The hungriest beast of them all on this blog is our Photo Of The Day. It consumes hundreds of images every month, and it has been doing so for over 9 years. Today we offer a bunch of images from the Al Asad Air Base, in Iraq. This military airbase is located in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. It is situated approximately 180 kilometers west of the capital city of Baghdad and 10 kilometers south of the town of Baghdadi. The airbase is named after the nearby town of Al Asad.

Top of the day and welcome to our Photo Of The Day! It’s fantastic to see the M110 SASS in the wild, on a tripod. You see a U.S. Army National Guard soldier, assigned to Task Force Wolfhound, East Africa Response Force (EARF), conducting high angle shooting training at Arta Beach, Djibouti, in 2022.

One of the benefits of our Photo Of The Day is that you can travel the world without a sweat. Today we’re in Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, located off the coast of Venezuela. You see a beach reconnaissance team member from the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps, as he helps secure a beach during a demonstration for sailors from Riverine Squadron.

Photo Of The Day: Finnish Lapland, some 130 kilometers (81 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, and we’re visiting the Sodankylä Garrison, in the middle of winter 2023. Above you see a U.S. Army cavalry scout assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 183rd Cavalry Regiment, Virginia Army National Guard. He’s aiming at a target with a Finnish RK62M1 rifle during a foreign weapon familiarization training at Arctic Forge 2023. The red dot is from Aimpoint (dated 2016), and the receiver is stamped with “Valmet” and “1971” – but apparently still going strong! I don’t work for either of those companies, but that seems like a pretty strong sign of quality.

We are in Japan in this Photo Of The Day. Above you see a U.S. Marine Corps scout sniper, from the Battalion Landing Team 1/4, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, as he fires an M40 A6 sniper system during a bilateral sniper live-fire exercise with soldiers from 1st Regimental Landing Team, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.

Photo Of The Day and we have the M500 Shotgun on the flight deck of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60), during a visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) gun shoot. The Paul Hamilton is part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, in the U.S. 7th Fleet conducting routine operations. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet, and routinely interacts and operates with Allies and partners. The ship is named after Paul Hamilton, who was the third Secretary of the Navy and served in that role from 1809 to 1813.

Our daily article series called Photo Of The Day will take you to some very exciting and unusual places sometimes. In this case, the caliber is more of a curiosity than the rifle itself, as we have a Chinese NDM-86 SVD clone chambered in 7.62 NATO. It comes from the collection of Dominion Defense LLC.

The strangest looking firearm ever on TFB’s Photo Of The Day? Here we see selected soldiers from the units of the 101st Engineer Battalion taking advantage of the opportunity that the Massachusetts National Guard offered. Their battalion coordinated with SARTS (Small Arms Readiness Training Section) Team for gunners and assistant gunners to attend some comprehensive machine gun primary marksmanship instruction (MG PMI) in the Training Support Center (TSC) at Camp Edwards.

Photo Of The Day and we’re in the Marina Urban Training Facility (Singapore) together with U.S. Marines looking at the SAR-21 Service Rifle with Round Corner Firing Module. Above you see Singapore Army soldiers with Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion Singapore Guards, 7th Singapore Infantry Brigade, conduct a room-clearing demonstration for U.S. Marines with Marine Rotational Force-Southeast Asia (MRF-SEA), I Marine Expeditionary Force

It’s the  Photo Of The Day o’clock and above we see a Hulk-like Lance Cpl. Matthew J. Zawisky, a Marine with the Guard Company, Marine Barracks Washington as he posts security around a simulated landing zone during a casualty evacuation scenario at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., Nov. 2, 2022. The Marines engaged in basic fire-team maneuver tactics with the M16A4 and M4 weapon systems.

Our  Photo Of The Day daily article series will take you to some very exciting and unusual places sometimes. Like today, where we see a Barrett M82  / M107A1 at the Arta Range in Djibouti.  Here we see U.S. Army soldiers as they play around with and shoot this sniper rifle during an East Africa Response Force (EARF) training on January 24, 2023.

Welcome to Pearl River, South Mississippi!  We have some of the coolest images “on board” here at TFB. In today’s Photo Of The Day, we get to know the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS) better, as they train international students from Colombia, participate insertion and extraction techniques on the Pearl River, near the John C. Stennis Space Center, in south Mississippi, November 30, 2022.

Photo Of The Day: Start your day with this collection of images from Riga, Latvia. We have a soldier assigned to the Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team Company Europe (FASTEUR), aiming an M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System during an embassy security drill at the U.S. Embassy, January 2023.

Photo Of The Day and we take a look at Task Force Red Dragon, Headquartered in Lynchburg, VA, the First Battalion 116th Infantry Regiment. These images were published as the National Guard Soldiers from Virginia and Kentucky ended their Africa mission in 2022.

Photo Of The Day: Above you see a “SkySoldier” with the 2-503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment “The Rock”, as he engages targets with a Beretta ARX160 for weapon familiarization training alongside the Esercito Italiano from the 3rd Alpini Regiment. The Beretta ARX160 was developed for military and law enforcement use and is chambered in various calibers, including 5.56 NATO and 7.62x39mm.

Today’s location is the Prince Sultan Air Base, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We see U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jordan Courtney, 378th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron K9 handler, training with Mirco, her military working dog.

Today’s Photo Of The Day is a special Beretta SO Sparviere over and under shotgun from  Pietro Beretta Custom Atelier made for Sylvester Stallone as a “unique tribute to his acting career and to the legendary role of the Italian American boxer he’s been playing since 1976″. The engravings and inlaid elements of the SO Sparviere Rocky shotgun are dedicated to Rocky Balboa, Stallone’s character in the famous movie franchise.

TFB’s Photo Of The Day tries to push the excellent work done by so many photographers around the world and in the firearms industry. It’s a celebration of those who go in harm’s way trying to catch those special moments for us, but also those who stay in the studio working out the perfect lighting and setting hour after hour. Armed with skills, cameras and sometimes a fair bit of post-editing here is where their hard work ends up.

Welcome to another edition of our Photo Of The Day. We’re always on the lookout for the best firearms-related images out there, with the goal to give your eyes something worth watching every day. Cinematic Arms caught the moment with this AR-180. The Armalite Costa Mesa AR-180 is a semi-automatic rifle that was produced by the Armalite company. It was introduced in the late 1960s as a civilian version of the AR-18, a rifle that was designed for military use. The AR-180 has a distinctive look with its curved stock and pistol grip. The AR-180 uses a short-stroke gas piston system.

TFB is back with our Photo Of The Day. Every day we bring you a selection of photo highlights, and today’s selection is quite entertaining. These are from the U.S. Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, which is a combat system developed to combine various martial arts, tactics, and techniques into one comprehensive fighting system. The program was created to provide Marines with the skills necessary to survive in close-quarters combat and other dangerous situations.

Photo Of The Day: Today we’re going to have a look at the SIG Sauer P320-M18 handgun. Above you see a U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sgt., from the 177th Operations Squadron C2 operations as he fires “his”. The images are from the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center, Egg Harbor Township, N.J. (2021).

Photo Of The Day and we join the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Okinawa, Japan. We see U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Damien Layton, left, and Cpl. Carlos Ambrosio, field artillery cannoneers with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, sighting in an M240B machine gun while conducting a tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel mission.

Photo Of The Day: Above you see a U.S. Soldier, assigned to the 2d Cavalry Regiment, engaging an enemy tank during Dragoon Ready 23 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, 2023.

What a fantastic time to be alive! Here we are again with our Photo Of The Day, which seems to be from the future, but from a future that exists already today. Above we have a rare sight. We see a soldier firing an unsuppressed XM-7 Rifle with the XM-157 Fire Control. The fact that the rifle does not have a suppressor is unusual. The photo is from a controllability trial of the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW), and the soldier is shooting from the standing unsupported firing position. The location is the Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD in November 2022.

It’s Photo Of The Day o’clock and we are looking straight into the barrel of a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner assigned to 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, as he pulls security. The vehicle behind is the M1126 Stryker Combat Vehicle. The image is from January 13, 2023, at the Twin Bridges Training Area in South Korea during Korea Rotational Force 12.

The goal with TFB’s Photo Of The Day is to give your eyes something worth watching every day. Over the years, we have shown firearms and soldiers from North to South, East to West in almost any imaginable situation and climate. For those living in Europe, the almost complete lack of availability of civilian semi-automatic rifles from Heckler & Koch on the market has been evident. After a long wait, there are now a limited number of such rifles available. These pictures come from Austria Arms – Ing. Fritsch Trade GmbH gives you an idea about the inventory.

Photo Of The Day: Photojournalism is the process of telling a story using photos as the main way to tell the story. A journalist uses a pen and paper to write stories, but a photojournalist uses a camera to take pictures that show what a story is about. Above you see senior Airman Brandon Heyman, a security forces specialist assigned to the 332nd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, as he maintains a defensive perimeter around an F-15E Strike Eagle at an undisclosed location within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

Technical data:

We are BACK, and we wish this Photo Of The Day came with sound. Or wouldn’t you like to hear the MK-46 30 mm chain gun on the USS Arlington, as it goes to work while underway in the Atlantic Ocean? Arlington is underway conducting a READ-2 inspection in preparation for Inspection and Survey (INSURV), a measure used to check the material readiness of ships.

One of the purposes of TFB’s Photo Of The Day is to broaden the audience for the excellent work done by combat photographers around the world. Today we’re somewhere in the Indian Ocean, where Lance Cpl. Sergio Escalante, rifleman, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), stands an armed watch during a straits transit. He’s working aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8). The USS Makin Island is a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship. Its main task is to embark, deploy, and land elements of a Marine Corps landing force in case of an amphibious assault by helicopters, landing craft, and amphibious vehicles.