Black Rain Ordnance is typically known for their custom ARs and eye-catching Cerakote jobs, but they also had one of the most innovative new products of SHOT Show this year. The Commando rifle is a new bullpup battle rifle chambered in full power battle rifle cartridges like .308 Winchester and 6.5 [Read More…]
Over the past seven decades, the FAL has stood as a battle rifle icon. Designed for Fabrique Nationale Herstal by Belgian small arms engineer Dieudonné Joseph Saive, the Fusil Automatique Léger (“Light Automatic Rifle”) is a short-stroke gas piston firearm [Read More…]
In this episode of TFBTV, Hop tries to get a read on the Springfield Armory Saint Victor in .308 Winchester. Springfield’s big bore AR is one of the lightest factory AR-10/LR-308 pattern rifles on the market, but some sacrifices had to be made to get it below 8 lbs. A strange combination of [Read More…]
Anderson Manufacturing unveiled their new AM10 Gen2 at this year’s NRAAM. Three different variants of this new DPMS-pattern design were on display with various barrel lengths. I sat down with representatives from Anderson to go over these three new models at [Read More…]
If we take an honest look at firearms these days, it is easy to see that now, in 21 century, there is significantly less diversity in weapon design compared to 50s or 60s. Everything we see now are gas-operated rifles based on AR-15, AR-18 and AK. But another major [Read More…]
This week Springfield Armory has released their all-new retro M1A Tanker Rifle. The Tanker features a 16.25″ Carbon Steel barrel and walnut stock giving it a classic look. With an overall length of just 37.25″, it comes in at about 7 inches shorter than its [Read More…]
Today, Kalashnikov Group (Russia) presented new assault rifle prototype called AK-308 at the International Military-Technical Forum “Army-2018” According to the press release: “Weapon is based on AK-103 with certain design features taken from AK-12 and is [Read More…]
For many of us, the first things that spring to mind about the Rhodesian Bush War are bush shorts and FN FALs. Thankfully, only the latter is covered in two videos recently posted by the Vickers Tactical channel and Forgotten Weapons. In the videos, Ian McCollom and [Read More…]
The Armalite AR-10 is the original lightweight 7.62mm combat rifle – a space-age amalgam of aluminum, steel, and advanced plastics capable of a rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute and weighing just a hair over 7 pounds, unloaded. Its younger, 5.56mm caliber [Read More…]
The Cold War is famous as the squaring off of two superpowers: The United States, and the Soviet Union, and their duel-by-proxy in Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. The standard rifles of each side, as well, became proxies: On the Soviet side, the famous AK-47 [Read More…]
Turkey’s state-run Makina Ve Kimya Endustrisi Kurumu/Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKEK) have announced that non-commercial military exports of their new MPT-76 rifle have begun. Turkish news site Hurriyet report that MKEK have already secured a [Read More…]
The 2017 Association of the US Army annual meeting was the public debut of Israel’s new full caliber bullpup rifle, the Tavor 7. Announced in late June via IWI’s Facebook page, the Tavor 7 is a 7.62mm / .308 Winchester caliber semiautomatic bullpup rifle [Read More…]
With the recent push for small arms ammunition with increased range, power and capability, are military customers in danger of being taken for a ride by industry marketeers working to sell rifles in new calibers? Is the primary driving force behind new infantry [Read More…]
We have just seen the cancellation of the Interim Combat Service Rifle, which gives me a good springboard to talk about marketing. Specifically, we will be discussing a kind of undercover word-of-mouth marketing that I’ve encountered a number of times over the [Read More…]
The US Army’s program to field a new standard-issue 7.62mm caliber rifle is dead in the water, it seems. Multiple anonymous sources have informed TFB that the Interim Combat Service Rifle program has been cancelled as part of a massive review of US Army small [Read More…]
Yes, the M4 Carbine will be replaced by a 7.62mm Interim Combat Service Rifle, and also no it won’t. Ah, I see I need to explain. This past weekend, I published an article reporting on the ICSR program’s recently released request for proposal (RFP), and [Read More…]
This is a guest post by Zain from Pakistan The ‘Sporter’ cal .308 Winchester has been designed as a hunting rifle with the firing mechanism of G3A3 in semiautomatic mode. The accuracy of the gun has been enhanced with a freely floating extended barrel and a mil [Read More…]
NcStar will being selling a new kit of AR-style rifles in 2017 called the VISM BlastAR Kit. According to NcStar, the VISM BlastAR Kit will take your “AR-15 to the next level” by transforming “your ordinary AR into a modern, cutting edge battle [Read More…]
Delta 14 Chassis is a replacement stock for M1A/M14 rifles. It replaces the original stock adding a number of modern features. The chassis adds a Mossberg 500 stock mounting platform positioned at a proper angle, which allows using the iron sights. It has holes on 3, 6 [Read More…]
While today the Italian company Franchi is not a heavy-hitting military small arms manufacturer, in the mid-1950s the company did produce some very interesting rifles, carbines, and submachine guns for the military market. The most recognizable of these is the LF-57 [Read More…]
The mid-late 1950s… Could there be a more optimistic time in United States history? I feel there’s no better rifle to illustrate the industry, innovation, and unbridled optimism of that time than the Armalite AR-10 7.62x51mm select-fire military rifle. Made [Read More…]
This is a short post intended to illustrate that terms such as “assault rifle” or especially “battle rifle” are more or less meaningless for classification, unless used in historical context and in conjunction with a particular rifle that was [Read More…]
Earlier this year, Daniel Defense announced their new entry into the thirty-caliber AR-15 market: The DD5V1, a lightweight, direct impingement 7.62x51mm/.308 Winchester rifle using a shortened rear receiver with a dedicated bolt and bolt carrier for the .308 cartridge [Read More…]
The FN FAL is one of the most prolific firearms of the 20th Century. This Belgian big-shot fires the powerful 7.62×51 NATO round at 650 rounds per minute, and came to be known as “the right arm of the free world” during its tenure as the backbone of many nation’s militaries. [Read More…]
We’ve covered a little bit of the AR-18 here before, and in passing mentioned its ancestor, the 7.62mm AR-16. For those uninitiated to this relatively unknown rifle, there is a brief but instructive article on the rifle at Wikipedia. GunLab’s Chuck has [Read More…]
POF is breaking with their tradition of offering only oprod guns (aside from the straight-pull ReVolt) by introducing a new .308 Winchester direct impingement precision rifle. Calling it the “Olde School”, they are presenting the rifle as being more [Read More…]
Three years ago, we broke the news that Beretta was working on a dual-caliber 7.62x51mm/7.62x39mm rifle, which reportedly would be available in 2013. This never came to pass, but Beretta apparently has continued work on the rifle, which has in common only the trigger [Read More…]
Chuck at GunLab recently posted on a cutaway L1A1 British FAL; since I have been studying the FAL recently, I was naturally drawn to the post. Unfortunately, Chuck’s coverage is somewhat spartan, and the images fairly low resolution, so I went hunting for more. I [Read More…]
Inexpensive .22 caliber rifles that are modified to resemble military rifles are nothing new; the Stevens 87M was an early attempt to create a visually modified .22 rifle for military training, and today you can find many .22 LR weapons modified to look like almost any [Read More…]
Wilson Combat has entered the big bore EBR market with its new line of .308 caliber AR-pattern rifles. They feature Wilson Combat’s trademarked “BILLet-AR” receiver construction, and come in both 16″ and 20″ lengths. From the somewhat [Read More…]