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 external profile of an M249 SAW light machine gun. The photographs were posted by the Instagram user Akalphonso who spotted them in use by an Iraqi Shi’a militia group named سرايا السلام‎/Sarea-Al-Salaam, or “Peace Companies” in English. The group is an organized self-defence force that was created at the height of the Daesh resurgence in Iraq and Syria, to protect vulnerable Shi’a communities in Iraq. Looking through the social media of the group, one sees numerous other small arms modifications that were done to make the weapons “look” like more effective small arms that they actually aren’t. One particularly gruesome example is of a PSL rifle that has been configured to “look” like a PKM GPMG from afar, complete with an M249 200 round plastic drum “attached” to the magazine well and the belt draped over the receiver of the rifle. This sort of practice has been going on in Iraq for some time, previously even among actual Iraqi special operations forces with Mad Bull airsoft replicas.

Today we’re taking a closer look at the General Dynamics GAU-19.  

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 call it one of the first true squad automatic weapons, being introduced at least a decade before the Minimi ever came on the scene. It was produced by the Soviet Union, Poland, Egypt, China, and North Korea under various designations. In China it has been asserted that it might have been part of a covert export line of light machine guns, being marked without Chinese markings and with the designation “M23”.

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 Burmese small arms production has typically been licensed produced of designs from Europe but usually with a few modifications that the Tatmadaw requested from the Directorate of Defence Industries. So although not truly innovative in the field of small arms design, the Burmese production small arms are still somewhat of an oddity and a true gem to research and to look into. TZ45 and Uzi submachine guns, G3 rifles, Lee Enfield rifle grenade launchers are all equally represented here.

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 Heavy Bombers of the Second World) working with live ammunition at the recent Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot in Arizona. What appears to be twin .50 BMG M3 aircraft machine guns were fed from several hundreds rounds of linked ammunition and as the saying goes, “Money was turned into smoke” on the plains of an Arizona desert. Perhaps the only thing cooler than shooting from the ball turret on the ground, is shooting live rounds from it in the air. Legally that would be near-impossible to accomplish anywhere in the United States as a private enterprise.

We’ve been comparing the guns of the Fallout series of post-apocalyptic video games to their real-world counterparts and today we’re going to examine the handmade rifle.

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 complimented by fire and maneuver. We were able to get access to fully automatic machine guns such as the MG42 and MG34, in addition to the MP40 submachine gun and landmark STG44 rifle. Of course we also had on hand Mauser K98s that complimented the historical firepower. There was a G43 that was on hand but the rifle suffered some malfunctions that didn’t allow us to use it in the live fire.

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 day. Undergoing field modifications that would be against regulations anywhere in the world, the troops did it anyways because it fit a necessary field requirement. 

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.

SIG Sauer have unveiled their newest entry into the small arms market at the 2018 AUSA exposition, which began today in Washington, DC. Described as the Light Weight Machine Gun, the new weapon was reportedly developed for US Special Operations Command’s medium machine gun requirement and is chambered in .338 Norma Magnum – a rival to General Dynamics’ Lightweight Medium Machine Gun.

We’ve got another guns seized in Brazil post, but this ones a real doozy! Police in Barra da Tijuca, a neighborhood in the west side of Rio de Janerio, Brazil recently found and seized an M2 Browning machine gun chambered in .50 BMG.

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 Guns with optics. An interesting twist in this history is that variants of the MA-Sniper were actually modified to be used in the ASEAN Armies Rifle Match competition that is held annually. These variants have not been seen in service in the field and are very different from what we have seen in service with the Burmese Army’s operational forces. Although there isn’t much information available on these rifles, one of the variants was actually on the logo of the 23rd AARM competition held in Burma in 2013!

Photographs have emerged of a captured Islamic State weapons cache which has an impressive range of firearms. The stockpile of weapons and explosive materials was captured by a rival Syrian group HTS. The cache included a wide variety of pistols, submachine guns, rifle and light machine guns from sources all over the world.

Remember the US ARMY’s OICW competition back in the 90s? Well apparently South Korea has continued to develop their own version. S&T K11 DAW (Dual-barrel Air-burst Weapon) is the modern version and my friend Uk Yang test fired it.

Today, Kalashnikov Group (Russia) presented new assault rifle prototype called AK-308 at the International Military-Technical Forum “Army-2018”

In anticipation of the release of Fallout 76 in November, we’re taking a look at the guns of the Fallout universe and comparing them to real guns. The Fallout series of games is set in a post apocalyptic alternate history universe that diverged from our history somewhere after 1945. The transistor was developed later in the Fallout world than in our world and  nuclear technology is much more advanced while computer technology is much less advanced. It’s not too important to get wrapped up in the details of the whole alternate history thing. Just think of it as a picture of Morrow Morrow land, the  way we thought the future might have been in 1950.

Your enemy is the best teacher when it comes to combat. In a move that appears to be imitating what the Kachin Independence Army pioneered in 2010 when it comes to bullet trap rifle grenades being fired from locally assembled Type 81 derivatives (the Chinese Type 81 already uses one, but they tried a different method), Burmese Defense Industries has introduced a rifle grenade firing capable variant of the 5.56x45mm Myanmar Army (MA) family of infantry small arms (locally produced Galil ARM). At the current time it appears that the nomenclature of this variation is the MA MK II. Thus, MA-1 MK II (full-length rifle), MA-3 MK II (folding stock carbine), and the MA-4 MK II (UBGL variant). It most likely isn’t the case that the MA-2 has been retrofitted to fire rifle grenades as a light machine gun platform being used for that purpose is rare anywhere in the world. In addition, the MA-2 MK II is the new 7.62x54mmR variant of the LMG. In addition there has been modifications to the MA-3 carbine, but if the folding stock can withstand the recoil of the grenade isn’t known either.

