New Arms for the Malaysian Armed Forces II

Kuala Lumpur: Without the tender document on hand, Malaysian Defence could only speculate on the accessories that the Armed Forces is specifying for its weapons.

Since the arms to be selected are not top-secret laser pulse weapons,. Malaysian Defence can be forgiven for speculating the accessories.

In the future, however, when Malaysian Defence has enough funds to do this full-time readers can be rest assured that it will purchase the tender documents and post it up on the website.

Malaysian Defence needs only to as a Sdn Bhd company (public limited company) and to register with the Finance Ministry to purchase the tender documents, costing about RM50.

The document is not expensive but Malaysian Defence needs more funds to operate its own Dot Com. Hint!!! Please contact me for further details.

Back to our discussions. For the Assault Rifle, the main accessories are optical sights (probably with magnification up to 300 metres and CQB purpose), laser designator and wihite/infra-red light.

US Special Forces M16-derived Mk12. This is not a regular joe assault rifle but its a representative of what could be added to an AR

For the Americans this is the absolute minimum. Since they are currently in combat, Malaysian Defence believes the American perspective is correct although this does not mean that it support or believes the US operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

To add to the list of most needed accessories is night vision scope, so our soldiers could carry the fight to our enemy at night also.

And to mount all this accessories, the chosen rifle, of course, need to be fitted with Picatinny rails.

The same accessories for the assault rifle are also perfect for the LMG and the sniper rifle. The sniper rifle however, needed a much more advanced optical sight to match its longer range 7.62mm cartridge.

The Steyr AUGA1, unceremoniously dropped by the Malaysian Army after only about 15 years of service. The dream of small arms manufacturing hub ended with this rifle.

For Malaysian Defence the specifications for the assault rifle is basic but the deciding candidate is the hardest and therefore, most controversial. Lest we forget the Steyr AUGA1.