The one and only Photo Of The Day is back and above you’re looking at a U.S.Marine with the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division. He participated in the Mission Readiness Exercise (MRX) in the summer of 2019, in Port Royal, VA, United States. His rifle is fully loaded with about everything except a magazine.

The world is hungry for visual storytelling, and TFB’s Photo Of The Day does its best to keep the feed alive and well. Here we have U.S. Marines with the Battalion Landing Team 1/5, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). They were engaging floating targets during an aerial snipers exercise in the Philippine Sea earlier in 2022. The exercise focuses on proficiency in engaging targets from an aircraft.

This week at Eurosatory 2022, Rheinmetall showcased a surprise, not their first tank the KF-51 or their unmanned ground vehicle that can launch loitering missiles, but the Squad Support Weapon or SSW40. It appears that the SSW40 is a matured version of the Hydra, a prototype automatic magazine-fed grenade launcher, which was first exhibited by Rheinmetall in 2012.

None of TFB’s Photo Of The Days is the same, and the CARACAL Air Assault Vehicle above is a perfect example. During Eurosatory 2022 in Paris, under the motto “Move – Sense – Strike”, Rheinmetall showcased the new family of Caracal airborne vehicles.

A new night vision company has been created by Hensoldt Optronics GmbH and Theon Sensors SA. The name of the new company is Hensoldt Theon NightVision GmbH, and their joint forces will be used to develop products and solutions for thermal imaging and night vision. In the announcement, they specifically mention new products like night vision goggles and weapon-adapted night vision attachments.

The U.S. Army has awarded SIG Sauer a contract to manufacture .300 Norma Magnum and .338 Norma Magnum ammunition. The order is a follow-on purchase for the Advanced Sniper Rifle (ASR) program, and has a $157MM maximum value contract and includes 4.5MM rounds for the first delivery. Specifically, the U.S. Army ASR ammunition contract consists of two cartridges: the M1163, which is a .300NM, 215 grain round, and the M1162, an armor-piercing 338NM, 300 grain round.

Winchester Ammunition have been awarded a contract modification by the US Department of Defense for continued production of 5.56x45mm, 7.62x51mm and .50 caliber ammunition. The work is set to be carried out at Winchester’s Oxford, Mississippi facility. Oxford is Winchester Ammunition’s primary facility for the production of military caliber ammunition. It opened in 2011 and also produces rimfire ammunition. Unlike the Lake City Ammunition Plant, which Winchester runs on behalf of the Department of Defense, Oxford is a privately owned facility. Winchester were also recently awarded a $15 million cost-plus contract to design a new manufacturing facility for the NGSW ammunition.

As usual, we have selected some pictures for you today. By this time you know it, it’s TFB’s Photo Of The Day to keep you in a good mood. Get a coffee, or some water, take a break and enjoy a few minutes off whatever you were doing and take a look at U.S. soldiers assigned to the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. They’re using their M110 semi-automatic sniper systems as part of the zeroing step before the Defender 2022 exercise at Oberlausitz Training Area, Germany. This happened in April 2022.

In our Photo Of The Day, we see an Afghan soldier providing overwatch security with a Romanian PSL rifle on an observation post while U.S. and Afghan soldiers observe rounds fired from Afghan artillery. These pictures are from 2012, almost 10 years ago. The bottom image is even older.

Imagine loading your M2 Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun, as you hear the rotors of the heavy CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter increase in intensity as you take off above the South China Sea. You’re the door gunner! Sometimes it might be worth getting enlisted after all?

Roy Batty from Blade Runner said: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…” ( Source) But have you seen breaching like this? In our Photo Of The Day, we have U.S. Marines with the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion and a United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces soldier showing how to breach in an urban environment during the Native Fury 20 exercise.

Photo Of The Day: Once upon a time we used to run a mini-series called Minigun Monday. Well, this one isn’t a Minigun and never made it to our series, but it’s easy to get fooled. Upon closer look, it is a Browning M2 .50 BMG Heavy Machine Gun with a blank firing adapter mounted.

Every day TFB brings you a bunch of fantastic photos that you most likely never would have seen elsewhere. Today’s Photo Of The Day is an M1A2 Abrams tank firing at a live-fire exercise in Bulgaria. The photo is taken by Sgt. Alan Brutus, USA, and I wonder how he pulled this photo off? Any ideas?

Photo Of The Day, with pictures of the CZ Bren from the sky as well as the ground. The pictures are from the NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group Latvia where the Czech Republic contingent prepared for a two-day small arms shooting competition for the Battle Group. Soldiers from all nations at Camp Adazi participated to compete and compare shooting skills. Day one included a pistol stage and day two the rifle stage we see here.

Location: Okinawa, Japan. TFB’s Photo Of The Day has become an impressive gallery, with an ever-growing number of images of firearms in all sorts of environments. Today we’re going to add a few more, just look at that beautiful machine gun above. Machine guns are all fun until it’s time to clean them, or if you have some strange malfunction. In these pictures we see U.S. Marines with the 2d Battalion, 3d Marines, providing security during a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) operations on Ie Shima, Okinawa, Japan. This happened in October last year. The Marine Wing Support Squadron 172, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, established a FARP on an airfield secured by 2d Battalion, 3d Marines to support sustained aviation operations.

Lone Star Future Weapons have lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (the GAO) against the US Army’s selection of SIG Sauer’s Next Generation Squad Weapons submission.  On 19 April the US Army announced the selection of SIG’s MCX 6.8 Spear as the XM5 Rifle and the LMG-6.8 belt-fed as the XM250. SIG Sauer’s entries to the program beat out the entry from Lone Star Future Weapons, which submitted the RM277 bullpup rifle.

