Apparantly since this wovie was filmed in Bulgaria they couldn't get US weapons to equip the actors. So instead they dressed up AKs to look like M-16s... these have to be the cheesiest things I've ever seen! They're passable from a distance, but totally laughable up close. Even the sniper rifle is a dressed up AK.
shareThe rifles were AR-180's dressed up to look like M-16's. It was pretty obvious from where the buttstock connected to the receiver. On an M-16, there is a straight line over the top of the buttstock and the receiver. On the AR-180, the buttstock connects to the receiver at a lower point, and the top of the receiver is therefor a little higher up.
http://www.world.guns.ru/assault/as36-e.htm
I believe that the sniper had a Zastava M76.
http://www.zastava-arms.co.yu/images/vojni/sniper/m76_engleski.htm
Thanks for the link. I've never even heard of those, let alone seen one before. I've served at several multi-national posts and never saw anyone carrying anything even remotely similar. I wonder where the studio acquired them...
Come to think of it, I saw another cheesy SciFi Channel movie that used very similar weapons. I wonder if some production company in Bulgaria has a stash of them somewhere.
They're definitely AK's, not AR-180s. The most obvious giveaways are the 5 or 10 round AK magazines in the magazine wells and the very distinctive selector lever on the right of the reciever. They went through alot of trouble to disguise them, and my guess is it was too much trouble to import weapons for the film, so they went with locally manufactured ones in Bulgaria.
shareThat would be my guess, too.
sharebut the military's standard weapons are now M-4's and M-16A2's....not M-16's
"Look at banner Michael!" - GOB
I've noticed these reconfigured AK's in a number of Sci-Fi Channel movies. You have to wonder if is really a lot cheaper than acquiring blank-firing replicas or even using Airsoft guns. It's really irritating to anyone who knows firearms. Also, the U.S. has no such armored cars.
shareWe always just called them "M-16s" when I was in, regardless of the actual model (started out with A1s, followed by A2s, A4s, and finally M-4s).
share