The Weapons of Black Ops 2: Fact and Fiction Part 1: Assault Rifles

This is my first blog post in "For Love of the Gun", and I'm gonna start off with a post about the thing that most recently re-sparked my love for military firearms. The newest installment of Call of Duty is set in the year 2025. Because of this, the makers have had to do predictions of where the world of military firearms is going. One thing I've always loved about Call of Duty games set in modern times is that they manage to find and include some of the most beautiful guns around. Every gun included in the Modern Warfare series has had just the right amount of Picatinny rails, and just looked down right intimidating and murderous. The same is true of Black Ops 2.I found myself intrigued by many of the guns included in the game. I knew that Black Ops 2 had tried to keep their weapons within reason of 13 years of firearm development, but I wanted to find out more about them. For the first installment in this set, I'll go over the assault rifles one by one and analyze the fact and fiction surrounding them.

First, the MTAR.

Any player of first person shooters has heard of the TAR-21 in some way, shape or form. The M in MTAR stands for Micro. IWI tradition is to produce mini and micro versions of their signature weapons (Micro Galil, Mini and Micro Uzi, Baby Eagle). To call the weapon as it is shown in Black Ops 2 the MTAR however, is inaccurate. The weapon referred to in the game as the MTAR is actually an IWI X95 "Flat Top". The X95 was once designated the Micro Tavor, but it's now its own weapon in the IWI product line. This weapon will get it's own gun showcase soon enough, but this is about picking apart the difficult ones, so we're moving on.

Next comes the Type 25.

 

This one's pretty easy, too. Inevitably if you played MW3, you're going to mistakenly call the Type 25 the Type 95, and for good reason. The type 25 is most likely just an ergonomically advanced version of the QBZ-95, the current Chinese assault rifle that has been featured in MW3 and Battlefield 3. The Type 95 was first produced in the year, you guessed it, 1995. Clearly Black Ops 2 would have us assume this rifle is the newest thing out of China, and is being produced in 2025, the year in which the game is set. Here's a picture so you can compare the two.

Third, the SWAT 556.

 I'm gonna make this short but sweet. This is a totally real weapon made by SIG. The SIG 556 is an assault rifle based on the Swedish military's treasured SIG 550. The 556 SWAT shaves a pound off of the classic model by redesigning the trigger housing, the magazine bay, and the flash suppressor. The irony is that the only difference between the 556 SWAT model and the 556 Classic is that the SWAT version features a quad-rail fore end. But as you can see, the game has is with the usual SIG fore end. I've posted the picture of the 556 classic which looks most like the weapon in BO2:

The fourth assault rifle unlocked is called the FAL-OSW.

 I was able to easily trace the roots of this gun in the real world, because the original name before the game was released was the SA58. The SA58 is a modernized carbine verion of the FAL. The "SA58 FAL OSW" is a select-fire carbine with quad rails that looks very similar to the one in the game. Oddly enough, when actually using the gun, the FAL OSW looks more like the real SA58, but in it's picture, it has a long barrel that looks more like the original FAL. Here's the SA58 OSW with an extended mag.

The next two aren't gonna get their own sections, or even their own pictures. They are the M27 and the SCAR-H. Both are well known guns that exist under the name given on Black Ops 2, and they'll most likely get their own gun showcases soon enough.

So moving on to the SMR:

This one was very hard to find, because it is almost entirely fictional, and plugging SMR into Google won't find you much more that Black Ops 2 itself. However, a weapon very close to this one does exist, which is a good thing, cause it is just damned intimidating. There's something a little stupid looking about a bullpup rifle, but this big clunker pulls the look off with aplomb. The SMR would seem to be based upon a reconfiguration of the M14 7.62 rifle called the Juggernaut. This is a little known kit that basically turns a shitty rifle from Vietnam into a ported, Picatinny rail riddled badass. This thing is pretty awesome, and my favorite Youtube sensation has already discovered and gotten his hands on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8iX8Lnogf4

The last rifle unlocked is the AN-94, which is so boring and easy to find information on that I didn't want to end on that. Instead I'm going to end on something exciting, the second to last weapon: the M8A1.

 The M8, as many of you know is based on the XM8. The XM8 was an experimental assault rifle looked at to replace the M4 as the poster child assault rifle of the US military. The project showed a lot of promise, and represented a viable replacement for the M4, but to the chagrin of many M4 haters and XM8 fans, the project was pushed back for what was thought to be indefinitely. In 2006, the army made a statement that it would be pushed back for at least 5 years and that there would be two interim firearms at least before the XM8 would be attempted to be phased in. In 2025, however, it's not entirely unlikely that this weapon will be taken on by the military, and Black Ops 2 seems to think it will be.