Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we are out today taking a look at the HK MP7.
This is specifically an MP7A1. So it's had a couple little improvements from the original base model,
but not quite all the really fancy desert coloured stuff of the A2 pattern.
Now there's an interesting backstory to this, and of course
this was designed as a quote/unquote PDW, a Personal Defence Weapon.
And the requirements for this sort of firearm originated in the very late 1980s
when NATO discovered that the Russian military was starting to issue
body armour as standard equipment. And at this point, of course, the Soviet Union was still fully intact,
and NATO's major concern was what if Russia attacks Western Europe?
They're going to have Spetsnaz teams, you know, running around behind Allied lines,
behind NATO lines, they're gonna have paratroopers dropping into, you know,
Western Germany and unleashing all sorts of havoc, and they're all gonna be wearing body armour,
and so all of these support type troops behind the front lines
are going to be running around with 9mm pistols that are going to be incapable of
going through the body armour on all of these Soviet combatants.
So NATO issued a requirement for a new Personal Defence Weapon that could defeat this Soviet body armour.
And there were two main firearms developed in response to it, one was the FN P90, and the other was the HK MP7.
Now, the MP7 has had a little bit of an uphill battle in the marketplace because it came out several years after the P90.
And so the P90 garnered a lot of attention, and interest, and clients, and
the MP7 kind of has to prove itself to a level that the P90 maybe didn't.
There are also some very significant mechanical differences between the two.
The P90 is a simple blowback action, it is selective fire, as is the MP7.
But the MP7 is a short-stroke gas piston rotating bolt. This is basically a little teeny miniaturised
G36 action, or AR-18 action, or kind of similar to the 416 action. You've got a gas port right up here,
you have what looks like a miniaturised AR bolt. And that allows a couple of things,
well mainly that allows the weight on the MP7 to be reduced,
because ... the P90 is dependent on just the weight of the bolt to stay locked,
the MP7 isn't, so it can be lighter. This is very similar to the MP5 being a delayed action,
compared to the standard blowback of most other submachine guns.
Now in its original guise the idea was this PDW (be it the MP7, or the P90 or
... any other firearm, just the way NATO conceived this),
these would be issued to basically everyone who wasn't a frontline soldier issued a rifle or a carbine.
So instead of getting a 9mm pistol you'd get an MP7 if you were a cook, or a clerk, or a driver, or anybody else like that.
In this role it's kind of similar to the M1 carbine during World War Two,
issued to replace the .45 calibre pistol because it was a lot easier to shoot accurately,
but largely issued to guys who weren't really expected to need them much, at all, if ever.
However, in the intervening years between when NATO issued these requirements,
and when the MP7 actually came on the market fully developed
(this took about 10 years, the MP7 was delivered for production first, I believe, around 2001),
well, the problem is between ... those two years the Soviet Union fell apart.
There's not really that much concern today about Soviet paratroopers,
you know, dropping into Western Germany and columns of tanks coming through the Fulda Gap.
So the need to actually issue these out has pretty much gone away.
Much of the combat today that forces are actually seeing, and this isn't like full-sized armies,
but much of the combat is against, say, insurgents in the Middle East,
people who aren't typically wearing body armour. And so
a small calibre cartridge like this, this fires the [4.6x30mm] cartridge, which is
kind of equivalent to like .17 HMR rimfire. It's a 31 or 32 grain bullet traveling at about 2,350 feet per second.
It's great for penetration, but it's not as good at actual lethality as something a lot bigger, and so
shortly after these guns came out you would see also a resurgence in, say, .45 calibre submachine guns.
Focused on what was really kind of the more direct immediate threat at the time.
Anyway, before I digress too far, this has ended up becoming an issued weapon largely for
specialist troops, for special forces guys who need something better than, or more capable than just a handgun,
but smaller and more mobile and compact than a full-size rifle.
There were allegedly, apparently, a bunch of these were used in the US Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden,
and that's the sort of application that you see these in today. So where it was initially intended to be
a massive scale, you know, a standard infantry weapon for the guys who don't have rifles,
it ended up being a sneaky squirrel and specialist troops sort of gun, simply because of needs.
Alright, let's try doing some shooting. I'm gonna go ahead and extend the stock out,
because this is really much better as a carbine than as a very large pseudo-handgun.
These were issued with 20 round magazines, or made with 20 rounders which are flush with the grip,
30s, and 40s. This is a 40 rounder. We have a bolt release, here safety lever here.
It is selective fire, so semi-auto, and full-auto. And let's see how this goes.
I'll be honest, the recoil on this is a little more jarring than I had expected.
If you go into this expecting kind of like, you know, a vaguely oversized rimfire cartridge,
.17 HMR, you'd expect it to have basically no recoil and it actually does. It has,
it's not a hard kick, but it's a very abrupt and sharp kick for what it is. Let's try a little bit in full-auto.
Yeah, kind of the same thing, it bounces around a little bit more than I had expected.
I suspect with more practice (which I certainly haven't had, this is my first time out at the range with one of these guys),
with a little more practice it's gonna be very easy to control, but right at first, it's a little more than I had expected.
Magazine release is the lever on the bottom of the trigger guard, push it down to eject.
Now, one of the uses that was not maybe originally intended for this gun is shooting it suppressed.
You know, if you're issuing it to everybody, not so much.
But when you issue this to Special Forces guys who are gonna go do secret, sneaky stuff with it,
putting a suppressor on it makes a lot of sense. Especially because it is this little tiny cartridge,
it's quite easy to suppress. In fact, with a can this size it's completely hearing safe, so I can pull those guys out.
And let's see what we can do here.
You're still going to get a supersonic crack from it of course, because this is supersonic ammunition,
but that really makes it very convenient and easy to use.
Alright guys, well hopefully you enjoyed this little bit of an intro to the MP7.
There's a lot more to talk about on something like this.
Of course, this is a gun that is still in very active use, still actively being improved and refined.
So a big thank you to H&K for letting me come out here and play with their MP7A1.
Also thank you to Trijicon for giving us access to their range and
slapping a cool MRO optic on this thing for us. And of course,
what you've probably been waiting for is a magazine dump. So 30 rounds in there...
Thanks for watching.