B5 Systems is an American company that is focused on engineering military and aerospace solutions. Most of their firearms products focus on rifles and their current product lineup features common parts like trigger guards, QD end plates, handguards, and stocks. In a [Read More…]
A lot of us who are into night vision devices or want to have the same equipment that the US government has access to will spend a lot of time and money trying to acquire these things through legal means. Not so for 3 individuals who were recently charged with the theft [Read More…]
Small arms ammunition has seen its fair share of ups and downs in terms of both price and availability over the last couple of years but that hasn’t stopped the insatiable appetite of our armed forces and their need for reliability and quality ammunition for [Read More…]
POTD, short for Photo Of The Day, is TFB’s daily article series where we try to find pictures that will entertain you. Did you know that credit for the first-ever color photograph taken goes to the mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell? At a lecture in 1861 he [Read More…]
RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) is a technology that practically permeates our modern lives. Everything from your passport, your keyfob at work, tags on the back of your equipment, and even your dog or cat probably has an RFID tag in it that contains important [Read More…]
The US Army MMO or Mounted Machine gun Optic program has selected the Trijicon MGRS (Machine Gun Reflex Sight) for use on the Browning M2 and M2A1 platforms. The initial MMO program started in 2018 put out a request to manufacturers for a mounted weapon platform optic [Read More…]
For all shooters, increased levels of lead in our bloodstream are a constant concern. Anytime you discharge a firearm, you’re potentially inhaling a lot of unhealthy chemicals including atomized lead. Army soldiers that shoot for a living are particularly [Read More…]
The US military is constantly seeking to develop the next best thing in warfighting technology. Some of the most important pieces of this technology are our weapons systems. TFB has recently reported on some of these initiatives, like the new M110A1 Squad Designated [Read More…]
Today’s Photo Of The Day features Australian Army soldiers from the 2nd Commando regiment conducting in a training exercise with their M4A5 rifles. In this photograph, taken by CPL Kyle Genner, we see Australian Army Commandos conducting in a series of [Read More…]
Carly Schroeder Last March, I trained with Tactical Night Vision Company (TNVC). For this course, I got the opportunity to partner with Carly Schroeder. #Notagunbunny It was clear that this was not Carly’s first course. Carly’s training resume includes many top [Read More…]
With the recent official news that the new AK-12 and AK-15 rifles have been adopted by the Russian Ministry of Defense it’s with interest we with Kalashnikov’s help can take a deeper look into how the rifles were developed and engineered. Nathaniel F [Read More…]
A key part of the capability brought to the table by the US Army’s new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle is its chambering for the 7.62mm round. Specifically, this chambering allows the SDMR to fire the (also brand new) XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round, [Read More…]
The US Army wants to give its soldiers more punch and reach: In the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Estimate Justification Book for the United States Army, the service outlined its strategy for procuring M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System (CSASS) rifles from Heckler [Read More…]
In the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, top Army officers talked about their plans to modernize the force, and, as part of that, replace both the M249 SAW and the M4 Carbine, the latter of which has been in service since the early 1990s. The [Read More…]
A long-awaited update on the much-delayed Compact Semiautomatic Sniper System program came with the recent Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing that was conducted Wednesday. In his testimony, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8 Lieutenant General John M. Murray told [Read More…]
Despite the suggestion being raised more than once in Congress, the United States Army will not be buying M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles from Heckler & Koch, but instead is devoting its small arms resources towards the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle program, [Read More…]
The golden age of polymer cased ammunition has probably already begun. Certainly, Norwegian-Finnish ammunition manufacturer Nammo seems to believe that, as they recently took a significant stake in American company MAC, LLC, makers of polymer-cased composite ammunition, [Read More…]
The Russian Defense Ministry has made a decision regarding its next infantry rifle: It will adopt everything, it seems. Not only will Russian Army forces receive the improved 5.45x39mm AK-12 (the new AK-12, not the different previous version), and the 7.62x39mm AK-15, [Read More…]
Until now, the US Army’s 7.62mm XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round has been a mystery. The round, which was rumored to be the basis for the now-cancelled Interim Combat Service Rifle (ICSR) program, is supposed to allow existing weapons in the 7.62x51mm [Read More…]
At the 2018 SHOT Show, Geissele Automatics made fans very happy by bringing out 3 new and much-asked for products. First, the company released its new Remington 700 trigger line, which consists of a single SKU adjusted from the factory to two models: Single stage and [Read More…]
At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range capability. The rifle, Milley said, will give a 10x improvement in [Read More…]
Two important decisions by the Army have stood out among the recent news of the M17 handgun starting to replace M9s throughout armories service-wide. First, is the news that within the Army Infantry, the handguns will be issued down to team leaders. Second, is [Read More…]
The Armalite AR-10 is the original lightweight 7.62mm combat rifle – a space-age amalgam of aluminum, steel, and advanced plastics capable of a rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute and weighing just a hair over 7 pounds, unloaded. Its younger, 5.56mm caliber [Read More…]
The US Army’s new sidearm, the SIG Sauer M17 Modular Handgun System, will soon be available for purchase on the civilian market. SIG’s Chief Marketing Officer Tom Taylor told Military.com about the decision, saying that about 5,000 of the full size M17 [Read More…]
The United States Marine Corps has finally officially announced its adoption of the 5.56mm M855A1 EPR round, developed in the late 2000s by the US Army, marking an important step towards ammunition commonality between the two services. Until now, the USMC has officially [Read More…]
Recently on The Firearm Blog we talked about one of the great might-have-beens, the German caseless G11 rifle developed by Heckler & Koch during the 1970s and 1980s. Today we have a video from 1990 filmed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds of a demonstration of the G11K2 [Read More…]
It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed thinking about small arms. I’m trying to put everything out of my mind so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning, go to the range, and bring you some raw ballistic data. So of course what [Read More…]
Is the US Army pushing for a new high-powered 6.Xmm caliber with their new NGSAR program? Recently, the listing for the NGSAR industry day in December was updated with a document describing in part the agenda of the second conference. Scheduled for 9:45 in the morning [Read More…]
The first holster to be issued with the US Army’s new Modular Handgun System, including both the M17 and M18 pistols, will be a variant of the Safariland 7TS holster, featuring both ALS and SLS locking systems. The holster is the first of at least three holsters [Read More…]
The US Army has announced a decision to field the M17 MHS as a sidearm to more soldiers than were previously issued M9 handguns. Where previously only senior leadership were authorized to carry handguns, with the new M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System squad and team [Read More…]