QBZ-191 service rifle family

LawLeadsToPeace

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Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
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It looks to me like there are specific objectives in that particular drill which is outside of shooting speed.
Might be moving targets which can vary from many instances.
Hm. True, I took a second look at it. The competitor seems to have to retrieve 'intel' from a box and engage targets that would pop out. Aside from the objectives and the targets moving, the heavy amount of camo netting obscures them, and the competitor most likely have to positively ID their targets before shooting. I guess that is why the competitors are 'slow', and because I am too used to the 'normal' style of competitive shooting lol.
 

by78

General
More close-up shots from Zhuhai.

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Hickok

Just Hatched
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It’s not the only one and the Iranian knockoff is even more of a unknown quantity with questionable production status. Outside of Those two nations you can look at builders from around the globe Who build similar products Turkey, The UEA, a long list of American makers. 416 is one of a list of weapons that combined the AR15 platform designed with the AR18 gas system. Heck in many ways the Chinese had already combined the AK platform design with an AR18 gas system the aforementioned Type 81.
Winchester and Colt back in the late 1960s had already made both a short-stroke gas piston (essentially functionally almost the exact same as a HK416) and a long-stroke (similar to AK platform) version of the AR15 after complaints about the reliability of the M16 in Vietnam. The US government eventually decided not to adopt either designs because they realized the reliability problems had nothing to do with the design of the AR15 itself but rather the government's own failures by changing ammo powder load.

Interestingly enough I believe the earliest military to adopt an AR15 with short stroke gas piston is in Taiwan. The T65 was in service by the mid 1970s and it had all of the ergonomics of the AR15 combined with AR18 gas system. Even the latest iteration of the rifle which is the T91 was designed in similar timeframe as the HK416. There are many who even believe the T91 is superior because it is lighter while still having less recoil than the HK416 (416s tend to be very overgassed for reliability which causes more recoil.) The point is that the HK416 really did not do much special and its design had been done a LONG time ago. However HK has an excellent marketing department and their build quality is excellent which popularized the Piston AR scene.

Back onto the QBZ-191, does anyone have any data about the accuracy of the platform? I know in China accuracy is usually measured in R50/CEP rather than extreme spread in MOA which is common in the west. However it's difficult to find any sources providing information about accuracy of the gun and the 5.8 ammunition. There are some sketchy website who claim that QBU-88 has about 1.5 MOA with heavy 5.8 projectiles which is perfectly reasonable but they provide no sources to back it up.
 

Blitzo

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Those are some good pics, and the bottom of the handguard and the cross screws made me realize at last how the handguard for QBU191 is attached to the barrel nut. Cause the cross screws are obviously way too low to directly interface with where the barrel nut would be, I've always wondered how they attached it on.
That slit at the ventral surface of where the two cross screws closest to the receiver shows it's basically the same as some solutions offered by companies like midwest and stngr where you have a anti-slide plate or a torque plate whose internal surface "plugs" into the barrel nut and keeps it form falling off.

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midwest 1.jpg
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ohan_qwe

Junior Member
Back onto the QBZ-191, does anyone have any data about the accuracy of the platform? I know in China accuracy is usually measured in R50/CEP rather than extreme spread in MOA which is common in the west. However it's difficult to find any sources providing information about accuracy of the gun and the 5.8 ammunition. There are some sketchy website who claim that QBU-88 has about 1.5 MOA with heavy 5.8 projectiles which is perfectly reasonable but they provide no sources to back it up.
I think that I have seen this from https://baike.baidu.com/item/兵器知识/5863987 but it was many years ago so my memory could be bad.f11186e251fbacf89a24a74e784fe1e00381a857.jpeg
 

Mohsin77

Senior Member
Registered Member
Interestingly enough I believe the earliest military to adopt an AR15 with short stroke gas piston is in Taiwan. The T65 was in service by the mid 1970s and it had all of the ergonomics of the AR15 combined with AR18 gas system. Even the latest iteration of the rifle which is the T91 was designed in similar timeframe as the HK416. There are many who even believe the T91 is superior because it is lighter while still having less recoil than the HK416 (416s tend to be very overgassed for reliability which causes more recoil.) The point is that the HK416 really did not do much special and its design had been done a LONG time ago. However HK has an excellent marketing department and their build quality is excellent which popularized the Piston AR scene.

I sold my HK416 (civie version) before they got banned in Canada and I still miss it. Yes, the recoil was a bitch (and it's heavy.) But I'd rather deal with that than the inherent reliability problems of a DI system. I've had failures on DI ARs but I've never had a failure on any piston system (HK, SIG, AK) that was caused by the gun itself. My only failures on the 416 were due to the aftermarket magazine, which I stopped using, or the occasional dud primer. I actually stopped bothering to even clean my gun, because it was pointless. And we're not even talking about HK's barrel life, which is practically infinite.

The fact is that most militaries trust the piston-system for a good reason, despite the cost of higher recoil and weight. The most important metric when it comes to firearms is reliability, much more than speed. Americans have a bias towards DI, but a lot of its own warfighters still admit that it can never be as reliable as pistons. You can't be pushing hot gases and fouling in the receiver and expect it to be as reliable as a piston. It's just physics.

With that said, I'll easily admit that any DI AR is a lot more fun to shoot than the 416, because DI feels like a laser by comparison. There's barely any recoil, which is especially important when you only weigh 160lbs like me. My 416 would literally be pushing me back on my heels even with good posture. And my forearms and shoulders would kill me after every range session because it's heavy. The learning curve on a piston system is much higher, but that also forces you to be a better shooter and focus on the fundamentals. I'd still pick piston systems over DI any day.

I guess that is why the competitors are 'slow', and because I am too used to the 'normal' style of competitive shooting lol.
IMHO, 1-man IPSC-type competions are pointless for infantry/SOFs, it's a waste of taxpayer bought ammo. They could have given them simunition or even paintballs and made them plan and execute a force-on-force operation against each other.
 
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