Thread: At least it's a nice colour green - NZDF choose AR to replace Steyrs

Originally Posted by Tankd

Last time at the end on the Trials ,they said to the Government of the day "We want the Canadian C7/9 " . The Government said back "No you don't you want the Aussie Styer " and guess what we got ????.

Yeh no conspiracy there.. just shity politics.

Originally Posted by kotuku

illjust stick with the SLRgents .heavy yeah but if something got hit it stayed hit and also a 10 lb rifle makes a mighty fine bloody shin scraper! ore spine readjuster (oops did i say that) and i stillremebers me TF basic at burnham.very impressionable raw recruits see 4 grizzled RFsgts operating on a stumpwith SLRS. end of volley-our sgt "go have a look and t
ell me what you learned
Its a very powerful bullet sgt
No son ,the correct answer is soldiers dont hide behind bloody trees-thats why god gave ya feet to keep your arse off the ground moving and keep you alive so the army can teach you to shoot back!
had he not been in the military hed have made a topnotch stand up comedian.
The M16-most outstanding feat I saw was it used as a chainsaw to chop a tree in half. 1x30rd mag +1/2 a mag. the plt commander concerned actually had a rather memorable conversation with the CO over that stunt
i got out in 1991as the steyr was comin into general service and i was always told we got it because lithgow small arms in aussie tooled up to manufacture it etc etc and the anzac relationship.as a mere TF sgt I accepted the
"official line -it seemed the simplest option and really who knows how a bloody politicians mind works anyhow at the end of the day!

You are making the presumption that their mind works to start with.....?

As for Budget cuts. they have XXXX Billion $$ to spend. SOme goes here, some goes there and some goes somewhere else. If you want more spent on the military (and I am NOT saying it is not justifiable) then it has to come from somewhere else. Do you take it from:
Healthcare ( also needs more money), or
Welfare (also needs more money), or
Police and law and order (also needs more money), or
Education(also needs more money), or
DoC (also needs more money), or
the higher taxes and get it from the taxpayer (also needs more money) ....?

Hang on, I think I see a pattern forming here....

Nah what you do is just give everyone more money (except the taxpayer) and don't worry about where it comes from.... or in other words be a green party economics spokesman... or a labour party finance spokesman in opposition... (at least they shape up a little when they have to be responsible)

They had them in the past

I used to get on the piss a bit with a retired Colonel who had a fair bit to do with the Steyr trial, R93 probably knows him. He got himself in a bit of strife later in life but was quite a good dude. I remember asking him about Steyr selection once and sorry to quell all the conspiracy/butter theories but vaguely(as was quite chopped @Cowboys Bar) remember him saying it tested far better than the other options available at the time. The AR's we get now are possibly made a bit better than the ones 20 odd years ago provided to be making fair comparisons with, as have tested up tops this time and as a result they have selected them.
Many grunts back then may have also had personnel preferences to AR'S like if everyone on here were told this is the one rifle you can buy to go hunting many would be pissed off.

I hope they fit them with some Eotech's from Aliexpress to keep the costs down.

Also I remember years ago a few Airforce guys from Woodbourne turned up at the Blenheim Gun club with a couple of Steyrs and a carton of ammo, full auto'd them till they were glowing, from memory they ruined one and I heard they got in a world of trouble

Originally Posted by jackson21

I used to get on the piss a bit with a retired Colonel who had a fair bit to do with the Steyr trial, R93 probably knows him. He got himself in a bit of strife later in life but was quite a good dude. I remember asking him about Steyr selection once and sorry to quell all the conspiracy/butter theories but vaguely(as was quite chopped @Cowboys Bar) remember him saying it tested far better than the other options available at the time. The AR's we get now are possibly made a bit better than the ones 20 odd years ago provided to be making fair comparisons with, as have tested up tops this time and as a result they have selected them.
Many grunts back then may have also had personnel preferences to AR'S like if everyone on here were told this is the one rifle you can buy to go hunting many would be pissed off.

If his first name begins with a G and last with a B then yeah I know him.
He was our shooting team coach for a number of years. And prevalent on a few weapon trials.
And he is lying thru his teeth😆

The A2 trialed the top in everything except accuracy and that would be due to the sights. To be fair tho, we were just the grunts and the end user. We didn't have to think about economics and such. We just said what we liked and why. There was set criteria we were familiar with and had to rate performance according to it

The AUG was defiantly a favorite and up there but we were surprised it was selected.

