#Iraq

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 newer, more compact variant is now available.

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.

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 in history, religion, or geography so this odd naming scheme comes as no surprise.

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 account under the handle of Salman Belarus started posting older media of the group on April 19th and has continued to grow to include much newer material, in addition to posting about the group coming back into the picture.

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 Iraq and Syria. The image caption states that the photograph was taken near the “Iraqi-Syrian Border”. The regiment replaced the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division that was previously in theater, deploying sometime between April and June of this year. A photograph also on DVIDs shows that the 3rd Cav conducted a transfer of authority (RIP-TOA) on May 28th of this year in Baghdad. Without further news or publicly available photographs, it would appear that this is the first large-scale operational deployment of the M17 MHS handgun within a conventional unit (or not, read on below as the 101st might have the 3rd Cav beat by a month). Apparently, the unit received the M17 MHS in January of this year or at least began qualifying with it at Fort Hood, home to the regiment.

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 class in full combat loadout.

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.

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.

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 State. TDMP has a website that is somewhat functional in Arabic, and an English version that still needs some work. The state-sponsored company is mostly committed to manufacturing multi-barrel rocket launchers, 81mm mortar shells, and UAVs of different configurations.

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 modern Infantry forces works through this sort of preparation can sometimes determine the difference between winning and losing against a determined insurgency of any time.

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 (ISIS) Train and Equip Fund (CTEF)”. This proposal covers the Pentagon’s plans to purchase equipment and arms that will be provided to forces that the United States (i.e- SOCOM) supports in Syria and Iraqi government security forces. At the low end of the supply chain are items such as magazine pouches and canteens, while at the high end are HUMVEEs and bulldozers. We are going to narrow down our focus to the small arms segment for TFB’s interests. A key element to keep in mind here is that this proposal hasn’t been approved yet and thus we are simply looking at what the Pentagon wants, instead of what they are going to get in terms of funding for all this equipment. The final result could be less, or it could even be more depending on the politics that go into the decision making process.

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 and carefully scrutinizing captured weapons caches. If you can, I would highly recommend  reading it yourself over on the organization’s website in the PDF form. We are going to summarize some of the more relevant findings of the report when it comes to small arms use and development here in this essay.

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 advisers for Iraqi forces deployed as part of Operation Okra. The article reads:

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 of aerial ordnance, could be hand launched, but most interesting to TFB is the ability to launch the device as an extremely improvised and unaimed rifle grenade. These rounds are craft produced, using plastic mold methods to create the fins and cup that holds the explosive charge that propels a projectile that has a fuse inside of it. Attached to this projectile is a safety pin that apparently must be pulled before launch. The only evidence that the device is launched from a rifle using a blank cartridge is a video clip showing this in March. Otherwise CAR believes the device has to have been hand-thrown.

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 the previous several years, and their loss is being expressed all over Iraqi social media. Both were killed within days of the other. Both of these snipers had a fair amount of success on the battlefield, but due to their enormous presence on social media, it might be argued that this appearance is almost as useful as any battlefield victory in lifting the spirit of the security forces and PMU fighters that are continuing the fight against the insurgency.