Welcome to the Personal Defence Weapons Central !

Personal Defence Weapons (PDW) are among those “innovations” in the small arms sector of the 1990´s that attracted a lot of interest - next to the OICW, weapon add-ons and the so-called anti-material rifles. But there’s no homepage specialized on this subject and wide enough in scope available to provide a good overview about the subject - except this one.

You will find not only information about PDW but also about many different weapons (most submachineguns and pistols aside) that can be and were used for the same classic purpose of a PDW - self-defence for non-combat soldiers. Therefore, this page does not only include ’Western’ SCHV PDWs but also the forerunners in .30 Carbine calibre as well as several categories of weapons similar to PDWs.

As a start, I suggest that you start by reading the history chapter - unless you’re familiar with the small arms history of the 20th century.

So what is it all about? What’s the purpose when a company decides to design a “PDW”? OK, first of all they want to earn money - but why should a military spend this money?

The classic reasoning behind the “invention” of the PDW is that non-combat troops are hindered in their duties by a full-size (assault) rifle. A compromise between self-defence ability and ability to do the primary job seems to be advisable. To do their job, they shall get more compact and lighter weapons than riflemen. Furthermore, these weapons should in best case be so comfortable to carry that they are always carried and therefore available in every surprising firefight. Even if a driver hastily leaves his burning truck, the PDW should still be with him. To design such a weapon is no easy task for an engineer unless the requirements for effective range, body armour penetration and lethality of wound ballistics are far below what’s expected from an assault rifle. One reason why dedicated PDWs are not in widespread military service yet is that exactly so much trade-off was not tolerated. Weapons that are not dedicated PDWs are still much more widespread in use with non-combat troops and this is likely less due to the slow pace of equipment replacement than because of deficiencies of the existing dedicated PDWs as well as the PDW requirements themselves.

But not unlike the historical PDW forerunners (.30 Carbine (7.62 x 33 mm) calibre weapons) the dedicated PDWs have three further applications:

Police Weapons; these weapons can be used when the police needs more range and penetration than a shotgun, revolver or pistol has. They’re also a strong signal to civilians that the police is serious about controlling the streets.

Combat troops’ weapons; combat troops are notoriously overloaded and some of them simply do not want to carry a full (assault) rifle. Platoon leaders, mortar crews and combat medics for example are likely to accept the loss of firepower for less weight and size of their personal weapon. An alternative why they might use such a weapon is that someone in the bureaucracy believed that they should accept the trade-off, which is the less promising variant. Combat troops might also consider a very light and compact PDW as a backup weapon in addition to an assault rifle. Since the latest Iraq war, many soldiers claim that even the M4 is too long for effective use from vehicles and inside of buildings - PDWs are shorter and might fill this niche, too.

Commando troops’ weapons; commandos seem to have a tendency to favor light and short weapons (except their use of light machineguns) - their power and survivability do often originate more in training, doctrine, tactics and favorable situations rather than their weapon’s firepower, so this superficially surprising preference makes some sense. But they still need effective weapons, and some designs, however light and small, are simply not enough for them. No matter how professional they are or seem to be, combat experience can still cause a shift to more powerful calibres. Interestingly, the two most well-known dedicated PDW seem to have been designed with this ‘secondary’ application in mind since they can be fired with only one hand (for example while the user hangs on a rope), are frequently photographed with silencers, have integrated laser pointers and/or rails for many add-ons like magnifying scopes, red dot sights, lamps and such. These are definitively not cheap, basic, rugged weapons that are intended to be used exclusively by some hundred thousand ‘rear area’ soldiers in front of their monitors and such.

historical note:

When I visited the WTS Koblenz mseum in 2007, I found a smoothbore carbine “M 1821 UM” of 1831. This carbine was a modification of the then standard carbine specifically for logistical and medical personnel (not the mounted personnel which got sabers, but the personnel on foot). The design of weapons specifically for non-combat personnel is obviously no modern idea.

**NEW** Guestbook **NEW**

(That’s the place to leave hints, tips, critics and such stuff)

Author: Sven Ortmann aka “LastDingo”                                                                                     

2007-05-31: Added two new promising designs; Magpul PDR and VBR PDW Sidearm

2007-05-03: I completely overhauled the “’PDW’ submachineguns” page and re-titled it into “other guns” (the control surfaces on the left don’t offer enough space for a longer tile like “other relevant guns”...). Several weapon types were added to that page.

2007-04-29: added the Ruger AC-556F subcarbine. I really need to stop working on the apparently endless list of machine pistol and subcarbine models...next on the list is a major improvement of the section that’s called “PDW SMG” so far.

2007-04-24: added a Swedish project based on the Carl Gustaf SMG, a machine pistol from the DDR,  finished the Diemaco CQB entry, some typo hunting, website structure changing and other miniature improvements.

2007-04-11: added the AAI SPIW carbine spin-offs, better Colt SCAMP photo (in colour)

2007-03-29: Oops, I did it again ... mini update this time: I’m tired of searching through all the junk in the spam filter of my e-mail account, so I included a guestbook for test purposes here. Recent ideas of mine about this page: I want to include the famous Sten and Sterling submachineguns in the “PDW” SMG page, include more on the Diemaco CQB carbine and I’m thinking about including the weird Kriss V submachinegun. I’m still worrying whether it’s relevant at all. I bet I’ve missed at least a dozen types in the SCHV PDW, HP handguns and subcarbines chapters. These (and the 9x39mm and 7.62x33mm calibre weapons chapters) are the chapters that I try to complete while the others shall show only examples. There are for example way too many machine pistols to show all...

2007-03-27 : PP-2000 and SFQ 5,8 / Chang Feng updates, new article links, some scattered new links ... I’m working on adding the Diemaco CQB, but lack the specs of this subcarbine.

2007-03-19: Added Marshal Arms Assault Rifle project.

2007-03-18: DSA SA58 OSW, PP-3 and many scattered links added to the page. Also mentioned additional descendants of QSZ-92 and CZ2000.

2007-03-14: HK 416, Kel-Tec SU-16 and two articles on links page added

2006-11-27: GIAT 5.7 mm PDW added (has anybody photos/infos on the other weapons of that family?), some new links

2006-11-26: NORINCO Type 05 & KAC 6x35 PDW added, NORINCO SFQ 5,8 / Chang Feng updated, Rhineland arms link added to FN P90 entry.

2006-11-25: crashed Netobjects Fusion file repaired, access to domain management regained - now I can maintain the site...

2004-12-14: many detail improvements, added PDW 17 Libra

2004-12-05: first release - thanks to the previewers, I changed about a dozen details and got new ideas and material for further improvements

2004-11-29: preview version online

www.personaldefenceweapons.com

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