SKORPION VS SCORPION: BATTLE OF THE ORPIONS
It’s no secret that we at Calibre Magazine have a real weakness for pistol calibre carbines, submachine guns, and every variant thereof. We’re perfectly aware of their downfalls, we know all the ballistic arguments, and we don’t need any more hate mail.
But there’s this 1980s charm to them we can’t get past. And take the most outrageous of all the great submachine guns, the Vz. 61 Skorpion, chambered in the essentially pointless .32 ACP, known in Europe as the 7.65mm Browning. Why? Whose idea was this? Well, technically, the idea was Miroslav Rybář’s, in 1959, and the reason for the tiny cartridge was that at the time, that was what the Czechoslovakian security forces issued. But despite their obvious drawbacks, Skorpions rock us like a hurricane.
If you’d have expected the original Skorpion to lead nowhere, especially after attempts to adapt its fascinating recoil system to larger calibres went poorly, you probably had a lot of company. It’s a weird little machine pistol that few can explain well, and that doesn’t usually make for the beginning of a significant branch of the evolutionary tree.
And yet CZ couldn’t stop tinkering with it. Even as other manufacturers moved away from submachine guns, as police forces transitioned from classic options like the Heckler & Koch MP5 to compact carbines, CZ toyed with variants of the design, searching for something that checked all the right boxes of compact, reliable, and effective. And the third iteration may be the one: the CZ Scorpion Evo 3, a railed-up, ergonomic, action movie henchman prop of matte black polymer and steel, chambered in the popular and ballistically proven 9mm Parabellum.
How does the modern rendition relate to the original? We don’t even know. But we know how to find out: take one of each and go to town, Calibre Magazine style. And that’s how we came to get our hands on the Orpion sisters: SC and SK... and pit Skorpion vs Scorpion. Which one gets the marriage proposal? Read on.
Badass Micro: the Vz. 61 Skorpion
These days, it’s easy to think that the intransigent, rioting, peevish left wing is unprecedented in its ignorant opposition to fundamental freedoms, but the reality is that it used to be quite a bit worse. Back in the 1960s and 70s, you pretty much had to declare allegiance to the USSR to get a job at a liberal arts college, and at that time they actually had concrete examples spread over half of the northern hemisphere of just how stupid that entire philosophy was. But no matter: far left terrorism was extremely hip at the time, and even in the one place where you could literally look across the street and see how much worse things could be, divided Berlin, there were “radical chic” terrorist movements devoted to advancing communism, the most famous of these being the Red Army Faction, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
Groups like Baader-Meinhof, being of course the Utopian, altruistic people that political radicals always believe themselves to be, focused primarily on blowing things up, shooting people, and robbing banks. And in those days, you could not possibly be cool while carrying out a people’s liberation action (sponsored by those champions of liberation, the East German secret police) if you didn’t have a Vz. 61 Skorpion.
We’re not entirely sure why these were so popular with the 1970s cafe assassins, but they were. As noted, the 7.65mm Browning is pretty mediocre at the best of times, and with the primitive terminal ballistics available at the time, they would have been pretty poor performers on human targets. Certainly bursts on full auto must have sounded fearsome: the cyclic rate is adjustable but typically tuned to between 850 and 900 rounds per minute, which makes for an impressive staccato buzz that might be inherently appealing to Marxists, considering their apparent penchant for things that sound great at first, but didn’t work well in the real world. But the Skorpion is a fascinating piece of history: it’s pure blowback, relying on the mass of the bolt and the return springs to hold it in place during firing. Ordinarily, blowback guns are known for their harsh recoil, but the use of the .32 ACP round meant that bolt mass could be reduced, and in fact in rapid fire the Skorpion is incredibly stable. Handing the Vz. 61 to new shooters, and smaller shooters, is universally entertaining: they love the negligible recoil and ease of use. It’s also tiny, so the ability to deliver a burst of automatic fire from an easily concealed weapon may have had some strategic value for its users, perhaps increasing its value as a propaganda tool. This extraordinarily compact profile is derived from a combination of unique features: the bolt carrier partially shrouds the barrel, for example, allowing for increased mass without adding to the length or bulk of the receiver, and the recoil is managed partly by a curious inertial dampener tucked into the grip.
