Armament Research Services (ARES) is pleased to announce the release of Special Report No. 6, Islamic State Craft-produced Light Recoilless Guns: Conventional & Chemical Variants. Special Report 6 examines the variety of shoulder-fired light recoilless guns developed by the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS), providing a detailed assessment of their technical characteristics, design, and operation. The
Mick F. Editor’s Note: ARES has documented numerous instances in which a munition which has not yet been publicly identified has been used in Israeli strikes in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Iran. The following article provides an overview of the use of the munition, its technical characteristics, and where it has been used. Information cut-off
Trevor Ball For more than a decade, Mexican drug cartels have used commercially available (COTS; commercial off-the-shelf), small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs; also called ‘drones’) to smuggle drugs across the U.S.–Mexico border and to conduct intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) tasks. Increasingly, cartels are also using small UAVs to employ lethal munitions, mirroring
Trevor Ball & N.R. Jenzen-Jones Editor’s Note: This blog post is linked to entries in the Open-source Munitions Portal (OSMP), a joint project between ARES and Airwars, available at https://osmp.ngo/. OSMP Entry Nos. 456, 496, 497, 498, 618, 619, 620, 623, 625, 688, 689, 690, 695, 723, 728, 735, 751, etc. An Introduction to the MK 80
Trevor Ball & N.R. Jenzen-Jones Editor’s Note: This blog post is linked to entries in the Open-source Munitions Portal (OSMP), a joint project between ARES and Airwars, available at https://osmp.ngo/. OSMP Entry Nos. 513, 514, 548, 549, 579 The use of smoke munitions in modern conflict continues to be misunderstood by non-specialist observers. In extreme circumstances, this
N.R. Jenzen-Jones & Trevor Ball Editor’s Note: This blog post is linked to entries in the Open-source Munitions Portal (OSMP), a joint project between ARES and Airwars, available at https://osmp.ngo/. The use of the Small Diameter Bomb (known in U.S. service and elsewhere as the GBU-39) is increasingly being reported upon in the context of
Patrick Senft Editor’s Note: This blog post is linked to entries in the Open-source Munitions Portal (OSMP), a joint project between ARES and Airwars, available at https://osmp.ngo/. OSMP Entry Nos. 644, 645, 646 & 647 The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has spawned an ecosystem of Russian- and Ukrainian-language military bloggers who share their
Armament Research Services (ARES) is excited to announce the release of Research Report No. 12, Digital Bazaar: The Online Trade of Arms & Munitions in Opposition-controlled Syria. The release of Research Report 12 marks the completion of a project which began with Research Note No. 11, ‘Analysing the Online Arms Trade in Opposition-controlled Syria’, and
Tony Salvo & N.R. Jenzen-Jones An image shared by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (DSNS) via social media in early May depicts what appear to be several Soviet 3-Z-2 (sometimes written ‘3Z2’) 120 mm incendiary mortar projectiles near the city of Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine (see Figure 1). The items pictured display evidence of
Patrick Senft Images shared to social media indicate that the Russian PTKM-1R (ПТКМ-1Р) top-attack anti-vehicle landmine was recently employed in Ukraine. This munition is not known to have been previously employed on operations. It was shown for the first time outside Russia by Rosoboronexport JSC in November and December last year, when it was displayed
