Photo Of The Day: If you thought the word “Italian” in the title was going to save you from seeing firearms Made in Germany, you were wrong. You’re probably as surprised as me that there are no Beretta ARXs. Here we have the Exercise Goldfinger 2021 where Special Forces, Air Forces and Amphibious Forces of the Navy train in the field of maritime counter-terrorism.

On December 22, the US Navy reported that two days earlier it had intercepted a fishing vessel attempting to smuggle weapons through the Arabian Sea. On board, Coast Guard and Navy personnel found 226,600 rounds of ammunition and 1,400 AK-pattern assault rifles. While the vessel was stateless, the five men comprising the crew identified themselves as Yemeni. According to an  official Navy press release:

The Czech Ministry of Defense has announced on 12/21/2021 that it will be purchasing 949 FN Herstal manufactured Minimi Light machine guns in a CZK1.12 Billion ($50.73 Million) deal with the Czech company, CB Servis Centrum SRO. This deal also includes optics, armor kits, and travel cases. The purchase includes both the 5.56x45mm chambered Minimi light machine gun, as well as the 7.62x51mm chambered Maximi light machine gun.

Photo Of The Day and what a nice place to be! The Norwegian Armed Forces ordered the Barrett MRAD already in 2013, so you can call them early adopters for sure. For the United States Army Precision Sniper Rifle contracts,  Barrett have now made over a thousand MRAD Mk22s. Here we can see Norwegian snipers as they engage targets beyond 2000 meters, while they have instructors observing them. The pictures are from July 2018 during the ISTC Desert Sniper Course and the location was Chinchilla Training Area in Spain. I bet mirage from the heat was an issue.

Photo Of The Day: TFB’s daily articles with photos like these are as close as most people ever get to Special Operations. We get a hint about what kind of uniforms, gear and equipment is being used, as well as how it’s mounted. Here we have French soldiers in Operation Monclar in Mali with various firearms from Heckler & Koch. Above you can just see the spotter behind the spotting scope and the designated marksman behind what I think is a Heckler & Koch HK417.

Archipelago Endeavor is an annual, bilateral integrated field-training exercise, conducted to promote interoperability, strengthen partnerships, and enhance strategic and tactical cooperation between U.S. and Swedish Marines. This is TFB’s Photo Of The Day, and we take a closer look at the US and Swedish Marine snipers working together and their firearms. The Swedish Ak5 is clearly visible (FN FNC). Can you identify the sniper rifles?

In today’s Photo Of The Day, we’re looking at transportation into the Hohenfels Training Area, Germany for the Exercise Saber Junction 2020, by means of V-22 Ospreys flown by the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. They also used CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Black Hawks flown by 12th Combat Aviation Brigade.

Subject: Photo Of The Day – Indigo Defender 21

Photo Of The Day: In 2008 the Norwegian government selected the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) as a replacement for their fleet of F-16s. Almost ten years after, in 2017, the first aircraft arrived at the Ørland Air Base and this is still the main base. In 2020 The Royal Norwegian Air Force conducted their first international deployment with the F-35 during NATO Air Policing missions in Iceland. Norway has seven F35s operational with a total of 52 planned.

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 action type, roller-delayed blowback, used in G3, MP5 and other H&K rifles, seems to have faded into obscurity. Until now. Meet BW20, the new battle rifle designed by Pakistan Ordnance Factories.

Photo Of The Day: The Norwegian SWAT Team practice boarding on the Norwegian coast guard ship KV Barentshav. The main firearm above is the Heckler & Koch MP5 in 9×19 mm, but note the sand-colored AN/PEQ-15 and the marine finish. In the Norwegian Armed Forces, the H&K MP5 has been replaced by the H&K MP7, which has been the subject in many previous POTDs.

Photo Of The Day: When I was a kid, the German Flakpanzer Gepard was my all-time favourite tank. Finland has a similar take on the concept. They moved their existing Marksman turrets, a British short-range air defense system, from old T-55AM chassis to new Leopard 2 chassis. The main armament of ItPsv90 is two 35 mm Oerlikon autocannons holding 440 rounds of fragmentation and 40 anti-tank rounds. The Leopard is powered by a V-12 diesel engine with 620 hp and probably more torque than we can count.

The training to become a member of the Danish Jægerkorpset is described as a marathon with many surprising obstacles that all require something very special to get through. The everyday life will be busy, but full of exciting courses and exercises both at home and abroad. During international service, one can expect to be among the first in the area to handle tasks such as threat assessments and personal protection.

Thales has announced the introduction of their latest day/night sight, weighing 530g or 18.7oz, the XTRAIM combines a reflex red dot sight with thermal imaging technology. The sight can be mounted on rifles and light machine guns. It was developed a Thales’ dismounted optics establishment at Saint-Héand in Eastern France.

Barrett Firearms Manufacturing Inc. has now made one thousand MRAD Mk22 rifles to fulfill the United States Army Precision Sniper Rifle contracts. MRAD is short for Multi-Role Adaptive Design, and it’s designed with a focus on precision and modularity. The upper receiver is machined from 7000-series aluminum, monolithic in design for strength, with a full-length M1913 Picatinny top rail.

