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 9 years. Today we offer a bunch of images from the Al Asad Air Base, in Iraq. This military airbase is located in the [Read More…]
In Part One of this article, I shared my experiences after visiting gun stores in Baghdad, and it is not what most people expect to see in Iraq. Gun stores are small and cramped, with a relatively limited choice of firearms and really high prices. Thankfully, things in [Read More…]
More than once, when I argued about gun control with different people, I heard the same argument: “If you want to have your precious “assault weapons” – go live in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia, they have no gun laws, you’ll be happy there [Read More…]
Longtime readers of TFB will know our very own Vladimir Onokoy as not only a very competent writer but also an insightful specialist on non-American weaponry from various countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and 12 other countries, mostly as a security [Read More…]
The Baghdad is a little known about rifle that is still extremely rare to come across both in the United States and even in Iraq. There are definitely more questions than answers when it comes to what we actually know about the rifle: It appears to have been built using the same machines and tooling [Read More…]
When Skynet takes over, the Battelle Drone Defender V2 may become your best friend. Our Photo Of The Day shows U.S. Marines as they operate the Battelle V2 during a training at the Baghdad Embassy. The Marines are assigned to the Special Purpose Marine-Air Ground Task [Read More…]
The camera loves the light, and in Iraq there’s plenty of sunshine. Today we look at a Danish soldier, scanning his sector of fire during a base defense exercise supporting Operation Task Force Dragon at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq. He’s using a Colt from Canada [Read More…]
Looking for moments when a great photographer meets some of the best Military Special Forces? Look no further, TFB’s daily articles are where you will find these amazing masterpieces. Our Photos Of The Day shows Norwegian Army soldiers, assigned to Norwegian Task [Read More…]
The 9mm Tariq is unique among Beretta enthusiasts because of its scarcity outside of Iraq. It is certainly one of the least studied due to the lack of primary sources and information in the firearms research community. But we try to take a crack at breaking down the Tariq’s history and [Read More…]
Smile! Wait for flash! Today our Photo Of The Day here at TFB is a picture from Al-Assad, Iraq, as Norwegian Soldiers from NORTU 5 (Norwegian Task Unit) tests an 84mm Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle. The original design was introduced already in 1946, but modern versions [Read More…]
Photos where the photographer manages to capture the projectile as it leaves the barrel are the best, we love them! As you can see we have a contender in this Photo Of The Day, where a 120 mm mortar round leaves the barrel of the M74 Mortar. The location is the Besmaya [Read More…]
TFB TV takes a look at one of the famous gun shops in Erbil, a city in northern Iraq. Wasta Bakhtiar has had his gunsmithing business for a number of years, starting in his own father’s shop as a child in Kurdistan. Today he fixes both Peshmerga and civilian small arms alike, sometimes even [Read More…]
About a month ago, Iraqi police seized over one thousand Ukrainian Fort-19 pistols that were smuggled into the country. Reportedly, the documents accompanying the cargo and the markings on the boxes were stating that the articles inside the container are bicycles. The [Read More…]
In fact, it isn’t an M249 SAW at all. It looks like a SAW, probably sounds like a SAW when fired, operates similarly to a SAW, but it isn’t one. What you are actually looking at is an RPD derivative that has been externally modified to fit the overall [Read More…]
In late October men of the 1st Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, currently deployed to Iraq, trained with the Drone Defender, an anti-drone device. The Drone Defender is made by Battelle, pictured is an earlier version of the system, the Drone Defender V2 – a [Read More…]
Iraq has made some fundamental changes to its firearms laws. The Iraqi government has shifted its policy and begun to allow for Iraqi civilians to legally own firearms not just for sporting purposes but also for self-defence. Historically, Iraq’s gun laws have [Read More…]
The Iraqi Al-Kadesiah rifle was named after a battle bearing the same name in 636 AD which marked a key point in the Islamic conquest of what is current-day Iraq and Iran. The naming of weapon systems whether it be small arms or missiles in Saddam’s Iraq was often based on important events [Read More…]
After a brief hiatus, the infamous Mahama Tactical training team is back in the spotlight again. The group’s former leader, Uzbek national Abu Rofiq was killed a while back and since then the team appears to have lost some key leadership. Since then, a Twitter [Read More…]
An image of the sidearm that has replaced the Beretta M9 in U.S. Army service has recently surfaced through DOD media outlets. The image is of a soldier from the “Brave Rifles” 3rd Cavalry Regiment that is currently deployed to Operation Inherent Resolve in [Read More…]
I first heard the term “tacticool” somewhere around 2012. At that time, a friend of mine and I were training with US ex-special operations instructors in South-East Asia, and instructors loved to make fun of Hong-Kong airsofters, who showed up to a basic shooting [Read More…]
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 [Read More…]
Damien Spleeters of Conflict Armament Research recently posted this photograph on his Twitter feed of a 7.62x39mm Chinese Type 81 LMG that was recovered among an entire cache of Type 81s after the battle for Mosul. We had some Easter eggs in the @conflictarm ISIS report [Read More…]
The Technical Directorate for Military Production (TDMP) is a defense armaments manufacturing arm set up within the Popular Mobilization Forces (الحشد الشعبي) that were established in Iraq during 2014 to combat the growing threat of the so-called Islamic [Read More…]
Unfortunately, an inevitable result of any large-scale military counter-insurgency operation are unintended, innocent civilian casualties otherwise known as collateral damage. The questions stated to military planners are not “If” but instead “When”. How any [Read More…]
The Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Defense Budget Proposal has been submitted to Congress and will take some time before we find out if it is approved or denied. But within it there is a specific budget document titled “Counter-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [Read More…]
Conflict Armament Research has released a report featuring the results of in-person findings of what the so-called Islamic State has been using in the past three years. These findings (40,000 items, 845 small arms) have resulted from personal visits to the frontlines [Read More…]
The Thales EF88 assault rifle has seen its first operational deployment, and the reception is reportedly very warm. According to an article in Defence Connect, the rifles were deployed with Task Group Taji 5 (5th rotation), a battalion of Australian Defence Force [Read More…]
During the battle of Mosul that recently ended with Iraqi security forces declaring the entire city to be cleared of insurgent elements, Conflict Armament Research discovered an anti-personal IED that the so-called Islamic State was using to drop from drones as a sort [Read More…]
In the recent battle of Hawija, in northern Iraq, Iraqi security forces and Paramilitary forces lost two marksmen in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Both of these snipers were very effective in the counter insurgency war that Iraq has been waging for [Read More…]
Created during the Iran-Iraq War, the Tabuk Sniper is one of those oddballs of historical firearms. Although referred to as a “Sniper” rifle, it really never was one to begin with. Chambered in 7.62x39mm, the rifle was intended as a squad or platoon support weapon to compliment the RPK [Read More…]
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