Airsoft Action - March 2020

armoury
G&G COBALT BAMF
SCI-FI SUPERSTAR?
MAKE IT SO...
IN A WORLD OF ME-TOO ARS AND M4S, G&G’S RADICAL RACE RIFLE STANDS OUT LIKE A
SORE THUMB. STEVE T FINDS OUT IF ITS PERFORMANCE CAN ALSO RISE ABOVE.
Will you just look at this thing?It’s
like no AR15 I’ve ever seen! If
Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard used
a wormhole in the space-time continuum
to send a phaser rifle from the Next
Generation movies back to 2020, then it
might look something like this. It’s all sleek
bare metal with blue accents that are set to
stun (sorry!)
It might appear Alien to MilSim players,
but that doesn’t mean it will only appeal to
Spaceballs like me. As we’ll see, both the
construction and performance will make it
an attractive option for many airsofters.
BLUE MOVES
Despite the BAMF’s sci-fi sculpt, this is no
movie prop replica. G&G’s latest licensed
RIF is 100% based in the real world and a
race rifle from Cobalt Kinetics.
The Washington, Utah business is…
not your usual firearms manufacturer. They
sound more like a California company
when they state that art overrides both
form and function. Like a Silicon Valley
tech co, they also talk about how their
“Blue-sky thinkers imagined design,
features, and capability that did not… and
could not exist”. And like any 21st century
entrepreneurial start-up they aim to,
“Disrupt the market”.
How do they intend to do that? In their
own words: “Cobalt Kinetics does not hire
gun builders or gun-engineers - or even
gun enthusiasts. We create and cultivate
them.” Alarm bells, anyone? There’s a
bunch of other promo guff but you get
the idea - they let the marketing dude get
freaky.
All that having been said, the BAMF
is an AR. A really - REALLY - sexy AR, but
it’s still just an AR. The form factor will
be familiar to any M4 user with control
interfaces that instinctively fall to hand.
“BAMF” stands for Billet Aluminum
- they mean aluminium, folks - Modern
Firearm. And G&G’s AEG meets those
credentials too. It may weigh more than a
polymer RIF but less than a conventional
metal weapon, without feeling any less
solid.
SEXUAL HEALING
Without coming over all weird, in terms
of physical presence, the Cobalt Kinetics
BAMF is almost sexual. The CNC machined
construction is intended to result in a
super-tight construction without wobbles.
While that’s certainly true of the usually
questionable buffer tube/stock area, we
noticed that the handguard rotates slightly
around the free-floating inner barrel,
which also had more play than we’d
expected.
Our biggest reservation is that the mag
release on the right-hand side just jumped
off during normal operation. Luckily, that
happened at home so we could find the
tiny spring that shot out too, but it would
be another story mid-game. Everything
popped back in without trouble, but you’d
be disappointed if that happened on a
budget starter RIF, let alone a £500 special.
C-clamp fans will be pleased to hear
the handguard is devoid of rail contours,
with a small portion of picatinny at the
top and bottom of the tip for iron sights,
flashlights and the like. You can always
“BUILDING ON THE SPEED-FIRST METHODOLOGY, THE PHYSICAL MOVEMENT OF THE
AMBIDEXTROUS FIRE SELECTOR IS SMALLER THAN CONVENTIONAL, WITH SEMI
AUTO AT JUST 45 DEGREES AND FULL AT 90. IT’S SO USER-FRIENDLY THAT WE CAN
INSTANTLY SEE HOW IT MIGHT SAVE TIME ON THE RANGE.”
12
MARCH 2020