Studying the history of the creation of various weapons, including small arms, you begin to understand with bitterness how many ingenious ideas of inventors and designers have not been finalized, not brought to their logical conclusion. Indeed, as soon as the thought of a genius person becomes a material embodiment and reflection of his ideas, and some invention appears.
The history of the creation of the Bushmaster M-17s rifle
It all began in 1982, when a small Australian firm, Armstech, applied for a competitive selection. It was a task to design a new automatic weapon for the Australian Armed Forces under a single "NATO cartridge" of 5, 56 mm caliber. To present the project of a new weapon, the designers of the company designed and made the necessary design calculations for their brainchild, an assault rifle (compact machine gun). The idea was not bad, a 5.56 mm assault rifle chambered for NATO was designed. The rifle was conceived as a bullpup, but the Austrian gunsmiths' product won the competition - the Steyr AUG rifle, which was later adopted as the standard weapon of the Australian army under the alphanumeric code F88.
Despite the failure in the selection round of the competition, Armstech did not abandon the promising project, but continued to work. However, poor record keeping undermined the company's financial stability. Facing the threat of bankruptcy, the package of documents for the rifle was sold to another firm from Australia, Edenpine, which intended to enter the US arms market with this rifle. In the early 90s of the XX century, Edenpine made a deal to transfer the rights to modify and manufacture this type of weapon to Bushmaster Firearms Inc. (USA). In 1994, the Bushmaster entered the American arms market with the M17s self-loading rifle, a modified and improved model of the Australian project, which was intended to be used as a weapon for policemen and civilian paramilitary units, rangers and security structures. To the surprise of many experts, the rifle, after all the improvements, turned out to have good shooting characteristics. In such an arrangement, it successfully combined a fairly long barrel, overall proportionality and relative compactness. This was accompanied by ease of handling and reliability in use. Despite such positive characteristics, the Bushmaster company closed the project for mass production of the product, throwing all funds for the manufacture of rifles of the Ar-15 / M16 type that are more in demand in America. Any explanation is hard to come up with other than the unpopularity of such weapons among Americans.
Bullpup layout
A bullpup-style layout is a variant of the arrangement of the product mechanisms, in which the trigger and the clip are structurally integrated into the applied part behind the trigger. This makes it possible to make the barrel length longer without changing the dimensions of the product, which increases the range and accuracy of fire.
The main motive that prompts designers to use such an arrangement of weapon mechanisms is the desire to make the length of the product shorter, which is very important in a limited space (car, tank, self-propelled gun, armored personnel carrier or infantry fighting vehicle). At the same time, the vertical dimensions of the rifle, as a rule, become larger, because it is necessary to make the sight higher, and the trigger also takes a certain place.
The device and principle of operation of the Bushmaster M-17s
The Bushmaster M-17s is an individual weapon in the form of a rifle that uses the principle of evacuation of gases after a shot for automatic operation. The gas piston remains in the upper position during its short stroke. The barrel bore is locked with a rotary bolt with seven lugs. The powerful bolt frame moves on two metal rods. Reverse springs are located near them. Directly the bolt and the barrel are arranged in a barrel box made of light-alloy metal. From the bottom to the barrel box, the trigger box is attached to it, made of plastic in a single composition with the firing handle, the receiving part of the clip and the butt plate of the applied part. On the upper plane there is a handle for moving weapons, on which there is a mount for "optics". The rear part of the handle for moving the weapon is made functional and serves for cocking the bolt. The safety button is located in front of the trigger guard.
TTX of this rifle
Caliber: 5.56 x 45mm
Product length: 760 mm
Barrel length: 546 mm
Weight (w / o cage): 3.72 kg
Clip - standard from M16 / AR15
In 2005, the Bushmaster M17S production program was closed.
