For a few weeks, the Belgian company FN Herstal have been promoting an event called: “A New Chapter Begins“. As you know, the company already provides an extensive range of firearms for use in the ground role, or mounted on vehicles, ships and aircraft from 5.56mm cal to .50 cal machine guns.

Photo Of The Day: Above you can see some left-handed shooting with the UKM 2020 machine gun. As Poland changed teams and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1999, the challenge to adapt their firearms to common NATO ammunition arose. The PKM machine gun was already being produced in Poland under licence, but it needed a serious redesign to be able to accept the new ammunition (7.62x51mm NATO) as well as the links and belt that hold them.

Underground Arms Watch returns with a brief glance at recently seized craft-produced arms by law enforcement around the globe.

If you’re a firearms enthusiast (as it’s likely that most people reading TFB are), you probably have a list of guns you want. Unless you’re one of the fortunate few to have an arsenal rivaling Heckler and Koch‘s Gray Room, the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, the NRA’s Whittington Center, or this guy that Nick met at a match several years ago, budget and availability are often limiting factors for new gun purchases. Of course, some guns are harder to get than others. Manufacturing runs and timeframes, frustrating legislation, importation challenges, the ravages of time, and a host of other factors can have a significant effect on the availability, accessibility, and price of various guns. The hardest pieces to procure are sometimes referred to as “unobtanium guns”, with the term being a sort of colloquial reference to these firearms’ difficulty (or sometimes impossibility) for us to acquire. Today we’ll explore a handful of the unobtanium weapons on my personal wish list, by no means comprehensive and in no particular order. I’m pretty sure that more than a few of you will find some commonality between my list and yours.

In this episode of TFBTV, James Reeves gets to take the SIG LMG-68 for a test drive at SIG Academy in New Hampshire. We talk to members of the design team about the LMG-68’s development, history, production, and capabilities. As previously reported on The Firearm Blog by Matt Moss:

It has been a while since we had news from the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons program, the last updates we got were on the final prototype and ammunition deliveries being made for the next stage of the Army’s evaluations. Now some interesting news regarding General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems’ bullpup entry the RM277-R and RM227-AR. A new company, LoneStar Future Weapons will be taking the lead on the post-development phase of the weapon.

Between the dates of August 25th, 1921 and September 2nd, 1921, a fierce battle between striking American coal miners and the combined forces of the West Virginia State Police, Logan County Sherrif’s Department, and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency would take place. Being one of the largest domestic battles to take place during the 20th century, the Battle at Blair Mountain would have long-lasting repercussions for both the coal industry as well as the state of labor unions within the United States and is also a strong demonstration of how an armed populace can hold their own against an organized and well-armed force.

Hello and welcome back to another edition of  The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about rimfire firearms, ammunition, practices, and trends. This week we’ll be taking a look at a piece of rimfire belt-fed goodness in the form of a rimfire Ma Deuce or M2. No matter how you take it, belt-fed guns are just somehow more fun. I don’t know if it is just the mechanical complexity behind them or the whole operation of the firearm but I know that anytime I get a chance to shoot a belt-fed, I’ll immediately take it.

Buckle up, buckaroos. We’ve got some dense legalese to get through today. On March 25, 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, reversed and remanded a lower court decision that denied a preliminary injunction against the ATF’s enforcement of the bump stock ban. I know that many of you are thinking the same thing that I had thought. Wait, what? I thought the whole bump stock ban thing was already over and done? A done deal, set in stone, lost and never to return. But it appears this is not the case, so without any further ado, let’s get into the meat of the matter.

For military history buffs, there’s nothing better than a good book. For those interested in firearms history and specifically the use of machine guns during the First World War, there’s some good news. The Vickers MG Collection & Research Association, a not for profit research collection in the UK, has announced the reprinting of a long-lost book about the British Army’s use of the Vickers machine gun during the Great War.

It seems that everyone’s most favorite and benevolent government agency has moved on from pestering solvent trap and Form 1 parts kit manufacturers and upgraded to harassing novelty business card makers. For those that don’t know, AutoKeyCard is or was, a company that simply made and sold metal business cards that featured an outline of the fabled Lightning Link.

Spotted a few days ago on Twitter via user @Progrockfarmer, we saw an entire arsenal being turned in by a Croatian citizen. As you can see from the picture above, the man had quite the armory at his disposal and it is far more than just a handful of rifles and a boatload of ammo. This man’s personal weapons cache also featured artillery rounds, hand grenades, belt-fed machine guns, and much more.

Photo Of The Day and yet another great photo by Hille James Combat Photographer. Today we’re looking at a photo he named “Out In The Cold“. We have a soldier in Multicam and an M2HB .50 Cal equipped with a Leupold scope and lots of other goodies. Just look at the gigantic flash hider.

