Monthly Archives: May 2018

Meet RNMB Hussar

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The MHC Sweep Capability demonstrator and her three coil boats seen on 2 May during trials in Portland harbor. Source: MOD

The Royal Navy’s first unmanned minesweeping system, an 11m prototype unmanned surface vessel that has been dubbed RNMB Hussar, has been accepted.

The MHC Sweep demonstrator combines the 10-ton ARCIMS USV with a power generation module, with towed magnetic, acoustic, and electrical influences, including up to three coil auxiliary boats

As noted by Defence Minister Guto Bebb:

“This autonomous minesweeper takes us a step closer to taking our crews out of danger and allowing us to safely clear sea lanes of explosives, whether that’s supporting trade in global waters and around the British coastline, or protecting our ships and shores. Easily transported by road, sea, and air, the high-tech design means a small team could put the system to use within hours of it arriving in theatre. We are investing millions in innovative technology now, to support our military of the future.”

In development since 2014, ArcIMS says their craft, in addition to mine hunting/sweeping, can perform maritime surveillance, force protection, diver support and ASW roles as well.

Which could be very interesting.

With uniforms this snazzy, how could they lose?

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The below image shows a  great selection of Soldiers of various units of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian army in 1914 (click to big up).

From left to right:
Austrian Landwehr ulan cavalrymen,
Austrian Landwehr (infantryman),
Bosnian Jäger,
Austrian Jäger,
Austrian infantryman,
Hungarian infantryman,
Tyrolean and Imperial Jäger,
Bosnian infantryman,
Hungarian honvéd infantryman,
Common, or joint (közös) Hussar in a new camp uniform,
Common, or joint (közös) hussar,
Common, or joint (közös) Jäger,
Common, or joint (közös) dragoon.

Note the Austro-Hungarian bluejacket at the far right, dressed for shore duty.

And it doesn’t even include such exotic units as the Albanians:

or ski troops…

Or crazy weapon systems like the water-cooled Standschütze Hellriegel Submachine Gun

While they looked good in photos and on paper, the Austrian forces were so poorly led, confusingly staffed and shallow in depth that German warlord Gen. Erich von Ludendorff said that to fight alongside old Franz Josef’s army was like being “shackled to a corpse.”

Of course, the uniforms would become much more practical as the Great War’s modern combat left the quaint 19th Century stylings behind in the mud of trench warfare– especially on the horrors of the Italian front, where the Austrians gave a better account of themselves than against the Serbs and Russians in the opening stages of the conflict.

Austro-Hungarian assault troops k.u.k. Sturmbatallione. They’ re-equipped with Austrian zeitzunderhandgranates, wire cutters and a variety of small arms.

Whelp, the USC has returned

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In 1999, Heckler & Koch debuted the UMP (Universale Maschinen Pistole = Universal Submachine Gun), a polymer-framed closed bolt blowback weapon that was intended to replace the vaunted HK MP5 roller delayed blowback SMG.

The thing is, the UMP really never caught on to the extent that the MP5 did because the move had already begun for tac and SRT forces to go with SBR’d M4s and even HK started selling the much more advanced MP7 to fill the subgun niche at the same time.

Even with that being said, I’ve been a UMP fan for years, especially of the .45ACP variant.

Oh baby Eger….no beard or anything…but that UMP .40, tho

The HK USC, the civilian-legal semi-auto carbine (16.5-inch barrel) version of the UMP with a fixed thumbhole stock, likewise was never a hit and many considered it Koch’s ugly duckling, a reception that drove it from the market a few years ago.

That’s a shame because they have a lot of potential and are about the most basic SMG-ish design you can get that is still reliable.

What’s not to like

But now, the USC is back….and there is always the option to go SBR to get it about halfway to the original UMP concept.

More in my column at Guns.com

Say what you like, but I really like the 57mm for small jobs

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Developed by BAE Bofors in Sweden, the 57mm Mark 3 cannon is used around the world — but can it kill a giant floating sausage?

The above video, released this week by the Canadian military, shows the warship HMCS Vancouver in a surface fire exercise while deployed in a joint exercise with U.S. forces in the Pacific. The handy little Halifax-class frigate is armed with a 57mm Bofors as a hood ornament and they get some gunnery practice in against a big red target float. These floats are unofficially termed killer tomatoes in the U.S. Navy and boudin (sausage) in the Canadian service, for obvious reasons.

