#SoCalledIslamicState

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.

News footage from a Kurdistan24 television crew, and overhead drone footage taken from a so-called Islamic State propaganda video both show a so-called IS attack in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where Kurdish SDF forces are battling the rebel group with the support of the United States. Driving heavily armed SVBIEDs (Suicide Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) into enemy positions is one of the most deadly tactics of the group in the current conflicts of Syria and Iraq. A study from the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point highlighted the fact that the so-called Islamic State was using as many as fourteen SVBIEDs a day in the Mosul fight against Iraqi forces.

We previously discussed the small arms capabilities of the so-called Islamic State-affiliated Maute group, we will proceed to cover the opposing Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that have been successful in crushing the rebel uprising. Despite this success, there is still a rocky road ahead of the security forces when it comes to their task at hand. A number of these high-quality photographs are from a photo essay by David Sim on the International Business Times.

The Government of the Phillippines is engaged in what is increasingly becoming a much harder fight than anticipated in the city of Marawi on the southern island of Mindanao. Numerous security forces are involved in the fight to include Philippine Infantry units, Marines, SF, and most recently U.S. Special Operations are being thrown into the fray. In addition to the local so-called Islamic State group (Maute Group) lead by two brothers, we have had much media attention focused on this entire dynamic and we haven’t taken a look at the Marawi fight yet on TFB. The International Business Times has an excellent slide show where their reporters took a number of high-resolution photographs of the fighting on the Government forces side. We’ll be examining the small arms capabilities of the government forces in a forthcoming post.

The so-called  Islamic State has released a video recently in a series of in-depth views of marksmen taking shots at Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in the vicinity of Kirkuk province in Iraq. The video is titled Arrows of the Monotheists and is essentially a propaganda and recruiting effort from the Islamic State. The majority is footage from a spotter with a camera focused on a particular target while a marksman nearby fires a well-aimed shot. Then it cuts to various scenes showing the shooters either moving into position or training to get up online. A number of the shots have been cut to show a shooter taking a shot from a staged position in the rear, to the actual shot footage, thus appearing like one take of the action. These sorts of videos first became popular in OIF with the “Juba Sniper” videos that circulated among the Iraqi insurgency.