Yes, it’s true: IWI is releasing the DAN in 338 Lapua this year, and it’ll be featured at SHOT 2017. The DAN was designed by Nehemiah Sirkis, who I like to think of as the Gene Stoner of Israel.

The press release makes it clear that IWI is offering is a premium package, coming with everything shown above besides the optic. It will be expensive: to put it in perspective, the Remington M2010 has an MSRP of $17,000 sans scope and suppressor. Street price is considerably lower, though; I’ve seen them as low as $8k on Gunbroker. The DAN doesn’t have much in the way of operational history, so I don’t think IWI will try to price it as high… still, expect street prices to be pretty stunning, and probably around $7k-$10k. It’s a beast of a gun, and weighs in at 15lbs naked, so the civilian market for this is probably pretty small, even without considering the price.

EDIT (3/10/2017): MSRP is $9,000. If street price is 82.5% of that, expect to pay about $7,500 for the rifle. With that pricing, I’m not sure who they’re going to sell to besides collectors – police snipers don’t need 338 LM performance, and the military is unlikely to use this when the Remington M2010 is already in the system. This is unfortunately going to be one of those rifles that sits new-in-box in a vault, waiting for the day it gets sold for some absurd multiple of its retail value due to rarity. Still, kudos to IWI-US for even making this available at all.

The Firearm Blog has a great post with some pictures of the latest prototype of the CAA Alfa. These were taken by Konstantin Lazarev, who’s got some more photos on his Facebook page. It is unclear whether this is a functional prototype, but at least it’s not 3D printed like the last one we saw.

As before, I’m a little skeptical about this gun. “AK in a shell” has been tried by many folks, and none of them have found much success. Couple this with CAA’s lack of gun design history (the RONI doesn’t count) and being late to market compared to the IWI ACE 3X… I suspect LE and US civilian sales are what they’re counting on to make this worthwhile.

The “AK in a shell” concept is rather flawed anyways. The AK receiver and trunions basically MUST be steel due to the way the gun functions. Once you’ve gone down that route, the extra plastic is just extra weight. In my opinion, IWI had the right idea by reducing weight in all the other places, and making strategic ergonomic changes.

According to The Firearm Blog, the Hartman MH1 reflex sight is now shipping in the USA. As you’ll recall from our previous coverage, the MH1 is the Israeli-made successor to the tepidly-received MSE-AQC. I am still skeptical that it will sell well at its specified price point ($650), especially in light of the competition from the popular Mepro Tru-Dot RDS, but perhaps street prices will surprise me.

I just saw that The Truth About Guns has reviewed the Magnum Research Baby Desert Eagle III (polymer frame) in .40S&W. You’ll recall that the polymer BDEIII is essentially the third-gen Cherokee, and the steel BDEIII is basically a second-gen Storm.

This is the first “trustworthy” review I’ve seen of the BDEIII in either form, so I felt it worth mentioning. Robert gives the gun a pretty good rating, but hates the slide-mounted safety/decocker – hardly a surprise, given the preferences in the US market.