With IDEX 2021, the first major international defence exhibition of the year coming up in Abu Dhabi later this month, FN Herstal have announced a pair of improved machine gun mounts for land and sea vehicles. The FN M3M WM (Weapon Mount) and the FN Light MWM (Multi Weapon Mount).

The highly popular and highly anticipated Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot is on for March of 2021 at the Big Sandy range in Wikieup, Arizona! Due to scares surrounding COVID-19 in 2020, both shoots were canceled last year along with many other popular gun-related events. However, the 2021 Big Sandy Shoot is back by popular demand and promises to be better than ever.

Various Indian media outlets have reported that the Indian Army has received delivery of the first batch of IWI Negev light machine guns which were ordered back in March 2020. The order for more than 16,0000 Negevs was a part of a series of purchases by the Indian military which saw not just light machine guns but also rifles, carbines and precision rifles.

SIG Sauer have announced the completion of the final delivery of their Next Generation Squad Weapon System prototypes and ammunition to the U.S. Army. The delivery includes finalised weapon prototypes which have been optimised following Army feedback from the ‘soldier touch point’ phase and a shipment of SIG Sauer’s 6.8×51mm hybrid cased ammunition. Uniquely for the program, SIG Sauer’s entire system submission has been developed in-house with no other external partners. So SIG Sauer’s homogenous system also includes their own suppressors.

SOFWERX, in concert with USSOCOM PEO-SOF Warrior (PEO-SW) has announced they will be hosting a Lightweight Machine Gun – Medium (LMG-M) Virtual Industry Day to foster the development of the new machine gun sought by US Special Operations Command.

Photo Of The Day and we are looking at an SG-43 Goryunov Machine Gun. It uses the 7.62×54mmR cartridge and was introduced during the Second World War, in 1943, to replace the M1910 Maxim.

Today’s Photo Of The Day features the Netherlands Korps Mariniers lead slinging sled! Unveiled a few months ago, the sled has an FN MAG 7.62x51mm general purpose machine gun mounted at its center.

FN Herstal has recently been commissioned by The German Bundeswehr to supply heavy machine guns for their fleet of NH90 helicopters. The NH Industries NH90 is a medium, twin-engined helicopter for multi-role military missions, and has seen combat in Mali, for instance.

Indian small arms procurement is a complex business. Not only is the Indian Army extremely large, standing at around 1.2 million men, but it also has a complex procurement structure and an indigenous small arms manufacturing base that has failed to provide weapons that meet the Indian Army’s requirements.

“Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.”
– Sally Mann

Israel’s IWI recently made a significant flex with the posting of a photo of their Negev light machine gun production line. The photo features Negev LMGs for as far as the eye can see. Posted simply with the caption: “Just another day in the office, NEGEV production line”

The Ministry of Defense of Georgia and the US Embassy in Georgia have published news articles telling about a US-funded program of equipping the Georgian Defense Forces with 600 M249 SAW light machine guns. The program includes a two-week weapon familiarization course for the Georgian military personnel conducted by US advisors. Half of the course was dedicated to field training held in the Krtsanisi training center and included various drills and target engagements at 100 to 600-meter distances.

In this episode of TFBTV, James Reeves discusses the history of the M60 machine gun and some of its little-known advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, James reviews reports from the U.S. Army that discuss the effectiveness, range, accuracy, and reliability of the M60. We also look at tests pitting the M60 against its bitter rivals from FN, including the M249 SAW and the M240 or MAG58. While the M60 has been mostly replaced, was this the best idea?

With the  Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program underway, the US army is considering changes in squad size. Working with the basic assumption that introducing new weapons might mean a change in optimal squad organization, the Army’s Maneuver Battle Lab recently revealed that they have commenced a study tackling the issue. While it is uncertain if any change will result from the study, the army had already indicated that the size of the squad will not fall below 9 men.

A visit by Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, to Textron Systems’ Hunt Valley facility near Baltimore, MD gave us some fresh photographs of Textron’s new Next Generation Squad Weapon program prototypes. We have two photos, one of a Textron employee discussing the program while holding Textron’s NGSW-Rifle prototype and another showing both the NGSW-R and NGSW-Automatic Rifle prototypes.

Lots of progress has been made this year in the 3D printed firearms world. We’ve seen the printing world go from just a few parts here and there to having guns that are almost completely made from 3D printed materials. The development group AreWeCoolYet (AWCY) recently reached out to me regarding their Scz0rpion project.

Hello and welcome back to another weekly edition of  The Rimfire Report. This weekly series explores anything and everything rimfire. The guns, ammunition, sports, history, and stories from the rimfire world are discussed here, and what a vast and expansive subset of firearms culture it is! This week we’re going to talk about the theoretical maximum amount of fun you can have with the humble 22LR round – a belt-fed 22LR.