Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the
Shooters Outpost Museum in Hooksett, New Hampshire,
taking a look at a really cool
South African light machine gun.
This is a Mini-SS, which is to say
it's the 5.56mm version of the South African
SS77 general purpose light machine gun.
Now it's "SS77" because it was designed in 1977
by two guys by the names of Richard Smith and Lazlo Soregi in South Africa.
Development work was done by the Lyttelton Engineering Works, LEW,
one of the main firearms engineering firms in South Africa.
And the gun originated basically because South Africa needed
a general purpose 7.62 calibre light machine gun,
and they were currently under international arms embargo, international sanction in general.
And so they had to develop one indigenously.
Now ... following in what is sort of the normal process,
this gun took about 10 years ... to go from design to actual successful implementation.
The first prototypes were being tested in 1978 and '79.
There was a lot of field testing done. There were some problems with the initial design.
In particular they had kind of repeated continuous issues with ... gas piston and extractor breakage.
They rebuilt them, they ... did more testing.
The gun finally went into service in 1988, '87-'88.
They produced a bunch, then discovered that they were still having durability problems.
And they actually ... unadopted, or set all the guns aside, from '91 until 1993
to figure out exactly what was going on with the design and fix it.
They reintroduced it in '94, that solved most, but not quite all, of the issues.
This thing was kind of a mess to finally get fully developed into service.
However I should say, this is all the 7.62 NATO version of the gun.
And what we're looking at here is the 5.56 version.
This project actually began in 1992.
And it was spurred basically by the US adoption of the M249 Minimi.
Kind of one of the first of the 5.56 belt-fed SAWs.
(If we don't count the fact that the Russians were doing it with the RPD in like 1945.)
But the US adopted the SAW in '88.
And that kind of pushed a lot of people to maybe take a closer look
at the idea of a 5.56 belt-fed ... Squad Automatic Weapon.
And so Lyttelton decided to get in on that game
and figured, "OK, what's the best way to do it?"
They had a team in-house that successfully converted an SS77 into 5.56,
and they figured, "Well, that's kind of the way to go.
Let's just build this on the same basic receiver platform as the 7.62 gun.
We'll have parts interchangeability, it'll be cheaper, easier to manufacture."
Now they initially advertised this as being something that
you could just get a 5.56 conversion kit to drop into a 7.62 SS77 gun.
And you'll see that copied a lot on the internet that that's how this was done.
In reality, they initially advertised it that way, but then ended up not actually doing it.
It was determined ... just it's better if we build it as a standalone gun
instead of trying to make the two calibres interchangeable back and forth.
So we have the standalone Mini-SS in 5.56.
They did a number of things to simplify it, took a number of lessons
from the field service of the SS77.
Well, I'll just tell you right now. Things like initially
the SS77 had things like a fluted barrel.
They decided that, "You know what? The fluting really just actually doesn't
help us that much, it's not worth the time and cost to make."
So they went with just a smooth profile barrel on
the second production run of SS77s and the Mini-SSs.
They originally had an adjustable gas block and they realised
it didn't really actually get used very much.
Part of the idea was to be able to change the rate of fire, but it didn't change
the rate of fire all that much, so they went with just a fixed gas block.
Which on the Mini-SS, by the way, gives it a rate of fire of about 800 rounds a minute.
Which is maybe a little bit on the high side, but pretty standard, pretty typical.
With the 5.56 gun they also made a number of efforts to lighten it in as many places as possible.
So the 7.62 calibre gun had things that you would want for a general purpose machine gun,
like mounting lugs on the gas block and on the trigger assembly
so that you could bolt the thing into a tripod or onto an armoured vehicle.
They dispensed with those on the 5.56 gun because those are applications
that the 5.56 gun just isn't normally used for.
They are willing to manufacture examples,
if someone wanted to buy a bunch of these with mounting lugs for example,
they're happy to do it. But it's not a standard feature.
Same thing with the buttstock, the original gun had a folding buttstock.
On the 5.56 they replaced that with just a simple fixed stock to reduce the weight of the gun.
But if you want a folding stock, they are willing to put that on for you.
So that's a pretty basic overview of the gun.
Let's go ahead and take it apart because this
is one of the very few guns out there with a side-tilting bolt, which is really cool.
Alright, so let's see, let's start with basic controls here which are really quite basic.
The fire control group has no semi-auto selector setting, it is full-auto or nothing.
The safety is ambidextrous here, it is this lever that flips up.
And when that's engaged it locks the trigger and it also locks the sear.
And it's in a position where with either hand
from a firing grip, you can engage
and disengage it without breaking a firing grip.
So that's a pretty effective, useful, clever safety right there.
A number of the design elements here are clearly straight off of FN machine guns.
And one of those is the barrel locking system.
So we have a barrel release button right here.
Push that in, lift the handle up, and the barrel comes right out.
As I mentioned earlier we have a fixed gas ... block here.
There's only one gas port in it, gives you about 800 rounds a minute.
For the 5.56 ... Mini-SS gun they went with a relatively light profile barrel
just to keep the weight down. The whole gun overall by the way,
comes out at like 18.25 pounds, 18.3 pounds, about 8.25 kilos.
So it is a quite light gun for a squad automatic weapon.
The muzzle device is a permanently affixed flash hider.
The sights on the gun are actually very reminiscent of the R4 Galils.
So we have a big hood, lets in a lot of light,
with a rather narrow, precise front post and a flip-up night sight there.
The rear sight here is also very reminiscent of the R4 Galil.
It has a two-position flip aperture sight.
This one is for out to 300 metres, and the long range one here is to go out to 500.
And then there is also the matching night sight to go along with the front night sight.
So right there.