The damping mechanism is clockwork genius: the bolt actually locks back on every shot when it reaches its maximum rearward travel, activating a cam which simultaneously hooks the bolt as it drives a small weight downwards in the grip, which is then sent back up with a spring and returns the cam to its resting position, unlocking the bolt and allowing it to travel forward to chamber the next round. Adjustments are possible within the mechanism to control the rate of fire in full automatic mode, a feature sadly unavailable to Canadian users. The experience of firing the Skorpion improves the faster it goes; it’s not until the user begins to rail off the rounds at maximum speed that the stability in rapid fire becomes apparent. It feels like holding a power drill: tiny, controlled motion that hardly takes the shooter off target at all. It’s possible to approximate the experience if your split times are fast enough; Calibre has a staff member who can do 6 rounds a second with the Skorpion and while it’s less than half the cyclic rate, with 5 round magazines, well, that’s as good as it’s going to get.
But let’s not forget some of the more important factors in the appeal of the Skorpion: the wire stock that folds overtop? So awesome. Although, unfortunately, sized for the kind of people who would fall to a .32. But this is the ultimate machine pistol and you don’t realize its value until you run it really fast. Then it’s actually scarily easy to crack off a mag into a big ragged hole, while going full cyclic. And wait…if you had standard, 20 round magazines, isn’t that the equivalent of shooting something twice with SSG buckshot out of a 12 gauge? Nobody’s arguing the effectiveness of that round, so we’re just going to absurdly declare that the Vz. 61 Skorpion makes sense, and if you argue we’ll put our fingers in our ears and shout things about the proletariat until you go away.
Darwin Takes Over: CZ Scorpion Evo 3
Well, the days of the Vz. 61 couldn’t last. It was too weird; Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof hung themselves in their cells, the Israelis got Carlos the Jackal, and Jeff Cooper developed the 10mm Auto, destroying Communism forever. Perhaps as a result of their personal experience with totalitarian regimes, however, the citizens of former Soviet states adapted quickly to freedom and kept on designing firearms, often perfecting designs which were then made available to private citizens. Never again, comrades: excellent work.
The Czechs in particular leapt ahead, recognizing the philosophical value of firearms as well as following through on a particular cultural inclination towards mechanical excellence. The CZ-75, already found in the hands of police and military organizations around the globe, developed from a blunt service pistol into a dominating force in international shooting competitions, and the Skorpion went from being a quirky footnote of stamped steel and brutal forgings to an oh-my-god-it’s-in-James-Bond-movies submachine gun.
Handling the Evo 3 is interesting. It’s a radically different gun than the Skorpion. Far from its micro machine pistol beginnings, it’s now a briefcase-sized SWAT gun. In place of the original’s stamped steel safety that hooks into a grinder cut to hold it in position, there’s an ambidextrous polymer safety with multi-coloured position indicators. In place of the crude mag release (which, to be fair, does line up perfectly with the user’s thumb if the mag is grabbed with the left hand) there is now one of the best mag releases we’ve ever seen, activated by the trigger finger and located at the front of the trigger guard, which engages by pressing it forward and which positively launches empties out of the magwell. Where once were rough but effective irons, as long as your expectations weren’t too high, are now rail-mounted sights, in this case fore and aft of a DI Optical red dot. The stock still folds, but now it swings to the side, and the length of pull is adjustable on the fly. The charging handle is now really a handle, not just weird little nubs, and it’s non-reciprocating. The ejection port is in a normal location, tossing brass off to the right in a predictable manner, instead of off the ceiling and into the shooter’s head. About the only features that haven’t changed are the blowback operation (although the strange dampener is gone) and the location of the magazine well. Quite an update.
