Other Gear & Gadgets

Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week is a gear week, and the topic is the radio hardware nobody issues you: the accessories, the earpiece choices that actually fit your assignment, and the battery discipline that keeps a working radio from turning into a brick at hour ten. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers, whose support keeps this column going every week.

Carl Gustaf doesn't make firearms anymore. What it makes now is time, and the lineage matters more than the product category suggests. The watch brand has rooted itself in the legacy of one of Scandinavia's most storied rifle manufacturers, using that historical pedigree not as marketing but as design philosophy. Let’s take a closer look.

Tyler Grey spent thirteen years getting told no. No, this won't work. No, sights don't work that way. No, nobody will want them. The fact that Saberdyne Systems launched the NDEX Indexing Sight System just now suggests he stopped asking permission. NDEX is a rear-sight-only system that removes the traditional front sight post entirely, forcing a philosophical reckoning with how pistol shooters have been trained for the better part of seventy years. The mechanism is simple, the implication is not. If front-sight focus is doctrine for precision shooting, what happens when you design sights for stress response instead of range conditions?

There's a pattern in American military history that's so intrinsically tied to a specific thing that mentioning it feels like you're setting up a punchline, and yet, FirstSpear just dropped it unironically across an entire collection. The five-color disruptive pattern that the Marines called Frogskin, which made its operational debut during WWII with the Raiders in the Pacific, is officially back, and no, the marketers didn't overthink the frog thing. It's just what people called it, and after 80-some years, FirstSpear figured enough time had passed to resurrect this piece of genuine American military history without anyone cringing.

What belongs in a patrol vehicle trauma kit beyond the issued IFAK, how to organize it for access under stress, and the consumable rotation discipline that keeps it functional when it matters.

Speed is the weapon, and the Stockholm archipelago is the proving ground. Swedish manufacturer Zulu Marine builds the 33P for exactly this environment: tight island passages, unpredictable chop, and the kind of high-speed maritime work that demands a hull that won't quit. The boat you're looking at here is the same platform that's found favor with coastguard and defense agencies across Europe.

The proliferation of drone-based surveillance on the modern battlefield has pushed individual soldier concealment to the forefront of defense priorities, and Saab is responding with a dedicated wearable camouflage system. The Swedish company has unveiled the Barracuda Poncho, a multispectral concealment garment designed to hide dismounted soldiers from thermal and, in its arctic configuration, UV sensors across a range of operational environments.

Boot selection by assignment and climate, break-in realities, insole and orthotic considerations, and the long-term foot and knee impact of poor footwear over a twenty-year career.

Duty belts have changed very little in decades. Threading pouches on in the right order, fighting keepers that fall off mid-shift, and liner belts that lose their grip after months of hook-and-loop abuse. It's a long list of small frustrations that add up fast for the officers who wear them every single day. Safariland is taking a hard look at all of it with the new HOLLE Duty Belt system, a platform that first showed up at SHOT Show 2026 and is now officially shipping.

I am a huge fan of the Bodyguard 2.0 primarily because it conceals well in virtually any situation. One thing I really don’t like about it is that the magazines are notoriously difficult to load, and if you do any amount of practice, a mag loader is going to save your thumbs and fingers for the shooting, as these mags tend not to break in very much over the course of ownership. XTech has just announced the new LDR2000B1, a new addition to the LDR2000 lineup of affordable mag loaders, that is now specifically catered for the Bodyguard 2.0 and other .380 ACP pocket pistols with similar magazine bodies.

Alongside the 5.11 Rush series, the AMP series is arguably one of the most popular backpack lines 5.11 Tactical has ever offered. Although 5.11 has officially retired the AMP series as a standard offering, the company has just announced it will be bringing back both the AMP12 and AMP24 backpacks for a limited time. There will be 511 units of each color, available until sold out. Full details are in the official 5.11 press release below.

Welcome back to TFB’s Small Business Spotlight! In this weekly column, we take a look at small firearm-related businesses. Today’s company is Lynx Defense, a manufacturer of premium range bags from Selma, North Carolina.

Blk Lbl is a small company out of Canada, born from professionals and avid hunters. The idea was simple: create a high-quality handguard and offer the ability for an integrated premium bipod that stores inside the handguard without creating bulk or adding excessive weight. This may seem near impossible, but upon burning the midnight oil and countless cases of Molson Canadian, the team at Blk Lbl accomplished the seemingly impossible. The Blk Lbl handguard with an integrated bipod was born.

The tactical nylon market is overrun with chest rigs and chest-mounted kits. Too often, it’s a game of rinse and repeat with little to no innovation. While all chest rigs can trace their roots to the original ChiCom chest rig, it is FullTang Tactical that has turned the page and written a new chapter that will set the direction of modern chest rigs to come. Let’s analyze this change of the guard by going full steam on FullTang.

While some of you out there might be able to get away without wearing winter gloves for your winter range sessions, up here in the PNW, things get a bit too cold for comfort if you plan on shooting outdoors. NEXTORCH North America just announced the Snow Guard Winter Tactical Gloves, purpose-built for reliable warmth and dexterity when the mercury dips. Designed and engineered for real winter operations in temperatures above 14°F, these gloves are intended to give you the performance without the usual trade-offs of bulk or lost control. According to NEXTORCH, the gloves feature a zoned insulation system that contains 40 grams in the palms and 100 grams on the back of the hand, paired with a waterproof-breathable membrane and CORDURA stretch fabric. The result is supposed to keep hands warm, dry, and operational through rain, snow, and cold, windy days while maintaining the tactile feel needed for serious work.