Later versions of the gun would have a Picatinny rail, this particular one does not.
The button on the side of the top cover, right here, is used to open it.
And inside we have a pretty neat compact system,
and a very simple system. So we'll pull this apart in just a moment.
But first let's take a look at the inside of the top cover here.
This is also just basically swiped right off the FN mag.
This is the same system that they used on the .308 SS77s.
Pretty standard sort of belt-feed top cover system.
There is a bipod on the front which folds out.
This is essentially an R4 bipod, a Galil bipod.
The .308 calibre guns have a more substantial bipod, larger feet.
That was reduced kind of to this size as part of the effort to reduce weight in the gun.
And there is also a latch right here on the side.
Push that in ... and you can just take the whole bipod off the gun.
The full-size SS77 had dust covers on the link ejection port here, as well as on the feed side.
The ... Mini-SS got rid of those two in an effort to reduce weight,
and retained only the dust cover on the ejection port on the bottom of the gun.
There we go, that snaps rather tightly into place.
And that automatically opens when the bolt closes.
So this fires from an open bolt. And you can carry it around with the dust cover closed
and it'll automatically pop that open the first time you fire.
Now let's take a look at disassembly, this thing is super slick to disassemble.
So first off we have our gas piston out here.
You'll note that that's a rather AK-looking gas piston.
There's a release lever right here, just pop that,
and the piston and its return spring both come out.
Alright, in order to show you proper field stripping,
I went ahead and put the bipod on the gun so that I can have it standing up like this.
I am going to pop the top cover off.
I'm then going to take the buttstock off. There is a button right here on the side.
Press that in and the buttstock slides off the bottom of the gun.
Nothing going on here. Like I said, you can get this with an SS77 folding stock,
but the standard is just this solid skeletonised polymer.
Now, the neat part here is ...
we have this tab on the back, which moves a little bit.
And that is actually the ... pair of dual recoil spring guides.
And then on the inside of the gun we have this plate that sits at the back of the receiver.
So if I press the recoil spring guides just forward enough to hold tension,
I can pull this block up. It is captive in place.
And as soon as I lift it out of the way, the recoil springs come right out the back.
There are actually, well technically, four recoil springs here.
Each one of these rods has a pair of nested springs, a small diameter and a large.
Now with the recoil springs out I can lift this up again.
I can pull the bolt back ...
all the way. Notice that with this block lifted up
the bolt can come a little further back than during normal operation.
And that's far enough that I can just lift the bolt and carrier straight out of the gun.
And the bolt just lifts right off the back of the bolt carrier.
Now what makes this really interesting to me is that this is actually a side-tilting bolt.
So this is the unlocked position when it's travelling.
When the bolt hits the front of the chamber it's going to stop.
The bolt carrier continues forward.
And that kidney-shaped cam on the inside of the bolt here
pushes the edge of the bolt out into the receiver.
And this surface right here is our locking shoulder on the bolt.
So right here in the receiver is the locking recess that the bolt goes into.
And you can see this oval block on the top, that's the locking shoulder itself,
because that surface is going to be hardened differently than the rest of the receiver.
That makes it ... a lot easier to separately harden the locking shoulder,
and it makes it replaceable should you ever need to.
We have a spring-loaded firing pin. So as soon as the bolt is
locked into the side of the receiver there and pushes further back,
the firing pin protrudes out the front.
That is a very sort of Bren-like deal where that's the firing pin right there.
So when the thing is fully closed the firing pin hits this lug.
Which is also the lug that controls the travel of the bolt side to side.
We have a roller bearing right up here,
this is what's interacting with the ... top cover to feed cartridges in on the belt.
This by the way takes standard NATO M27 links, so the same links you'd have on the Minimi.
We have a little bit of a heavy spring buffer in the back of the bolt
just to absorb any last residual energy.
We have tracks on the bottom of the bolt carrier here for the two recoil springs.
This is your sear engagement surface.
So the trigger, which I'll take out in a moment, is just a very simple
pull trigger, sear drops sort of design.
And that's locking into this surface right there.
This is where the bolt carrier is engaged by the gas piston.
They sit right like that, so it's a short-stroke gas piston.
This comes back just a little bit, gives the bolt carrier enough of a tap to cycle fully.
On top of the bolt this fin is what actually pushes a cartridge
forward out of the belt and down into the chamber.
Big extractor on the bottom, the extractor was one of the things
that they spent a lot of time working and reworking on the original SS77s.
It's funny, you see shades of the FAL in desert service here
with these sand cuts in the side of the bolt.
Now the last couple of disassembly elements are things you wouldn't necessarily
be doing for a general field stripping, but they're still really easy.
So we can take off the entire top cover with a pin right here.
Push that through.
There we go. That pin comes out. Oops.
And the feed tray and top cover are held together
by another cross pin that in theory you could take out, there's no reason to.
And then we have one more similar cross pin on the trigger group.
So that pin comes out, and then we can take off the fire control group.
And we just have a big ol' slot in the bottom of the receiver.
Pistol grip rather similar to the R4 Galil, as are so many other elements of this.
And once again, simple dropping sear for the trigger.
The safety is going to lock the sear, lock the bolt.
Just locks up everything, which is exactly what you want the safety to do.
There you have the Vektor Mini-SS.
Really, I think it's a very cleverly designed gun.
I think it did very well to take the lessons from the pretty rocky roll-out of the SS77
and integrate them into a 5.56 gun,
that, while I have not fired one myself,
the predominant opinion is that it's a quite good light machine gun.
And frankly from an engineering perspective, I think it could kind of take on all comers.
On paper at least, I think this would be totally competitive
with guns like the Negev and absolutely with the Minimi.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.