These aren’t AK-47s, the cheap and ubiquitous automatic weapons favored in the third world because, while crude, will shoot under almost any circumstance. No, Heckler & Koch MP5s, the standard submachine gun of security services throughout the world, including our own special forces in all branches of the military.
This isn’t a black market gun. While people living in caves in Afghanistan can and do manufacture Kalashnikovs by hand, the MP5 is a sophisticated weapon requiring high tech metallurgy and other technologies for their production.
Pakistan Ordinance Factories manufactures these weapons under license from HK, and they are under the control of the Pakistani Ministry of Defense.
Use sterile arms if you don’t want your sponsors identified too readily. If the source is obvious, use them anyway. Even Special Forces supplied BARs, Stens, etc., to the Montagnards.
ruh row …. not looking good for Pakistan.
Of course in Canada we’re dealing with more important things. Like what amounts to the overthrow of the gov’t through separatist backing.
Interesting picture, but what is the context? Who took it? How do we know the terrorists used these weapons?
Yes the MP5 could be called more “sophisticated” than an AK variant. However, AK’s aren’t so crude that you can just knock one up in a cave. And of course an AK firing 7.62×39 is far more deadly than an MP5 shooting 9mm luger, but that is besides the point I guess.
If the terrorists were in fact using these weapons, one does have to wonder where they got their hands on them. Of course, we can’t immedietly assume they came from the Pakistani government.
Questions that answer themselves
“After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.” Tom Freidman, NYT
The picture of the one captured terrorist while he was still running free in the train station shows him using an AKM, not an MP5; methinks AP got screwed up somewhere. I don’t doubt that Pakistan is involved at some level in this, but there’s no reason for them to give these wingnuts less-effective MP5s when there are boatloads of sterile AKs available that can’t be traced back to a Pakistani source.
A proper international gun registry would allow us to track these guns.
Do not underestimate the ak as weapon of choice, even seasoned military veterans will drop an m16 and grab an ak.This is a fact.
The weight of three days worth of ammo might be significant in the selection of AK vs MP5.
I am a seasoned military veteran, and I much prefer the M16, especially the Canadian made variant.
I would agree that size was probably a factor. The ammo for an mp5 takes up 1/3 the space of an AK. The weapon itself takes up 1/2 the space. These people are well funded, so they wouldn’t have to rely on Pakistan to supply them. If there’d been several hundred weapons siezed, I’d suspect a military source. A few mp5s wouldn’t be hard to get from the black market.
Why Pakistan? Why not look at Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, or Libya? They all have access to the same weapons, either in their military, or police force. I saw soldiers carrying the same weapon on a beach in Mexico. Making a link on that piece of evidence is extremely weak.
I wish mommy government would let me have an FAL…
As pointed out by dp above, this one fact that Pak has a license to manufacture the MP5 in facility(s) under control of the Pak government is pretty much meaningless.
All we can infer is that these well-trained assailants chose a weapon often selected by professionals. What’s the big surprise here? If I’m a journeyman framer and need to depend upon my tools, I’d be selecting the best framing hammer to carry out my daily work too.
And I’m sure if a carefully trained group of terrorists, supported by a sufficiently bankrolled benefactor is in need of a few MP5’s, I’m sure they have ways of acquiring them, especially in the Middle East.
The bigger question that should be asked is, if these guys were skilled and well-trained, which by all accounts it would seem to be, then why is this one guy that survived apparently singing like a canary? Seems like a detail or two might have been missed in his training – like say, that suicide-clause-if-about-to-be-captured bit. Or maybe there’s something else going on. Though Occam’s razor suggests otherwise.
I think people, especially the press, think that doing this type of thing requires a lot of training. Unfortunately it really is not that difficult. I could teach someone how to use an smg in ten minutes and they could be really good with it in a few hours. Does it really take that much training to walk into a hotel full of unarmed people and kill them?
Minuteman – its not just that all they had to do was point a weapon and pull the trigger. Reading accounts of the incident suggest that they were well-prepared with not only a carefully organized infiltration plan into Mumbai, but also all were physically fit, and may have been using meds or other substances to enhance their ability to fight the ill-equipped Indian forces sent against them.
minuteman- What’s your take on the Indian police freezing up when confronted? Would that happen here if the Mounties faced an attack like that? What about city Cops? I have a feeling our guys would put up a serious fight.