Instead of relying on generic advice (which is generally very handy in a pinch in a broad variety of situations) that may collapse your effective range or create unseen trajectory issues, the AmmunitionToGo Zero Tool delivers a data-driven FREE recommendation based on your exact rifle details. Input barrel length, caliber, optic type, and height, plus vital zone size at ammunitiontogo.com/zero-tool, and receive the distance that maximizes point blank range for simple center-hold hits. Available at no cost, it helps remove the guesswork so shooters can verify at the range and gain real confidence in where their rounds actually land from muzzle to target and beyond.

The U.S. Army has approved the M111 Offensive Hand Grenade for service, marking the first new lethal hand grenade cleared for military use since 1968. The system was developed at Picatinny Arsenal through the Capabilities Program Executive Office for Ammunition and Energetics in cooperation with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM).

What you carry every shift, what you actually use, and what the cumulative cost looks like after a decade on the job.

Strike Industries has just announced the release of their new aluminum chassis for the ever-popular Ruger 10/22 family of rimfire firearms. The new Strike Modular Chassis comes with a handguard extension to tailor its length to different 10/22 configurations and builds, and can accept both AR-15 buffer tubes and Picatinny rail stocks. Let’s go over other features of this new Strike 10/22 chassis.

If you want to add Picatinny or M-LOK accessories to your Ruger Mini-14 without making any permanent changes to the gun, you may want to take a look at the new Hardpoint and Bomb Rack Mini-14/Mini-30 accessory mounts by Catalyst Arms. Both the Hardpoint, a 1913 rail section, and the Bomb Rack, an M-LOK extension, are attached to the gas block of the rifle, providing accessory mounting points in front of the handguard. Let’s take a quick look at each of these new Mini-14 accessories.

Folding stocks on rifles have been both misused and misunderstood for decades. While the AK possesses one of the most iconic folding stocks, the AR15 has long suffered from an inability to yield. Folding the stock has been the unobtanium of the AR world since its conception. No longer, Dead Foot Arms has found the secret to folding under pressure, but without compromising form or function.

The security check at the Mogadishu airport is no joke. The capital of Somalia has been a war zone for years, and the airport is often considered the safest place in the entire city, so naturally, the airport's security has a reputation to uphold.

Hemorrhage control isn’t about looking tactical. It’s about buying minutes until definitive care arrives—and sustaining the skills to make those minutes count.

The market for tactical nylon gear is expansive. There are so many companies today producing bespoke high-end equipment for a wide variety of needs. It should be fair that, among the wild west of manufacturers all competing for your attention and mighty dollar, one of these companies has risen to the top by focusing on purpose-driven products - Wilde Custom Gear. Driven by user input and quality design and manufacturing, Wilde Custom Gear produces products based on mission needs.

Welcome back to TFB's   Small Business Spotlight! In this weekly column, we take a look at small firearm-related businesses. Today, we're featuring REPACKBOX, LLC, an Alaska-based manufacturer that's been solving one of reloading's most annoying little problems for over a decade: What do you do with all that loose ammo?

Loading double-stack single-feed pistol magazines by hand can be difficult, tedious, time-consuming and even painful depending on the number and/or capacity of magazines you load. Thankfully, there are multiple different speed loaders available on the market that make the loading process of the aforementioned magazines easier. Most of these devices are manual, though. Last time I checked, we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century, cars are self-driving, mail is delivered by drones, so maybe it’s time to have power tools for loading pistol magazines. The question is, does anyone make one? Well, there is at least one option - the Magpie handheld electric speed loader by Kinetic Blossom. In fact, the company claims that this is the world's first automatic handheld 9mm magazine loader.

Just because we’re used to doing something a certain way doesn’t mean it can’t be done better. That’s how just about every advancement, ever, in firearms design came about—someone rethinking the normal. And that is spreading over to the world of optics these days, with green visual elements replacing red-colored elements. That’s the key feature behind MCG Tactical’s new Boar boresighter; it takes the normal red dot used for such equipment and replaces it with green.

Batteries are the bane of almost every optics existence, and that’s why most of us probably carry around a zip-loc bag full of random batteries of varying charge states - some of them are likely empty as well. Although I haven’t quite committed to purchasing my own 3D printer just yet, I did have an idea that I wanted to pass on to my good friend “Hammy” from Hammy3DPrints. Excited about my idea (having a small compact box that has all the basic batteries in it), I called him right away, only to find out that he previously had a version of this battery box - it just needed a few touch-ups. A few days later, I had a fresh print show up, and today I’m going to tell you why the Range Bag Battery Case from Hammy3DPrints is the best damn thing he’s ever made.

Anti-drone warfare devices are undoubtedly one of the most important assets in modern warfare in general and particularly in the Russo-Ukrainian war. One of the self-defense tools against kamikaze drones is net launchers. Earlier, we took a look at the Russian Setkomet anti-drone net launching muzzle attachment. Well, the other side of the conflict is working with the net thrower concept as well, and a Ukrainian company called Ptashka Drones has recently introduced a single-shot net-launching handgun system.