#ISIS

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.

A coordinated attack against the Afghan Ministry of Interior headquarters in Northern Kabul on May has shown a fair degree of sophistication when it comes to the small arms and tactics of the insurgents involved. Reportedly the planning was carried out by the Haqanni Network of terrorists, but overall responsibility has been claimed by the so-called Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-KP). The attack was meant to strike a symbolic hit against a recent Loya Jirga, or gathering of religious scholars in Kabul that were proclaiming an end to the current violence in the country. Casualties were all the attackers (less than a dozen) with Government casualties at 14 killed and 17 wounded. Those last numbers are questioned by many in Kabul as being too low for many of the attacks in the city.

Conflict Armament Research has recently published a short but very comprehensive report detailing the craft produced anti-armor/personal launchers that we reported on in May of 2017. The findings that CAR has come up with are quite revealing about the launchers themselves, in addition to how the terrorist group conducted itself through manufacturing armaments and in utilizing these at the front. I would highly encourage readers to look through the original report, but if you don’t have time, we’ll highight some of the key findings here.

In a recent letter released to Army general officers, Chief of Staff of the Army Mark Milley outlined a plan for reform of the Army’s development and procurement arms. In it, he also made mention of the Army’s plans for future individual weapons and equipment. Among those, the General mentioned a new piece of kit for the soldier: Exoskeletons. From the letter:

It seems that human augmentation devices have seen their first practical application. Passive exoskeletons – perhaps less glamorously called “full body orthopedics” have been spotted in use by Russian sappers in Palmyra, Syria. The sappers – Russia’s equivalents to Western bomb disposal or explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units – were wearing structural exoskeleton suits reportedly designated “K2”, shown in the videos below:

A cool head under fire was on display in a video released just yesterday, in which a female sniper of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ, a part of the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces narrowly avoided the bullet of an ISIS sniper who had her in his sights. The dramatic video was first released by Turkish journalist Hemze Hamza through Twitter:

We previously discussed the small arms capabilities of the so-called Islamic State-affiliated Maute group, we will proceed to cover the opposing Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that have been successful in crushing the rebel uprising. Despite this success, there is still a rocky road ahead of the security forces when it comes to their task at hand. A number of these high-quality photographs are from a photo essay by David Sim on the International Business Times.

The war in Syria and Iraq has seen the development of a whole range of scratchbuilt and improvised weapons that are as ingenious as they are destructive. Recently, a kind of serially-produced rocket launcher has come to light as part of Da’ish (ISIS) propaganda, which appears to demonstrate a capability to serially produce clandestine weapons of a fairly high degree of sophistication. The weapon, a multipurpose missile launcher with a high explosive warhead, is unassuming and appears roughly equivalent to the US AT4, though cruder. It is a simple tube with almost no fittings or sights, a carrying/support handle, and a safety pin securing a fold-out firing grip.

An Egyptian man in Cairo found something unusual and worrying in/near Cairo International Airport: A 9K32 Strela-2 “SA-7 Grail” missile launcher, designed to take down aircraft at ranges of over 3 kilometers. The man, Ibrahim Yousry claims he found the missile launcher – launcher only, sans missile – about a mile from the airport, at the side of the road among other trash. From the Telegraph:

East Asia and the Middle East are full of garage gunsmiths and homemade firearms. With the current conflict in Syria and Iraq it seems like lots of homemade guns are being found on the battlefield. Some of them seem decently well made, and some just seem odd. The one below seems outright dangerous, to the shooter. Gun Youtubber MrGunsnGear recently posted on his Facebook page this gem that was found by Peshmerga forces fighting ISIS near Mosul.

In Malaysia legal gun ownership is somewhat like transferable NFA machine gun ownership only not as expensive but just as limited and somewhat more strict. According to my friends at Cresdo, a firearm importer in Malaysia, has told me that there are only little over 100k firearm permits allowed in Malaysia. On top of that you are only allowed one firearm. Say you buy a gun and you don’t like it. You cannot trade it, sell it or destroy it to buy another gun. Most permits are for handguns for self defense. There is a premium on these guns. Many permit holders are wealthy business men and they opt for high end guns like SV Infinity or STI often paying more than double their retail price.

The terrorist organization Daesh has released another disgusting propaganda video, this time about their long range shooters. I refuse to call them snipers because that would entail that they are actually professionals and have been formally trained. Luckily for us, the good guys, these terrorists don’t seem to fully comprehend the fundamentals of marksmanship or camouflage. The majority of the hits displayed during the video do not seem to have incapacitated their targets, and most of these look to be at at least 400 meters and in, certainly not precision shooting. Unluckily for us, it appears that they possess some night vision capabilities because one of the clips shows the camera with an IR filter, and the shooter must also have an IR capable scope if he were shooting in low light. Also some of the scopes displayed show IR scopes or image intensifiers. All the equipment appears to be captured or bought off the black market in some fashion as well. I would not recommend watching the video, unless you want to make your blood boil. This style of video propaganda, filming the actual hits of a shooter from his hide, isn’t new at all. During the Iraq campaign, there was an Iraqi insurgent sniper named Juba, who produced similar videos. However, it does show the long range rifle capability of our enemies, which I know we aren’t a political site, but I’m sure every reader on here can agree that a terrorist organization such as Daesh, are evil, and are our enemies. Another good point is that the footage is coming from a select few of their shooters, because you notice the same guys and the same weapons throughout the video. This is good because it means they probably have a very limited long range capability in their combat forces.

The Czech Republic has announced that it will donate obsolete vz. 58 rifles, both new and used, to the Iraqi and Kurdish regional government. The vz. 58 is an unusual assault rifle often confused with the famous Kalashnikov pattern of rifles, but very different from that family. Jane’s reports:

Russian and Arabic language news sites are reporting that the Russian MTs-116M sniper rifle has been seen in use with Syrian Arab Army forces, specifically female fighters. The rifles, based on the successful MTs-116 target/hunting rifle, are equipped with 5- or 10-shot detachable box magazines, similar in pattern to those used in the famous Dragunov SVD designated marksman rifles. Accordingly, the sniper rifles are chambered for the 7.62x54mmR Russian cartridge, the oldest military small arms cartridge in the world that has been continuously in service with its parent country.

This past Big 3 East, they had a huge finale. They brought out a BMW 5 series, placed binary explosive all over it and let over 100 people shoot at the car with whatever they have. Pistols, ARs, SMGs, Machine Guns. A good time was had by all.