tippmann/Air-ordnance: the tip of the spear

​Okay, let's see if I can get my facts straight. In the early 1980’s Dennis Tippmann Sr started out building half-scale replica machine guns: as nice as they were he had only a few short years before changing gun laws led him to enter the emerging airgun market in 1986. Since then Tippmann has built quality airguns and latterly paintball markers selling millions since. Then, in 2005 Tippmann concentrated on some of their other product lines built through Tippmann Industrial Products, i.e. die cutting presses, sewing equipment and post driving machinery, but then in 2012 decided it was time to go back to the gun industry and thusly started Air-Ordnance to manufacture fully automatic belt fed air powered pellet machine guns, and Tippmann Armory to manufacture rolling block high powered hunting rifles. Tippmann has long been a leader in the paintball market with beautifully engineered top choice markers and so the transition into Air-Ordnance was a no brainer: take the same HPA or CO2 power system and shoot pellets instead. Hence the SMG-22 and the Modoc, the latter being the focus of this post. The Modoc is a hybrid of Dennis Tippmann’s interest in vintage rifles mated with APW’s (Air Powered Weapons): essentially a rolling block HPA air rifle shooting a 9mm pellet at 1200fps from a 34.5” barrel. It comes with 3 steel rechargeable cartridges that are powered to 4500PSI and good for one shot each. The rifle weighs only 6.5lbs and sounds like a suppressed .22LR rifle when fired, making it a sobering piece of ordnance and more than adequate for your hunting, target and range-funnery needs. The Modoc is a prime American example of how the humble airgun of yesteryear is evolving into a serious contender to your cartridge equivalent and Tippmann/Air-Ordnanace is right there at the cutting edge. Not that I’m overlooking their awesome SMG-22 which by all accounts is becoming legendary in it’s own right, but I’ll let you check out their website and related videos yourself. Anyway, if you didn’t already know about them, then now’s the time to discover just how innovative and prolific Tippmann/Air-Ordnance is. They’re at the tip of a spear in modern APW R&D. http://air-ordnance.com  
GOM