Infantry Marine, based in the Midwest. Specifically interested in small arms history, development, and usage within the MENA region and Central Asia. To that end, I run Silah Report, a website dedicated to analyzing small arms history and news out of MENA and Central Asia.
Please feel free to get in touch with me about something I can add to a post, an error I’ve made, or if you just want to talk guns. I can be reached at miles@tfb.tv
Italian handgun company Tanfoglio had their 9x19mm TCMP submachine gun with them at the Tanfoglio booth during Indo Defense 2018. We reported on the TCMP in 2016 when the company was showing the TCMP at the IWA Show, but since then TFB hasn’t heard too much about [Read More…]
In our previous coverage of modern Vietnamese small arms development on display at Indo Defense 2018 we spent some time looking at locally produced M79’s, Lee Enfield No.4’s, a rotary grenade launcher, and even a 9x19mm Bizon! In this post we’ll be [Read More…]
One of the biggest buzzes during the show was the booth from Vietnamese Defence Industries (VDI). This was the first such appearance of the Vietnamese delegation to any major trade show outside of Vietnam with the amount of materiel that was being presented to the [Read More…]
Apart from the standard 5.56x45mm AR15-derivatives and MPT76 service rifles on display, Kale Kalip had two new product entries that were being exhibited for Indo Defense 2018. The first is the .50 BMG KSR50, which appears to be a license produced or at least Kale [Read More…]
ATA Arms might be one Turkish company to keep an eye out for in 2019 as the company is greatly expanding into a number of areas. Present at Indo Defense 2018 was their new ASR rifle and ATA 1955 semiautomatic 12 Gauge shotgun. Not at the show but currently in their [Read More…]
The Istanbul based ATA Arms brought out their 40x46mm BA40 standalone and UBGL grenade launcher to the show in Indo Defence 2018 this year. The launcher is the first such design from ATA Arms, which actually won a major contract this year for 8,000 launchers from the [Read More…]
In fact, it isn’t an M249 SAW at all. It looks like a SAW, probably sounds like a SAW when fired, operates similarly to a SAW, but it isn’t one. What you are actually looking at is an RPD derivative that has been externally modified to fit the overall [Read More…]
Australian-based Marathon Targets has been quietly changing the scene in the past several years when it comes to making live fire ranges much more realistic and dynamic by using autonomous moving target systems. The systems are starting to see use all around the world, [Read More…]
At Indo Defense 2018 this year we at TFB were able to get a hands-on examination of MKE’s KNT-76 Designated Marksman Rifle. The rifle is an upgraded MPT-76 service rifle that has a number of additional design features to increase its accuracy and precision as a [Read More…]
The RPD was the culmination of Soviet light machine gun designs that began with the DP-28 of pre-World War Two days, and ending with the RPD, or Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova. It was a lightweight, belt-fed from a drum, gas operated machine gun chambered in the Soviet M43 7.62x39mm cartridge. Some [Read More…]
The 40x46mm low-velocity SL40 grenade launcher has been in Australian Defence Force service for some time now, serving primarily as a modular under-barrel grenade launcher attached to the 5.56x45mm NATO F90 service rifle within the infantry at the squad or section [Read More…]
In a video posted on the Popular Front Instagram page, a man completely disabled from the neck down is seen shooting an AR15-patterned rifle from a mobile rest. Patrick Bronte was disabled when he was 16 years old in a tragic accident but has continued his involvement [Read More…]
The Burmese state-owned arms manufacturing wing Ka pa sa Industries (Defence Industries) has a long history of working within limited resources to meet the operational requirements of the Tatmadaw (Burmese Military). Operationally this has been seen in the cycle of [Read More…]
I think we can all agree that for better or worse, outside of gunsmithing colleges there has been a poor representation of the study of firearms within any university certainly in the United States, possibly in the world as well. Again I say this emphasizing “for [Read More…]
The Myanmar Military (“Tatmadaw” in Burmese) is one of the only Southeast Asian nations that manufactures the majority of its small arms and light weapons (up to 120mm mortars) and has been doing so since the early 1950s in collaboration with a number of foreign allies. The majority of [Read More…]
In what is probably one of the coolest historical recreations to happen at a national machine gun shoot in recent years, the folks from the Bomber Camp program out of Stockton Aviation Field Museum actually got a Sperry Ball Turret (as used on the prolific B17 and B24 [Read More…]
What would it be like to try and attempt to shoot historical small arms in some of the ways that they were actually used in the past? We try and do that in this episode with German small arms in a small team setting, assaulting an objective across open terrain using a base of fire […] [Read More…]
Although the L1A1 SLR (FN FAL) service rifle served the Australian “Digger” faithfully for an extremely long period of time, infantrymen in the Vietnam War realized that the rifle could be “tweaked” to fit the combat that the soldiers had to fight in day after [Read More…]
Today there are two types of camouflage methods that immediately come to mind when we consider the task of trying to better conceal infantrymen and their weapons throughout the world. The first and more readily available example is that of camouflaging (or bou-flauging [Read More…]
Beginning in November 2018, Discovery Channel will be airing a series of episodes under a new show called “Master of Arms”. The show will consist of a skills competition wherein different contestants will be asked to create a particular weapon that was used [Read More…]
Although rebel groups and insurgents are usually focused more on small arms themselves instead of the accessories that can be attached to them, we are continuing to see the diversification of these after-market accessories throughout the world as the firearms themselves [Read More…]
For this episode, we go to Northern Thailand where we take a look at some of the shooting ranges in Chiang Mai. Specifically, we were able to sit down some of the shooters, owners, and instructors at a range called “Shooting Adventure Chiang Mai” and “Range 333” where we [Read More…]
The New Zealand Herald has reported that the 9,040 LMT 5.56x45mm MARS-L rifles purchased by the New Zealand Defense Force have suffered critical parts breakage in certain components of the rifles, specifically the firing pins, bolt carriers and inside the trigger [Read More…]
Wooden handguards fitted for an M16/AR15-patterned rifle are nothing new in the United States among the boutique custom build community. Some folks prefer the older, more nostalgic look of the solid wood grips that used to be so common on firearms of all types prior to [Read More…]
Currently boosting a force of over 30,000 fighters, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) has always been a force of reckoning on the Burmese border with China. And although arms production among the Wa (northern Shan State) isn’t a new or hot topic (this [Read More…]
In an earlier article on TFB, we covered the early efforts at producing a precision rifle for the Burmese Army, culminating in the MA-Sniper. In this article, we look at the production variant. Finally, we get to the production MA-Sniper. Starting at least before 2013, [Read More…]
In two previous articles on TFB we looked at the Burmese MA-Sniper in-depth while being used in the field by Tatmadaw Infantrymen. If readers recall there were a number of different variants of the MA-Sniper, to include early attempts at modifying MA-2 Light Machine [Read More…]
During the age of the G3, manufactured in Burma by Defense Industries under contract from Heckler & Koch through the West German company Fritz Werner, the Tatmadaw produced a designated marksman variant. It was called the BA-100 (Burma Army-100) and was the fourth [Read More…]
Wedged in between the streets of the busiest and biggest city in Thailand is the gun market district in Bangkok. Here you have dozens of stores that selling everything ranging from the cheapest Chinese tactical garbage to high-end side by side shotguns or semiautomatic race guns that Thais compete [Read More…]
Continuing the TFB tradition of covering lesser known character markings and how they can be interpreted by collectors and researchers, this article will take a look at the role of Thai numerals in marking historic small arms previously in use by Royal Thai Forces, in [Read More…]
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