Weapons Man
Broke Navy Seeks Foreign Ships for Marines
Handicapped by a shortage of “gators” or amphibious ships, the Navy is considering taking shipless Marine infantry and Ospreys, and hiring allied ships to carry them. Where the ships could come from is an open question, as it’s unlikely any reliable ally has enough idle gators to close what the Navy identifies as an 8-ship gap for projecting power in the North Africa region alone. Handling maritime crises in two regions of the world simultaneously would be hopeless with the current force structure, but we’d have to try.
...
A Tale of Two Temperatures
Consider this graphic. It is a somewhat crude reproduction of one in the Rheinmetall weapons design handbook. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who is unlucky at bicycles bur uncannily lucky with heiresses, thinks that we all should be criminals for discussing this online, so let’s all get our crime on and return to a subject we’ve discussed before, heat management in automatic firearms.
...The Rise and Fall of the Halftrack
As a kid in the sixties, you couldn’t get away from ’em. Turn on Combat with Vic Morrow, and there’d be one in every few episodes, hauling American infantry up to the point where they’d start walking. A couple years later, The Rat Patrol stuck German Balkankreuz symbols on them and made ’em the bad guys. Around that time, they made the TV news, too, carrying long columns of hard Israeli troops to victory over Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians with more modern weapons. Our cousin’s friend Charlie even owned one and drove it on parades — and to winch State Troopers out of snowbanks in blizzards. The White M3 half-track troop carrier, and its variations, were everywhere. It, and its foreign competitors, had considerable mindshare and were intensively developed from about 1930 through 1945, but none were made after war’s end. By the time the Israelis stormed Jerusalem, the armies that developed the halftracks and used them in WWII were all out of them — they’d surplused them, and when there were no surplus takers, towed them onto gunnery ranges, where the bones of a few remain.
...Wow. 1 Million Uniques, 4.6 Million Hits, 1st Half 2015
Thank you, thank you, and dare we say, thank you? In 2015 our readership here has exploded and at the end of June we are over 1 million unique users and 4.8 million hits, year to date. If you want to be pedantic about it, our numbers end of 30 June were 1,019,313 uniques and 4,825,377 hits.
...When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Spicy Recipes
Another tragic crime caused by “Florida’s lax gun laws” and human depravity, but pretty much entirely by human depravity, since there was no gun involved.
And the motive? An argument over spice. No, not the drug kind, either.
Panama City police say 33-year-old Caleb Joshua Halley was working at Buddy’s Seafood Market last Tuesday when he and a co-worker, 26-year-old Orlando Thompson, began arguing about how much spice to add to the restaurant’s gumbo. Authorities say Thompson slashed Halley across the torso, and that Halley died last Thursday. Thompson is being charged with manslaughter.
via News from The Associated Press.
We’e heard of places that have a gumbo to die for, but this is ridiculous.
Survival: How Many Things Did She Do Wrong?
The lede of the story is really, from a would-be survivor’s point of view, missing the point. Here’s how it kicks off:
...
Handbag Carry: Just Stop Doing It. Now.
As fans of the female shape (on females, of course; don’t look for us to go the way of Bruce Jenner anytime before the Sun goes nova) we’re sympathetic with women’s complaints about fit and comfort problems with conventional designed-for-dudes holsters.
...
Received from USASOC
The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on:
Lt. Gen. Charles T. Cleveland will relinquish command of U.S. Army Special Operations Command to Lt. Gen. Kenneth E. Tovo during a traditional Army ceremony at Fort Bragg on July 1, 2015.
Cleveland has commanded USASOC since July 2012. Tovo has been serving as the Military Deputy Commander, U.S. Southern Command, Miami, Fla.
The traditional Army ceremony will take place at 8:30 a.m. on Meadows Field, at the USASOC headquarters.
USASOC is the Army component of the joint U.S. Special Operations Command and is among the most diverse organizations in the U.S. military, bringing a broad range of competencies and disciplines to support geographic combatant commanders and ambassadors worldwide.
LTG Cleveland presided over a reorientation of several Army special operations forces on long-neglected core competencies, notably UW/GW for Special Forces, which was his primary SOF background.
Kyle Defoor Learns About Big Army Maintenance
…O,r lack of the same. A class for a large Army unit came completely unglued as weapon after weapon failed. Charging handles broke. Dust covers went flying off. Locking lugs sheared. A furious Defoor, noting that the guns were Colts, posted a nastygram on his Facebook page with a photo of some of the parts:
...
Sunday Soaking
Rainsplash Drop from Vanderbilt.edu. Seems appropriate.
...That Was the Week that Was: 2015 Week 26
Another week is at an end, actually a little past its end as we’re posting this about 24 hours late and backdating it.
...Saturday Matinee 2015 26: Red Tails (2012)
Red Tails opens with a morality play of sorts, set in the sky over Europe in 1943. A few German fighters draw off the P-51 escorts from a bomber raid, and the main German force, led by a lean, hungry fellow in a plane with a yellow nose, falls on the olive-drab B-17s. “Show no mercy!” the German leader intones melodramatically, and the Bf109s don’t, shredding the column. “Where are our escorts?” the helpless bomber crews cry as they die in droves.
...