Stick around till the end to see the perforated vinyl deep-sixed with some good old reliable M2 love, sent to the bottom like Megatron.

For those who are curious and squee out to specs, the Bofors fires at up to 220-rounds per minute (though the magazine drum only holds 120 party sub-length shells) with a range out to nine miles. The U.S. uses the same gun, designated the Mk110, on littoral combat ships and Coast Guard cutters. Sure, they are no 16-inchers, but they get the job done on small stuff.

Want a little more excitement? The below from gun maker BAE shows tests of various 57mm loads against selected targets.

The Little Bird before the Little Bird was cool

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This image I snapped in Dallas last week of a Hughes 500 type light observation helicopter mock-up at FN’s booth made me think of another image I came across years ago.

Note the FN 12.7mm M3 gun pod on the skid and the FN P90 PDW stowed as a bailout gun by the observer’s seat.

The “other image” dates from Vietnam:

Loach cockpit showing smokes and the grenade bag filled with tear gas, baseball grenades, M26 grenades and white phosphorous. Also visible is the makeshift cyclic stick for the Scout in the event the Pilot is shot

Of K-frames and memories

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One of the first revolvers that I purchased on my own in the early 1990s after I broke age 21 was a well-used police trade-in S&W Model 19. I loved the heft of it. The blocky wood combat grips, the deep blued finish that you rarely see anymore on production guns– and was amazed at how well it shot. A few years later, I traded it and some pocket change for a nearly mint S&W M66, the same gun in a stainless version, that was to be my first duty gun for just a year before the agency I worked for switched to semi-autos that were, gratefully, department-provided. While I still have the M66, I do miss that old Model 19.

So I was delighted to find last week in Dallas that the vaunted old wheel gun had returned to Smith’s lineup after a nearly 20-year absence:

Yes, that is a brand new Model 19…

More in my column at Guns.com

The ETA throws in the towel

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It is always good for everywhere when a terror group throws in the towel and, after a half-century of asymmetric operations, the Basque separatists of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna have announced they are disbanding. Formed in 1959, the group was extremely violent during the Cold War-era, killing almost 900 and wounding thousands more, largely during Franco’s dictatorship before moving into a form of open combat against their nemesis vigilante group, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, which took a heavy toll on both sides.

A 2010 ceasefire turned into a 2017 disarmament and now, the ETA is no more (hopefully).

Last of the Schlachtschiff, 77 years ago today

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Here we see the much-feared German Bismarck-class battleships, SMS Tirpitz, in Gotenhafen (occupied Gdynia, Poland) on 5 May 1941, on sea trials in the peaceful mid-Baltic (the Soviets were allies with Hitler then) just two months after she was commissioned.

More a figurehead than a fighter, this lavender marriage of convenience was the last capital ship ever completed by any version of the German nation and the fleet that operated her was on orders to never truly risk her loss. So of course, she was possibly one of the most-often attacked ships in history. In all, the Allies launched at least 20 separate attacks, mostly by air but also by midget submarines and frogmen (and once by a Soviet Red Banner Fleet submarine in open ocean), against her between 1941 and 1944 when she was finally gesunken by Royal Air Force bombers.

In addition to splashing a few attacking British aircraft over the years with her AAA suite, the only time the mighty Tirpitz fired her fearsome main battery of 38 cm SK C/34 L/52 guns was against shacks manned by a platoon-sized element of Free Norwegian army troops on the remote metrological outpost of Spitsbergen, killing 9 Norwegian soldiers and capturing 41, surely an immense waste of firepower that could have been duplicated by a destroyer, or perhaps even a determined U-boat.

German 380mm/15″ SK C/34 gun being installed on the Battleship Tirpitz during her construction

Still, you can argue more dollars, rubles, and pounds were spent trying to destroy her than marks in her construction and operation, and the Allies were forced to tack capital ships on to every convoy that sailed in waters threatened by the largely immobile Teutonic dreadnought, so there’s that.

But you can always buy really sweet knives made from her remains…

With la Legion etrangere in Mali

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The above half-hour feature from English-language France 24 spends some time with a French Foreign Legion group in Mali as part of Operation Barkhane. The interesting thing is there is, of course, Belgian and Italian Legionnaires present, but also a hard leg from Tennessee, because why not in a force with 140 nationalities thrown together in a camouflaged melting pot?

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