The B&T GL06 (Grenade Launcher 2006) was developed in response to a French tender for a riot-control less-lethal weapon in 2006. B&T had actually already been working on a less-lethal projectile system, which they call SIR (Safe Impact Round). It is a rubber projectile with a hard plastic base and driving band, fired from a hard plastic case using a 9mm blank cartridge. What makes this ammunition noteworthy is that it is reloadable – projectiles fired in training can be gathered up and reloaded into their original cases, dramatically reducing ammunition cost (or conversely, allowing agencies to do a lot more training on the same ammunition budget).
The launcher is very simple, just a break-open single barrel system. There is no extractor or ejector; empty cases are just plucked out by hand (the plastic case does not expand when fired). It uses a heavy double action trigger licensed from H&K’s under barrel grenade launcher, and it is capable of firing 40mm high-low rounds (M79 type ammunition). It won the French tender it was designed for, and has been picked up by a number of other law enforcement and military agencies since.
Maybe it would harm the PR perception of non-lethal, but put a steel barrel in and it would be a great launcher for all 40mm rounds. Hopefully the rest of the frame would be able to hold up to higher pressure propellants.
Just offer it as a military model, and you’d sell a ton of them. These things shoot really well, and no under-barrel launcher can even compete. I’m just not sure that the wear on the current barrel would be a deal breaker.
If you need 40mm derivative of less-lethal weapon then use MM-1 http://modernfirearms.net/en/grenade-launchers/u-s-a-grenade-launchers/mm-1-eng/
Well…
The users received an instruction manual different from the one provided by the manufacturer : short distance straight flight head shots maimed a lot during Yellow Jacket protest : skull fracture, eye removal…
https://www.politico.eu/article/yellow-jackets-blinded-police-weapons-france-protests/
Well…
The users received an instruction manual different from the one provided by the manufacturer : short distance straight flight head shots maimed a lot during Yellow Jacket protest : skull fracture, eye removal… https://www.politico.eu/article/yellow-jackets-blinded-police-weapons-france-protests/
Anyone taking “less lethal” as “honest, nobody is gonna die” is an idiot. “Less” is the key word, there; nothing you fling at ballistic speeds into a crowd is “safe”. If you’re stupid enough to be participating in a riot, well… Reality is going to ensue.
I once had the misfortune of wandering into the periphery of one of those riots that the Germans were so famous for, back during the early 1980s. Back when the Polizei were the real deal, actual Polizei who would enthusiastically beat the crap out of you for disrespecting them in the subway tunnels…
Now, you would think that water cannon are fairly innocuous on the scale of things you use as crowd control in Germany back then. You would be mistaken: I observed a couple of things about how those were actually used by the cops in question. First, they did not simply spray down the crowd, which in late October-ish, should have sufficed. What they actually did with those water cannon? They’d pick out particularly boisterous and obstreperous members of the crowd, who’d be pointed out to the water cannon operators by what I presumed to be knowledgeable types about the exact people in the crowds, and then that one guy would get the full force of two or three different water cannons at the same time. He’d wind up pinned against a wall or fence, and just brutalized with the water stream the way you might go after a big bug while you were watering your garden. The guys they selected for this were usually the ones hurling crap at the riot cops with shields, and you’d see them wind up in a heap at the base of the wall they’d been pinned on, collapsed and utterly spent. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that some were even drowned, to be honest. Maybe deliberately. Those water cannons were no joke, and two or three on you at the same time? I’d expect whole-body bruising and contusions from the sidewalks and walls they would hit. I’m not kidding… You’d see bright-light masked boyo running up, throwing something, and then… Bam. driven back into whatever backdrop there was, and they’d just play with them with the water streams.
Less lethal, my ass. I got nailed by one of those rubber batons doing OPFOR as a rioter, once upon a time. That thing could have killed someone, in the right place. I was pissed that the guy firing it had disobeyed his orders not to fire above waist level, but nobody ever figured out who’d done it.
My advice to anyone? You see them unlimbering the riot-control gear? You’ve overstayed your welcome as a protestor, and it’s time to go home peacefully. You’ve made your point: Anything past that, people are going to get hurt.
Those protests had something unseen previously.
The organizers had to provide in advance a notice with the track of the protest. Then, it should be approved before the protest.
The unexpected thing is : at some point, instead of leaving an exit open, the anti-riot forces were asked to cut all exit to trap the crowd and then open fire with non-lethal hand grenades, tear gas, Flashball rubber bullet and rubber grenades.
But there were 2 problem : the crowd was not violent (nor rioting) at this point and could not retreat by walking back as the incoming procession was too long (and and could not disperse in the adjacent street as those were also closed by the police forces). It could be literally translated as the “fish trap” technique.
Some police group were assigned riot control task without proper training : it lead to dramas such as shooting close range from the back, spraying with semi-automatic grenades launchers, etc… Police groups trained for riot control disapproved those abuses.
I’m not a fan of mid-1980s Germany, in terms of the rioters, the riot police, and all the rest of the Kabuki theater that went on.
You had this crazy situation going on wherein the holier-than-thou protest types would be putting up posters about how HK was selling weapons to “right-wing tyrants”, and all the bestest people were there nodding agreement. Meanwhile, over here, there are German industrialists piously selling “dual-use industrial technology” to Saddam, so he could manufacture insecticides that were actually nerve-agents… While all those pious numpties had their state pension plans heavily invested in the factories and businesses selling that crap.
I used to hang out with a semi-crazy German activist chick who’d done the math on investigating all that crap, and she was the worst of all possible things for those types who were doing all that shady sh*t… A disappointed and disillusioned idealist who’d basically lost all faith in everything. She’d gotten into it all as a protest against her middle-class parents, and when she confronted her father about it all, he just pulled out a ton of documents showing her where all the left-winger types were investing and benefiting from it all.
I’d be fine with the whole thing if they were just honest about it, but the hypocrisy and backstabbing endemic to it just pisses me off. I lost a lot of interest in Europe as something worth defending once I saw all the crap shipped into Iraq after the sanctions went into effect. I mean, you can believe the lies told to you by the New York Times, or you can believe your lying eyes when you see the shipping crates clearly labeled laying in the warehouses…
So much scandals are going on…
Thank you for the anecdote