#Syria

A recent media video following a platoon of the Syrian Arab Army take over of al-Bukamal, a city in the eastern portion of Syria, on the border with Iraq shows a soldier with what appears to be the receiver, trigger guard, and stock of a shotgun (Remington 870 from the open source photographs) combined with what appears to be a four foot long pipe attached to it. Unfortunately, our only perspective of the weapon is from behind the soldier carrying it, which obscures the receiver, what would most likely be the pump action charger and the ejection port.

The bloody battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa has been since been won by the Kurdish Peshmerga with U.S. support. But while it was raging, we wrote about the Polish volunteer fighting with the Peshmerga with a public name and Facebook book title of Archer. After getting in touch with the individual, he was able to submit to TFB a number of photographs of his small teams inventory along with some actual feedback on the small arms used.

A Bulgarian investigative journalist by the name of Dilyana Gaytandzhiev has published an article vigorously detailing the activities of the Azerbaijani state run airline Silk Way in providing arms shipments across the MENA region and Africa in the airlines diplomatic capacity. Not only does it appear that U.S. Special Operations Command is using the airline to transport massive amounts of small arms and ammunition from Eastern Europe to groups in Syria, but also such customers as Saudi Arabia, and Kurdish state actors in addition to possibly much more. The majority of the shipments appear to be rocket launchers and associated ammunition, but there are numerous amounts of Kalashnikov variants mixed in among the shipments as well. W e actually had a post on TFB about shipments from Bulgaria to Kurdistan as early as 2008, so the Silk Way connection might not be that far off in this regard.

Recent so-called Islamic State propaganda videos and an individual Twitter account within Syri a have posted numerous examples of improvised suppressors in use on a wide variety of precision rifles and anti-material rifles.The Twitter account simply mentions that the rifles belong to “Brothers” and “Sunni” fighters, which could literally be any one of the tens of opposition groups in the conflict. Most of these suppressors or cylindrical flash hiders appear to be made out of pre-constructed materials such as a flashlight or other metal tubes. With the exception of one, they appear to be direct thread as well. Although very simple to employ, direct thread brings with it the possibility of the suppressor unscrewing itself unless there is a method of locking.

Lost Weapons on Twitter has posted screen grabs from a recently released so-called Islamic State propaganda video show a remote controlled 73mm SPG-9 recoilless rifle (Russian in origin, derivative country origin unknown) in use by the rebel group in Syria. The contraption uses a camera hooked up to the optical sights, linked back to a controller. It appears that the launcher’s elevating and traversing mechanisms are locked in place however, thus negating any form of actual control over the launcher’s point of aim from the operator point of view. This is unlike other RC controlled platforms, such as this SVD, also in Syria. Thus, the launcher is really just pointed at a predesignated target, or target reference point, where the operators hopes that an enemy would appear. And even if the round is successfully fired, there would still have to be someone present in the room to reload the next casing, which almost entirely negates the point of it being remotely controlled in the first place. The other point is that it doesn’t appear that the connection to the video monitor can go very far, with screen grabs indicating that the video monitor is in the same room as the launcher.

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.

It seems that human augmentation devices have seen their first practical application. Passive exoskeletons – perhaps less glamorously called “full body orthopedics” have been spotted in use by Russian sappers in Palmyra, Syria. The sappers – Russia’s equivalents to Western bomb disposal or explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units – were wearing structural exoskeleton suits reportedly designated “K2”, shown in the videos below:

Last December we reported on the Uzbek originated group Malhama Tactical, offering the equivalent of private military services to numerous belligerents within the Syrian conflict. Rather than fade away from the scene, the group has actually appeared to have grown, with its own dedicated Twitter, Telegram, and several Youtube pages that go by hannibal Great and  Malhama-Tactical FanGuy. In our previous post about the group, the videos that we posted were all taken down from Youtube but they are still on the internet in various locations. I’ve taken the liberty of downloading them from their original source and uploading them to Youtube, because it probably is only a matter of time before the group deletes their channel or it gets taken down. My hope is that readers realize that TFB isn’t intent on “spreading” their propaganda videos, but is instead doing our utmost to learn and analyze the weapons, tactics, techniques, and procedures that the group is utilizing.