But, although it wasn’t apparent at first sight, there’s more 61-era heritage left in the Scorpion Evo 3 than meets the eye. The trigger group is functionally similar, just much more refined. On field stripping them together, similarities in the bolt carrier system jump out that are more fundamental than the differences. Sure, it’s now one big recoil spring instead of two little ones, and it’s been located entirely behind the barrel, but it’s just a scaled up version, designed to take advantage of modern machining methods. Evolution, indeed.
And the Evo 3 has a lot to recommend it. We love the fact that the magazines are now actually reliable, straight from the factory, without needing a microscope to evaluate the feed lips. The non-reciprocating charge handle that locks upwards like an MP5. The ability to use ammunition that can, with just one round, actually put down something larger than an underweight marmot. In short, in every way other than size, the Evo 3 can’t really be compared to the Vz. 61; it’s a functional, modern, submachine gun, of course spayed and/or neutered to comply with Canadian gun laws (we’re going with spayed because we’ve decided we want to think of both of these guns as female.)
But which one do we love in this Skorpion vs Scorpion contest after spending some quality time together?
Scorpions: Love at First Sting
There’s just no other way to look at this: in every measurable way other than compactness, the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 is flat out superior to the original design. The recoil is definitely stouter, which is inherent in all blowback 9mm designs, but it’s markedly less than any rifle; even the heavy Brugger and Thomet APC 223 reviewed elsewhere in this issue has more recoil. The lightweight Scorpion is radically more maneuverable than any carbine, and the muzzle blast is far more tolerable than even a full-sized .223; cut an AR-15 down to a ten or twelve inch barrel and there is no comparison. An entry-sized AR will rattle out your fillings if used indoors or near range walls; the Scorpion, on the other hand, is pretty pleasant to use even in tight quarters. The Evo 3 makes a good deal of sense for a lot of practical applications, and it’s a really fun gun that will very easily put magazine after magazine in a six inch circle at 50 yards with no special effort. Shooting one with a red dot, like the DI Optical FC1 that this one came with, was just cheating.
And the Vz. 61 Skorpion? Definitely not as practical. Definitely not as reliable. Definitely shoots a weird calibre and prefers round nose FMJ bullets over everything else and definitely has primitive sights that are way too close to your face. But man, it is just so hot. And people love it. We couldn’t take it out of the case without people asking about it, and everyone who shot it loved it, just because it’s so weird and fun. There’s no recoil, there’s no muzzle blast, and the faster you shoot it the better it seems to run. But there’s no denying that most of the appeal is nostalgia.
If we could only have one…it’s a tough call. If we needed to use it for work, it’d be the CZ Scorpion Evo 3, hands down. It’s a solid, dependable pistol calibre carbine. But for a toy? We just can’t turn down the original Skorpion.
The report begins by claiming that 2,215 firearms were seized in the western region in 2014. Curiously, this figure is dramatically lower than the seizure figures reported in the RCMP Commissioner’s Report on Firearms, which claimed 10,311 firearms were seized in the same region the following year, and this phenomenon is repeated in the 2015 BC task force report. It alleges some 3,195 firearms were seized in BC in 2015, when the Commissioner’s report clearly indicates 4,874 firearms were seized in BC in the same period. For some reason, both reports examining the source of crime guns report dramatically less guns were seized than the Commissioner’s annual report indicates.
And as forbidden, communist fruit, the Kalashnikov rifles of course became the objects of unfulfilled Canadian desire. The appetite this whetted fuelled a market first for the SKS-D, which was simply the ubiquitous Simonov carbine only featuring the ability to take AK magazines, and then later the Czech answer to the AK47, the Vz.58, which the Czechs used despite standardization on the AKM one year later in the entire Soviet bloc outside then-Czechoslovakia.
The decision to mount the piston above the barrel necessitates some design compromises (although this can be said of all design features) most notably an increased offset between barrel and sight plane. This limitation is manageable, however, and red rifle development proceeded with this stylistic theme with great success in the Kalashnikov world, and left an entire generation of Canadian shooters craving a rifle with the iconic look of the red giant.
