Dan Shea is a U.S. Army veteran and has been involved in military small arms and defense contracting for over 45 years in the defense industry. Dan is a certified government expert on small arms, and a Master Armorer certified as an armorer instructor on the following weapons systems, among others: M16 series, AK47 series, M203, GP25, M249/MK46, M240, M60 series, M2HB, MK19, NSV, PKM, DShK, KPVT, RPG7, Carl Gustav M3 84mm, AGS-17/BGA-30, M134 Minigun, most shoulder-fired or tripod-mounted weapons systems, as well as most suppressors systems. Dan designed and implemented the 1997 and 1999 Silencer trials using cutting-edge equipment to quantify the sound results of over 160 designs by various manufacturers. Due to this extensive experience, Dan is frequently invited by manufacturers to supervise MILSPEC testing of new weapons systems.

He was the founder and General Manager of Long Mountain Outfitters, LLC, the small arms specialty sales and training company in Henderson, NV that previously held the GS contract for the Armorer /Operator training on U.S. and foreign small arms. Dan is closing LMOLLC to concentrate on government contract work with Phoenix Defence as the Small Arms and Small Arms Ammunition expert and defense contracting.

Dan’s licensing includes manufacturing and importing of firearms including machine guns, silencers, and destructive devices, as well as international arms brokering. In addition to being one of the world’s leading Subject Matter Experts on small arms, he consults to the top tiers of U.S. and international military, law enforcement agencies, and manufacturers on small arms, ammunition, weapons threats, and design. Dan was the Technical Editor for Machine Gun News for 10 years starting in the 1980s. He has now been the Editor-In-Chief and Technical Editor of Small Arms Review for the past 27 years and the newer, international Small Arms Defense Journal for 14 years. He has thousands of articles in print on the subject of military small arms and is the author of The Machine Gun Dealers Bible, presently in fifth edition.

Dan Shea has been to over 85 countries actively dealing in arms and munitions, attends approximately 25-30 military trade shows every year, is known all over the world and has contacts in most defense factories and many militaries. His companies have working relationships with numerous military museums and reference collections around the world including Shrivenham, Warminster, and the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, UK; several groups in Eastern Europe, and KASOTC in Jordan.