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 [Read More…]
In a surprising turn of events given the recent public motions towards an all-M27 fleet, the United States Marine Corps has just released a new request for information (RFI), soliciting proposals from the industry for a whole new suite of infantry equipment, including [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
The Spanish National Police Corps (Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, or CNP) have captured a huge number of weapons during a series of raids conducted in the areas of Biscay, Girona, and Cantabria in Northern Spain. The raids recovered about 10,000 firearms including [Read More…]
The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has revised its solicitation for the Suppressor Upper Receiver Ground (SURG) program (via FBO.gov). The SURG program is intended to provide an upper receiver for the M4A1 Carbine which would be designed for continuous [Read More…]
Not long after SHOT Show, I got the chance to interview Mrs. Kori Phillips, former program officer for the Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, and current program officer for the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. We talked [Read More…]
In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers. For our showcase today we [Read More…]
In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers. Today we’re taking a [Read More…]
The redheaded stepchild of the SCAR contract was Robinson Arms’ XCR, an interesting design from a small company in Salt Lake City, UT. A rifle that is part AR-15, part FNC, and part noodle, the XCR represents an attractive looking and interesting might-have been, [Read More…]
One of the most interesting firearms for me at the 2017 SHOT Show was Hill & Mac’s quasi-reproduction of the WWII-era StG-44 Sturmgewehr. We’ve covered this weapon twice before at trade shows, including SHOT 2016 and the NRA 2016 Annual Meeting, and I am [Read More…]
The Puckle Gun is one of those firearms of which only a couple of examples exist in the world, but which is covered in a great deal of introductory firearms books, usually in their section on the history of machine guns. This has led many to assume the Puckle Gun was [Read More…]
An update from the USMC has been released today authorizing the purchase of Gen M3 PMags with unit funds for Marine Corps combat units. The update reads: GENTEXT/RMKS/1. PURPOSE. THIS MESSAGE PROVIDES UPDATED GUIDANCE REGARDING THE USE OF MAGAZINES FOR THE M4/M16 SERIES [Read More…]
Military procurement is a very precise business, in which the costs, drawbacks, and benefits of different ideas and proposals are weighed in the balance, and those that don’t make the grade are relegated to research status or cancelled outright. It’s also a [Read More…]
Improvised and camouflaged firearms can be some of the most interesting weapons around, and the best ones combine inventiveness, creativity, craft work, and a sort of apocalyptic chic together into final products that are compelling far beyond the sum of their parts or [Read More…]
In the first two parts of this article on a new long range infantry rifle paradigm, we painted a picture of what sort of weapons would be needed to maximize the infantry’s long-range capability, in theory allowing them to achieve “overmatch” versus [Read More…]
On the defense side, sound suppressors have been relegated to special roles ever since their invention. Used to give stealth to special operatives, assassins, and direct action teams, silencers have been valuable tools, but not central fixtures in normal military [Read More…]
More and more, it seems like we are on the cusp of a break in the small arms “plateau”, and that major changes may be coming both in the technology and use of infantry small arms and ammunition. The biggest harbinger of this coming paradigm shift has been [Read More…]
The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make [Read More…]
France has just adopted the HK416 as its new standard infantry rifle, replacing the FAMAS, and Germany is on a path to a new weapon, aiming to divest herself of the controversial G36. This raises the question: Will Germany and France adopt a unified arm? These two [Read More…]
Previously, we talked about the word “controllability”, and what it means in relation to the recoil and ergonomic characteristics of a firearm. If you haven’t already read that article, I recommend you click the link here and do so first, as this post [Read More…]
Yesterday, we took a close look at the AK’s operating group, to enumerate the details that make this pattern such a dependable design. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the other elements of the AK that make it so reliable, but first I want to [Read More…]
Today we know the Kalashnikov family of rifles as one of the most successful and reliable weapon families ever designed. Even as the rifle’s legend has begun to be peeled back, the weapon’s reputation for reliability is still largely unquestioned, and many [Read More…]
Since we’ve covered the two most prominent PDW rounds of today, I want to take a quick detour and look at an interesting – but obscure – personal defense weapon/assault rifle round from history. After World War II, the apparati of the German war [Read More…]
Last weekend, I took the major arguments of Kalashnikov conspiracy theorists head on, and one of those – which I hear rather frequently – is why he did not design any other weapons besides the AK-47. The reason is… He did. Kalashnikov was a skilled and [Read More…]
The National Firearms Act really is a drag. Thanks to its legal restrictions on short barreled rifles, some of the lightest and handiest classes of firearms are substantially restricted from common ownership in the US. The police carbine (semiautomatic short barreled [Read More…]
What is the simplest gun you can possibly make? When you hear this question, the kind of gun that comes to mind is probably a simple zip gun, like the one below, which has a forward-moving mass, a trigger, a barrel, and not much else: Given modern ammunition, [Read More…]
The 6.5 Grendel is in many military small arms enthusiasts’ eyes the ideal military caliber, in theory combining the best characteristics of both 7.62mm and 5.56mm rounds. However, in the thirteen years since the round’s introduction, it has found little [Read More…]
In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for [Read More…]
We hear a lot of talk about how some firearms are “controllable”, while others are not. The word “controllable” or “manageable” is often used in gun reviews to describe the recoil characteristics of a gun, even though without [Read More…]
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