Good afternoon everyone and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturers of the awesome YHM R9 multi-host suppressor. Last week we brought you a look at the Hansohn Brothers Vidar 22 rimfire silencer. Today we take a [Read More…]
Meravigliosamente! In our Photo Of The Day, we have a wonderful flash from an Italian SCP70 rifle. The soldiers are Italians of the 183rd Airborne Regiment, and they’re using their SCP70 rifles to fire blanks at enemy combatants during a decisive action training [Read More…]
The number of internet users worldwide will soon reach the 5-billion mark. Our world has never been so connected. Great photos can spread like wildfire, but the story and the necessary context sometimes gets left behind. TFB’s Photo Of The Day, we will always [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: The M249 Light Machine Gun is made in the United States by FN Manufacturing LLC in Columbia, South Carolina. Here we can see it in action in the exercise Cold Response, spitting out those 5.56mm bullets at a high rate of fire. The M249 with the [Read More…]
Subject: Photo Of The Day Location: Pohakuloa Training Area, Hawaii What’s going on? We are looking at infantrymen from the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, as they suppress the enemy with their [Read More…]
In previous Photos Of The Day articles we have taken a look at the Idaho Army National Guard reference style pictures of the M107 Semi-Automatic Long Range Sniper Rifle and the M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System. Today it is time for the M249 Light Machine Gun.(FN [Read More…]
The Department of Defense has awarded FN America a five-year indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery contract to supply machine gun barrels. The model of gun the barrels will be for was not stated but it is likely for the M240 general purpose machine gun and/or the [Read More…]
In mid-March, the United States Army held their 10th annual Special Operations Command International Sniper Competition at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Twenty-one teams from around the globe participated in the six-day event. According to the Army Times, there [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…]
A confidential source has revealed to TFB the current contestants that have passed the most recent phase of the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle Competition (NGSAR). This phase is less of an actual competition between small arms prototypes but more of a theoretical [Read More…]
The US Army Materiel Command has shared an interesting behind the scenes video filmed at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. Ever wonder what happens to the US Army’s tired small arms? All the M4s, M240s and M2 Heavy Machine Guns which have seen decades of [Read More…]
So far the only U.S. civilian legal semi-automatic version of the venerable M249 Squad Automatic Weapon was from the same company that makes the actual machine gun, FN Herstal. However, we recently learned about another semi-automatic M249, from Utah based Machine Gun [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…]
Whatever the next infantry small arms configuration is, I hope it does away with the failure that is the belt-fed Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). Why? Let’s talk about it. On the surface, the idea of augmenting the firepower of a rifle squad with a belt-fed machine [Read More…]
The Czech Republic are to purchase over 100 general purpose machine guns from FN Herstal. The Czech Army has agreed a deal to procure FN’s version of the Minimi light machine gun chambered in 7.62x51mm. In a contract notice published on 22 November, the Czech [Read More…]
The US Army will be holding a second Industry Day for its Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle program, which seeks to replace the M249 light machine gun with a new longer-ranged, lower signature automatic rifle. The Industry Day will be held at Picatinny Arsenal on [Read More…]
We have already seen the 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype brought out by Textron for the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, but TFB also got an up close and personal look at Textron’s cased telescoped machine guns. Textron has two different cased [Read More…]
On the heels of the re-naming of their Stoner LMG as the Lightweight Assault Machine Gun (LAMG), Knight’s Armament company has introduced a scaled-up version of the same weapon in the 7.62x51mm caliber, with provision for other calibers should they be requested. [Read More…]
At the 2017 Association of the US Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting, Textron System displayed for the very first time their firing 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype. Previously, only non-firing mockups had been shown to the public, but after successful tests this summer the real [Read More…]
Knight’s Armament Company has announced a new very light weight belt fed light machine gun – which they have appropriately termed the Stoner X-LMG (for “Extra Light Machine Gun). The new weapon is based on the previous Knight’s LMG, itself a [Read More…]
The United States Marine Corps has issued a new acquisition notice for up to 50,814 M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles (IAR), to be sole sourced from Heckler & Koch. The notice is technically not a solicitation in and of itself, but a pre-solicitation notice, intended to [Read More…]
Last Saturday marked the very first FN SCAR Owners Group Shoot. The FN SCAR Owners Group is a Facebook Group of SCAR owners. This event was organized by Lester Gillis and hosted at Low Country Preserve in Tabor City, NC. Plus it was sponsored by FN America. The event [Read More…]
After over 30 years of using the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, it seems the US Army may be moving away from the concept of squad-level belt-fed automatic firepower in favor of a lower-capacity but more precise (and probably magazine-fed) weapon. In a recent Special [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
My experience with firing a SAW from the standing position is very limited – like one time limited. And even when everything goes completely right, the adrenaline rush of squeezing off bursts from a light machine gun while compensating for gravity and inertia can [Read More…]
FN America just released their 2017 catalog. It’s a very tempting catalog to read, with a lot of nice firearms and pictures. There’s also the LE and Military section, what dreams are made of. One of the news, for consumer and law enforcement buyers – [Read More…]
Winter is coming! The Mountain Platoon from the Swedish Arctic Rangers shows off by fighting from snowmobiles. This is a live fire exercise from a moving platform and looks like a lot of fun. The snowmobiles seem to be BRP Lynx. I think the version is called Lynx 800 [Read More…]
In this installment, we’ll be looking at a very unique round. The 6mm SAW was probably the first small arms round ever designed using computer-calculated parametric analysis, and it was also probably the first American rifle round designed from the outset for [Read More…]