Every field has its own mysteries and mystifications. And if we are talking about the history of Soviet small arms, the biggest puzzle is the notorious AKMSU. If you look it up on Russian gun websites, you can find a lot of fascinating information, for example:

Japanese newspaper called The Mainichi reports that a large cache of buried WW2 firearms and edged weapons was found during construction works near a Tokyo elementary school. Estimated 1,400 firearms (or rather what is left of these guns), 1,200 bayonets (maybe also swords) as well as a number of grenades and ammunition were dug out from the site. Let’s read the report of The Mainichi newspaper and take a look at the photos taken on the site.

If you’re having any problems with the embed video, you can use this link:  https://kalashnikov.media/en/media/videolibrary/4522502

Unlike many other countries, Russia always celebrates May 9. In fact, it is one of the biggest holidays of the year. On May 9, 1945, at 00.16 local time, Germans signed the Instrument of Surrender, which ended World War II in Europe.

Russian Federal Security Service (FSB (ФСБ)) in cooperation with the Russain Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Guard seized a large cache of illegal firearms that were smuggled from Europe to Russia. When trying to identify these firearms, I was amazed to see that most of them are historical guns many of which are quite rare specimens. Let’s try to identify the most interesting historical firearms seized during this operation.

Although the 9x19mm MA-13 MK II design was first seen online in 2012, there is still relatively not much known about it outside of the Myanmar Police Special Task Force that has been seen utilizing it as standard issue, albeit sparingly. Staying within the previous designation of the Burmese Defense Industries license produced copy of the Israeli IMI 9x19mm Uzi submachine gun as the MA-13 (MA for Myanmar Army), the Tatmadaw appears to have added a “MK II” suffix to the nomenclature to designate a variation.

At a recent amnesty program held by the Israeli Defense Forces, a first model Dror in .303 British turned up along with a number of other small arms that had been surrendered as part of a drive to return historical small arms from IDF veterans or otherwise. In this particular case, the Dror that was handed in is of special importance because of how rare it is. We talked about this on TFB TV a while back and Ian has an excellent post on Forgotten Weapons about it as well. The early variants of the light machine gun that was illegally manufactured in Canada, sent as contraband to Israel where it was assembled, were in .303 British and had a side mounted magazine slot that could fit a 20-round magazine based on the Johnson LMG’s design. They didn’t fare too well in Israel due to feeding issues and only 800-1000 were ever made before the second variation was improved upon and ironically entered service in Israel after the fight for independence had already been won.

The craft-modified bullpup PKM design that has popped up in different iterations (albeit sparingly) throughout Syria, Yemen and Libya takes its roots in the Russian 7.62x54mmR Pecheneg PKP GPMG that became popular within the Russian Ministry of Interior due to the need for a beltfed weapon system that could be compact as possible. Originally the Pecheneg wasn’t a bullpup, but simply a shortened PKM with integrated carrying handle. Later, bullpup versions became available but at this point, it doesn’t appear that they are seeing a tremendous amount of use within Russia. The bullpup variant appeared on the scene at least in public around 2016. It didn’t take long for craft-modified variants to appear in hotspots in the MENA region, first in Libya in early 2017, then in Syria possibly around late 2017, and most recently in Yemen this summer (May, June 2018). Dates are very approximate with these timelines due to images making their rounds on social media from their respective communities until they get picked up by Western sources and analysts. So we can’t pin down exactly when these designs were developed or even entered service, but we do know none seemed to exist before the Pecheneg bullpup in late 2016. For more information about that original design, Russian presenter Sergey Badyuk got his hands on a variant in one of his episodes on Youtube.

This is the first guest post by Grigory, author of “Kalashism” blog:  https://www.instagram.com/kalashism/
Grigory is a passionate gun enthusiast and spent his entire career working in Russian military-industrial complex in various capacities. He travels a lot, mostly to the Middle East and South Asia, and has a unique perspective on a lot of modern small arms and tactical gear.

Starting when the notorious terrorist leader found refuge in the company of Mullah Omar’s Islamic Emirate in the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden became a vociferous proponent of constantly appearing in propaganda footage armed with a Soviet AKS74U “Krinkov”. Many have pointed to this being a very deliberate choice and not a haphazard appearance of a particular weapon system for maximum impact. If the leader wanted to simply demonstrate that he was armed in every recorded or photographed event, then of course any nearby rifle of sufficient weight and size could do. Indeed, the “Sheikh” could have pulled one off his Arab staffed security team at any time. But he didn’t, and instead he specifically chooses to be depicted in visual media as carrying the AKS74U. From what appears to be the time he began his work in Afghanistan and ending in some of his last televised propaganda messages, UBL constantly and consistently has an AKS74U by his side.

For this episode, we took a trip to the folks at Battle Arms Development in Las Vegas and were able to get our hands on some of the companies newest rifle entries that were premiered at SHOT this year. The Tanker and the Paratrooper is sort of the manifestation of Battle Arms in the company entering the full rifle market from the parts manufacturing business. They also have a lightweight piece, a .308 rifle, but these aren’t covered as much in the episode above.

After a brief hiatus, the infamous Mahama Tactical training team is back in the spotlight again. The group’s former leader, Uzbek national Abu Rofiq was killed a while back and since then the team appears to have lost some key leadership. Since then, a Twitter account under the handle of Salman Belarus started posting older media of the group on April 19th and has continued to grow to include much newer material, in addition to posting about the group coming back into the picture.

Early prototype of AM-17, first public demonstration. August 2016