guys the future is now

this is the fn p90

why yes it has been selected by space force as the official weapon of the space marines to combat aliens

lol

ok so thats a lie but seriously look at this thing

thats some scifi shit right there

so what even is the deal

well it goes back to the late 80s

when nato was getting ready to upgrade their everything to defend against the new computerized commies of the future

during the 80s both sides were putting a lot of effort into fancy high technology for their soldiers

space stuff and lasers and techno everthings

a lot of it ended up being scrapped

but a handful of things went on to finish their development

one big thing nato was worried about was the idea that every single commie was going to have body armor on

now natos infantry were mainly using rifles in either 5.56x45 or 7.62x51

thatll go through soft armor pretty well

but again we run into the issue of the guys behind the lines doing auxillary support

i swear these fucking truck drivers

so like back in wwii we had that m1 carbine

but that was decades ago and it was basically abandoned

so now everybody was just using 9mm pistols

ug

nato had to reinvent the concept of the personal defense weapon

they wanted a shoulder fired weapon weighing like 6lbs

and a matchy match pistol weighing like 2lbs

the rifle had to hit at 200 m and go through level IIIa body armor

no small feat

guys IIIa stops .44 magnum at the muzzle

so fabrique nationale and heckler und koch both submitted designs for guns and ammunition

fn created the 5.7x28mm cartridge

hk made a similarly tiny 4.6x30

both rounds are designed to be tiny and very very fast to get through armor

nato looked at the designs and everybody said the 5.7 was the clear winner

except all the germans oops lol

so whatever nato didnt standardize and both designs are out there

but the offerings from fn are more widespread

the pistol fn made is the Five-seveN

it has a lot of little technical details that are interesting

but overall its much less of a departure from its contemporaries

meanwhile the p90 is unlike anything else

its fully ambidextrous

super short and light

everything is plastic

friggin everything

and its a bullpup

ok so first what is a bullpup

did i talk about this before

well nobody knows how the name came about

but it refers to designs where the action is behind the fire control group

so normally a rifle looks like this

but bullpups are like this

a specific definition could be something like

a bullpup is a weapon where the chamber is behind the fire control mechanism

this has pros and cons

but with the p90 the designers were trying very hard to keep it compact

it has to fit in armored vehicles and helicopters

like no longer than a mans shoulders are wide

and a bullpup is a great way of doing that

another thing they did to make it compact was their crazy magazine system

so normally a long magazine sticks out right

well they stuck it along the longest axis of the weapon

and it has the cartridges do this crazy twist right at the end

its pretty unusual

but as a result everything is super slick and compact

plus it holds like 50 rds

awesome

it has more slick features too

literally everything is ambidextrous

mag release charging handle safety selector you name it

even the ejection is special

the cases dump straight down out the back

and everything is super ergonomic which is why everything looks funky

it definitely seems like itd work well for somebody who needs something light and compact

but they dont train with all the time

and they need to just stay out of the way until suddenly holy shit theyre attacking us

but then the funny thing is it never did what it was supposed to

because the soviet union fell just as the p90 was coming out

but thats ok they still made them

they made probably less than 20000 so far

but they are often used by bodyguards

secret service

special forces guys

antiterrorism units

special police

and so on

one time back in 1997 these peruvian special forces guys used the p90 to take out hostage takers who were wearing body armor

the weapon worked well and helped save a bunch of people

kickass

now

we talked about the weirdness

but how does it operate

well its actually just a simple blowback mechanism

surrounded by plastic parts

it field strips stupid quick

push a button and it falls apart

crazy

the original version had an optical sight permanently mounted to the weapon

they did this a lot in the late 80s

but soon people realized we need rails on everything

if you want to buy one

they do sell long barreled versions in semi auto

and you can get a shorter barrel to make it a semiauto sbr if you want

theyre not super duper plentiful

but they arent impossible to find

if you need one make it happen

live the dream dude

as for ammo

they stopped importing the fancy ammo originally sold and made to go through armor

and nowadays anything you find is probably specifically designed to not pierce armor well

what are they afraid of hmm are the police contemplating misbehavior

but regardless the 5.7 round is pretty cool and people are still actively working on it

so itll be around for sure

and even tho it didnt get to really fight commies

it has definitely earned its spot as the creator of the new style of pdws

any pdw these days studied the p90 hard

its a super cool gun

and really

who wouldnt want to be a space marine

im doing my part

lol

pew pew

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