T65 (Type 65)

History

To fill their national arsenal with indigenous designs, Taiwanese engineers developed the T65 (Type 65), an automatic assault rifle based on the American Armalite series, with several variants to meet local military needs. The T65 served as the standard service rifle for the Taiwan Army and Marine Corps from 1976 to 1997, when it was officially replaced by the "T86" series.

Operators of the T65 outside Taiwan include El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Jordan, Libya, Liberia, Panama and Paraguay. The design of the T65 is credited to the Joint Logistics Command (Xingjun Arsenal, Taiwan), and production is carried out by the Joint Service Force's 205th Armory.

Visually, the T65 proved to be a highly traditional automatic rifle, equipped with gas-operated and rotary bolt action, firing the world-renowned 5.56x45 from a curved, detachable 30-round (standard) magazine mm NATO cartridge. Externally, the design is very similar to the US model Armalite/M-16. The main differences are the new ergonomically designed shoulders, improved iron sights (located in the front and rear positions), and elongated perforated handguards on the cylinder/barrel assembly. The T65 also lacks the M16's signature carrying handle (though prototypes have been seen).

Otherwise, the system retains the same receiver with integrated pistol grip and magazine, as well as the Armalite/M16 series, and is loaded via the same T-grip on the rear of the upper receiver. The absence of carrying handles allows for the mounting of various optics, while the rings under the shoulder rest and under the barrel allow the use of a shoulder strap.

The gas cylinder, like the M16, is located above the barrel assembly, and the feed assembly can accommodate STANAG-style magazines that exceed the aforementioned 30-round limit. The total weight when unloaded is 3.31kg, the barrel length is 990mm, and the barrel unit length is 508mm. The rate of fire is specified as 700800 rpm. An optional bipod can be mounted for squad support/light machine gun roles, and later production models introduced a three-shot burst rig similar to the M16.

There are four positions in total - Safe, Single Shot, Burst and Full Auto.

In the "T65K2" (Typ 65K2) effort, the T65 was eventually modernized through improved production processes, which in itself gave rise to the shortened "T65K3" (Typ 65K3) carbine styling for special forces.

The T65 rifle was used in the Liberian Civil War (1989-1996), the Iraq War (2003-2011), the Haitian Civil War and most recently the 2011 Libyan Civil War.

Although its "Type 65" designation implies the 1965 entry year, the official adoption of the rifle occurred in 1976 - the "65" designation comes from the ROC "65 Years" T65 stock that dropped in 1975 in writing At the time of this article (2013), rifles are still in use worldwide.

Specification

Roles

Dimensions

Performance

Changes