Geisslele Automatics won a contract to supply AR-15 rifles to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This new contract includes both complete rifles and upper receiver groups. Let’s take a look at the specifics of this contract, and what it might mean for Geissele’s future civilian offerings.

The hungriest beast of them all on this blog is our Photo Of The Day. It consumes hundreds of images every month, and it has been doing so for over 8 years. Today we have one of the coolest pictures for a while, just look at that NSV machine gun hammering those 12.7×108 mm rounds. In Finland, it’s called the 12.7 ITKK 96. Task Force Red Cloud, headquartered by elements of CLB-6, has recently been deployed in Finland to support the Exercises SYD 2022 and Freezing Winds 2022.

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report!  This ongoing series is about the rimfire firearm world and its many guns, ammunition types, and history! Last week we looked at the antique $5 Mossberg Brownie .22 caliber rimfire pistol. Despite advancements in handgun technology, many of you seemed to be interested in owning one of these pistols, even if it were a modern reproduction. However, most of you noted that the current pricing of original Brownie pistols, even heavily used ones, was far too expensive for all but the most hardcore collectors to consider paying for. This week we’re taking a look at another relatively obscure rimfire firearm with the Tippmann Arms 1919 belt-fed full-auto pistol. This year I was fortunate enough to be able to see one of these things in action at the first annual All American Machine Gun Shoot. Today we’ll take a closer look at the Tippmann Arms 1919 as observed at one of the most entertaining firearms events I’ve been to all year long.

Hello everyone and welcome to TFB Podcast Roundup 61! We’ve got a great lineup of gun-podcast content for you guys this week and I just want to take a moment to remind all of you of an upcoming event in the South Eastern part of the United States that I think most of you would be willing to drive out a couple of hours for. What we’re talking about is the All American Machine Gun Shoot being hosted at The Sawmill Complex in Laurens South Carolina. A lot of you will remember that we recently lost one of the largest machine gun shoots in the United States and thankfully some good friends of mine decided to take up the mantle and fill the void that was left there. The All American Machine Gun Shoot will take place between October 14th and 15th and tickets are only $20 ($30 for two-day admission and $5 for children 12 & under) and can be purchased on-site at the gate. If you’re interested in going, you can expect a great show and the opportunity to handle and shoot a lot of cool guns. For more details on the machine gun shoot, you can check out the TFB Behind The Gun Podcast episode where we interviewed Anonymous Bob and his daughter RapidFire Rachel who are responsible for getting this ode to full-auto up and running! Enjoy this week’s selection of podcasts and we’ll hopefully see you at the Machine Gun Shoot!

In  Part 1, we looked at some of the Azerbaijani-made small arms showcased at the ADEX 2022 exhibition in Baku. In Part 2, we’ll look at more unique and lesser known products of the Azerbaijan defense industry – large caliber sniper rifles and machine guns.

The ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia brought a lot of attention to the military-industrial complex of Azerbaijan. And while many of their heavy weapon systems were procured abroad, when it comes to small arms, Azerbaijan demonstrates a surprising abundance of domestically produced firearms, which were demonstrated at the ADEX 2022 defense exhibition in Baku. That is especially interesting considering the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan did not inherit any significant firearms manufacturing capability and their entire military industry was built from the ground up in the last 30 years.

It’s time for another Photo Of The Day, and we can’t express enough gratitude to soldiers and photographers who capture moments like this when the shooting range is lit up by the muzzle blast from rarely seen firearms. In this case, we have the Heckler & Koch G36C in the hands of U.S. Marines and Swedish Marines at the Berga Naval Base, Sweden. And as you notice, that’s not the only H&K in these images.

Norway’s Armed Forces have been using the FN Minimi Light Machine Gun (in 5,56×45 NATO) since the late 80s. Recently they awarded FN Herstal another contract to supply up to 4,000 FN Minimi 7.62 Mk3 Light Machine Guns, a movement up in caliber as you can see. In this Photo Of The Day, we see the Telemark Battalion conducting a live-fire exercise with various firearms of the Norwegian Army.

On 3 July, the ranges at Bisley, the UK’s historic home of shooting, hosted a very special shoot. Vickers Machine Guns fired 16,000 rounds of ammunition with a crowd of nearly 1,000 people gathered to watch. It had been 20 years since the last time this many Vickers Guns had fired together. The event was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the disbandment of the Machine Gun Corps – the British Army’s corps of expert machine gunners formed in 1916 which disbanded in July 1922.

This past July 4th my friend Victor got access to a collection of guns. My friend Kythe and I tagged along to check them out and shoot them of course. I was more interested in filming some machine guns in slow motion so we selected a few guns to shoot and film. We decided to focus on slo-mo WWII machine guns and a Luger pistol. I figured filming the toggle action on the Luger in slow motion would be fun.

Photo Of The Day: The M249 Light Machine Gun is made in the United States by FN Manufacturing LLC in Columbia, South Carolina. Here we can see it in action in the exercise Cold Response, spitting out those 5.56mm bullets at a high rate of fire.