Enter the Type 81: a rifle virtually unknown in the west, due in large part to the 1989 ban on Chinese arms to the the United States. Before that ban took effect, just twenty Type 81 rifles were imported, and as such the American firearms industry has overlooked them entirely.
The pedigree of the Type 81 is certainly respectable enough: it is a modified Simonov design, intended to incorporate some of the capabilities of the Kalashnikov, a version of which (the Type 56) the Chinese were already manufacturing. But the effects of the Sino-Soviet split were felt not only in the sudden absence of Mao’s Little Red Book from the Moscow Times’ bestseller list: the cooling of relations between the two authoritarian states that began in 1960 left the Chinese feeling as though developing a homegrown arms industry would be a worthwhile endeavour, and as they had already learned to produce the AKM in the form of the Type 56, and the SKS as the Type 63, it seemed reasonable to apply the lessons in a new rifle, intended to finally modernize the army’s now wildly outdated doctrine of supplying officers with Kalashnikovs, and regular troops with the rather unwieldy and slow SKS.
The design work was left to weapons designer Wang Zi Jun, who chose to retain the short stroke piston and long receiver of the SKS, not to mention the last-shot bolt hold open. From the Kalashnikov he took design elements such as the guide rod and return spring, as well as the brute simple and easy to machine two-lug bolt, although the bolt carrier more closely resembles that of the Dragunov SVD.
The trigger mechanism was in part taken from the Kalashnikov design, but the safety/fire selector switch was relocated to what we would now consider “conventional” placement: above and behind the trigger, on the port side of the rifle, an improvement on both the SKS and the AK safety placement. Most western users, however, will find the selector positions disorienting at first: with the selector pointing forward, the gun is ready to fire. Safe is 180 degrees away, so if you’re used to the now-ubiquitous AR15, be prepared for a period of adjustment.
Slung underneath the front sight is a bayonet mount which struck the designers as an improvement over that the Type 56 AK simply because the Type 81 could be fitted with a detacheable knife-type bayonet rather than the permanently mounted spike that had been featured on previous Chinese rifles.
The rear dust cover lifts out after you push in a button at the rear of the assembly with the tip of a bullet, or something else, and from there you simply pull the charging handle rearward and start lifting out components. Peering down into the receiver, we note that the mainspring is another stranded design. The guide rod assembly holds a captive recoil spring of conventional design but again the spring steel seemed unusually good for a Chinese gun; we suspect that the Type 81 is benefiting from a (possibly unintentional) mil-spec here: parts which required no alterations to be used in the export semi-automatic version may simply be taken straight from the military assembly line. While the Type 81 is no longer the primary service rifle of the PLA, it is still in use by reserve units and police forces so the ability to build to combat standards is certainly still there.
As Chairman Mao famously observed, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. But we’re a civilized lot, and have gotten old and comfortable and lost our revolutionary aspirations. We just want to know if kinetic energy will grow out of the barrel of this gun, and how.
We’ll also note that one of the interesting things about this round of testing is that there is almost no difference in bullet weights across the entire spectrum of available ammunition: the heaviest two, which were Remington Core-Lokt and a Barnaul soft point, were two grains heavier than the lightest, which was…almost everything else. American Eagle FMJ lists bullet weight at 124 grains; every other bullet was 123 grains. This may account for the minimal accuracy differences; there’s just not that much difference between the suppliers other than consistency of manufacturing. The short stroke gas piston combined with the fairly long bolt travel may tend to obscure differences in powder, as well. But such as they are, let’s take a look at the numbers.
But most people who buy a Type 81 won’t be looking for precision; they’ll be looking for a unique commie blaster with a legacy that ties it to the mighty Kalashnikov. If that’s what interests you, this is certainly your huckleberry. And we believe the rifle is capable of reliable performance: we had issues with double feed malfunctions (which can be particularly vicious in a rifle which has imported some Kalashnikov features; the shape of the ejection port and the large contained area above the ejection port make it a tough gun to clear) but they were limited to a specific magazine, all others working without incident.
