Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, please excuse the voice, I'm getting over a bit of a head cold here.
But today we are going to take a look
at a Beretta AR 70/90.
This is the improved pattern, as the name implies,
of the Beretta AR 70.
And well, I have a previous video on the AR 70 itself,
so we'll skip the developmental story of that one.
I'll link to it at the end of this video in case you are interested.
But the important thing to note is that the ... Italian Army adopted the AR 70.
But they didn't adopt it for everybody, it essentially only went to elite special units.
And the majority of the Italian Army continued to use the BM-59 in 7.62 NATO.
Now this would last until the 1980s.
So in 1970 NATO decides that it needs to standardise on a new cartridge.
The US is now by that point equipping its forces in Europe with M16 rifles,
they are in 5.56, the NATO standard cartridge is 7.62. This isn't good, this isn't going to work.
But it takes NATO a full 10 years to finally finish all of its testing and standardise on 5.56.
Now it's not the American 5.56, it's the Belgian ... SS109, adopted by the US as M855.
And this would have some problems for a bunch of countries, including the US and also Italy.
Primarily that new standardised cartridge was a 62 grain bullet
that required a 1 in 7 [inch], or maybe 1 in 9, twist to properly stabilise.
The AR 70 and the original M16s used 1 in 12 inch twist barrels,
which didn't adequately stabilise that new ammunition,
they were designed for 55 grain ammunition.
And so both countries would have to retrofit their guns or come up with new rifles.
That's where the M16A2 comes from in the US.
And Beretta in the early 1980s began to put together an improvement package,
or an upgraded version, of the Beretta AR 70 to accommodate this new ammunition change,
as well as make a bunch of other improvements to the gun.
So this was first presented to the Italian military in 1985.
It would go through a bunch of ... competitive testing
as well as endurance and field trials testing on its own.
There were two other competitors for the new Italian army rifle at this point,
although neither of them were ... distinctly Italian designs.
The Bernardelli Company showed up with a copy of the Galil.
And the Franchi Company showed up with, it's unclear if it's a copy
or if it was a straight just licensed production version of the H&K G41,
which was essentially the HK33 using M16 magazines.
Now the AR 70/90 would win the competition
... and be adopted in 1990 as the name implies.
Let's go ahead and take a look at what they did to it, there are some distinctive features on here
like this odd carry handle, and some clever ones like the gas block.
In putting together the AR 70/90 platform Beretta changed almost everything
about the AR 70 with the exception of its fundamental mechanical system.
The most important single change that they made was that of the magazine.
The AR 70 uses a proprietary nose-in rock-back magazine.
And that was changed to the standard AR-15/M16 magazine
because it's clear that that's what all these NATO rifles were using.
Now this is an American-made one, aluminium.
Beretta did of course make their own magazines for these
because they were going to be supplying them to the Italian Army.
The Beretta ones are actually steel, kind of like HK's 416 magazines.
This carry handle is a very distinctive element with that forward sweep to it.
And it's a little bit odd because it's a detachable carry handle,
and carry handles don't really seem like the most useful, necessary elements.
Well, this in particular was developed as a short-range rapid sighting system,
in addition to just being a carry handle.
So it basically has a set of pistol sights: we've got a pair of dots on either side of an open notch back here,
and a front post with its own white dot up front.
And the idea is you can line those up for rapid close-range shooting.
Now this carry handle is drilled through here front and back,
so that you can use your standard aperture iron sights.
There is a 250 metre and a 400 metre aperture sight there.
You can use them through this carry handle, but in my opinion not that well.
You get a really claustrophobic sort of sight picture trying to sight through this,
it's really easy to mess up and like look over the top of the aperture
and see this as your rear aperture. I frankly don't like the carry handle.
And so I find it rather convenient that we can push this button here, push the whole thing back,
and just take the carry handle assembly off.
So there's the tunnel through it, there's your carry handle sights. I don't like this thing.
That carry handle mounts, by the way, on a little trapezoidal bracket up here
and a locking lug at the back.
And this is intended to be an optics mount, so they did make
like a basic fixed 4x power optic for this
which was pretty much completely obsolete by the time it was even introduced.
