Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today courtesy
of the French Gendarmerie, taking a look
at a really cool modern Chinese bullpup SMG.
This is a CS/LS 06.
And it's a design that was inspired in part by the Russian Bizon, the PP-19.
And also in part by the American Calico,
although it's definitely distinct from either of those designs.
So it was developed by a Chinese weapons designer,
whose name ... I'm not even going to try because I will totally butcher it. [Qing Shangsheng]
So there's his name right there. [Qing Shangsheng]
He's the same guy who developed a number of other interesting Chinese firearms
including the QBZ-92 pistol, the Type 64 submachine gun,
the Type 67 - the silenced pistol, the Type 80 submachine gun.
So a guy with a lot of experience.
And in 1993 and '94 he actually developed this in secret on his own
before getting it far enough along in the process
that he decided to show it to a factory manager in 1996.
At that point it was formally approved for further development.
And in its original form it actually used the helical magazine as a buttstock to the gun,
and it was in the Chinese 5.8mm pistol cartridge.
This was fairly quickly replaced by a version where the magazine was on the top, as in this iteration.
And then it was decided that actually the gun ought to be made
more for the export market than the domestic Chinese market, so it was redeveloped in 9x19.
There were a couple more prototype iterations.
... One of them used an underfolding stock.
The most interesting one actually had two magazines in it.
A helical magazine on top and also a box magazine in the pistol grip.
It's unclear to me how exactly you were supposed to choose between the two,
but you can actually see remnants of that in this design, the final production version, interestingly.
So by 2004 the gun was actually ready for testing.
And in initial testing, as is fairly typical, it had problems with all sorts of things.
The ejector, the fire control group - the trigger specifically, the magazines.
A lot of problems, again as one would expect.
They spend another year trying to resolve those problems
and in 2005 the gun is formally presented to the public at a military expo in China.
It's at that point designated the CS 05.
Serial production is approved to begin.
And in 2006 the export version comes out as the CS/LS 06. And that is what we have here.
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at it and pull it apart.
There you have it with the stock collapsed.
You've got two solid integrated pistol grips. Handles pretty nicely there.
This muzzle brake is built into the gun and it comes threaded for a suppressor mount.
Apparently this is typically sold as a package with a suppressor,
but I don't have the suppressor here to show you.
We have a selector switch on the left, nice solid good detents in there.
The top is marked "B" - that is safe, "D" is semi and "L" is full.
Rate of fire on this is something like 800 rounds per minute.
The front sight is I would say very typical of perhaps an SKS or a Chinese AK.
Completely round shield with a nice little round front post in it.
And then the rear sight is a fairly small little aperture.
The markings are a bit hard to read here but that rear sight can be set to 100 metres as it is now,
or 150, or back here the 5 marking is 50 metres.
And that just flips a cam that sets that rear aperture to a different height.
The rear sling swivel here doubles as the stock release button.
You push this in and ... (there we go) ... the stock will come out.
That is fully extended. Note that there are slots in the collapsing stock here
which do line up with the ejection port,
so that this can be used with, right there, with the stock fully collapsed.
This is modern enough that there's a section of Picatinny rail back here
that you could mount an optic to, if you want that.
And then we have a magazine release button right here.
Push that in and the drum lifts off the top.
This holds 50 rounds, it actually feeds from back here but you can load it from the front.
Unlike the Calico magazine for example.
And then it does have a winder. You load it up and then give it
seven complete rotations to properly tension the magazine.
So you've got like a barber pole style of helical track of cartridges in there.
This fires from a closed bolt, so it doesn't lock open.
And it doesn't lock open on an empty magazine either,
that functionality isn't built into the helical magazine.
It is hammer fired, which you'll see in just a moment.
And well here we go, let's just disassemble it now.
The first thing you do is push in this button on the front
and then you can pull out the front pin that's locking the action into the polymer stock.
Then the second step is a little bit trickier, you have to take out the safety selector.
And to do that what you do is first check it, ... alright.
You then pull the trigger back in full-auto, and while holding the trigger back
you can drop the safety lever down about half a position.
Once it's there ... the safety lever can be lifted directly out.
Note that the slot there is horizontal, that's important to remember when you reassemble the gun.
Now you can just take this, lift it, lift the metal out of the polymer body.
Next up we want to remove the recoil spring.
This is a really pretty tight recoil spring, there we go, but it is captive.
So you lift the front of the recoil spring out of that pin and then you can pull it out.
Very much AK-like there.
And it kind of wobbled out but I put it back in to show you, this is the spring housing.
And once you take this off (you slide it back and lift it up) then the bolt can come off.
Let's see, we've got our hammer back here so I need to re-cock that.
Alright, with the hammer cocked and the spring retainer removed,
the bolt now lifts up and comes out.
So this is a telescoping style of bolt, meaning that the bolt face is back here
and you've got all this mass sitting up in front of the bolt face.
This is a pretty darn heavy bolt, which makes sense
for it being a simple blowback gun with a relatively short receiver.
This doesn't ... move back all that far,
which means you want a lot of mass in order to ensure that it's going to function safely.
Here's your firing pin. I suspect this is supposed to have a spring in it.
This one doesn't, but this one has had a bit of a hard life
so I'm not surprised if the spring is missing from it.
There's nothing else here that's going to come apart in a basic field strip.
You've got your muzzle device permanently attached to the barrel.
That's the front mounting point for the drum, along with the ... front sight.
You've got two pins here that hold sort of the rear ... section onto the front with the barrel.
So you could drive those pins out and separate that, but we're not going to at the moment.
We have the ejector here.
You can see that there's still clearance (sort of) on the underside.
And you still have this hollow cutout in the stock here
for the early prototype that ... actually used a box pistol magazine in the grip,
in addition to that helical magazine.
And then we've got our rear sight tower out here and your fire control group.
So the trigger is there, we've got a transfer bar right there.
Pull that forward, it's going to drop a sear right there, which releases the hammer.
There's not much to see inside the polymer shell.
We have the lug back here that controls the stock extension and locking.
And in this one that's kind of in bad shape, I think if this was actually fired
the stock would probably collapse on the shooter, which would be a bit unpleasant.
So nothing else out here, there's no metal reinforcement in this
aside from the collapsing stock itself, right there.
It doesn't feel all that reassuring.
... If this came out in the US market I think people would be a bit dubious of this polymer,
but it seems to have held up fairly well.
There you are, one field stripped CS/LS 06 Chinese submachine gun.
I have to say the gun feels pretty good to me.
Granted I haven't actually fired it, but the grips are good,
the sights are pretty decent, the length of pull is good.
The sharp metal edge on the stock isn't so great, but in 9mm that ought to be tolerable.
It's a very handy SMG, especially with the stock collapsed.
It's also pretty light, it comes in at 2.2 kilos, that's about 4.8 pounds.
Bump that up to 2.9 kilos with a loaded magazine,
50 rounds weighs a fair amount, that's like 6.4 pounds.
Still a fairly ... light, fairly handy little SMG.
They did make some commercial sales.
So it was used by Chinese police and paramilitary organisations,
as well as being sold to at least a couple of countries.
I know Venezuela and Myanmar and Uganda bought them,
not countries known for their major military power.
But the gun did actually see some commercial sales and successful export.
So I thought this would be a pretty darn cool one to take a look at.
A big thanks to the French Gendarmerie for giving the opportunity to show it to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.