USAF ejection seat rifle

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Colt made a 10.5 inch barreled AR/M16 in the early '60s with a skinny round forearm, two position collapsing stock (short as it gets and long as it gets) and a sawed off pistol grip as their "Aircrew Survival Weapon"

I believe one of the Ezell Small Arms of the World has a picture and maybe a mention. Such a thing with a flat top ( original had carry handle and front tower) and folding front and rear would be very small.

With two or three magazines ( even 20 rounders) it would beat the heck out of being in a bad place waiting for a Jolly Green with a handgun

Biggest issues I have with giving air crew a survival gun is that they don't train with them regularly and have to hope the sights are someplace close every time they change aircraft.

-kBob
 
The Air Force has guns?

(just kidding, guys) A few years before I retired, our aircrew were being issued SIG P-228s.

mokin said:
Made me think of a buddy who worked in the seat shop. "Meet your maker in a Martin Baker!"
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I've known a couple guys who earned the "Martin Baker Fan Club" patches for their flight jackets. Anyway, I'm sure Scott O'Grady would've felt a little better with the rifle and four mags than just the M9 he had at the time (I had a great weekend at Piancavallo ruined when he got shot down, had to return to my unit and get ready to help look for him, which didn't end up happening).
 
I guess I don’t know much about ejection seats. The seat separates from the pilot after ejection, so how does the gun stay with the pilot?
 
That whole deal was shady as f*** by the government. They put out a request for proposal (fedbizopps) for that rifle like two years ago. A bunch of different AR makers bid on the contract and sent in the requisite sample rifles. The government played with the samples got all the good ideas and then sent the samples back and did not award the contract to anyone. They just built them in house steeling the best ideas from the various submission guns. Very shady...
 
H&Hhunter said:
I guess I don’t know much about ejection seats. The seat separates from the pilot after ejection, so how does the gun stay with the pilot?
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The kit hangs below the pilot from a lanyard when he separates from the seat. Here's some info on the ACES II, a seat in common use in the AF.

http://www.ejectionsite.com/a10aces.htm

mcb said:
That whole deal was shady as f*** by the government. They put out a request for proposal (fedbizopps) for that rifle like two years ago. A bunch of different AR makers bid on the contract and sent in the requisite sample rifles. The government played with the samples got all the good ideas and then sent the samples back and did not award the contract to anyone. They just built them in house steeling the best ideas from the various submission guns. Very shady...
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So the RFP (that they paid for) showed them that there wasn't anything out there substantially better than what they could easily organically assemble from COTs parts, and you're saying it's shady that they put the commerical parts together in house instead of paying a contractor a big markup to put the parts together for them across the street?
 
Gtscotty said:
So the RFP (that they paid for) showed them that there wasn't anything out there substantially better than what they could easily organically assemble from COTs parts, and you're saying it's shady that they put the commerical parts together in house instead of paying a contractor a big markup to put the parts together for them across the street?
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Just as coloration to this - the FAR pretty much states that bid costs are recoverable if the RFP is not awarded. So, it's not like the bidders somehow lost IP or money in responding to the RFP - they just lost the ability to make money by federating COTS gear into a new weapon.
 
mcb said:
The government played with the samples got all the good ideas and then sent the samples back and did not award the contract to anyone. They just built them in house steeling the best ideas from the various submission guns.
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I'm Joe Taxpayer, and I endorse this method!

For once, we're not buying a solid gold toilet seat from some Senator's district. . .
 
mcb said:
Except they were stealing IP and not paying for it.
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Nope the only people with protected IP were the companies who designed the actual commercial parts, and the .gov bought the parts from them. How to put together an AR from COTs parts is not protected IP and the specific packing cube requirements governing barrel length, etc came from the AF. The offeror had nothing of value to sell except other people's ideas, therefore the AF bought from those other people, not the Offeror. Perfectly legal and logical, there's a reason you didn't see a successful protest or lawsuit.
 
mcb said:
Except they were stealing IP and not paying for it.
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I've probably proposed several billion dollars worth of weapons system work to the government over the last forty (40) years. In every case, the contents of the proposal were delivered as company proprietary data under some form of limited data rights, meaning that the .gov could not share it with my competitors but had ownership of the data within the context of the RFP. No theft of IP is needed if the IP is incorporated into the proposal and delivered under data rights that allow the .gov to assert some ownership of the contents of the proposal. The CFR makes it very clear that the .gov can assert ownership of IP contained in a proposal :

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/48/252.227-7016

(e) Information available without restrictions. The Government's rights to use, modify, reproduce, release, perform, display, or, disclose information contained in a bid or proposal, including technical data or computer software, and to permit others to do so, shall not be restricted in any manner if such information has been released or disclosed to the Government or to other persons without restrictions other than a release or disclosure resulting from the sale, transfer, or other assignment of interest in the information to another party or the sale or transfer of some or all of a business entity or its assets to another party.
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This is no different than an RFI : the .gov goes fishing for ideas to solve an unmet requirement, and if they get enough responses they either move to a 'buy' or they move to develop the capability. That development activity can be solicited from either a .gov lab, an FFRDC, or industry (via Sole Source J&A or competitive RFP).

Gtscotty said:
Nope the only people with protected IP were the companies who designed the actual commercial parts, and the .gov bought the parts from them. How to put together an AR from COTs parts is not protected IP and the specific packing cube requirements governing barrel length, etc came from the AF. The offeror had nothing of value to sell except other people's ideas, therefore the AF bought from those other people, not the Offeror. Perfectly legal and logical, there's a reason you didn't see a successful protest or lawsuit.
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And there ya have it.
 
entropy said:
I prefer the Luftwaffe's idea of an 'Egress survival weapon' (Imagine how long that word would be in German!)

A Sauer Drilling.
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Yeah, I wonder where they expected to be forced down. Not much big game to subsist on in France or England. Maybe they were planning on operations over the various African colonies.
 
rbernie said:
I've probably proposed several billion dollars worth of weapons system work to the government over the last forty (40) years. In every case, the contents of the proposal were delivered as company proprietary data under some form of limited data rights, meaning that the .gov could not share it with my competitors but had ownership of the data within the context of the RFP. No theft of IP is needed if the IP is incorporated into the proposal and delivered under data rights that allow the .gov to assert some ownership of the contents of the proposal. The CFR makes it very clear that the .gov can assert ownership of IP contained in a proposal :

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/48/252.227-7016



This is no different than an RFI : the .gov goes fishing for ideas to solve an unmet requirement, and if they get enough responses they either move to a 'buy' or they move to develop the capability. That development activity can be solicited from either a .gov lab, an FFRDC, or industry (via Sole Source J&A or competitive RFP).

And there ya have it.
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You guys might be correct but its still shady as f***. Those companies did a lot of research to find the parts that met the AF requirements. They also put a fair amount of cost into testing to show that those components worked together and that required some engineering investment. They had to tune gas systems etc to go with the various non-standard parts use in this systems. So it might not have been a theft of IP in a legal sense but there was a lot of engineering done anticipating it would be recouped in a contract and the AF stole that research/engineering effort and built it themselves. Shady as f*** and makes companies less likely to respond to RFPs from that group in the future. It definitely pissed some people off. If your going to build it yourself then do it yourself don't let someone else do it under the guise you might buy it from them. There is a big difference between a RFP and a RFI. One has and expectation of a contract at the end. Don't create a RFP and use it as a stealth RFI, not cool.
 
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