During WWII, the US manufactured a million FP-45 “Liberator” pistols, at a cost of slightly more than $2 each (about $35 today by official inflation calculations, likely twice that by real inflation), to be air-dropped into occupied territory in Europe in order to arm the resistance unit. The goal wasn’t that it was a great weapon; the purpose was to be just good enough to kill an enemy soldier at point blank range and take HIS gun.

If the US (or anyone else) were to do something like that today, with slightly higher aspirations and the following specs for the RFP, what cartridge, materials, and basic design layout do you think would work best, and what would the unit price be if bought in bulk?

1. No regard for any particulars of firearms laws in any country; it’s a rebellion weapon.
2. Designed around a subsonic round, with integral suppressor.
3. Iron signs, but with simple rail or attachment points for optic
4. Simple construction, maintenance, operation
5. 5MOA accuracy or better at 100m

Thoughts?

Edit to Add: 2.A) Either integral suppressor or threaded for a suppressor. Obvious trade-offs on size, concealability, size with/without suppression. production costs. An integral sup will make a smaller package than a threaded barrel with the suppressor attached.

2.B) It may be designed to use a sub-sonic loading of a normally supersonic round, with a box of sub-sonic ammo to be shipped / dropped with it for initial engagements, but able to use local resupply. For example, 300 Blackout is “normally” available in subsonic, as is 10mm or 45 ACP, but  7.62x39mm Russian is not (normally ~124 gr at 2300-2450 fps), though  220 gr subsonic can be found. Obviously a “common” ammo type has tradeoffs over a “rare” ammo type.

Got case lube? Check.
Got spare decapping die pins? Check.
Got spare resizing die decapping rod assembly? Check.
Got spare resizing die decapping pins? Check.
Got spare resizing die bushing? Check.
Got crimped primer pocket swager? On order.
Got stuck case remover? Uhhhhhh…?

The one problem with saving up brass until you have a lot of it to do at once so you can batch process it is that you get all the problems you might experience all at once, too. So a bent decapping rod or pin or assembly I have spares on hand, but I had a piece of brass jump above the shellplate and get jammed WAY up into the resizing die (the press has pretty good leverage on the last part of the power-stroke), and no easy way to get it under the shellplate to pull to back out. There is such a thing as the “RCBS Stuck Case Remover”  but I did not have one on hand, and shipping at this time of year may not be lighting fast. After some fiddling about I managed to goober something together to extract the case without breaking anything too badly. But I realize I really need a proper garage workbench with a vice on it. Oh, well.

More than 2k pieces of brass resized, decapped, and trimmed to length so far, and quite a pile of brass shavings and used primers to show for it. More to go, yet, though. Then I get to sort it into piles, be interesting to see if I get a similar distribution to this spreadsheet.

I’ve accumulated a larger pile of assorted 223 brass than I thought I had (2.5k+), and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to reload it all. I have a Dillon progressive press, and don’t want to have to handle the brass more than I have to, but I also want to make some reasonably accurate loads for precision shooting, and some training / blasting / plinking ammo loads for general purpose. The brass is somewhat sorted, in that it is generally in batches that were accumulated together, and each bag is mostly a similar type, even if not all exactly identical. Most is commercial, some is 5.56 NATO military brass. It’s all been run through the polisher (corn cob media), but some of it has been stored a while and isn’t exactly shiny-new looking.

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