DP, I honestly don’t think our police would do any different. The police and military mind sets are completely different. A swat team when encountering a hostage situation will secure the scene and then try and negotiate. As I recall this is what happened at the Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson Collage. The military response is completely different. You see this in the actions of American forces in Iraq. Military forces are in the business of attacking and destroying their enemies. Police forces, due to the nature of their job, don’t have enemies, they have suspects who they are trying to apprehend.
Proves nothing really.
The arms markets in Peshawar are full of skilled armsmakers who make lots of copies of well known guns, many of them are as good as the originals.
It all makes no difference in the end. This was the work of Muslims doing their obligation to spread Islam by the sword as outlined inumerable times in the Qur’an, Sunna and Sura’s.
Until such time as the Muslims themselves are prepared to cleanse their books (and they can’t because they are considered unchangeable), then we can fully expect the 1400+ year old world war of Islam on Dar al Harb [non-Islamic world] to continue unabated.
the Ummah itself is unable and unwilling to take this on. Do you think anybody else is going to try? A cartoon and riots and murders proliferate.
Imagine trying to change the Qur’an.
We’re stuck with Islam. The best we can do is to manage the damage they will do. If that means a new Inquisition to convert them to Ahmadiyya (actually a peaceful sect that has removed these passages) and a moratorium on immigration then so be it.
It probably boils down to substantial rogue elements in the Pakistani security and military rather than organized planning at the top government levels. There is little for Pakistan to gain from India being pissed off at them, but obviously there could be financial, ideological or religious reasons for rogue elements to co-operate. They would calculate that such attacks would not be quite enough provocation to start a war, especially a nuclear war, but in some cases that might not deter them either.
The western world (which seems to include India now) is going to be stuck with this nightmare for generations to come unless we come up with a better response (some would say we are almost doing nothing about terrorist attacks other than appearing to search for bases). We probably need to make the more moderate Islamic states and their leaders more directly accountable for terrorism on a collective basis, perhaps some sort of escalating “asset removal” program on an annual basis would get their attention where diplomacy clearly has not. I would suggest one billion dollars of assets per 100-death terrorist event in 2009, escalating threefold each year after that, and reaching blockade of Persian Gulf and Mecca proportions by 2012. And I would make a big deal about restarting neutron bomb technology development with lots of hints about how nice the world would become without the terrorist problem, adding details like “there could be as many as a billion terrorists, how are we supposed to know?”
Or we could just roll over and play dead and hope they go to another planet.
the bad rep the M-16 got was due to the fact that when the USA army was told they were going to use it, they generals insisted that the same supplier that supplied they “other” ammo be used, this was “dirty” ammo, and it was the carbon from this dirty ammo that was causing many of the mal functions of the M-16. You don’t here about the same problems with the AR-15, the same weapon but a non military version, and non military ammo
now as to the H&K, it’s an excellent in close weapon, and as was mentioned, the ammo is much lighter, thusly more of it can be carried. this was a well planned mission thus such factors were considered
the machining of the weapon can trace were it was or was not manufacture, so we’ll find out eventually
and yes (to who ever mentioned it) the AK-47 can and is manufacture in very crude facilities, this is even mentioned in the article. And I’ve heard from people who used to (in Hungary) manufacture these weapons and the ammo for them, in very back-woods shops.
Somebdoy needs to run a fact-check. I have seen that picture. It was on the BBC website but I can’t find it anymore.
That picture doesn’t tell half the tale. Behind the chair, there is a ‘black cat’ commando – a member of India’s elite National Security Guard. In a chair to the right of this chair, another black cat is sitting. Across from him, to the left of this chair, another black cat is seated. They are all unarmed. All their guns are lying on the chair.
The picture is taken in the lobby of one of the hotels. The BBC also ran another picture of an Indian commando using a HK MP 5. It is the weapon of choice for Indias commandoes.
Yes, Gunner. The photos I saw of the gunmen seemed to show men carrying AK47 or AK74 weapons. I didn’t see any H&K weapons. The H&K model basically shoots a souped-up 9mm pistol cartridge and the empty brass I saw in pictures was from a rifle. Not to say there weren’t 9mm H&K’s in use.
“What’s your take on the Indian police freezing up when confronted? Would that happen here if the Mounties faced an attack like that? What about city Cops? I have a feeling our guys would put up a serious fight.”
dp, you obviously don’t know what happened. Let me fill you in. For what its worth, I have been briefed by foreign observers who have been writing the official reports for their governments.
