We’d heard Arsenal was coming out with a new pistol a while back thanks to some of our Russian readers, but we didn’t really have a good idea about what it was or what made it special. And we knew Arsenal’s conjoined 2011 side-by-side thingy wasn’t it. Check out this link to a Russian news program showing it off earlier this year — that’s all we had to go on. But now Arsenal has put up a website with all the juicy details in English so we can happily report what makes their first gun, the Strike One (will there be a Strike Two and – God forbid – a Strike Three?) special. And while it may look an awful lot like just another standard polymer frame pistol, this gun has one big advantage . . .
The Strike One has an EXTREMELY low profile compared to the competition. Yes, SIGs tend to be very tall guns due to the way they’re designed but these guys have made the Strike One such that the bottom of the barrel is practically flush with your knuckles. Can you say, ‘slide bite?’
What’s the benefit? For starters, that low bore axis greatly reduces muzzle flip. The closer you have the barrel to being in the center of your fist, the less upward movement you’ll experience when the gun goes bang. The muzzle flip in the video above looked only slightly worse than a Nerf gun.
The issue is that in order to get that barrel so close to your hand, they had to leave off a ton of material. This thing is so slimmed down that I actually have some concerns about its safety – concerns that only a torture test will alleviate (hint, hint Arsenal).
The Strike One semiautomatic pistol comes to the world scene in 2012 as a completely new and revolutionary gun. The Strike One semiautomatic pistol comes as the fastest, most controllable, most accurate and hard hitting service pistol available today on the world market. A full 5 inches cold-hammered barrel, along with a 75 Hrc surface Nitrite treatment for barrel, locking block, slide and operating pin industrial production standard, warrant safe and flawless use of the pistol in excess of 50.000 rounds. The frame of the Strike One was also engineered with exacting and unprecedented standards: the operating frame block, again made of the best 42CrMo4 steel, features long rails for total axial and torque control of all the moving parts, pins and springs. The frame itself, with it’s unique and true 3D hand grip (and not just “millings” on a flat surface) comes today as the only service pistol with a full fledged IPSC standard magazine insert “miniskirt”, allowing Special Operation and SWAT teams to work as if they were using a competition pistol. The trigger system of the Strike One, again like no other before, operates mainly on the horizontal plain, without raisers with variable and long, rubbery trigger pull, but with a crisp and short firing pin release: this is the secret, along with a lighting fast locking mechanism, behind the unbelievable semiautomatic firing speed of our pistol. Finally, thanks to the in-line barrel operation, the Strike One allows the development of a number of extremely innovative accessories, which base the designing and operative criteria on the “carrying in-line barrel”, such as for instance the LRC (Long Range Conversion).
According to the video, the gun will ship worldwide beginning in September. Needless to say, a T&E version is being requested but it might take some time to clear customs. Stay tuned.