I kept my post short earlier as I hadn't the time to watch the video until just now.
My two points were simple. 1) the PRC makers never walked entirely to bullpups. And 2) Ian is not entirely against bullpups.
Shoehorning a different round into a gun made for a completely different one tends to yield less than ideal results.
In this case I question whether the gun rebuild was worthwhile at all.
9mm SMGs are a dime a dozen and being honest a 9mm SMG seems a poor choice for a bullpup. If compactness is the need a Submachine Pistol would have been better.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the gun. Sights are changeable
You know, the iron sight block unscrewing itself during operation, speaks anything but "reliability" or "robustness".
Although Ian seemed surprised himself that the sight block was giving him no issues as he was shooting the gun, which makes me somewhat suspicious he didn’t install it properly to start with.
In the video you can see the sight walking its self out as he shoots. This weapon is almost always seen with a red dot and I think that is for a reason. The fact he is able to hand adjust the screws doesn't lend itself to a sign of retention.
The PLA version the Type 05 We know has a fixed carry handle and sight replicating the QBZ95's sights.
and lefties can suck it up.
Sigh...
Okay let's go there. In the modern world where does an SMG stand?
Where is it still the preferred weapon?
The Military basically lost interest with SMGs as anything more than a nitch weapon.
Police and Bodyguards are the two areas where a SMG can still compete.
Ian is a lefty he owns a bullpup the Famas which he can convert and shot lefty but he also shoots right handed when needed.
Now an assaults rifle bullpup like the Qbz95 can ignore lefty issues as it's a main issue assault rifle.
it's bullpup form is simply to make it easy to carry in an APC, Helicopter, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
For that form of operations battles in the field a righty only bullpup doesn't matter. You can fight across the Gobi, the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the jungles of south east Asia even the steppe of Siberia with out needing to shoot lefty. And even if you did. With Qbz95 it would be awkward but not entirely impossible. The ejection port is a bit forward and the ejection path is two.
A modern SMG though is a CQB weapon. It's meant for room clearing, and combat inside ships, buildings and tight alleys.
As such needing to corner and shoot offhanded (for a righty) is nessisary. Because of the compact size and design it doesn't allow for that. As a PDW or SMG that is questionable.
The gun shoots a lot smoother with its intended subsonic 5.8mm ammo.
Which is another oddity of the root of the weapon family.
As a cheaply made bullpup openbolt blowback submachine gun, it certainly won't be awful, most likely just spectacularly below average,
Type 05 I always figured was the Chinese attempt at translating the P90. The two are damn close in size. Both feature pistol versions of a low drag moderate velocity <6mm round from a 50 round magazine.
Even the way they are gripped and shouldered seems close.
Yet P90 takes great pains to be Ambexterous. The top loading magazine for downward ejection. The selector dial, ambi charging handle. Infact it's ambi to a fault as in the event of a jam the user is striping the weapon.
However in this thread it's said no.
Apparently supposed to be the PLA's attempt at a 'silenced' weapon.
Well. I think they missed the mark then.
If the aim was a compact suppressed weapon with a pistol caliber. Why not make an integral suppressor? Like the old type 64.
Integral suppressors tend to Ballance better and weight less due to not needing a QD mount, being part of the barrel they have better accuracy and tend to have better heat characteristics. In the form of a bullpup the suppressor could have been integrated into the barrel inside the foreend of the weapon reducing the length.
For Type 05 We know that ammo should stabilize from a pistol length barrel, after all the standard side arms of the PLA are the same caliber and they have suppressed pistols. The added barrel length is really only marginally better range.
And in the 9mm form why bother with a bullpup? If compactness a Submachine Pistol with a folding or Teliscoped stock would do.
And then there is the other weirdo the Chinese type 06 SMG. Both weapons seem to be completely over complicated.
He likes rare and unusual designs, and unfortunately that does colour his reviews somewhat
what about this gun isn't rare or unusual?
It's a bullpup 9mm SMG derived from a 5.8x21mm weapon from the PRC.
For Ian this is a freaken Unicorn!
His reviews tend to be straight forward to the practical. He likes unusual guns but he loves them when they work. And if a gun has an issue he will be forward about it.
The PLA doesn’t want gold plated extra platinum editions, they want a gun that works, keeps working and is cheap enough to make a million at a time without breaking the bank
*Cough* OST-11*Cough*
So dry this time of year...
Jokes aside. Being blunt I think the designs the Chinese introduced in that time period for SMG and the earlier 'Modern' small arms of the PLA circa the Chinese take over Hong Kong have some obvious over complication features and clear elements of Rushed to service.
the known issues of first gen QBZ95 that lead to a redesign in the 95-1. Despite the overall package being very conservative the fact no one bothered to consider the location of the fire control selector seems a glaring issue. One equally at fault to the SA80 series as well.
The QBB95 Drum is also a off choice. But less so than the Type 05's 50 round coffin magazine. Coffin and drum magazines are fairly notorious for jamming. The magazine is often the most troublesome part of any self loading rifle yet despite the conservative nature of the weapons they seem to have chosen very 'sexy' feed systems.
