You and me both... but no, the gov will likely spend a couple billion paying for each enfield to be picked up by armed security guards and hand carried to Newfoundland or Quebec to be melted down into tricycles or something...
Ranger Rifles to be on Sale in October
- Thread starter Ganderite
- Start date
You and me both... but no, the gov will likely spend a couple billion paying for each enfield to be picked up by armed security guards and hand carried to Newfoundland or Quebec to be melted down into tricycles or something...
They will be but these are not those.
nowarningshot
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I did not follow which rifles were in the competition, so dont know if the Steyr was one of them? I know the actual manufacture was to be by license by Colt Canada, probably a deal killer for a lot of manufacturers, giving up manufacturing, blue prints, tooling to potentially make a competitor stronger.
- Location
- Lower Mainland
wow....top dollars for sure
maple_leaf_eh
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I'll bite. This contract has been shouted about long and hard here on CGN. There have been several factors that would appear to be ridiculous on the surface, but are necessities in the very long run. Small arms are a generational purchase. Whatever is ordered and issued has to be supported well into the future. This gets complicated when breakdowns can't be predicted until the initial issue has been in service a while. What would the taxpayers say if the military's supplier was broke or out of business just when their expertise is needed most? (cough LSVW cough MLVW cough Sea King cough) It is simplistic and short-sighted to rely entirely on the goodwill of industry.
The contracting solution is to secure the manufacturing rights and legally obtain the intellectual property so that in 20 yrs when the last Left Front Dust Guard Grapple Grommet is installed, a product manager can open the file and give a work order to the machinist. Pay up front rather than pay way more much later. Sending orders to tender result in lowest cost bidder winning, but inefficiencies at all other levels.
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maple_leaf_eh: Not trying to start an argument- I'm just a bit baffled (as a taxpayer) as to why the choice for replacement of surplus WW2 vintage rifles is a fancy top of the line commercial product. I look on Cabelas and see a large choice of basic hunting rifles (with scope) for $500-$600. I'm also pretty sure that 4 or 5 years from now there will also be similar rifles available for needed replacements and that any of them can be repaired by armourers or gunsmiths , as required, with factory available parts. As to functionality in the northern climate, I suspect most of the Rangers are pretty experienced gun users and could make do with any quality rifle for the basic bear protection role. Finally, given the importance of maintaining sovereignty in the Arctic, and the hefty role the Rangers are forced to play in this, why not just issue them the standard infantry rifle of the day. That's what the No. 4 was, in its day.
milsurpo
milsurpo
Wonder how long they are going to employ those "30 new high-paid skilled workers in Kitchener"? I think 2 years at the max.
Also how long does it take to make 6820 rifles in a production facility like Colt Canada?
If they made 71 rifles a week or 14 a day they could do that in less than 2 years to meet their stated deadline starting early 2017 of fully equipping the rangers by 2019.
maple_leaf_eh
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
There are dozens of cheap designs. The Rangers specified what they wanted and thought they needed. Some wiseguy even officially specified a No.4 in .308, but none of the companies had anything remotely close with a two-piece stock, rear-locking, flip-up micrometer rear sight and replaceable front inserts. There have been commercial attempts but none have been sustainable. If you go back to my previous point about making a generational purchase, the government of Canada has been burned too many times with factories going out of business long before the in-service equipment needs spare parts.
So, the project office looked around again and specified for a bolt action in production with (and here is where the business got interesting) full intellectual property transferred to Canada. Not a limited licencing, but 100% autonomy. None of the big US producers were going to sell their design work to a foreign government, or lose their share in the US civilian marketplace! Hence, no RuRemChesterBergs at the trials.
I used to build stuff for the CF. let me advise you in something you might know nothing about: intellectual property and strategic supply chain. It does not matter how long they take to build the guns or how many ppl they employ at the end of the day. Those are economic benefit sweeteners.
Owning IP doubles or triples the acquisition cost. You are not buying rifles, you are buying a guarantee that the rifle cannot be made obsolete without your say-so. You are cutting the oem out of any future procurement. You are buying all the r and d that went into developing the product to begin with.
Owning IP doubles or triples the acquisition cost. You are not buying rifles, you are buying a guarantee that the rifle cannot be made obsolete without your say-so. You are cutting the oem out of any future procurement. You are buying all the r and d that went into developing the product to begin with.
GunsNotPuns
CGN frequent flyer
Meh. I have no problem with the size of the contract or the perceived cost per rifle. I work for the federal government, this is one of the better contracts I've seen. Besides, Prime Minister Zoolander has pissed away several multiples of that bringing peace loving men of combat age from the Middle East as "refugees" and what will that get us? At least the $33M got the Rangers something.