Each day a different image from the world of firearms. We call this POTD, short for Photo Of The Day, and it is our daily article series where we go to great lengths trying to find the most interesting pictures for you out there. There’s a lot of fire, flames and smoke in today’s pictures as we visit Poland and the Giżycka Brygada Zmechanizowana (Mechanized Brigade). Poland uses the Russian T-72 Main Battle Tanks. After extensive upgrades, they are called PT-91 Twardy. The main armament is a 125 mm gun, with a 7.62mm PKT general-purpose machine gun on the same axis. As you can see, they like smoke too.

On 19 April the US Army announced the selection of SIG Sauer’s entries into the Next Generation Squad Weapons program. Despite an official announcement and a media event to unveil the weapons to the press, details on weight, loadout and capabilities have been scarce.

Mass production of the famous AK-47 started in 1949, and by 1959 the design was completely finalized. Many countries tried to modernize it, some were successful, like Poland with its “Beryl” program, and some unsuccessful, like Hungary, which ended up ditching all changes in the late 70s to just make a standard AKM rifle they called “AK-63”. But there were modernization efforts that went beyond simple upgrades, and Zastava M21 is probably one of the best examples of that.

A Norwegian soldier with the FN Minimi in Bamako, Mali. One of the purposes of TFB’s Photo Of The Day is to broaden the audience for the excellent work done by professionals in combat photography. A perfect picture may take everything from a split second to months of planning, and it would be sad to see that kind of work go unnoticed.

The Department of Defense has announced that Massachusetts-based FLIR Systems and Florida-based Leonardo DRS have been awarded firm fixed price contracts worth over $500 million to provide Family of Weapons Sights-Individual thermal imaging systems. FLIR have been awarded a contract worth $500,219,123 while Leonardo DRS have been awarded a $579,295,440 contract. According to US Army, the production locations and funding allocations for the FWS-I contracts will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of 27 April, 2027.

Some use reindeer and some use K9 Belgian Malinois to travel in the snow. In our Photo Of The Day, we have Norwegian Coastal Rangers conducting an air mobile operation together with the Royal Norwegian Air Force 339 Squadron. This happened during exercise Arctic Hawk in Northern Norway. Apart from the dog, you can see weapons like the Heckler & Koch HK416N and the FN Minimi.

Photo Of The Day and it’s time for a visit to New Zealand. Apart from the soldiers, the “star” here is the LMT MARS-L produced by Lewis Machine & Tool Company. Note the Monolithic Rail Platform. The rifle now serves as the standard service rifle of the New Zealand Army. It’s available in two different barrel lengths, but in 5.56mm only. MARS-L is an abbreviation for Modular Ambidextrous Rifle System – Light. Most have the Trijicon ACOG optic with an RMR red dot on top.

On 19 April, the US Army  announced that SIG Sauer had won the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) competition with its 6.8mm hybrid ammunition, MCX Spear and LMG-6.8 selected to equip the US Army’s close combat forces. The Department of Defense held a Media Round Table  event at the Pentagon discussing the NGSW program and how the newly selected weapon systems will be produced, procured, integrated and fielded.

Welcome to TFB’s own Photo Of The Day. As the name implies, this page is dedicated to rare and unique pics which are updated daily. Behind the Heckler & Koch 40mm Grenade Machine Gun (GMG) we have British Army Pte. Warren from Poacher Troop waiting for a firing order. With a weight of almost 30 kilograms, the GMGs are usually mounted to a vehicle.

Winchester is about to ramp up production in its facilities in Oxford, Mississippi and East Alton, Illinois in preparation for its latest military contract. The United States Army has officially awarded Winchester a hefty $145M Army Pistol Ammunition contract to produce .38 caliber. 45 caliber and 9mm ammunition over a five-year contract agreement. I was unaware that the US Army was still using 38-caliber pistol ammunition but in any case, this contract is a huge win for Winchester and will keep them secured as one of the largest suppliers of small-caliber ammunition to the United States Military.

At the World Defense Show 2022 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF) presented the BW20 family of weapons for the first time. In December last year, the first video of the BW20 rifle was published on Youtube. While the original video only featured a standard battle rifle with a 16-inch barrel, at the expo in Riyadh, POF showcased two other rifles, a carbine with a 12-inch barrel and a designated marksman rifle with a 20-inch barrel. All three rifles are chambered for 7.62×51 and use polymer AR-10 magazines.

Photo Of The Day and we have a guard ahead of the F-35A aircraft from the Royal Norwegian Air Force at Evenes Air Base during exercise Falcon Deploy 2021. The F-35A is a single-seat, single-engine, stealth, fifth-generation, multi-role combat aircraft ordered by several NATO allies.  The Heckler & Koch HK416N has a  AG-HK416 Grenade Launcher.

We, here at TFB, have been closely following the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program since it began back in 2018. Today, it has been announced that SIG Sauer have won the contract to provide both the NGSW-Rifle and NGSW-Automatic Rifle. An initial delivery order contract worth $20.4 million has been awarded. SIG’s MCX 6.8 Spear will be designated the XM5 Rifle and the LMG-6.8 belt-fed will be designated the XM250 – designations directly following on from the M4/M4A1 Carbine and M249 SAW which the new weapons will replace. SIG’s selection means that the US Army’s new 6.8mm round will be based on a hybrid metallic case, not the polymer-based design developed by True Velocity.

Using images to communicate news and stories has shaped the way we view the world and in our Photo Of The Day we get to see all sorts of firearms and soldiers. Here we have soldiers of Enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group Latvia as they participate in the exercise CRYSTAL ARROW 2021.