In late 2018, in the Russian cities of Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, the Russian military arranged expositions of arms and equipment captured during the Syrian War. These included a huge variety of production firearms as well as craft-produced examples such as the grenade launcher shown in the header image. Let’s take a look at these pictures and identify some of the weapons that were on display.
DIY
PKT Coaxial Machine Gun Modified for Infantry Use
If you visit the Russian Wikipedia page about the PK machine gun, you will see a rather interesting image (see above) showing a soldier who holds a rather unusual “homemade” conversion of the PK machine gun. According to the article, the soldier on the picture represents the Artsakh Republic Defense Army. The picture was supposedly taken in 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Shotgun Pistol: Criminals’ Favorite Silah in Egypt
It’s cheap and easy to manufacture, it’s relatively concealable (different sizes exist), and it allows you to carry a machete or any other melee weapon in the other hand, how practical! The iconic DIY shotgun pistol of Egypt since the 25th January Revolution became extremely popular among the poor, the violent activists and of course, criminals.
AJWA Arms Company of Darra Adam Khel
As you may know, Darra Adam Khel is a town in Pakistan, which is known for domestic arms manufacturing. Information concerning the firearms made in this region is normally very scarce. However, there is a tendency of local shops to start using the internet as a tool for promotion. When doing a research for another article, I came across a facebook page of a Darra Adam Khel Company company called AJWA Arms Company.
Among many firearms posted on their page, there are several quite interesting ones which we’ll take a look at in this article.
The gun shown in the top image of this article is a Russian PPSh-41 with a stock adapter made to accept a pistol grip and a side folding stock borrowed from an AK rifle. AKs with such stocks have been made in Romania, Poland and East Germany. Another pistol grip is attached to the barrel jacket slots of the PPSh-41.
Below are more images from AJWA Arms Company Facebook page depicting some of their most interesting firearms (in no particular order).




We’ll keep following these companies and in case if they publish something interesting from the small arms perspective, we’ll report it to our readers.