Weapons Man

You will be amused to know that the guy drove with Arab skill, and overheated the engine in the Ferrari.

They told him smoking was bad for his health.

The CIA has released its Presidential briefing documents from the Kennedy (1961-63) and Johnson (1963-69), including a guidebook to the documents.

The Bundeswehr has responded to the ongoing clamor over problems with the G36 rifle by attempting to restore troop confidence in the weapon. One way they’re doing this is providing a graphical training aid, a Pocket Card for the G36 that describes lessons learned and immediate action for common problems with the weapon.

(Editors’ note: this was supposed to fire at 1800 on 17 Sep 15. For whatever reason it didn’t, and it’s been belatedly restored, as of 1000 18 Sep 15. We regret the error — Eds.]

It’s called a Recluse. It doesn’t turn you into one.

The commander of US Central Command, Lloyd Austin, spilled a fact which shocked the Washington Post a little.

People have been wondering exactly how the crew is laid out and works together in the new Russian T-14 Armata tank. Here is an answer, as what appears to be a pick-up crew (test crew? journalists?) sets up and fires the Armata’s main armament. Some comments after the brief video.

It’s obscure, arcane, and in places, in Dutch.

Girls, here’s his profile pic. Don’t all IM him at once, let the guy pace himself.

Love is blind. This is generally an evolutionary “plus.” But… not always, eh, Darwin?

This documentary is a Russian one, expertly narrated in correctly translated English, that shows a little bit of the Russian submarine Severstal (Hull number TK-20), the last of the six Typhoons completed. In it, commander Bogachev takes his boat from the yards to the naval base at Severodvinsk, where it loads missiles and proceeds on a training mission. Great insights to Russian sub design, crewing (the crew includes draftees as well as long-service sailors and officers), and culture.

Here’s another SA80 chart from the aforementioned HK presentation. It was not presented because, as you can see, the legend is garbled. The numbers look a little better, but we’ll get to those after we fix the chart.

Here’s an old HK document bragging up their rebuild of Britain’s buggy SA 80 assault rifle, circa 2007.  Whilst it’s marked “Commercial in Confidence,” a rough equivalent of the US’s proprietary information markings, it was presented at a public NDIA Conference (the 2007 Small Arms Conference) and it’s still available in DTIC’s document repository.1

The Veterans Administration and its piss-poor performance has emerged as a campaign issue in the 2016 Presidential Campaign. So far, discussion seems to be primarily on the Republican side, as many of the Democrats running are either better disposed towards government employees than veterans, or are tied to the current Administration that has served them so badly (not that prior Administrations of either party have covered themselves in glory, here).

Mind you, this angry, angry, angry fellow wasn’t very good at the whole stranglin’ thing, seeing as he tried it three times and came up short.

They’re not just live again, they also have a promo video. New (or maybe just new to us?) although we seem to recall we’ve seen the murder of the drone before.

Remember, it’s always legal if it’s your drone.

And yeah, we did beat TFB with the breaking story (grin). Not like we have a competitive streak or anything.

We’ve confirmed that this video is a new release. -Eds.

We received minutes ago the word that Tracking Point, last seen nearing belly-up in bankruptcy protection, is back in business, accepting orders, shipping product, and resuming development. In fact, founder and new CEO John McHale is so enthusiastic about the relaunch that we’ve received, if we’re counting right, (3) releases in a matter of minutes around 0930 Eastern Daylight Savings Time (including one link that 404’d. Patience, John).

A couple years ago we mentioned needing X-Acto knives and some well-meaning person kindly gifted us an industrial quantity of the things — sort of. But these weren’t actual X-Actos, but no-name Chinese knockoffs that, in place of X-Acto’s firmly gripping aluminum collet, had a cheesy blue plastic collet that would give up the blade under any kind of tension at all.

Although it’s almost as dim as people who blame guns, to say the doctor did this. The disease did this. The doctor just missed the disease. It’s probably small consolation to the bereaved parents — and neither is the $5 million of the doctor’s and clinic’s (and their insurers’, so really of all other patients’) money that they and their lawyers divvy up, but the doc didn’t try to harm their child. It was just an error, an oversight, at best.