The sniper rifle trial in 90-91 was also a surprise selection as the M24 variant was the most popular with the users.
The AW although accurate was far to heavy and cumbersome for the intended role.
Most blokes shot a modified Hawkins style and it was achievable with great results with most other rifles on trial.
The AW raised your profile too much and a lot of blokes struggled with it when first in service. I hated the thing and especially the optics being fixed 10x. Vari powers were not known for reliability back then.
I still hate the system and hope they come to their senses and go to a more user friendly system in the future.
The AW would suit static positions on roof tops and rubble loopholes but carrying around in the green role it is poos.

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R93,I completely share your view regarding the AW.
The fashion is to things standing higher and higher, with scopes to fare up the bore axis that canting error are more likely to occur.
Carlos Hathcock would be spinning in his grave if he was seeing that!

Originally Posted by Friwi

R93,I completely share your view regarding the AW.
The fashion is to things standing higher and higher, with scopes to fare up the bore axis that canting error are more likely to occur.
Carlos Hathcock would be spinning in his grave if he was seeing that!

White Feather wouldn't give a fuck. His Military uses sensible gear. Ours on the other hand.
It is all just personal opinion but pretty much shared from what I remember by most of my era of grunts. FNG's and pogues, especially pogues wouldn't know any different as they have not used or trained with anything else. Limiting their knowledge and experience.

The role of the infantry is to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and to hold ground and to repel attack, by night and day, regardless of season, weather or terrain.

The role will never change. They just need sensible gear to achieve it.

R93, to be fair, that is more correct what he told me, it was the accuracy tests the AUG topped and was why they chose it. Think he also mumbled something about was it Austrian Steyrs for tests but later supplied with Aussie built ones which weren't as good? Welcome to correct me here R93 also as was sometime ago and heavily on the diesels....

Funny that about the Sniper rifles, I often think....fuck imagine trying to lug some of those heavy sniper contraptions around with all your other shit through bush with massive scopes on top, not like you're cruising around on a quad!

Originally Posted by jackson21

I used to get on the piss a bit with a retired Colonel who had a fair bit to do with the Steyr trial, R93 probably knows him. He got himself in a bit of strife later in life but was quite a good dude. I remember asking him about Steyr selection once and sorry to quell all the conspiracy/butter theories but vaguely(as was quite chopped @Cowboys Bar) remember him saying it tested far better than the other options available at the time. The AR's we get now are possibly made a bit better than the ones 20 odd years ago provided to be making fair comparisons with, as have tested up tops this time and as a result they have selected them.
Many grunts back then may have also had personnel preferences to AR'S like if everyone on here were told this is the one rifle you can buy to go hunting many would be pissed off.

I know a retired Captain that participated in the AUG trial, @R93 will know him, first and last name start with a T and is a Vietnam Vet.

He said the A2 won hands down and they were pissed when the AUG got chosen. He said it was pointless as they'd already made up their mind.

Originally Posted by jackson21

R93, to be fair, that is more correct what he told me, it was the accuracy tests the AUG topped and was why they chose it. Think he also mumbled something about was it Austrian Steyrs for tests but later supplied with Aussie built ones which weren't as good? Welcome to correct me here R93 also as was sometime ago and heavily on the diesels....

I think the Aussie ones had a problem with the mold for the stocks which was sorted rather quickly iirc. Few other minor issues they also sorted over time.
Dunno why they chose the reticle they used compared to ours. It was a weird decision imo.
I managed to pass their AWQ using it when I was attached to one of their battalions for a while. Was difficult when you had to hold a fig 11 target central as best you could inside a large circle at 300😆

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Originally Posted by R93

I think the Aussie ones had a problem with the mold for the stocks which was sorted rather quickly iirc. Few other minor issues they also sorted over time.
Dunno why they chose the reticle they used compared to ours. It was a weird decision imo.
I managed to pass their AWQ using it when I was attached to one of their battalions for a while. Was difficult when you had to hold a fig 11 target central as best you could inside a large circle at 300��

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R93

As I recall, that was the Austrian Army reticle in the Austrian video that they showed us when we got our Austrian Steyrs,which were later swapped out for Aussie rifles (during another pointless reorganisation). Still not a good reason to choose it BUT ... what can you expect from people who get their gravy in red bottles labelled tomato sauce?