A cool head under fire was on display in a video released just yesterday, in which a female sniper of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ, a part of the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces narrowly avoided the bullet of an ISIS sniper who had her in his sights. The dramatic video was first released by Turkish journalist Hemze Hamza through Twitter:

The war in Syria and Iraq has seen the development of a whole range of scratchbuilt and improvised weapons that are as ingenious as they are destructive. Recently, a kind of serially-produced rocket launcher has come to light as part of Da’ish (ISIS) propaganda, which appears to demonstrate a capability to serially produce clandestine weapons of a fairly high degree of sophistication. The weapon, a multipurpose missile launcher with a high explosive warhead, is unassuming and appears roughly equivalent to the US AT4, though cruder. It is a simple tube with almost no fittings or sights, a carrying/support handle, and a safety pin securing a fold-out firing grip.

Russian presenter Sergey Badyuk has partaken in a very informative discussion on Kalashnikov rifles in use by various Syrian groups within Assad controlled portions of Syria. He is a prior Russian serviceman himself and certainly knows his rifles. Now obviously, we can’t accept the information portrayed here as complete truth when it comes to small arms in use by Assad’s SAA. However, this is a somewhat legitimate open source outlet that allows us to peer into Assad’s forces.

Two Arabic news sources ( Military-Zones, Middle East Panamera) have published independent posts about a remote control vehicle currently at least in the developmental phase of design within the highly contested Aleppo province in Syria. The designers are in areas still in control by Assad’s Syrian Arab Army, and have been working with the SAA in the hopes of a purchase. Originally it was constructed due to Syrian troops taking casualties in the current fight against numerous rebel and terrorist groups operating throughout Syria and especially in Aleppo province. The group mentioned backing the project is the Aleppo Chamber of Industry, however, this is from the Google Translation and is most likely a translation error instead of any actual organization.

Recent photographic evidence has shown that Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is equipped with DNS-1 Day & Night Vision Sights from the Belarusian company “Belarusian Optical & Mechanical Association”. These optics have been seen mounted on both AK74Ms and PKMs using a Picatinny rail on a standard Kalashnikov optic mounting platform in use on many Soviet small arms designs. Although these optics haven’t been seen in large quantities, their presence in two photographs signifies at least a small order of such DNS-1 optics. The DNS-1 appears to have an infrared capability in addition to a standard daytime usage mode, very similar to the U.S. Army’s discontinued Day/Night AN/PVS-10 of the 1990s and early OIF/OEF eras. Although these sights were cutting edge technology when they were introduced, today they tend to be overweight compared to numerous other equivalent optics available. For the Syrian Army, these optics would be a tremendous advantage over the rebels they are fighting, especially during periods of low light.

Recent photographs out of the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib show a thorough manufacture of improvised anti-material rifles, all in 14.5mm. Local gunsmiths in the rebel-held city appear to be using the discarded barrels of 14.5mm KPV heavy machine guns, of an unknown country origin (most likely Russian) to fashion both bolt action and what appears to be two variants of a self-loading gas operated rifle. Some of these rifles even have very well applied digital camouflage schemes for the conditions that they are manufactured in. All variants are magazine-fed from either underneath the receiver or in one case as a side loading mechanism. All have Picatinny rails fashioned to the receivers of which variable power scopes are affixed. At least one of the scopes is a Steiner, while others have a “B” logo embossed on the front of the objective lens cap. It could possibly be Bushnell but the logos don’t match. It could also be an airgun scope that those would be much easier to acquire not only in the MENA region but anywhere else. Barring any evidence to prove otherwise, all the anti-material rifles look to be manufactured by the same entity and also look to be in different stages of experimentation and testing. One of the self-loading rifles looks rather crude, and due to the presence of more bolt action systems, it appears that testing was done with the self-loading rifles but found to not be satisfactory so the entity went with a “production” run of the bolt actions which were much easier to produce reliably.

The mostly Kurdish composed Syrian Democratic Forces were recently pictured in combat against the so-called Islamic State with a modified Zastava M93 Black Arrow anti-material rifle. The M93 is chambered in either .50 BMG or the Russian 12.7x108mm cartridge. The M93s in use by not only the SDF but also elements of the Kurdish Peshmerga are most likely in 12.7x108mm due to the ample supply of Russian ammunition in the area of operations. Kurdish forces have been known to have been using M93s for some time now