So much more commonly they have a Picatinny rail that sits on this
style of mounting blocks so that you can mount modern optics on the thing.
Originally that was also intended for use with a night vision optic
that fits proprietary onto this mount.
So that's the purpose of those mounting blocks. The carry handle is sort of an afterthought.
Both the AR 70 and the 70/90 have built-in folding bipods. I like this sort of feature.
The downside to this one is that the bipod is mounted directly on the barrel, it is not free floated.
So if you try and put a lot of pressure on this bipod, you will absolutely deflect the barrel
and you'll lose your zero at long-ish range. But I still like having it on there.
Both the 70 and the 70/90 are also set up to launch rifle grenades.
So this is our 22mm NATO standard rifle grenade muzzle device.
This is a gas cut off. When you lift it up
you've got this nice obvious hood over the front sight, that cuts off your gas
so that you're not battering the bolt carrier when you fire rifle grenades.
What the 70/90 adds to the system however is a two position gas regulator,
which was not on the original AR 70.
So the way this thing works, this is open, this is closed. Closed gives you more gas.
And if we look in up close here, there are a series of vent holes around the diameter of this gas piston.
These are the excess gas vents, so once the piston moves this far
whatever remaining gas is in there is vented out here to control the overall velocity of the piston.
There is then one hole up here at the front.
And when I have this set in the open position, that hole is open,
and it will vent additional gas before the piston starts moving.
When I change it to closed that hole is shut off.
So essentially "closed" is the dirty or adverse or higher gas setting.
"Open" is intended to be the standard use.
This, by the way, was not developed around suppressors,
this was just regular rifle and very dirty rifle.
Most of the controls on the 70/90 are ambidextrous, which is pretty cool.
We have a four position regulator here, so this was originally
safe, semi-auto, 3 round burst, and full-auto.
This one of course is semi-auto only, so those extra two positions don't actually do anything.
But we have a lever there and on the left side.
And that's got a nice big thumb pad on it that's pretty easy to manipulate.
A little harder when you get all the way around to full, but for a rifle like this
that is just semi-auto, pretty easy to go from safe to semi.
Standard magazine release right there. And it is not particularly easy to use,
but it is an ambidextrous magazine release over on this side.
Fortunately for me I'm left-handed and so this one, which is the easier one to use, is the one I'll be using.
A few of the other changes include the use of a rubber butt pad, instead of metal as on the AR 70.
The profile of the pistol grip was changed a bit, there's still a ... storage compartment in the base here.
That's nice and easy to get into, you can keep whatever you want in there.
There is a folding trigger guard for winter trigger use with gloves.
That has a little spring-loaded pin there.
Push that pin in and you can fold the trigger guard down.
It's got this little detent that more or less snaps into the pistol grip there.
So now you can fire this with heavy gloves or mittens.
The receiver profile changed to sort of a trapezoidal shape
instead of being a bit more square on the AR 70.
And the handguard here is different than what you typically see on the AR 70,
but this is actually an upgraded handguard that was designed by Beretta
originally for the AR 70 in 1983.
Retrofitted onto some of the early guns, and then used on the 70/90.
A quick look at the markings before we take it apart, Beretta AR 70/90, calibre 5.56 NATO there.
Back here we have the serial number and the manufacturer markings
from the guys at Brimstone who made this for me, we'll talk about that in a few minutes.
And on the other side a "Made in Italy, Pietro Beretta" mark.
Now disassembly starts with a pair of pins just like an AR, more or less.
Pop that pin out, and it is captive.
And we can pivot the receiver open.
The front pin is held in place by little wire clip, I'm just going to leave that one in
because there's not a whole lot for us to do in here.
The fire control group is rather different than the original ones
because it has had the burst and full-auto mechanisms removed to be a legal semi-auto in the US.
There was a carbine version of this just like there was of the AR 70
that used a two tube side-folding stock, but this is the standard infantry model.
The recoil spring for the AR 70/90 is (like the 70) located in the gas piston above the barrel.
So to remove the bolt I actually have to remove the charging handle,
which locks the bolt carrier to the recoil spring assembly.
