The Firearm Blog

The photo below shows a couple of South Ossetia militia. The guy on the right is carrying a Sako TRG.

It is unlikely Finland would allow arms exports to South Ossetia. It was probably bought on the civilian market and then exported. I cannot imagine that South Ossetia would have many snipers so this is feasible.

Their squad sharpshooters (or whatever they call them in that part of the world) are probably using the SVD.

I cannot make out if it is a TRG-21 / 22 (.308 Win) or TRG-41 / 42 (.338 Lapua or .300 Win Magnum). I have never seen a photo of a 41/42 without a muzzle break, but I think the 21/22 can have the Sako TRG muzzle break attached, please correct me if I am wrong.

Click to expand the image

H/T: MP.net

The Fedorov Avtomat is possibly the first (see comments) an early firearm used in action that would classify as a true self-loading battle rifle.

Photo by Semen Fedoseev

It weights in at about 4.4kg compared to the 7.7-8.8kg of the BAR: much closer in weight to that of a battle rifle (rather than a light machine gun).

3200 were produced and it saw action during the Russian civil war and WWII.

More about it at Wikipedia and guns.ru.

President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev visited the Dubna Institute for Nuclear Research yesterday:

It has all the aesthetics of Russian pistols

I wonder what that is.

I first saw the image here. Confirmed it was not a fake here.

Check out the latest Magpul creation. It is a folding carbine. Similar to the Ares FMG and PP-90. It appears to use some glock parts uses the Glock action, magazines and laser systems.

A couple of video demostrations:

Some photos from GlockTalk.com:

It looks very cool!

Compare with other FMG type firearms

The original Ares FMG which was designed by Eugene Stoner:

the PP-90, designed by the KBP design bureau in Tula:

the Ukrainian Goblin

And although very different the Kel-Tec SUB-2000 (this folds for storage, not rapid deployment).

I will update this page as more information becomes available.

UDPATE:

According to this thread, it is called the FMG9 and Magpul do not have plans to put it into production, at this point it is just a prototype… although I am sure James Bond will get his hands on one for his next movie!

UPDATE

Another video demo

UPDATE: From ar15.com:

The advantage to the FMG9 over previous versions are…

1. One button, spring loaded action.
2. Light weight, color coded plastic (can be molded as a non gun color)
3. Closed bolt, safe action (others were open bolt SMGs, ours can be carried with a round in the chamber).
4. Proven Glock action with stock Glock factory magazines and laser systems.

Hat Tip for the update: Cryptic

mike123456 posted high-res photos of his beautiful custom Tromix Saiga-12 shotguns. I love the drum magazine!

(Click to enlarge)

More photos here.

I think the Yarygin PYa / MP-443 “Grach” pistol, which was adopted as the Russian army and law enforcement service pistol, must be the ugliest modern pistol. What do you think?

It fires the 9×19 mm 7N21 cartridge which is just a very hot 9mm Parabellum.

Click to expand the photo.

More info about the pistol here.

A very interesting video about the AK’s 60th anniversary. I like the following quote from the video

“If it has given some countries the opportunity to gain freedom then it is a useful thing” - Kalishnikov

It covers the history and current events such as the Russian crackdown on foreign AK manufactures including the US clones.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Includes an interesting interview with an associate of the infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Hat Tip: Defense Tech

Until today, since 1986, Soviet/Russian cosmonauts have carried an interesting three barreled pistol / carbine / shotgun into space!

The Toz TP-82 has two side by side smoothbore barrels which fire 12.5mm shot shells and flares. The lower rifled barrel fires 5.45mm ammunition.

The removable stock can be used as a machete. The gun weighs 2.4 kg without the stock.

From Huntbl.ru (translated from Russian using Altavista Bablefish):

… underwent comprehensive tests in different climatic zones of the countries, which confirmed its high reliability and effectiveness under the extreme conditions. In the process of tests were obtained different forms behave like a beast and birds. From the threaded stem successfully they fired back moose, Kabanov, mountain goats, Gasella subgutturosa, saigas, foxes on the distances to 200 m, with the weight behave like a beast to 200 kg. from the smooth it is trunk they acquired hares, foxes, geese, weft, partridges, turtle doves, pheasants, seagulls.

I imagine the reason they combined a shotgun, pistol, carbine and flare gun was to save weight.

The weapon will not be used in the next space mission (12 October 2007) because the ammunition it uses has has run out.

I read about the gun here (the journalist who wrote the article knows very little about guns and ammo).

Last week the CRS Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1999-2006 report was released. I had a bit of trouble finding it online.

Here are some interesting facts from the report:

71.5% of the value of all arms agreements worldwide were with developing nations during 2006. The 2003-2006 figure is 66.4%.

This came to a total of US$28.8 Billion. A decrease of US$3 billion since 2005.

Suppliers of arms 2006 (millions of USD)
1 United States $10,306
2 Russia $8,100
3 United Kingdom $3,100
4 Germany $1,800
5 Israel $1,300
6 Sweden $1,100
7 China $800
8 Spain $300
9 Italy $300
10 France $300
11 Poland $200

Recipients of arms 2006 (millions of USD)
1 Pakistan $5,100
2 India $3,500
3 Saudi Arabia $3,200
4 Venezuela $3,100
5 Algeria $2,100
6 Israel $2,100
7 Brazil $1,100
8 Iraq $900
9 Indonesia $600
10 South Korea $500

Some interesting graphs (click to increase size):

Click here to download the report.
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Izhevsk Mechanical Works is a Russian arms and vehicle manufacturer founded in 1807 by Tsar Alexander I.

Below are some of their firearm promotional videos. I enjoy watching and reading military promotional material which are usually designed to entice the buyer to purchase millions of dollars worth of goods, rather than consumer marketing trying to entice you to try another type of tooth paste.

The first video is about the AK, Dragunov and Bizon firearms. The second is about the Saiga-12 shotguns. These video are also available on the Izhevsk website here.