Photo Of The Day and we’re back in Afghanistan, towards the end of 2009. Above you see U.S. Marine Sgt. John Hollingsworth, where he is zeroing his weapon at the shooting range in Forward Operation Base Airborne, Afghanistan. Below we see a U.S. Marine feeding [Read More…]
TFB’s Photo Of The Day. We go back in time, to Afghanistan in 2013. Above we see Spc. Daniel S. Kennedy, from Tuttle, Oklahoma, with 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, as he provides security as Afghan Border Police (ABP) break ground on a new checkpoint, in [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: It’s been over a year, so we hear very few things from Afghanistan. These images were taken in 2014, in the Helmand province, and we see U.S. Marines 3/7 in a shooting competition with various firearms. Above you see U.S. Marine Corps Capt. [Read More…]
In our Photo Of The Day, we see an Afghan soldier providing overwatch security with a Romanian PSL rifle on an observation post while U.S. and Afghan soldiers observe rounds fired from Afghan artillery. These pictures are from 2012, almost 10 years ago. The bottom [Read More…]
POTD, short for Photo Of The Day, is TFB’s daily article series where we try to find the most interesting pictures out there. Did you know that credit for the first-ever color photograph taken goes to the mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell? Back in 1861, he [Read More…]
As the situation in Afghanistan continues to unfold, some people refuse to leave anyone behind. Operation Recovery aims to continue helping at-risk individuals get out of Afghanistan. With requests for aid numbering in the 4,000s, the recovery effort needs funding. [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: A variety of photos from Afghanistan, from a time which now seems like a long while ago. This happened in the Maiwand district in 2014. We have a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day and yet another great series of photos by Hille James Combat Photographer. Today we have pictures of the Dutch Commandos in Afghanistan, the Korps Commandotroepen (KCT). The Korps Commandotroepen is the Special Forces unit of the Royal Netherlands [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, August 26, 2021, just a few days before the evacuation ended. You can imagine the pressure of working there, day and night with just a few hours of sleep between the shifts. Above we see a paratrooper [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: Modern history in action as we take a look at Swedish Special Forces (SOG) at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. They are working in collaboration with other nations’ units on the site. The soldiers live inside the [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day: The world’s first photograph, made by a camera, goes back to the year 1826. It was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Here we are today looking at a picture taken with the help of Night Vision as the last American soldier leaves Afghanistan. This [Read More…]
The recent and hasty withdrawal of the United States Armed Forces from the country of Afghanistan has been somewhat of a controversy. Many say that the withdrawal of US forces was irresponsible while others are lauding the decision as a step towards a more peaceful [Read More…]
Pen guns are unusual creatures in the menagerie of firearms designs. And no, that’s not a reference to the horror show “PEN-15” rifle assembled by TFB TV’s James “Questionably Frequent Phallic Jokes” Reeves with his motley crew of [Read More…]
The AKS74U is perhaps one of the more interesting Kalashnikov variants that has spawned a following all over the world due to its compact size and effects as a status symbol in the United States, Middle East, and Central Asia. The name itself is one such example of that following that continues [Read More…]
Photo Of The Day and we take off to an exciting place called Kabul, in Afghanistan. We’re looking at the Afghan Special Police and their Crisis Response Unit 222 (CRU222) being trained and monitored by Norwegian Naval Special Operation Commandos. This means that [Read More…]
Every day TFB tries to give you at least one great photograph to look at, followed with a text about what is going on and which equipment is being used. We call this POTD for short, or Photo Of The Day. TFB is extremely happy to be able to share photos of the extremely [Read More…]
Today’s Photo Of The Day displays a British Army Soldier using his SA80 for covering fire in Afghanistan. You can see his fellow soldiers in the background. The SA80 has the SA80 Underslung Grenade Launcher (UGL) mounted, which consist of a Heckler & Koch [Read More…]
Stars and Stripes recently ran a story about an embed with Afghan National Army troops operating in a number of provinces. One of the photos taken by the author, J.P. Lawrence, immediately caught my eye for obvious reasons. It features a young ANA soldier, on guard in [Read More…]
Today we present a great photo in all its simplicity. The CRU 222 is one of three Afghan Special Police Units dedicated to the immediate police response. Their job is to hunt down terrorists in Kabul, Afghanistan. Their base is located at the old Camp Gibson, outside [Read More…]
The British Army’s official Twitter account shared an interesting photo of the pipe rifle range at NATO’s base in Kabul showing ‘newly arrived’ troops zeroing their rifles. The Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) Pipe Range is part of [Read More…]
Very and distinctly different from anything craft-produced in the Darra Adam Khel regions of the Kyberpukhtunkha region of Pakistan, the Kabul Arsenal pumped out railroad materials, coins, and most important to us at TFB, Martini-Henry’s and Martini-Metford license produced copies with the [Read More…]
In what would certainly make the gun makers of Darra Adam Khel blush with professional embarrassment, a recent so-called Islamic State of Khurasan (IS entity in eastern Afghanistan) propaganda video showed fighters of the group engaging enemy Taliban fighters with a [Read More…]
Starting when the notorious terrorist leader found refuge in the company of Mullah Omar’s Islamic Emirate in the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden became a vociferous proponent of constantly appearing in propaganda footage armed with a Soviet AKS74U [Read More…]
An image of the sidearm that has replaced the Beretta M9 in U.S. Army service has recently surfaced through DOD media outlets. The image is of a soldier from the “Brave Rifles” 3rd Cavalry Regiment that is currently deployed to Operation Inherent Resolve in [Read More…]
A coordinated attack against the Afghan Ministry of Interior headquarters in Northern Kabul on May has shown a fair degree of sophistication when it comes to the small arms and tactics of the insurgents involved. Reportedly the planning was carried out by the Haqanni [Read More…]
There certainly exist a large number of myths and misconceptions about small arms in Afghanistan. Everything from the names of certain firearms available to how they are perceived in the country has been over exaggerated or hyped up to the point of no return. Surprisingly there are almost as many [Read More…]
Previously we looked at some of the very modern stores that sell numerous Turkish models in Kabul but in this episode, we look at some of the older small arms that are considered antiques but still legal to purchase (although ammunition is somewhat of a gray area). For that purpose, we went to one [Read More…]
Similar to many small arms in use by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the diversity of Soviet patterned Heavy Machine Guns is quite high among the ANSF forces of today. Almost to a point where every derivative and variant produced in other countries is [Read More…]
The Afghan Long Rifle, or more commonly known in the West as a “Jezail” struck free into General Elphinstone’s combined British and Indian Army of 1841 and 1842 as soldiers were shot down from hundreds of meters beyond the effective range of their own smoothbore muskets. The [Read More…]
To be quite honest, the old Kabul Arsenal never needed to be “relocated” as it had never been lost, destroyed, or otherwise essentially altered. What this post is adding to the conversation is that someone who had a very legitimate interest in the arsenal [Read More…]