The quirky sights mounted to the Type 81 prototype, which led to our belief that the instruction manual must an entire chapter of Mao’s Little Red Book, will in fact not be more confusing and erroneous than Marx’s Theory of Surplus Value. No, the production sights are actually fine. We’re almost disappointed in this because the experience of trying to figure out why our first targets were totally unscathed was actually a scene of much hilarity. Sadly, buyers will be deprived of this memory, as both front and rear irons on the production version are fine.
But all these factors also combined to create some innovative tactics and weapons. Lessons learned on the beaches and mountains of many of those tropical islands are still used by today's troops. In fact, some could argue that it was during the battles in the Pacific Theatre that the US military began to open their eyes to the effectiveness of greater volumes of fire; a lesson that would eventually end up with the adoption of the modern 5.56 NATO cartridge and AR-15 rifle. The scarcity of hard cover and overabundance of concealment in the Pacific's jungles meant maneuvers often required withering covering fire… a strategy that would end up becoming one of the hallmarks of the first war to see widespread use of these new tactics: Vietnam.
But, long before Eugene Stoner was working on the rifle that would be used in that war, some equally creative members of the US Marine Corp were working on a stop-gap solution to their own problem. Armed with M1 Garands, Thompson submachine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, and Browning 1919A4 machine guns, the simple (and undoubtedly surprising) reality was that the Marines were lacking in firepower: They just couldn't put rounds downrange fast enough. The BAR, although maneuverable, had a limited magazine capacity and possessed a cyclic rate of roughly 650 rounds a minute. The belt-fed 1919A4 solved the capacity problem, but still only put between 400 and 550 rounds downrange per minute. And of course the Thompson simply lacked the punch of the rifles and machine guns, and the Garand was semi-automatic only.
And so, on November 1st, 1943 as the Marine Corp came ashore on Bougainville Island at the commencement of what would be a year-long campaign to liberate the island, AN/M2s were carried ashore and fitted into fixed defensive firing positions to secure the beachhead; the guns' spade grips and buffered aircraft mounts conspiring against their more active use.
Obviously, while that result was as good as could be hoped, the tool itself needed some improvement and so two Marine paratroopers took an AN/M2 and more extensively modified the gun, taking Colby's cue of fitting it with a bipod but taking further steps towards making the AN/M2 a proper man-portable machine gun. Step one was to trade the muzzle-mounted bipod for a proper folding barrel shroud-mounted bipod taken from a BAR. A BAR also volunteered its rear sight, to replace the AN/M2's aircraft sights. Finally, a Garand stock was cut in half and the buttstock portion fitted to the rear of the machine gun's receiver, and a trigger mechanism fabricated to replace the spade grip. The result was something of a visual abortion, but as they say in the military, if something is stupid but it works, it's not stupid. And so the AN/M2 "Stinger" was born.
As the Marines landed on Iwo Jima on February 19th, Stein used his Stinger machine gun to provide covering fire for his platoon, and repeatedly and purposefully exposed himself to enemy fire to reveal the position of enemy pillboxes and emplacements. He then used his own Stinger machine gun to eliminate several of the enemy positions, killing upwards of 20 enemy soldiers. Unable to defeat one of the pillboxes with his Stinger machine gun alone, Stein directed the fire of a 75mm gun borne on a half-track; having his Stinger shot out of his hands twice during his efforts. Throughout the battle, Stein ran back to the rear no less than eight times to get more ammunition for his Stinger, carrying a wounded Marine on his back each time. Stein would be killed a few days later on March 1st when he volunteered to lead a group of Marines on a mission to eliminate a complex of pillboxes, but was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on February 19th.
Obviously the largest component to the Stinger machine gun build was the actual AN/M2 itself… and luckily for Paul, the museum had not one, but two on hand to choose from. From there, it was a matter of referring to original photographs in order to replicate the stock, trigger, and sights. Although a simple enough modification, the conversion was no small process, and was made all the more difficult by the risks involved. An aircraft machine gun firing 1300 .30-06 rounds per minute is not a gun you want to have a problem with.
Appearing in the sixth and final episode of 
But the Tavor's manufacturer, Israel Weapon Industries, lost no time in announcing a new model which would address some issues, and also appear in a more svelte form, for while the original had been short, it had also been rather chunky in appearance (not that anyone would expect a bullpup to win a beauty contest). But for those who wanted a better, more compact Tavor, help was on the way in the form of the Micro Tavor or MTAR-21, which would be known on the civilian side of the street as this: The X95.
But of all the demands placed on the new model, every one paled in comparison to the trigger issue, so let's address that now: The old one was terrible. The new one is good, with a clean break, a positive reset, none of the grit or slop of the original and half the weight. This feels like a clean, smooth, 5 pound trigger. It's a bit longer than an AR trigger but not intrusively so. For a bullpup, the trigger is great.
Finally, the entire package was made slightly more modern, with a simplified stock, a bit less weight (about half a pound less) and improved ergonomic features. Those included a steeper grip angle, some very nifty integral backup iron sights, and increased modularity in the form of an integrally railed handguard.
The X95 is not designed with extreme accuracy in mind, and our expectations were not especially high as we set up our lead sled on the bench. Our first realization was that the standard rifle rest was not designed for bullpups, and the only way the Tavor would fit in the rest was on an awkward cant, which made the process a little fiddly. Additionally, dropping the magazine after each group required us to forcibly remove the carbine from the rest, as the magazine itself would wedge tightly against the frame. And, of course, the rest itself had insufficient rear elevation adjustment to get the point of aim down low enough to hit targets at a reasonable height. So despite our massive 15-60x reference optic, we set the distance at 50 yards, hoping to get results that at least seemed passably accurate.
In fact what we saw was that at worst, with the rifle awkwardly placed into our rest, the rear of which was sitting on a pair of PMags to get the elevation right, the X95 shot 4.29 MOA, using Remington Hog Hammer ammo and, oddly, Hornady TAP. But from there it got better. A lot better.
Interestingly, there appears to be no particular correlation between bullet weight and accuracy; the most accurate bullet was 55 grains and the least accurate was 75 grains, but the heavy 77 grain Noslers were right in the middle of the pack. In general there appears to be a slight advantage to lighter weight projectiles but it's difficult to say if that's a function of the rifle or of the particular ammunition we had. It’s also worth noting that the X95 is a long-stroke gas-piston operated rifle, so pressure curves will play a big role in operating the rifle’s action in a consistent and repeatable fashion; a key component in developing or finding an accurate load.
Having satisfied ourselves that the X95 is perfectly adequate in regards to accuracy, we had to admit that the rifle was better than we'd initially thought. The new backup iron sights work well and fold down into the top rail when not in use, and while the Tavor isn't well suited to lead sleds, that's not where we do most of our shooting anyway. Treated as an infantry rifle, it makes quite a bit of sense. Offhand shooting was quite easy on account of the added rearward balance of the X95 compared to the standard Tavor, and the slight loss of mechanical accuracy relative to a platform like the AR-15 is offset by the ease with which the user can keep the rifle steady. We also liked the more vertical grip, compared to the standard Tavor's rakish profile.
Downsides include those which are inherent to the bullpup design: reloads are slower than conventional magazine changes, for example, and the bolt release is in an awkward spot on the bottom of the stock. We found that empty PMags were not as likely to drop free when the mag release was pressed, although aluminum magazines worked well. The charging handle seems strange to us: when the bolt is locked back, it doesn't seem to have anything to prevent it from sliding back and forth willy-nilly, and when the bolt is in battery, the handle itself flops oddly on the bolt handle stub. And, of course, the trigger guard design is something you either love or absolutely despise. We're a little unnerved by it, as we're used to using the bottom of the trigger guard as an upward hand stop when we're not actively shooting and our trigger fingers are stretched out on the side of the receiver. Losing that hand stop makes the trigger seem extremely exposed to us, and we'd prefer a conventional trigger guard (which exists, and they're modular and easily swapped out, if you can get one.)