New Industry Standard for Measuring Suppressor Blowback to Be Introduced By ARDEC

[alamo5000]

Interesting.

---

"At the 2017 National Defense Industry Association’s annual Armament Systems Forum in April, representatives of the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) presented a new method for measuring and quantifying gas blowback with suppressed firearms. The testing was conducted in the service of creating a new standard test procedure for gas blowback, for the Army, NATO, and the industry. Importantly, the test procedure involved mounting air inlets in locations corresponding to the shooter’s face when firing the rifle, which gives accurate measurements for what quantity of toxic gases reach the shooter’s face during operation."


http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/06/22/new-industry-standard-measuring-suppressor-blowback-introduced-ardec-ndia-2017/

[alamo5000]

"The testing seems to have revealed that the best combination for reducing gas blowback to the shooter was “Suppressor A” combined with “Charging Handle B”. Of course, in the interests of objectivity, the presentation does not reveal which suppressors or charging handles are described by which labels, so we are left to wonder. What is interesting about these results is that it does seem to prove that different suppressor designs of roughly similar size can give substantially different degrees of gas blowback. Also, the preliminary proof of concept testing from April of 2016 appears to prove that “gas busting” charging handle designs can considerably reduce the gas blowback perceived by the shooter. Perhaps most importantly, however, the testing suggests that the gas blowback problem with suppressed firearms can be solved through proper design of the suppressor and the charging handle, which is good news for military planners looking to move towards an all-suppressed rifle fleet in the future."

[alamo5000]

The data. (In PDF format)

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2017/armament/Jacob19270.pdf

[fledge]

MAC did a video recently comparing sound and blowback between OSS and Dead Air. OSS is louder at the muzzle but quieter at the shooter's ear because they mitigate more gas out the front. I wouldn't be surprised if that was "Suppressor A." The video emphasis was on sound levels at the ear. Gas correlates to that.

[Slippers]

MAC did a video recently comparing sound and blowback between OSS and Dead Air. OSS is louder at the muzzle but quieter at the shooter's ear because they mitigate more gas out the front. I wouldn't be surprised if that was "Suppressor A." The video emphasis was on sound levels at the ear. Gas correlates to that.

That video is worthless for a comparison between the two cans because they used completely different host weapons. There's no way of knowing if one or the other was overgassed in terms of barrel port size, causing it to unlock faster. The dead air host had a gemtech sbc, but if the gun was super overgassed then that means a huge amount of gas would be vented out the ejection port, and unlocking may have still been too quick.

[fledge]

I was disappointed they used different hosts. My takeaway was with the OSS itself being quieter at the ear than the muzzle for a reason.

[0uTkAsT]

There's little doubt in my mind the OSS can was "suppressor A", but I wish they would have specified. Especially in the case of the charging handles... the world wants to know which CH was "B", though I'm surprised they even tested that Falcon 37 abortion [BD]

In any event, I'm glad this is a "thing" now, so more quantitative analysis can be done in the future.

[alamo5000]

There's little doubt in my mind the OSS can was "suppressor A", but I wish they would have specified. Especially in the case of the charging handles... the world wants to know which CH was "B", though I'm surprised they even tested that Falcon 37 abortion [BD]

I will be willing to bet that if they try many different suppressor designs they will get even better results. I have always been sort of curious about reflex suppressors myself. I am pretty fascinated by the whole suppressor thing now.


In any event, I'm glad this is a "thing" now, so more quantitative analysis can be done in the future.

Exactly.