#Weapon

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.

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 rifles, upper receivers for existing weapons, optics, suppressors, and targets. The new RFI is very explicit as to what the industry can and/or should bring to the table as far as proposals. Below is replicated the “Infantry Rifle” segment of the RFI document, which is just one part out of five:

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 at length about both programs, the technology they developed, and the state of lightweight ammunition today. The interview, which spans fifty-five questions, will be broken up into three sections, each covering questions about different aspects of the program, to be published monthly once each in March, April, and May-wait, hold on,

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 at length about both programs, the technology they developed, and the state of lightweight ammunition today. The interview, which spans fifty-five questions, will be broken up into three sections, each covering questions about different aspects of the program, to be published monthly once each in March, April, and May-wait, hold on,

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 pistols, rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns, plus about 400 grenades, bombs, and other explosives.

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 suppressed use. Last year, SOCOM released the initial solicitation, but some of the original requirements were apparently too difficult for the industry to meet. The new SURG requirements are supposedly more in-line with the industry’s capabilities at the moment, which means we might be able to expect a new SURG upper receiver to be selected in the near future.

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 at length about both programs, the technology they developed, and the state of lightweight ammunition today. The interview, which spans fifty-five questions, will be broken up into three sections, each covering questions about different aspects of the program, to be published monthly once each in March, April, and May. This first installment deals primarily with the history of the LSAT and subsequent CTSAS programs, with a little bit of the ammunition technology thrown in.

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.

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.

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, and now exists as a small player in a big market (although, as Ed knows, it’s big in Canada!).

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 very pleased to say that the progress that HMG has made on this project is very apparent in the examples that were present at this year’s SHOT Show. A year ago, I had been fairly critical of the weapons the company had brought to the show, as they were in a very rough state and not very convincing as reproductions, but this year the weapons HMG brought looked extremely promising.

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.

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:

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 very messy business, rife with opportunities for graft and corruption, and one that by its nature is prone to wasting money. It’s certainly true that our current system of military procurement badly needs reform to prevent waste of taxpayer dollars and to ensure the best equipment is purchased at the right price.

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 their actual capabilities and practicality. Mark Serbu – one of the big names in big guns, and Royal Nonesuch – a YouTube vlogger with a penchant for the improvised and dangerous, joined forces together with Serbu’s daughter Valerie ( 50CalVal), and Mark’s friends Mike and Mike (“Beardo”), to bring to the world the fire extinguisher shotgun. As the video below illustrates, that’s pretty much what it says on the tin: