Finland and Sweden are both in the process of adopting AR-pattern rifles, and for the Finns this will be their first service rifle in 5.56mm NATO. It is a transition that has been anticipated for nearly 20 years, but was finally put into high gear by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Finland’s entrance into NATO. The exact pattern of the new service rifle is being determined through testing (it may be DI or a short-stroke piston; we don’t know yet) but the National Defence Training Association of Finland (MPK) has chosen and purchased the ARG S 40 as it’s new rifle for reservist training. This is the much-anticipated AR pattern rifle manufactured by Sako, which won Finnish military tests.
As acquired by the MPK, the rifle is semiautomatic only, chambered for standard 5.56mm NATO, direct impingement, and features fully ambidextrous controls, collapsing Magpul stock, heavy 16.1″ barrel, and M-lok handguard. The military rifles will of course be select-fire and will have some different details, but this is my first look at the general AR pattern from Sako. Overall it handles quite well, and I think it makes a lot of sense for Finland’s needs.
Many thanks to the MPK for giving me a chance to film this example, and for providing these rifles as stage guns for shooting at Varusteleka’s Finnish Brutality 2025!
Goddamnit, Ian… You had one job, and completely missed it: The barrel attachment. What the F**K did SAKO do with that, on these rifles? It’s been driving me nuts since I first saw it; it kinda looks like there’s a clamp-action like they did on the LMT monolithic uppers, or the Colt Canada ones, but I’ve seen nothing to even begin explaining that SAKO solution anywhere, and it’s been driving me nuts since the first one I saw.
And, you had one in your hands!!! Cue the John Cena voice and “I am disappoint, son…” meme.
Well, someone will eventually bother to lay out what they did… Somewhere.
Iesous H. Christos, man… That’s probably the one unique feature on this rifle, and you just left it laying there unexplained… 😉
Maddening. I’ve been looking forward to a solution to this mystery ever since you announced you’d gotten your hands on one, in the flesh, and would be doing a piece. I haven’t had this sensation of frustration for decades…
“(…)what they did(…)”
Sako Oy is assignee of patent US12163754B2 Gas system of a firearm
https://patents.google.com/patent/US12163754B2
which show weapon similar to ARG S 40 AND does have word attached in Claims section.
That seems to be a patent for an as-yet unused annular gas system…
Aaaaand… In the diagrams, it shows a very LMT-esque clamping system for something, whether or not it’s the barrel or the handguard setup, you can’t really tell. Nothing in the verbiage, either…
All I want to know is how the hell they did the barrel attachment to the upper, and what that singular Allen bolt is actually securing.
(sigh) Maybe someday, someone will tell the world.
So this is basically a nice AR-15 build. And it has taken the Finns 20 years to come up with it. A trip to a couple US gun shops would have gotten the matter sorted out in less time. But I guess bureaucrats need to make things complicated, to justify their jobs.
But on a more serious note — AR-15s are now fully acceptable as frontline combat rifles. Seems like a lot of ripple effects from this could occur, some good, some bad.
Um…Finland has not been overrun by (insert foe) in that long nonce. If “the bureaucrats” had adopted an utter POS, you’d be whinging about what was the hurry.
How do you know it was “bureaucrats”?
Perhaps the Finnish military actually know a thing or two about military procurement and their geopolitical situation regarding a certain murderous authoritarian regime.
It doesn’t mean they were working on it for 20 years. It means they stuck with their existing Kalashnikov-pattern rifles as long as possible but everyone knew that as a small Western power shifting towards NATO they’d want an AR platform for parts & ammo compatibility some day.
Against… I’d spend it on Archer artillery systems, and hope you never need to use Valmets much before sensible folk make themselves heard; that way, personally. Seems not much use, in practical terms overall. Virtue signalling, no? Oh well.
I mean does Finland even want transvestite toilets? The reason we are fighting, for “Western values” like Ukraine. Mismatch… No? Oh well.
That people as intensely conservative as the Finns would swap rifles at all is impressive. Nobody should be shocked that the AR they chose was a good one. I was more surprised when they bought those Chinese AKs a few years ago. At least these didn’t come off Wish.
At this point, I have to marvel at the inherent improbability and humor that this situation represents.
When I was a young soldier, anyone saying that the AR-15 series of weapons was a good choice for combat would have been shouted down and mocked. That was worldwide, and everyone would have told you that… “Anything but the M-16…”
Flash forward, and… What the f*ck is going on? There have been more adoptions of the basic Stoner system weapons than anything else in the last forty-odd years than anything else. Even the damn Germans are issuing variations on the theme…
It’s a telling thing, all that. Everyone who was saying how “inferior” the M-16 was, back in the 1970s-80s? Where’re they now? Oh, that’s right… Buying M-16-alikes.
Makes you wonder, it does. Also, points out how a terrible initial fielding can sabotage adoption and uptake of a design that’s obviously got some good things about it, despite the opinion of “experts” everywhere.
I used to hold that the M-16 was a terrible weapon, and we made a mistake adopting it. Now? I’m more “Yeah, it wasn’t the weapon… It was the fielding, and all the idiots behind the scenes…”
I do wonder what we would have gotten, had someone “done the right thing”, and ensured a proper fielding and a true intermediate cartridge. Offering up the IP and TDP for free wouldn’t have been a bad idea, either… We might have ended up with a true NATO standard, early in the idiocy.
I shot, no held an S.A.S one wee CAR15 painted green… Once, on one occasion; I wasn’t in the S.A.S but in Kenya. And it was like a wee toy gun; so light and small. I had a big (Not being a SLR user) Lsw Sa80, that bloke out of interest pointed it up; and came down onto the target with it, when I gave it him, as oppose me lifting it up to hit the target. And fair play he was better than me at 20, he he… Just mentioning incase anyone else has a heavy’ish gun; maybe you should hold it pointing up, type thing and bring it down. Gravity or something, aye.
The issues with the L85 weapons system have little to do with the weight, and everything to do with the ergonomics they saddled it with.
You can’t run one effectively in a gunfight, because doing basic things like changing out magazines and clearing misfires/jams requires you to take your attention off your immediate surroundings; this is something that will get you killed in real combat, no matter what the happy-dappy trainers tell you in peacetime. Take your attention off what’s going on around you? There will be fatalities, some of which will stem from you having lost track of where your fellow soldiers are and what they’re doing.
Having watched UK soldiers at work on live-fire ranges as far back as the late 1980s, I’m absolutely not a fan of the L85 or any other bullpup design; I have no idea who the hell worked up their training drills, but having a guy stop in the middle of an advance to contact, remove his rifle from his shoulder, and then go about looking down at it to reload…? Insane. You can still see that crap in all the FIBUA videos that they were posting into the late 2000s; I don’t think there’s been a corrective.
You have to design a weapon so that it requires a minimum of mindspace and attention to operate; the soldier should be capable of doing a clearance drill or reload cycle without ever taking their eyes off the environment. You design such that they have to pay attention to the rifle, rather than what they’re in the midst of? You done screwed the pooch, friend-o…
“(…)like a wee toy gun; so light and small(…)”
If you do not consider AR-15 or derivative thereof as too light then use H&R SPIW https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/H%26R_SPIW
“(…)used to hold that the M-16 was a terrible weapon, and we made a mistake adopting it. Now? I’m more “Yeah, it wasn’t the weapon… It was the fielding, and all the idiots behind the scenes…”(…)”
Keep in mind that http://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/u-s-a-assault-rifles/m16-a1-a2-a3-a4-eng/ the US Army adopted the XM16E1 as a limited standard rifle, to fill the niche between the discontinued 7.62mm M14 rifle and the forthcoming SPIW system therefore you should recognize said weapon as stop-gap solution and therefore do not require everything you would from standard (without limited in front) rifle.
Reply to Kirk: I remembered this article from 1986 “SWAT” magazine, about the Alaskan Troopers looking for a patrol rifle. Hopefully this link works:
https://imgur.com/gallery/swat-1986-alaska-extreme-cold-weather-rifle-testing-uLfvt
Their criteria focused on reliability in cold weather with suboptimal rifle maintenance. Ergonomics and optics were not as important. Maybe the AR’s today are more reliable in cold weather than in 1986, or maybe their higher need of maintenance is worthy of all the benefits they bring to the table compared to an AK variant.
You get down to a certain temperature point, and it’s all about the people running the rifles more than it is the design. Hand a guy an AK-series rifle, and if he’s constantly lugging it in between heated spaces and the out-of-doors at -30 degrees Fahrenheit, wellllll… It won’t work after enough freeze-thaw cycles, no matter what. Likewise, if you’ve got a guy who religiously pays attention to keeping his rifle cold, doesn’t take it into the warm, and does what he’s supposed to? It’ll keep right on ticking.
