On the 17th of November, 2021, the Twitter account Lee Ann Quann reported that the Vietnamese Army was in the midst of testing a brand new homemade UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). The tweet included a video of what appears to be a cobbled-together unmanned treaded [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: Above you can see the M40 Sniper Rifle with the Redfield 3-9×40 scope used by Sgt. Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney. He recorded 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills while serving in the Vietnam War, and the rifle can be found in the National [Read More…]
Vietnamese weapons aren’t particularly mainstream in the Western world, however, we catch a glimpse of them, from time to time. Recently Vlad showed us the latest products of the Z111 Factory, the STV-380 and SVT-215. Now, thanks to the TV channel VTVcab, and its [Read More…]
In the previous post, I talked about some of the new AK variants developed by the Vietnamese Z111 factory, but those prototypes seem to be a side project for the new facility. The main purpose of Z111 is the production of STV-380 and STV-215, new service rifles of the [Read More…]
There are very few countries in a modern world that have a respectable firearms industry and manage to keep a veil of secrecy over it. Besides North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Sudan, and some Gulf countries, Vietnam seems to be very secretive about its new guns. Thankfully, [Read More…]
Evelyn Ernest Owen (15 May 1915 – 1 April 1949) designed the Owen machine carbine or Owen Gun in 1939. This is the topic of our Photo Of The Day. TFB wrote about it already in 2013, in the article: Made In Australia: The Owen Submachine Gun. As I’m sure [Read More…]
This year, Vietnam had its first large international defense exhibition, DSE Vietnam 2019. The expo was located in Hanoi downtown, next to all the museums and government buildings, just a two-minute walk Vietnam Ministry of Public Security. Not surprisingly, the [Read More…]
Even among professionals, not much is known about modern Vietnamese small arms. You can seldom see Vietnamese manufacturers at defense exhibitions and every time they make an appearance, there is a lot to talk about. This year, Vietnam had it’s first large [Read More…]
In our previous coverage of modern Vietnamese small arms development on display at Indo Defense 2018 we spent some time looking at locally produced M79’s, Lee Enfield No.4’s, a rotary grenade launcher, and even a 9x19mm Bizon! In this post we’ll be [Read More…]
One of the biggest buzzes during the show was the booth from Vietnamese Defence Industries (VDI). This was the first such appearance of the Vietnamese delegation to any major trade show outside of Vietnam with the amount of materiel that was being presented to the [Read More…]
Although the L1A1 SLR (FN FAL) service rifle served the Australian “Digger” faithfully for an extremely long period of time, infantrymen in the Vietnam War realized that the rifle could be “tweaked” to fit the combat that the soldiers had to fight in day after [Read More…]
Dennis Martin, a gun lover like all of us who runs with the Instagram handle of “AK47Shooter,” provided this picture on his account recently. Postulating that… Maybe we would have won the Vietnam war if we had ditched the M16 for this instead. [Read More…]
A recent visit by the Vietnamese Vice President Ngong Thinh to the MoD’s state arsenal factory Z111 has revealed that the country is currently producing what appears to be a licensed copy of the Russian 12.7x108mm OSV-96 semi-automatic magazine fed anti-material [Read More…]
Although the Russian Kalashnikov assault rifle is the one that is most famous, it is arguably the Chinese Type 56 AK that made the bigger impression on the world in the 1960s and 70s. This rifle was initially developed with Russian technical assistance just before the [Read More…]
Fortunately night vision has come a very long way in terms of thermal and Infrared optics choices that today’s grunts have. However, once upon a time, 6 pound passive starlight PVS 2s were considered state of the art when it came to the capabilities of U.S. troops fighting at night. The scope [Read More…]
A recent article in the Vietnamese online journal Nguyen Tan Dung discusses the latest updates of a remotely controlled 12.7x108mm DShK heavy machine gun that could see potential use among soldiers of the Vietnamese Peoples Army. The contraption was aired on the Vietnamese MoD’s public [Read More…]
Dat Viet, a Vietnamese language news website has reported that the production of Vietnamese made bolt-action, five round magazine-fed12.7x108mm KSVK anti-material rifles has commenced at the Israeli IWI built, Vietnamese MoD owned factory Z111 in Vietnam. The factory [Read More…]
During the height of the Vietnam War, the famed US Lake City Army Ammunition Plant made steel-cased 5.56mm M193 ammunition for the US Army, as part of an effort to conserve valuable copper. This ammunition did not make it past the testing phase, as the project was [Read More…]
Within the Leeds based Royal Armouries small arms collection in the United Kingdom there is a particular Soviet AK47 that is kept amongst the collection of other AKs. The serial number is ГЛ4027, in addition to a date stamp of 1953 with an Izhmash arms plant logo. [Read More…]
Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it. Now, a good definition for “assault rifle” in my opinion comes from Anthony G. Williams, a British author, ammunition collector, and military [Read More…]
In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers. On Wednesday we looked at a [Read More…]
We are saddened to report that the veteran apparel company Grunt Style has announced that Lieutenant General Hal Moore has passed away at the age of 94 in Auburn, Alabama. LTG Moore was the first American commander to engage in a large-scale battle with the M16 family [Read More…]
Since the beginning of the modern era, the question of how to arm the increasingly large body of non-infantry troops has become both more pressing and more difficult to solve. Initially, these men could be armed with pistols, or perhaps submachine guns firing pistol [Read More…]
A seller on Gunbroker has recently posted a very peculiar and unique weapon system, a civilian legal 40mm reproduction of the China Lake pump action grenade launcher. The receiver, stock, and pump are registered under a Title 1 firearm, while the barrel is registered [Read More…]
After World War II, US Army analysts determined that the effectiveness of the infantryman was not as closely related to their marksmanship discipline as had been previously thought. It seemed that instead, the random environmental circumstances and effects, plus the [Read More…]
While the current record for the longest “confirmed” sniper kill is over 2,700 yards (just over 1.5) miles, with a .338 Lapua Magnum round, for nearly 35 years the record stood not with a traditional centerfire rifle, but with a modified M2 Browning Heavy [Read More…]
Colt’s Manufacturing Co., LLC, announced at the 2016 National Rifle Association Annual meeting that they would be introducing new semi automatic reproductions of their previous military AR-15 and CAR-15 offerings to the civilian market. According to [Read More…]
This video was originally from an episode of 60 Minutes. It was documenting the use of marijuana from Vietnam soldiers. I am more concerned about the fact that these soldiers are pointing shotguns at each others’ faces. The pipe appears to function like a chamber [Read More…]
So you’ve just bought a MAS 36, and you’ve heard a lot about how it was too little, too late, how it shoots a weird, hard-to-find caliber, has no safety, and you can’t adjust the sight for windage. On the other hand, you like that the action is short [Read More…]
In late 1963, photographer Arthur Rickerby snapped photos of a Colt demonstration of its new AR-15 rifle. The photos appeared TIME Magazine, and their focus was on more than just the rifles themselves: Present at the shoot was 1962 Miss America pageant winner Maria [Read More…]
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