This Photo Of The Day takes place at night, somewhere in Switzerland. The country is landlocked, so we can assume that they spend more on their army and airforce than their navy. I’m not sure which kind of anti-aircraft guns are used in these pictures, but perhaps the Oerlikon GDF, Oerlikon 35 mm twin cannons? Or do you have a better idea? Oerlikon is now part of Rheinmetall Air Defence AG.

The UK’s Royal Navy have been testing a new mount for their .50 caliber defensive guns. The Agile, Small-deflection, Precision (ASP) is made by Oregon-based Flex Force. The ASP stabilizes the gun using gyroscopic stabilization which will make longer range, more accurate fire in heavy seas possible.

TFB’s Photo Of The Day is where you can discover the World of firearms through a camera lens. Every day we run a new theme, selected pictures, a short story and credit to the person behind the lens. Today we take a look at the German exercise Black Boar where the rangers of the 1st company of the support battalion conducted a combat shooting with practice ammunition, using blanks. Particular attention was paid to the execution of the activities of the individual shooter. This includes, for example, preparing a shooting position correctly before moving into it, correctly passing on the reports and the correct behavior and action in the event of enemy fire.

True Velocity have announced the acquisition of LoneStar Future Weapons. Texas-based LoneStar Future Weapons were the start-up company which, with True Velocity’s backing, took over the technical data package of General Dynamics-OTS’ RM277 entry into the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons program. This means that their will now have been three separate companies responsible for the RM277 rifle and automatic rifle since the NGSW program began.

Photo Of The Day: What a great, crisp, photo of the M110A1 Squad Designated Marksman Rifle (SDMR) above. And there are plenty more if you scroll down. Above you have U.S. Army Sgt. Divante Scott, 1-114th Infantry Regiment, 44th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, from the New Jersey Army National Guard.

Photo Of The Day: The Royal Marines Commandos have some postcards from their action-packed mission in the USA, where they are working together with US and Dutch Marines. The location: Mojave Desert in California.

Photo Of The Day: For some reason, it’s always difficult to get clean pictures of Japanese infantry firearms, but here’s a welcome exception. Here we have Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force soldiers assigned to the 34th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division. They’re engaging in a firefight during a guard and protect exercise in Samurai Readiness Inspection at Yokota Air Base, Japan, 2021.

Going over the top with the U.S. Marines. In our Photo Of The Day, the show is performed by USMC Marines as they conduct fire and maneuver training on a fire team assault range in Jordan. They’re armed with the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle made by Heckler & Koch, and it looks like a hot, dry day in the desert.

TFB’s Photo Of The Day and we’re looking at Seaman Boatswains Mate Hayden Sleath as he fires the line thrower projectile from HMAS Anzac to HMAS Sirius, during a replenishment at sea. The rifle used is an Austeyr F88 and the photographer managed to catch the projectile just at it leaves the ship.

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. Right above we have Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Wells, a rifleman assigned to Alpha Company, Battalion Landing Team 1/1, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) as he posts security on the flight deck during an interior and exterior clearing exercise. The team is aboard the amphibious transport dock USS Portland (LPD 27) earlier this month.

In 2019, with help from reader Stimpy75 and my friend Emrah, TFB reported about new Personal Defense Weapon (PDW) that was unveiled at the International Defense Industry Fair (IDEF) in Turkey. The TOKAT 571 PDW falls into a medium-sized class of machine pistols, that’s larger than one-off pistols like the Glock 18 and Beretta 93, but smaller than full stocked PDW’s like an H&K MP5 or UMP. The R&D company, Bihemta reached out to me to get the word out that the TOKAT 571 is expected to get investment funding from the Turkish government for full production.

As usual, TFB has selected a few pictures for you. By this time you know it, it’s TFB’s Photo Of The Day to keep you in a good mood. Get a coffee, take a break and enjoy a few minutes off. Here we have Australian Army soldiers together with U.S. Marines with the Marine Rotational Force – Darwin as they dismount an MV-22B Osprey during Exercise Koolendong at Bradshaw Field Training Area, NT, Australia. This happened at the end of August of this year.

The first online photograph is said to have been published by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992. It’s uncertain how many were actually able to see that image at the time, but probably not a lot. Luckily TFB’s Photo Of The Day is a lot more popular and anyone with an Internet connection is welcome to visit. Here we do our best to focus on interesting high-quality images with a focus on firearms of all sorts.

Photo Of The Day with a loud bang as U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, fire an M3 Carl Gustaf rocket launcher. This happened during exercise Rock Klescman 21 at Pocek Range in Slovenia, in September 2021. Exercise Rock Klescman was a bilateral training exercise with the Slovenian Armed Forces focused on the rapid deployment and assembly of forces and team cohesion with weapon systems tactics and procedures.

The British Army have selected the Thermis CS thermal imaging system to fulfil their requirement for a Sniper In-Line Low Light System or SILLS. The contract was awarded following an international tender and is worth up to $11.5 million. The initial order is for 500 systems but more may be procured within the contract. The Thermis CS is produced by Greece-based Theon Sensors and delivery of the first batch of Thermis CS are expected in 2022.