Firstly, the Indian police is notoriously underequipped. The guns most of the Indian police were using were .303s- WWII vintage. Within the first minutes of the attack, three top cops were killed. One was the head of the police – killed while rushing to the scene. The anti-terror Squad chief was shot dead en-route to the scene. He was ambushed. The most celebrated sharpshooter in the police was also taken out within minutes of the attack – again the victim of an ambush of sorts. The police didn’t freeze up – despite the break in the chain of command, they neutralized half of the terrorists in the first half hour.
For what it is worth, the BBC website has CCTV footage of a policeman, armed with a .303 taking on the AK 47 armed terrorists, and succeeding in forcing them to seek cover while civilians ran for safety. Foolish bravery, but bravery all the same. He probably saved 20 lives single handedly.
The terrorists walked into the hotels, and knew their way around. The distance between the hotel and the place they disembarked from boats. Under 50 meters. They used a side entrance, open for weddings. They didn’t use the main entrance, where police were posted. They didn’t spend their time waiting in the lobby for the police to come. The police responded fast enough – hundreds were evacuated in the first couple of hours – 14 policemen lost their lives. Just to give you an idea of the carnage, 40 people were massacred in one restaurant alone – in mere minutes. No police in the world – Canadian or otherwise could have stopped it.
The Marine Commandos were first on the scene. The National Security Guard – India’s elite trained for this, only arrived in the early morning, hours later. This has been blamed on the poor response time of the Cabinet Committee on Security. The NSG could not be deployed without its approval – because foreign citizens were involved.
This was a massive intelligence failure, and a colossal political failure, but nobody in India has had a bad thing to say about the conduct of the armed forces. That is remarkable, seeing as it was mostly Indian lives that were lost.
There is a tendency to see the Indians as a third world country with third world armed forces. From experience, I can say this is not the case. Their counter-terrorist and counter-insergency units are amongst the best in the world – regularly tested in Kashmir and Eastern India. Their mountain warfare school is the best in the world – American and British troops are delegated there. The Marcos and NSG recently held exercises with the Americans, and it was a pretty even affair. The navy and Air Force are better equipped than most western countries. India is spending heavily on defence these days.
Nor are the army units ill-equipped. The police isnt funded well, but the Army is. It is also a blooded and experienced army, one that won many plaudits for showing baffling bravery in the Kargil conflict, forcing Pakistani troops of the top off steep mountains.
Also worth noting is the tremendous bravery of the hotel staff of both hotels. No one deserted their post. They helped move civilians to safe areas. 200 dead (14 policemen and a commando) between a crowded railway station and two hotels with 5 restaurants directly accessible from the ground floor is the low end of what could have happened. And in at least one verified case,a staff member took a bullet while shielding a customer.
Just looked at some video on the BBc website, they are clearly not carrying MP5, but an AK of some type.
For those of you thinking about the photos of the terrorists carring AK’s, those photos are all from the train station attack. The station is a wide open place, where range would matter, and a rifle would make sense.
The guys attacking the hotels would be fighting in close, and would need a weapon with a high rate of fire and ammunition light enough for them to carry a lot of it. In this case an SMG would be preferable.
Looks like the comments section in the original thread are pointing out the guy is mistaken; perhaps this thread should be altered or removed until more clarity can be assured?
sarge here well what a lot of bull crap. all pics show themnm terrorists with AKMs and them mp5s belong to the indian security boys who like em cause they can penetrate their fellow troopers body armor like a m16 round but sarge digresses pof is selling those recievers right here in the old US of A only they is called patriots ordinance factory so white boys will still buy em . in fact it aint rocket science to make a hk weapon sarge has several g3 kits installed on mail order pof recievers ya just need a demilled kit(machine gun with reciever torch cut-available till recently fer as little as 200 bucks from shotgun news) and 140 dollar pof reciever and a hydralic press and a few brains. but never mind that cause why would the paki government want to get nuked by india which is still a possibility unless old conda-teetha rice can talk em out of it. no sarge thinks russia or china got the most to gain here or maybe some of them american neocons or maybe even isreal
sarge here sarge meant to say the mp5 can’t penetrate body armor unlike them m16 rounds especially them rounds with them AP penetrators
sarge there, you were doing fine till your last part
“or maybe even isreal”
You watch too many Tom Clancy movies.