@historicalfirearms / www.historicalfirearms.info
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with this video. After spotting an L85A1 with an ad hoc front grip in some footage from the Gulf War I did some digging. There's a rich history of British soldiers fashioning home made foregrips so we take a look at a few of those too.
In this video we take a look at the FN40GL 40mm grenade launchers currently proliferating in Ukraine, with both under-barrel and standalone versions of the FN40GL seen.
This week interesting footage of an improvised weapon was shared online. social media quickly described it as the 'Ukrainian Minigun' but the anti-drone weapon consists of 6 AK-74s on a static anti-aircraft mount, seemingly designed to combat small, low flying drones.
France has continued to aid Ukraine, supplying complex weapon systems and vehicles. Alongside things like armoured fighting vehicles and artillery they have also provided a number of machine guns with both AANF1s and French FN MAGs seen in use.
Check out the video below:
As the proliferation of 5.56x45mm rifles in Ukraine continues the latest rifle to begin to be seen in use is the Heckler & Koch HK416. Small numbers of the rifle have been seen in use with Ukrainian special operations forces so far.
Check out the video below:
In this video we talk to Danny Michael, curator of the Cody Firearms Museum, about the mysterious Burton Machine Rifle - our own research into the rifle and how it links to the republishing of some important, out of print volumes of the ARMAX journal.
A look at the German SMArt 155, a Sensor Fuzed Munition, currently in use in Ukraine. It releases a pair of fire-and-forget top-attack submunitions. The submunitions use a ballute and parachute to slow their descent and allow the onboard infrared sensor and millimeter wave radar to locate its target and fire down an explosively formed penetrator.
In late April a Ukrainian unit shared an intriguing video of a small mortar that fired 40mm grenades. Since then they have shared several more videos showing how the small mortar works.
At the beginning of May 2023, Russian media shared a flurry of videos from salt mines near Soledar. The videos showcased a captured weapons storage depot said to be inside part of the mine complex which was recently captured by Russian private military contractor unit Wagner. In this video we'll look at the videos to see what weapon systems were captured at the depot. The weapons largely appear to be damaged or obsolescent.
Designed to combat the threat of Frogmen/Combat Divers, the DP-64 is a niche-role 45mm grenade launcher. In March it was featured in a Russian news report filmed somewhere in the region of the Kakhovka Reservoir.
The Russian A-545 is perhaps the rarest of assault rifles in use in Ukraine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion last year there have only been a handful of potential sightings of the rifle which features an internal recoil mitigation system.
Recent imagery confirms the presence of the Mk153 SMAW in Ukraine. In the last couple of months there have been sightings of the Mk153 in use at the front an at a Ukrainian Armed Forces training ground. The Mk153 is a shoulder-fired rocket launcher capable of engaging structures and armoured vehicles.
This is the first of a series of videos looking at the older weapons in use in the war in Ukraine. In future instalments we'll look at Maxims, Mosin-Nagants and DP light machine guns but in this first video we'll examine use of the Fedor Tokarev-designed TT-33.
Over the last couple of months a number of M110 semi-auto precision rifles have begun to appear in Ukraine. Predominantly seen in the hands of Ukrainian special operations forces, the rifle began to appear in the autumn of 2022. In this video we take a look at some of the imagery of them in theatre.
Check out the accompanying article for this video here.
At SHOT Show 2023 we got our first look at the Individual Weapon System, chambered in .264 Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) - a round developed from .264 USA. Developed by FN America in response to a requirement from the Irregular Warfare Technology Support Directorate the new rifle looks to address many of the same questions as the US Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon programme.
I spoke to FN at SHOT Show and I've dug up the original IWS requirements so this video represents everything we know about the ISW at the moment. Sadly the rifle was behind glass at the show so we couldn't handle the weapon and the lighting wasn't ideal for filming but we got a decent look.
Check out the full accompanying article for the video here.
The Defender, from Ukrainian Company Black Storm, is a kit which allows the venerable 40mm GP-25 under-barrel grenade launcher to be converted into a standalone weapon. It combines a telescoping stock with an internal spring designed to mitigate felt recoil and a forward grip and a pistol grip extension to improve the weapon’s ergonomics. These have been seen in use since Spring 2022 and pre-date Russia’s February invasion so have probably been in use even longer.
They are an interesting piece of kit which allows AK pattern rifles which have been adapted with after-market railed forends and the large numbers of western rifles (which can’t mount a GP-25) to continue to be used.
Check out my video on the Defender below, it features more information and examples of its use in the field and video of it in action:
Recently at the Las Vegas Antique Arms Show I had the chance to examine an extremely rare Sten variant - the silenced MkIVA. One of only a handful known to exist.
Check out the video:
