The German Police School for Hesse in Hanau used this in G1 rifles on their indoor range and hand cycled the individual rounds. The GI was the German Version of the FN FAL.
They also used a 9x19mm plastic training round and I seem to recall a .32 ACP as well (this was about 1982 so maybe I just wished they had .32 but this was during the transition from .32ACP police pistols to 9x19mm)
The German Army used an OD green model of this cartridge for blanks, in the blank the bullet stayed attached but blew out a little X in the point of the bullet. These blanks also worked in the MG 3 and we would find them with both the non disintigrating links or the disintergrating laying about in training areas back in 1974. There was also a black 9x19mm blank we occassionaly ran across. We once found a Blank Firing Attachment that oddly had a valve type screw with setting for the rifle and SMG....one wonders what happened when they were set wrong.....
Our Kasserne had backstops in bays that the Germans used before WWII that were generally called "Stables" by most folks. All I can say is such folks had not been around many horses. Further there was a good bit of "rotten" (corroded out) 9x19 mm "brass" about 25 meters from the front of each of the four "stables". They were behind a huge berm where GIs and their families sat and watched dirt track car races on the "race track" Oddly 100, 200, and 300 yards from that berm and on a line parallel to it one could find 8x57 spent cases that were in awful shape form decades in the weather.
I drew up plans for a 25 meter .22LR range in one of the "stables" that featured low over head cover to prevent shooting out and concrete sewer pipe for standing supported fighting positions ( just like used in Basic training in those days) and cover to allow prone shooting. We had very little allowence for Marksman ship training and going to a German Million Mark Range was a two to three hour drive in Duece-n-a-halfs.
The Idea was shot down and I was treated like Lt. Fuzz. Months later I took one of the Staff that shot down my idea to one of the indoor ranges 2ACR had built in an unused garage where they used Cobray .22LR adaptors in M16A1. He still thought it was silly.
There was a system like the Blue Plastic Bullets made for the 5.56 that used a special BCG for semi and auto fire in the M16 series through M4 that was adopted by the US Army, but I have heard of little being done with it.
The Airforce looked at some arcade type game trainers that used a rifle attached to sensors (mecahnically) to engage dome shaped screens either about the size of a pin ball machine or room sized. It actually worked pretty well according to a bud on the project, but cost a lot up front during the Clinton years when money was tight. The company provided videos of actual troops in the field for use as targets or illustrations of standard type E targets for targets. The rifles were the exteriors of actual rifles and featured a system to provide recoil and cock the actual trigger group.
Given the USAF and US Army love affairs with flight simulators I was sure that would catch on, but.......
-kBob
The county range looked like a war zone today! Lots of Weird stuff scattered around, including a bunch of blue polymer empties. The head stamp says 7.62x51 and what appears to be “DAG 5H0833.” It looks like these were used in a fluted chamber, H&K?
This is their “lethal” version. They are also experimenting with just pointing one’s hand to mimic a pistol, while yelling “BANG”....but they are checking to make sure that isn’t some kind of appropriation of culture...or at the very least “Toxic Masculinity”!