Machine guns make just about every red-blooded American happy. However, access and opportunities to this type of equipment are something that is often difficult to attain for most of us. Local gun ranges often have full-auto rentals for the occasional blast of fun but events like the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot allowed people to not only watch many of their favorite machine guns in action but also join in on the show by taking part themselves in the firing line. Sadly, last year’s Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot was the last one to ever take place. However, today I bring you all a little bit of hope. Today on the show I have with me Rapid Fire Rachel and her father Anonymous Bob. The two of them together are gearing up for what should be an event that will scratch your machine gun shoot itch. Today on the TFB Podcast we talk about this, as well as a bit about both Bob and Rachel and what they love most about shooting and firearms.

A Ukrainian company, the Kharkiv Plant of Individual Means of Protection (HZISZ), which operates under a number of trade names including RAROG, have developed disintegrating plastic machine gun links for various Soviet/Russian-pattern 7.62x54mmR chambered belt-fed machine guns. The ‘KS-122 Machine Gun Tape’ can be used in PK, PKM, and PKT pattern guns as well as the older Goryunov-pattern machine guns, the SG-43 and SGM.

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?

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.

There are too many photographs to keep records of, but there can never be too many with a machine gun spitting fire. Here we try to collect and share them in our Photo Of The Day. Today we have Special Forces Training in Germany. There are U.S. soldiers from the 10th Special Forces Group participating in a small unit tactical training exercise which was held in the Boeblingen Local
Training Area located near Panzer Kaserne, Boeblingen, Germany, in 2019.

Dusting off the Underground Arms Watch series after a dormant start to the year, we return with a look at some recent examples of ‘ghost guns’.

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.

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.

Yesterday, the US Army announced the selection of SIG Sauer’s weapons and 6.8 hybrid metallic cased ammunition as the Next Generation Squad Weapons System (NGSW).

Ukraine is converting salvaged Russian PKT machine guns for ground use. There appears to be a car repair shop in Kyiv which is taking in captured and salvaged Russian tank machine guns and adapting them for ground use with an ad-hoc stock and pistol grip assembly. Fascinating ingenuity, but not without historical precedence.

When normal people hear the word “smart gun”, the first thing they usually think of is the guns that require either a fingerprint or some sort of wrist band that allows only that user to shoot it (in theory). However, when cinephiles and hoplophiles hear the same term, only one gun comes to mind – the M56 Smart Gun from the 1986 movie Aliens. In a recent YouTube video I came across from user  KetzuKhan, it seems that he’s managed to cobble together his very own working M56 Smart Gun replica.

The US Army is yet to officially announce the winner(s) of the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program but we know how many weapons they’ll be ordering between October 2022 and September 2023. The US Army’s weapon system program acquisition costs for the 2023 fiscal year show that the US Army is seeking to initially procure 29,046 weapons during the period.

Generally, there isn’t much information about Sudan’s military industry in general and their small arms in particular. The country has been sanctioned and isolated from the international community for a long time as a result of bloody civil war, genocide, and war crimes committed during the War in Darfur. While very little information is available, some Middle East defense exhibitions, such as IDEX in UAE and World Defense Show (WDS) in Saudi Arabia give us a unique chance to take a glimpse of what is going on in the Sudan arms industry.

On March 24th the ATF released an open letter to all Federal Firearms Licensees in regards to the purchase, selling, and possession of Forced Reset Triggers or FRTs. Although this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone, the letter is quite clear in its intention and seems to actively seek out to retroactively punish those who have purchased them or have sold them. The full letter has been posted below for your convenience.

It’s now three weeks since Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine. We have seen the Ukrainian Armed Forces put up an impressive fight while Russia’s forces have stalled since their initial attempts at a lightning advance failed. While images of burnt-out or abandoned Russian armoured vehicles have dominated the news and social media there have been some interesting small arms seen. Everything from the newest Ukrainian AR-15s to Russia-backed separatists with Mosin-Nagants.

The US Army has released a sources sought notice for a 6.8mm conversion kit for the M240B and M240L machine guns. The kit will convert the weapons from 7.62x51mm to the 6.8mm round which wins the Next Generation Squad Weapon program. The move is essentially market research to find vendors who might be capable of providing kits that include all necessary parts to convert the 7.62x51mm M240s to the new round. This might include barrels, gas systems, action springs and bolt assembly parts.

Maxim Defense is a fairly well-known company within the firearms industry and they are probably most well known for their development of suppressors, and more recently, their development of short-barreled rifle ammunition which tumbles upon impact to increase terminal performance. Today, TFB Editor in Chief has Travis Bundy on the show with him right from the SHOT Show 2022 floor to talk a bit about his history with Gemtech, his background in physics, and of course his work at Maxim Defense and what the company is currently working on for 2022.

The Canadian government has confirmed that shipments of ‘lethal’ military aid will be shipped to Ukraine as the crisis with Russia continues. The military aid will take the form of small arms and ammunition and will follow earlier non-lethal equipment which has already been sent by Canada.

FN America have announced a $50 million contract with the US Army to provide M240L GPMGs and titanium receivers. The new award is in line with the June 2021 contract worth $92 million to produce M240 series general purpose machine guns. The titanium receiver is the key component which helped shave 5 lbs off the previous M240B’s 27.6 lb weight. The M240H introduced in 2004 weighed 26.3 lbs while the L weighs just over 22 lbs. The number of guns and additional receivers ordered under the contract has not been confirmed.