Michael Smallwood Following news of US-made TOW 2A anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) missile tubes being captured by Jabhat al-Nusra (or the Nusra front) from Harakat Hazzm last month, new videos uploaded in recent weeks show Jabhat al-Nusra militants employing these systems against armoured vehicles near Idlib city, Syria. With recent heavy fighting in Idlib, these advanced
Sam Baartz Almost a year ago, ARES reported on the appearance of US-made TOW 2A anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW) in Syria. In service with several anti-government groups, the TOW systems were primarily documented in the hands of the so-called ‘moderate Syrian rebels’. Since then, there have been dozens of appearances of these systems. The TOW series of ATGWs were originally
Michael Smallwood Photos posted to Twitter last week show Kurdish forces in Iraq with a limited number of Chinese QLZ87 automatic grenade launchers and M99 anti-materiel rifles. A Kurdish fighter takes a sight-picture with a QLZ87 AGL. The QLZ87 is a direct gas impingement operated, selective fire grenade launcher chambered for the Chinese 35
N.R. Jenzen-Jones Photos of arms destined for Kurdish forces being loaded aboard a Royal Dutch Air Force cargo plane in September include several images showing the markings on packaging material. The photo above shows crates containing DM32 multipurpose projectiles for the Panzerfaust 3 (Pzf 3) rocket-assisted recoilless weapon. The Pzf 3 with the DM32 projectile
Michael Smallwood with Yuri Lyamin A recent photo, above, shows a Syrian government fighter manning a Russian Kord 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine gun (HMG) in the eastern Jobar district of Damascus city. The belt-fed Kord is chambered for either 12.7 x 108 mm or 12.7 x 99 mm (.50 BMG), and has an
By Michael Smallwood A YouTube video released last week by a Syrian Islamist rebel group in Daraa city shows wooden crates containing components of the Russian-made Kornet (Корнет; ‘Cornet’) man-portable anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW). This system, with the NATO reporting name AT-14 Spriggan, is one of the newer and more capable Russian-made ATGWs. Purportedly
By Michael Smallwood. Header image displays an improvised launcher in a two-tube configuration mounted on the rear of a pickup truck. Photos emerging from Iraq purport to show members of the Islamist militant group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) in possession of 333 mm Falaq-2 artillery rockets and improvised launchers. In the photo below, a substantially
The following post originally appeared here, authored by the Oryx Blog team. It has been expanded and modified with their permission for The Hoplite by Michael Smallwood and Yuri Lyamin. In a series of photos coming out of Tripoli, Libya, militants are shown using sophisticated guided air-to-surface missiles as unguided surface-to-surface weapons. The missile shown,
Michael Smallwood The above video, posted on the 24th of June, shows combatants near Syria’s western city of Hama firing a 9K32M (NATO reporting name: SA-7b) man-portable air defence system (MANPADS) with a non-standard battery attached. Other instances of improvised batteries being used with MANPADS have previously been documented in Syria, with one video released
N.R. Jenzen-Jones with Yuri Lyamin Ansar al-Sham (كتائب أنصار الشام; ‘Supporters of the Levant’), an Islamist militant group associated with the Islamic Front in Syria (الجبهة الإسلامية; al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah), have uploaded a YouTube video showing combatants firing a 2B9M automatic mortar near Mount Chalma, in Syria’s Kesab district. The 2B9M Vasilek (‘Cornflower’) is a breech-loaded, long recoil-operated
