#Reconnaissance

Looking for a new car? Want something… Different? How about, say, an armored car? Well among their catalog of AK clones, AR-15s, pistols and other assorted firearms, Atlantic has recently listed for sale a Fox armored reconnaissance vehicle. Of course, nothing good in life is free, and if you want this Fox to be yours it’ll be nearly $50,000 – which, by armored vehicle standards, is not that bad. Still, try telling the wife that you’re not getting that BMW 4 Series after all, because wouldn’t an armored car be so much cooler? Well, if you still want to try to convince the missus, maybe Atlantic’s video, embedded below, will help:

By this point in the second decade of the 21st Century, unmanned aerial vehicles armed with precision weapons are not strange or unusual. Indeed, they have so profoundly impacted the popular psyche as to have had pop songs written about them. However, these systems generally make a distinction between the aerial vehicle and the ordnance itself (e.g., an MQ-9 Reaper and its AGM-114 Hellfire missile payload). Then, what is unusual is a weapon which combines these two systems into one, a device that is both UAV and missile, both bomb and surveillance drone. Israeli news outlet iHLS reports on a device that is exactly that: The UVision Hero-400EC, a loitering reconnaissance drone that can fly directly into an enemy position to deliver a 10 kilogram explosive warhead.

Marine Corps Systems Command announced the fielding of a Military Enhancement Kit (MEK) to various units that require breaching as an essential capability. This includes everything from Military Police, to Force Reconnaissance Marines that need to breach houses. The kit is an addition to current Mossberg M500A2 slide action shotguns that are currently in use mainly by MP, Recon, and special response units across the Marine Corps. Although the M1014 is supposed to replace the Mossberg or at least compliment it, the reality is that there aren’t enough M1014s to go around so units have to contend with the Mossberg. The irony of this kit is that the M1014 was designed to have a telescoping stock for this exact purpose, but the cost of the shotgun has been so prohibitive that units still aren’t receiving it.

The United Kingdom has become the first nation in the world to receive  a modern cased telescoped ammunition (CTA) automatic weapon, the French 40mm CTCS, according to IHS Jane’s. The UK procured the weapons in July of last year to upgrade their Warrior IFVs, and as the main armament for the new Ajax scout tanks, expected to enter service in 2017.