Sunday, August 28, 2011

Libya: Modern firearms in the post-Gaddafi era

As sporadic fighting still goes on while former strongman and dictator Gaddafi continues to be on the run, many interesting pictures out of Libya can be seen:

The G36:
German made from famous H&K, used as standard rifle in the German army (since 1995) and the Spanish (1999).

Pictures can be seen here: Guy carrying brand new guns 
and here: Guy standing and again in action (the other rifle looks like a AK 101- 105 type, also quite new).

The producer H&K issued a official statement saying they didnt ship G36s to Libya at all.
My guess is that they are being produced with licenses from HK  in a plant in Saudi-Arabia, using a loop-hole in gun regulatory rules. Whether HK knows about this is uncertain, but clearly one could think of such happenings before giving licenses. German government is aware of this, however an allowance for the export of the license was not necessary.
The G36 uses standard 5.56 x 45 mm NATO ammunition, so supply might be difficult to the fact, that most of Gaddafis arsenal consists of soviet 7,62 x 39 mm or 5,45 x 39 mm.

The FN F2000:
Belgian made assault rifle, bullpup design, first publicly displayed in 2001.
Pictures can be found in this blog, on this image, aswell as here. All pictures seem to come from Misurata (Misrata).
The shown configuration comes with the 40 mm under-barrel grenade launcher. Ammunition again is 5,56 NATO, same as G36.
This weapons are part of a dealing with the Belgian government in 2008. According to this article 400 F2000 were to be delivered.

The FN P90:
Same producer as above (FN Herstal, Belgium). Introduced in 1990.
Only seen this image so far.
Part of the same deal as the F2000 in 2008. 367 of this submachine-guns were to be delivered.
Since FN developed a special high-velocity ammunition (FN 5.7×28mm) for this gun, sustaining supply will be difficult, not to talk about spare-parts, magazines, etc.

Due to the fact, that ammunition supply will be getting tighter (especially for the P90), it is most likely for them to become showcase weapons.
More attention should be payed to all this AK clones flooding the country.
For further reading: Globalpost article.

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