At any rate, $2,700 is a bit rich for these rifles though granted I haven't seen one in person...
At any rate, $2,700 is a bit rich for these rifles though granted I haven't seen one in person...
maple_leaf_eh
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
The acronym is FAM - fighting age males.
GunsNotPuns
CGN frequent flyer
Ah, I was not aware we had an official acronym. Well, may God bless each and every one of them. Perhaps they will move north and join the Rangers themselves.
In fairness, that is not the issue with the Sea King. Truth be told, the SK is still supportable and still used by many countries. The challenge is more likely that the ratio of maintenance to flight hour is obsolete within Canadian Naval Air Arm doctrine and better, more capable ASW systems are available that can't be retro-fitted into the Sea King from an economic feasibility standpoint. The Sea king OEM is Sikorsky and they are still in business and doing quite well.
If it does not matter about "how many people are employed at the end of the day" I wonder what happened to the CF IP on the Lee Enfield No.4 and why they (Colt Canada) could not make more of those very effective rifles and their needed parts, They would sell a lot more of them and their parts on the private market too.
Australian International Arms (AIA) made them completely from scratch and sold them for about $600 each to dealers.
They say that the Rangers use of the LE is only now becoming obsolete because it is getting hard to obtain needed parts for them.
The no4 rifles are chambered and proofed for .303B. The CF wants to standardize on 7.62x51 for many logistics reasons. The no4 rifle has never been reliably converted to 7.62 in a way that will stand up to prolonged abuse and remains an expensive gun to make today with most parts machined and surface heat treated using old and expensive processes. It's also not optics friendly.
The AIA gun was looked at and found lacking. It's not mil spec. It was built in Vietnam using Asian surplus barrels. I used to have a couple of them and sold them for being poorly made compared to the real deal.
AIA as a company is an example of exactly what DND wants to avoid. A fly by night manufacturer of crappy lowest cost compliant goods.
They only wanted a .308/7.62x51mm chambered rifle as replacement for the capable .303 No.4 LE as they know nobody has made commercial bolt action .303 rifles since the 1960's.
The whole reason to replace the .303 LE was given as they could not get replacement parts to keep the existing rifles in service. They do not need .308 LE's, they have production capacity to still make .303 ammo.
What I am saying is why did we not just ask Colt Canada to make the needed replacement parts to keep the current very capable LE still servicable and in service.
The Danish Slædepatruljen Sirius still use the M1917 as their service weapon, due to the high reliability of these bolt-action rifles in the harsh conditions of high Arctic Greenland and they replace parts like barrels when they are worn out.
Maybe that would have been a better use of taxpayer money then go with a $2700 commercial rifle that is going to get beat to hell and we have no idea how it will hold up to Ranger longterm use. Will they be able to hold up to prolonged abuse?
AIA is and example of the fact that LE's still can be made if needed, I am not saying we should use AIA rifles as that company also does not make them anymore anyhow.
You said that we need to ignore the cost of the new rifles because they will be able to make parts whenever needed and it gives the government control as it can still be made even if obsolete, a bit like how the situation is with the current issue LE rifle now. We already own the rights to make LE rifles or parts.
maple_leaf_eh
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Don't you think someone who is paid to solve problems would have thought the same way as you? The contract is the end decision after a couple decades of staff work, admittedly in what look like a few false starts. The cargo cult notion of shipping containers of parts sloshing around the world's surplus market waiting for some staff officer to buy is not realistic. They already bought up what was reliably affordable. The No.4 has not been properly supportable for long enough that the system was forced to react. IMHO, this is as good a decision as any.
For a long time converted No.4 rifles were perfectly acceptable on military rifle ranges for civilian target shooters. About twenty years ago the New Zealand version of the NRA was ordered by the NZDF to not fire conversions on military ranges. The risk of stretched and overproofed actions, with no concept of firing logs or in-service monitoring was considered too great to allow continued use. The Kiwi sport shooters were hopping mad, but eventually had to play by someone else's rules. Can be converted is not the same as can be reliably converted.
I don't think there are any conventional drawings for No4s anywhere. The original rifles were produced in a craftsman-type work environment with sealed patterns, individual jigs and testing gauges. From reading between the lines in the references, the inspectors rejected more parts than any modern contract would tolerate. When the British sold the production line to Pakistan in the 1960's, they didn't sell a couple of DVDs of CADCAM files. They sold crates of notes, go-no go gauges, cutting tools and attachments for milling machines. We cannot apply modern manufacturing principles to the No.4 (ie have you ever looked at Khyber Pass gunsmith videos on Youtube?). Hence, one reason why the AIA was found not suitable.