And I can do that by pulling back on this little tab.
This is intended to be done with the nose of a cartridge,
but I've got a nice set of pliers here to do it.
So you pull that back and then the bolt handle comes out.
And then I can pull the bolt carrier out of the back of the receiver.
There's our bolt carrier, we've got a two lug rotating bolt here.
That's locked position, that's the unlocked. And just pull it out.
Note that the firing pin is actually connected to the bolt carrier,
it is held in place by this cross pin right up there.
So if I want to take that out, I have to push out that cross pin.
Once again, the nose of a cartridge is an ideal tool for this if you don't have pliers.
So pull out that pin. That is not captive, that is going to be easily lost.
Not something you would necessarily have to do very often in the field.
There's the firing pin, there is no firing pin spring in this.
You can see we have ... NATO stock number parts on some of these components.
Next up I can actually just pull off the whole gas block assembly, like so.
So, we've got the gas port in there.
The cut off. All of that hardware comes off.
The bipod assembly has this spring-loaded arm on it.
And to take the bipod off all I have to do is lift up this
and squeeze the two legs of the bipod together like so, and it just opens up.
So this is a pinch sort of mechanism.
So it locks in the open position and I can pinch it closed.
So you can take this off if you just don't want to have it on the rifle. Really a cool system there.
Next we'll take the handguard off, this is very simple, it just has a metal spring clip up here.
So snap that over the gas tube and the barrel and it just slides off the bottom.
There's a little sheet metal hook there ...
that locks around this cross pin.
That's actually the cross pin that holds the lower onto the upper.
Next I can take off the gas tube, which is just a friction fit in place. So that comes off.
And then to take out the recoil spring I have to push it in slightly,
rotate it 180 degrees and lift it out.
It has ... this locator pin that locks it in place.
So it's normally like this, you push it in, rotate it so the pin is up, and then it will slide out of the receiver.
Go ahead and take the lower completely off.
If we take a closer look at the upper here, it does have a sliding spring-loaded dust cover up here.
So that's just going to reciprocate backward behind the bolt handle.
You can see it right in there.
This is a stamped sheet-metal upper that has a milled trunnion riveted in the back.
And a milled trunnion riveted into the front.
You can see our locking ... shoulders, right there is one of them, the other one will be on this side.
The barrel is held in place by this barrel nut.
Really a pretty simple design and a pretty reliable one.
And there is the whole thing field stripped out for you, one Beretta AR 70/90.
Once this was adopted in 1990 it did become the standard Italian Army rifle,
replacing the BM-59 in service, and tens of thousands of them were manufactured.
They remained the standard service rifle for about 20 years.
Until circa 2010, 2008 or 2010 (I'm not sure on the exact date),
the Beretta ARX160 was adopted to replace these guys.
So these were extremely rare guns in the United States for a very long time,
well, pretty much until just a couple of years ago.
There were semi-automatic factory versions of these made by Beretta,
but they were never exported to the US because they post-dated
the various bans on importation of rifles like this.
So there are some pre-ban AR 70s floating around the US which are very cool and tremendously expensive.
But a couple of years ago parts kits for these started to show up, a relatively limited number.
I grabbed one because I knew it was a cool rare rifle.
I didn't know exactly what I was going to do it with it at the time,
but shortly thereafter I ran across Brimstone Arms in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
And they built this one up for me as an American-made semi-automatic only copy.
Basically made a new receiver for it, assembled the parts kit onto that.
They did that in relatively small numbers for me and some other people.
I know there are other companies out there who also did the same thing.
When the parts kits showed up that provided the incentive for people to figure out
how to make the receivers, for people to make the barrels and make these into complete guns.
So a big thanks to Brimstone. They didn't give me this rifle, I paid for the build process
and all the parts in it, but I really appreciate them taking on the project.
So this coming weekend I'm going to go ahead and use this
along with the Bernardelli PO18S that we took a look at in our previous video this week.
I'm going to use both of those in a two gun match, see how the Italians do in the desert on the clock.
So stick around for that video, it should be a lot of fun.
Thanks for watching.