Canadian Military Dealing With More Problems With New Machine Guns

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The Canadian military is dealing with yet more problems affecting its brand new machine guns being built by Colt Canada.

In August, military sources alerted this newspaper to problems with the new C6 guns that resulted in 347 defective weapons being returned to the company for repair. The weapons are part of a $120-million deal with the firm in Kitchener, Ont., to build new C6A1 general purpose machine guns.

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During the repairs on those weapons, additional problems were found with the guns, the Department of National Defence confirmed to this newspaper. “Some production weapons had failed the belt pull testing, which ultimately resulted in the need to replace all the feed channels for weapons manufactured from 1 Oct 2020 to 1 Oct 2021, which represents a total of 1,391 weapons,” DND spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier noted in an email. “This component was slightly out of specification, and causing some weapons not to perform adequately during this live firing test.”

In July 2017, then Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the Canadian government would purchase 1,148 new C6A1 FLEX general purpose machine guns from Colt Canada. The contract was worth $32 million. In January 2020, the Liberal government announced it would spend $97 million buying another batch of C6A1s, some of which would be installed on armoured vehicles. In announcing the original contract, Sajjan said the new guns would improve the Canadian Army’s operational capability and would “help provide an advantage over potential adversaries.”

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DND noted that both Canadian Army leaders and the defence department’s procurement chief, Troy Crosby, believed the contract with Colt was providing value for tax dollars despite the ongoing problems. That is because “these issues are being fixed at no additional cost,” the department noted. “We remain confident that the improvements being put in place will result in the delivery of fully compliant weapons to Canada,” DND added.

Colt Canada’s Czech parent firm, the Ceska Zbrojovka Group (CZG), noted in a statement in August that “Colt Canada is working closely with the Government of Canada to address any technical issues identified with some of the machine guns it has delivered to the Canadian Armed Forces.”

In August, Colt Canada did not respond to questions about why more than 340 defective guns were provided to the Canadian military. Colt Canada did not provide comment on what changes would be put in place to prevent a repeat of the problems with the new C6 machine guns.

But, in response to the latest C6 problem, a Colt Canada lawyer sent a letter to this newspaper noting that, during routine testing, the firm had identified a concern with a part provided by another vendor. “The root cause was identified as an out of spec vendor-supplied component, known as the feed channel,” the letter stated. “Colt Canada has worked closely with this vendor and with the Department of National Defence to rectify the issue with this component for all future production. All weapons which were previously supplied with the affected component will be rectified in the field and, as such, this has had only a minimal impact on the deployment of the system.”

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The contract for the new guns was awarded to Colt Canada without competition under a federal government program to support Canada’s ability to produce military small arms domestically. Colt Canada has been deemed the country’s Small Arms Strategic Source and Centre of Excellence by the federal government.

The first deliveries of the C6A1 Flex general purpose machine guns began in late 2020, with final deliveries anticipated in 2023. DND did not say how many of the guns had been delivered so far.

The C6A1 FLEX machine gun is to be carried by soldiers and mounted on some Canadian Forces vehicles. Colt is to make another version of the C6 designed to be mounted in armoured turrets such as the Leopard Tank and the Light Armoured Vehicle fleet.

Small arms analysts have noted that the machine gun the C6 is based on is a tried-and-true design that is in service with militaries in more than 80 countries.

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