#Army

Well, this is awkward. Even as the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s “Gun Storage Check Week” program runs June 1-7, promoting safe firearm storage, we see the U.S. Army has lost a pile of pistols, and it wants them back, badly. How badly, you ask? Fort Moore wants the pistols back so badly that they’re offering a $5,000 reward for info that cracks the case, as they believe the pistols were stolen.

B5 Systems is an American company that is focused on engineering military and aerospace solutions. Most of their firearms products focus on rifles and their current product lineup features common parts like trigger guards, QD end plates, handguards, and stocks. In a recent announcement, B5 happily shared that their Collapsible Precision Stock had been selected by the US Army’s Advanced Sniper Accessory Kit that provides upgrades for the Knights Armament M110 Rifle.

A lot of us who are into night vision devices or want to have the same equipment that the US government has access to will spend a lot of time and money trying to acquire these things through legal means. Not so for 3 individuals who were recently charged with the theft of nearly $2,200,000 worth of military equipment from Fort Hood including IR Laser illuminators, AN-PRC-117 radios, and thermal optics. Two US Army veterans plus one civilian businessman have since been charged with conspiracy to commit theft of government property.

Small arms ammunition has seen its fair share of ups and downs in terms of both price and availability over the last couple of years but that hasn’t stopped the insatiable appetite of our armed forces and their need for reliability and quality ammunition for training and mission duties. Winchester, the largest manufacturer of small arms ammunition for the United States Military recently announced that they have been awarded a $13 million contract for the 7.62mm cartridge (presumably M80 ball).

POTD, short for Photo Of The Day, is TFB’s daily article series where we try to find pictures that will entertain you. Did you know that credit for the first-ever color photograph taken goes to the mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell? At a lecture in 1861 he unveiled what is to be considered as the first durable color photograph. It certainly sounds a lot more interesting than anything I did at school.

RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) is a technology that practically permeates our modern lives. Everything from your passport, your keyfob at work, tags on the back of your equipment, and even your dog or cat probably has an RFID tag in it that contains important information. Guns are part of this equation too and it is being used predictably by some of the United States Armed Forces to keep track of weapons to prevent potential theft as well as help aid in weapon inventory tasks and distribution. However, recent research has revealed that RFID technology inside the military’s weapons poses a “significant” security risk according to the Department of Defense.

The US Army MMO or Mounted Machine gun Optic program has selected the Trijicon MGRS (Machine Gun Reflex Sight) for use on the Browning M2 and M2A1 platforms. The initial MMO program started in 2018 put out a request to manufacturers for a mounted weapon platform optic in order to facilitate “faster target acquisition times and increased first burst probability of hit”. It is unknown at the time of writing how many optics the army has ordered and at what price but the initial solicitation mentioned a number up to 11,450.

For all shooters, increased levels of lead in our bloodstream are a constant concern. Anytime you discharge a firearm, you’re potentially inhaling a lot of unhealthy chemicals including atomized lead. Army soldiers that shoot for a living are particularly susceptible to potentially toxic levels of lead in their blood due to their training regimen. In a recent assessment conducted at a training facility in Germany, it was found that recent changes to the range regulations had dramatically reduced the blood lead levels found in tested soldiers.

The US military is constantly seeking to develop the next best thing in warfighting technology. Some of the most important pieces of this technology are our weapons systems. TFB has recently reported on some of these initiatives, like the new M110A1 Squad Designated Marksman Rifle, the Next Generation Squad Weapon program, and a potential heavy barrel upgrade for the M4. Of course, any kind of firearm, new or old, is going to have to have ammunition. In this realm, it is well-known that Federal is one of the best in the business. In addition to products like their renowned hunting rounds, every day carry, and target loads, they are also a major supplier of bulk military ammo. This does not appear to be changing anytime soon, as an August 4th press release details a new contract for them to continue supplying the US DoD for the Next Generation Carbine Technologies program.

Today’s Photo Of The Day features Australian Army soldiers from the 2nd Commando regiment conducting in a training exercise with their M4A5 rifles.

Last March, I trained with Tactical Night Vision Company (TNVC). For this course, I got the opportunity to partner with Carly Schroeder.

With the recent official news that the new AK-12 and AK-15 rifles have been adopted by the Russian Ministry of Defense it’s with interest we with Kalashnikov’s help can take a deeper look into how the rifles were developed and engineered.

A key part of the capability brought to the table by the US Army’s new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle is its chambering for the 7.62mm round. Specifically, this chambering allows the SDMR to fire the (also brand new) XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round, designed to give the squad the capability to defeat advanced ceramic armors at combat ranges. There may be juuuuust one little problem, though: Cost. The US Army’s Ammunition Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2019 was released this month; in it was procurement information on the XM1158 ADVAP, and a bit of a shocking sticker price to boot:

The US Army wants to give its soldiers more punch and reach: In the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Estimate Justification Book for the United States Army, the service outlined its strategy for procuring M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System (CSASS) rifles from Heckler & Koch to outfit its squads with a 7.62mm precision semiautomatic rifle, called the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle (SDMR). The primary justification for this move was confirmed in recent Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearings to be the ability to launch the Army’s new XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round, which is based on the projectile design introduced with the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR), but with a core made of tungsten alloy, rather than steel.

In the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, top Army officers talked about their plans to modernize the force, and, as part of that, replace both the M249 SAW and the M4 Carbine, the latter of which has been in service since the early 1990s. The replacement effort is called the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW), formerly referred to as the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle (NGSAR), and will involve an industry competition to select the weapon that best meets the Army’s requirements for the future. In his testimony, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8 Lt. General John G. Murray, spoke about the NGSW: