@79248cm/s, the Colt 9mm SMG should be R0635 (with a zero), not RO635, right?

NNescio said:

@79248cm/s, the Colt 9mm SMG should be R0635 (with a zero), not RO635, right?

@NNescio

Sorry, I actually don't know specifics on naming. My experience is not in the US military but basically paramilitary so we didn't necessarily use the exact same weapon systems or contracted from the same batches that the military uses.

I did a quick lookup on some gov texts and surprisingly I see both zero and the letter O used. (side note, apparently there was a burst fire model R0639 contracted too). Colt's website for LE dealership doesn't help either as they also have zero and letter used interchangeably. In text they use zero, but in the title for the "Colt 9mm SMG" (which is the name I am familiar with) they use the letter O.

Since GFL has it with the letter O and we call her RO, I would think that would be best for simplicity sake.

Also thanks for translations, I appreciate it.

79248cm/s said:

@NNescio

Sorry, I actually don't know specifics on naming. My experience is not in the US military but basically paramilitary so we didn't necessarily use the exact same weapon systems or contracted from the same batches that the military uses.

I did a quick lookup on some gov texts and surprisingly I see both zero and the letter O used. (side note, apparently there was a burst fire model R0639 contracted too). Colt's website for LE dealership doesn't help either as they also have zero and letter used interchangeably. In text they use zero, but in the title for the "Colt 9mm SMG" (which is the name I am familiar with) they use the letter O.

Since GFL has it with the letter O and we call her RO, I would think that would be best for simplicity sake.

Many thanks for the informative reply.

Huh, I guess someone screwed up the names and now not even the official people know what to call them (going from your examples I went around looking for the other Colt 9mm SMG models, and they all have the same problem of being called interchangeably R0[Number] or RO[Number]). Funny that even the government docs can't be consistent.

I'll stay with RO for now, for GFl purposes.

Edit:

79248cm/s said:

Also thanks for translations, I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

NNescio said:
...

@NNescio

This is an old conversation but I remembered talking about this with you and in case you were curious, my wife's little luncheon today was attended by a retired Colt rep. We talked and he said the RO stands for "Restricted Offering". Basically this is the stuff that has the select fire functions or was designed specifically for military trials. So "O" rather than "zero" is correct officially. The reason for the order forms having digits was because military models were only 3 digit while other offerings were 4. So the zero brought it back up to a 4 digit number which apparently reduced errors with people confusing RO with the R-series and putting a zero at the at the front, thinking that whoever made the order forgot the last digit of zero and erroneously left it blank instead of writing it out. Think Model 1 written as Model 01. The zero is just a placeholder to not implying 10, and apparently some people got that confused thinking that was Colt's naming format. Maintaining 4 digit models prevented some poor clerk from running over the place looking for some apparently secret unlisted weapon Uncle Sam ordered, which doesn't actually exist.

79248cm/s said:

@NNescio

This is an old conversation but I remembered talking about this with you and in case you were curious, my wife's little luncheon today was attended by a retired Colt rep. We talked and he said the RO stands for "Restricted Offering". Basically this is the stuff that has the select fire functions or was designed specifically for military trials. So "O" rather than "zero" is correct officially. The reason for the order forms having digits was because military models were only 3 digit while other offerings were 4. So the zero brought it back up to a 4 digit number which apparently reduced errors with people confusing RO with the R-series and putting a zero at the at the front, thinking that whoever made the order forgot the last digit of zero and erroneously left it blank instead of writing it out. Think Model 1 written as Model 01. The zero is just a placeholder to not implying 10, and apparently some people got that confused thinking that was Colt's naming format. Maintaining 4 digit models prevented some poor clerk from running over the place looking for some apparently secret unlisted weapon Uncle Sam ordered, which doesn't actually exist.

Thanks for the info.