I remember when that issue of SWAT came out, and I remember throwing it over to my friend who had just returned to the Lower 48 after six years in Alaska up at Fort Richardson and Fort Wainwright. He’d also spent a couple of winters working at the cold weather testing center that Natick Labs had up there, so he knew whereof he spoke with regards to “small arms in the cold”. He was not particularly impressed with the testing described in the SWAT article, and felt that the issue weapons were just fine… So long as you did as you were supposed to. The other stuff he’d done comparison testing on during his stints at the testing center was the same… Do what you’re supposed to, and it’ll work fine. Be stupid? Win stupid prizes…
It was interesting talking to him about the lengths they had to go to, to keep weapons running. Everything on the guns would gum up at some point, to include naptha and gasoline they used for cleaning, something I found hard to accept. From what he said, the best thing they’d run into for weapons was some experimental crap that was like a hundred bucks an ounce and which the Army had overruled on the grounds of cost. It was some sort of Teflon/Molybdenum Disulfide slurry that you put on and let dry out before taking the weapon out into the cold.
Believe it or not, the coldest I’ve ever been on the temperature scale during Army service was in Germany up at Bad Toelze when it got down to around -30 Fahrenheit. We had issues with weapons there, but they weren’t insurmountable, once we got the drills down. The M16 series is fairly good at low temperatures, once you dial in how you’re lubricating and handling them. They really do not do well with a constant freeze-thaw cycle, though… And, not too many weapons out there are any better.
Gotta tell you, though… The idea of taking all the modern optical crap out into that sort of weather just leaves me with a delicate shuddering sense of horror.
Gee, didn’t the FDF and Swedish army get the memo about the inadequacies of 5.56x45mm against the emerging threats of über-mega-advanced-high-tech *body armor*? /s.
So Finland is wondering what barrel length and whether direct-impingement or not… I wonder if the color choice is another hang up? I’d have thought Sweden would want the cheery green coloration of the old AK5 FNC derivatives… But most look like a drab sort of baby poo brown… Are the Finns going to adhere to a “black” rifle and break out the white tape for much of the long winter season?
I do agree with many posters about how strange it is that the Stoner system–the “accidental rifle” in C.J. Chivers apt phrase from his book _The Gun_–is now literally the go to world standard. With the aspects of the cheapness of manufacture of the AR-18 also now almost universal. Recall that the flaws of the M16 roll out: “no need to clean it, hence no cleaning kit…” and “contractors had lots of the powder used for the 7.62x51mm cartridges on hand, so they just went ahead and used that in the 5.56x45mm cases… I mean, what’s the dif?” did much to impugn the weapon in the minds of many service men and women who carried it–I recall being upbraided by a Vietnam vet about the utility of the M16 as a crutch while limping shot up from one or another patch of jungle or rice paddy–and all of the armchair weapons enthusiasts. Remember all of the claims about the gas system inserting fouling into the action?
The AR-15 isn’t the pinacle of small arm development.
It’s proven, produced in every continent, cheap enough, effective enough but a cheaper, more performant rifle isn’t difficult to design.
It should have been the object of a real product improvement program since day one.
The ergonomics are near-perfect, but… They should have been ambidextrous, from the start, and the selector switch should have been limited-throw rather than the 180-degree and 360-degree monstrosities that they issued originally. That was not well-thought out; I could live with discussing whether or not to go safe-full-semi or safe-semi-full. That’s more down to esoteric choices than really all that important.
Other than that? Aside from some of the bolt/carrier improvements like lengthening the dwell time, and beefing up the lugs and extractor, the damn thing was nearly perfect in terms of ergonomics from the beginning; certainly better than the majority of the stuff that was prevalent at the time it was developed.
I still want to know what the hell went on with that whole “who did the ergonomics” question. I’ve yet to see it really spelled out who did what, and how they arrived at their choices. Whoever it was possessed what can only be described as damn near divine inspiration.
In other news of AR-15 world dominance, the Swiss have apparently chosen an LMT piston variant as their next service rifle…
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/lmt-defense-and-swissloxx-ag-secure-swiss-armed-forces-rifle-contract-44819425
This is not something I’d have put on my Bingo card for this or any other year…