POTD: U.S. Marines with the 12.7108mm NSV Machine Gun

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.

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POTD: Vigilant Fox – Mixed Firearms

Photo Of The Day: We’ve rounded up a few of our favorites for your viewing pleasure today. Grab a coffee or a glass of water, sit down, and relax for a while. Above you see a British soldier firing his SA80 during the Vigilant Fox exercise in Finland, with an interesting mix of firearms from around the world.

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Soviet Influenced Heavy Machine Guns in Afghan Service

Similar to many small arms in use by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the diversity of Soviet patterned Heavy Machine Guns is quite high among the ANSF forces of today. Almost to a point where every derivative and variant produced in other countries is represented within the ANSF ranks from the Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP), Afghan National Army (ANA), the Nationa Directorate for Security (NDS), and the Afghan Border Police (ABP).

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FOB IN A BOX: Modular Interlocking Ballistic Barriers from KF Armory at [AUSA 2017]

Being a defense show rather than a firearms industry show, there are a bunch of interesting products to see at AUSA that one might not get a peek at elsewhere. An example of this kind of product is the Modular Interlocking Ballistic Barriers from KF Armory. These barriers are made of a solid proprietary rubber-like material, can absorb impacts up to .50 cal (for the variant rated for that round), and can be assembled into walls and structures in very little time.

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SOCOM Wants…U.S. Made PKM and NSV?

Special Operations Command recently posted a solicitation on the government ran Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) resource in regards to a need for a domestic U.S. manufacturer to produce exact copies of the Soviet 7.62x54r mm PKM medium machine gun, and the 12.7x108mm KSV heavy machine gun (Entry is fourth from bottom on web page). With these U.S. made machine guns, SOCOM intends to supply foreign forces the command is advising with higher quality machine guns. Explicitly mentioned in the solicitation is that secret squirrels are having issues with leading and mentoring indigenous forces but lack the capability of quality weapon systems or replacement parts. The plan calls for a completely U.S. made product, on U.S. soil, using domestic labor to create a “facsimile” of these machine guns

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