Barrett mrad's um and then all the assorted belt fit machine guns and things go on with that and so did they have any significant ammunition logistical issues or was everything standardized enough that it wasn't really a big deal yes and no so there's a non-answer um so they they had a supply of NATO standard they had a supply of Soviet standard and then there was the interim stuff so like so the B T I think it's the BNT Black Arrow is what it's called I think it's a three three Lapua Magnum okay like that's the non-standard like it's a standard NATO caliber that we use but it's not standard NATO caliber you know I mean like it's at gray area so those you'll get like a 220 round boxes of that um you know if you want match grade 308 for your bolt guns a lot of guys are running the Sako trgs the 22s um with cans out of Norway it's a hodgepodge of things uh with Vortex Optics uh you know they're if you want Hornady match Grade ammo you could probably get 20 or 40 rounds of that you can get a bunch of d-linked 240 ammo but that's not going to give you the same results right as a as thing you know if you want you know so there's the quality of ammo is hard to find the amount of ammo is there it's just okay for specialist roles um that's where things can get a little thank you okay any particularly cool stories about Oddball Small Arms from from either conflict um I'm sure there are but they all I kind of went into him with that thought of like I'm gonna see some weird so nothing really surprised me okay um what what were you carrying what were your standard guns uh for your and your you and your unit so um with the pesh it was an AK-47 um it was I think a Chinese one uh it had a basically if you dragged it through the Tapco catalog uh that's what I had uh and it worked um I wouldn't I rebuilt that gun as a kind of homage I rebuilt my my m162 from The Invasion and my AK and I I mean it scuffed it up the same way it looked and it's it's cool for me but it's a giant Hunker shed like it was it is not not a good thing um going over to Ukraine um initially it was an M14 um Woodstock was there a story behind that like how did you get on M14 what I got I don't know um if you were doing sniper training yeah um and that's the worst sniper rifle you can use right now did it have a scope or was it just higher that I brought okay I had heard heard um inklings and rumors that I would be having an M14 or an M1A because it is a non-filato version that they had it did have the knob for the selector but the little paddle itself was non-existent so I didn't I didn't go too far down that rabbit hole it's not like you're really going to gain anything by trying to get it full auto no uh We've we've seen me shoot matches full auto it is not an advantage um uh so yeah so I brought over a mount a side mount and um rings and everything uh and set that up and zeroed it and it was every bit of a four MOA gun that they're known for oh okay um so uh that was there and then one unit we had uh 74s that were issued um and then right before I left they were issued um it's a 556 AR patterned which I never actually pulled the trigger on but they were like here and I was like this is new this is different uh and uh that was the extent of my experience with those ones okay and uh Iraq um I mean pkc's with uh the the stock literally blown off so they would weld on a uh like rebar section um same thing with uh so yeah you said pkc yes what is that so the pkc this and I'm might be totally misspeaking so there's the PK the pkc and PKM okay that might not be what we call them here but this is what they call the miraculately so the PK was the initial version the pkc was the vehicle Mount non-dismount equipped and then the PKM was the modernized okay typically call that a pkt okay per tank yeah but that's I figured that's what you were going with yeah but then that was the Iraqis telling me pkc and like okay cool it's a PKM but okay like you know everything to me if it's a 54 hour belt fed machine gun it's to me it's a pkl um okay which I know is wrong uh but yeah so then so that was that was Battle damage so they welded that up same thing um Ashley Bella telescope we found a bunch of uh AK-47s that had been blown up and we bubbled those back together to become modern Firearms um well not modern but functional Firearms um handgun sidearm oh starter pistols what what yeah Turkish starter pistols no say you have to be kidding me but you're clearly not Kim oh no I I almost lost my mind when they handed me one with real bullets in it uh was this meant to kill again you I think um yeah that uh their knockoffs like Beretta or Glock or whatever I mean you can you can buy them online for you know there's they're non-firearms well they smooth board them to using some sort of drill press I doubt they actually match there there was no chamber reaming at all okay so it's just here's nine Mill bullets that fit in this magazine we loaded in there and it Chambers and I'm not squeezing that trigger inshallah yeah um and the the worst part is about the inshallah stories is the guys I worked with were Christians and they like the majority of peshmerga are Muslim but the guys that were supposedly are Christian and they were like they would yell at us we'd say inshallah they're like no no we we have the god and I was like I mean bro I'm gonna call we're gonna do inshallah if you're making me shoot this gun because I'm gonna lose my hand um the the craft built um wow the Soviet um caliber the 50 Council 12 12 5 12 7s and fourteen five some of them I think um those were those were dubious of uh nature but I mean they're single shot breach lock yeah um you know the Curtis gunsmiths could do some wild stuff I think most of those things were built from legit barrels yeah oh yeah yeah so yeah that takes care of not all of your safety issues but a lot of your safety issues yeah um okay and just the historical Firearms we talked about before the mp40s the uh all right I've been trying to prod you because you told me at lunch about carrying a pps43 and a stechkin yeah so those were not 2016 time frames um so yeah so the discussion was Modern so everybody in our unit uh that first unit they all were all issued them which country Ukraine okay yeah so they're yeah so all of the Ukrainian SS guys that I'd worked with in that particular unit had ak-74s and stitchkins and skins for those of you that don't know are also known as an APS which is a select fire pistol that is literally it shoots at 380. and it's it's the size and weight of a mark 23 yeah it's massive and it's super controllable and it is so much fun like I I the it's I've obviously shot a lot of machine guns and a lot of I had a lot of full auto trigger time so you know imagine the face and the smile that the person that first time gets I had that from shooting that pistol I like that I have it on video I'm like this is so cool thank you guys like then I handed it back to him I was like ah um and then the the papa shot that was actually during the invasion of Iraq okay um back when I was a nice 17 18 year old kid um we had found one uh that the guys that we had taken it from alleged it was for bird hunting ah I don't know how much bird hunting you can do with that firearm is this the Woodstock or the sheet metal Woodstock so PPS h-41 yep and uh had that for a bit and then uh word got up the chain of command that uh private Vermillion had a non-standard firearm in his possession and that immediately was yeah they asked that pretty quick uh but you know that makes a fun little story I got a couple pictures of the house and nice we did a few raids and a few missions that I was able to carry that on because my immediate chain X fan was like whatever gun it shoots yeah all right so nice all right well I think this has probably gone long enough for this particular subject so thank you very much that was really fascinating to uh to hear hopefully you guys enjoyed it uh we'll be doing some more talking to Neil about some other elements of his time in Iraq and uh Ukraine thank you very much for joining me I'm glad you didn't uh get killed overseas thank you for having me and I I'm happy as well

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 231,038

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly

Id: LUHbXXu_PYE

Length: 43min 49sec (2629 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2023