Vets react to today’s IFAK
Veterans from World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Korea check out a modern day Improved First Aid Kit used by Soldiers in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A jump rope?!”
“Suppository?”
“A worm?”
I love it.
Category Archives: DARPA
Boeing comes clean on the Army’s Quiet Bird after 50+ years
Boeing just posted a bunch of information and imagery on a program, the Model 853, that has been suppressed for a half century.
The Quiet Bird was a version of the Boeing Model 853 which started out as an Army observation airplane study, this version of the 853 study was used to test materials and shapes that would reduce radar cross sections (RCS). The model was built and tested in 1962- 1963 at Boeing Wichita, these test were on a radar range and no actual flight testing was done. The tests reportedly achieved excellent results in reduced radar cross section, but it was a bit ahead of its time and did not generate interest from the military. The lessons learned on Quiet Bird probably did influence the design of the Boeing AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile. Internally Boeing continued to work on the non-metallic structures aspects that were pioneered with Quiet Bird, and that effort eventually lead to the use of increasingly larger and more complex composite structures in Boeing aircraft.
Of course, you know the Air Force would have shit a whole duck if the Army ever tried to get a jet-powered observation plane, especially in the 1960s. That’s why the Army was stuck with OV-1 Mohawks and OV-10 Broncs in Vietnam.
Is that a banana torpedo in your shed, or are you just happy to see me?
One funny looking crab pot
A Kongsberg Remus model UUV operated by Boeing conducting ‘sonar tests’ for the Big Blue popped up by a waterman’s boat in the Chesapeake so guess what he did…
“It was super foggy the day they discovered this thing,” Laurie Haas said. “They almost hit it with the boat.
“They didn’t know what it was because it was such a bright color yellow.”
Figuring the object was valuable, the crew pulled it onto their boat to see if they could reunite it with its owner. Davis Haas stashed the drone in his shed back home.
“I couldn’t wait to see it when I got home,” Laurie Haas said. “This was the catch of a lifetime.”
Of course Boeing chopped chopped over to them when they found out.
Here’s pictures of a Slocum Glider and a Sea Lion that I came in contact with a couple years back. They are marked up pretty good with ‘If found’ labels.
Pentagon’s super secret manned spy satellite finally declassified, kinda
The National Reconnaissance Office, the shadowy intelligence agency that runs (most of?) the U.S. inventory of spy satellites released a trunk-load of information about the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program. Set up in the 1960s MOL’s cover was to test long term operations for scientific research in orbit.
The actual, classified, mission of the MOL program was to place a manned, beer-can shaped surveillance satellite into orbit that would allow USAF personnel to take immediate snap shots from space and zip it over to Vandenberg ASAP.
From NRO:
At the time, several military and contractor studies estimated that manned surveillance satellites could acquire photographic coverage of the Soviet Union with resolution better than the best system at the time (the first generation Gambit satellite). Additionally, the Air Force billed the MOL as a reconnaissance system that could more efficiently and quickly adjust coverage for crises and targets of opportunity than unmanned systems. The Air Force controlled development of the satellite, which was consistent with MOL’s unclassified mission, while the NRO ran development of the covert reconnaissance mission of the program, including the camera system and other subsystems.
Apparently it would be manned by rotating crews of two Air Force astronauts using a Gemini capsule as a vehicle to accomplish crew swap outs.
A 1967 conceptual drawing of the Gemini B reentry capsule separating from the MOL at the end of a mission
The MOL program even selected 17 military pilots (almost all USAF) to begin 30-40 days missions starting in 1972, but they never left the ground.
Canceled in 1969 after spending $1.56 billion (about $10.11 B today), but never launching a manned vehicle into space (although two unmanned Gemini B mockups were sent), the NRO dropped (silent) video and over 20,000 (redacted) images and documents on the internet on Oct.23
Enjoy.
Integrally suppressed pistols: The New Maxim 9 and how we got there
This week the good folks over at Silencerco dropped a number of new suppressor designs to include an integrally suppressed 9mm handgun design dubbed the Maxim 9 after the inventor of the Silencer—Hiram Maxim. The thing is, the concept, while super sweet in its latest form by Silencerco, really isn’t that new.
Somewhere in occupied Europe…
In the darkest days of World War II, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and American OSS ran a myriad of operations behind the lines in both Nazi-occupied Europe and Japanese occupied Asia. They set up resistance groups of local insurgents and supplied them with weapons, training, and equipment to help set the Axis rear aflame.
The SOE went to new places and made friends like this mustached Brit operative seen in the center of this group of French resistance
One of the weapons they supplied was meant especially for assassination. This mysterious suppressed pistol was known as the Welrod. The Welrod was not a traditional pistol fitted to a detachable silencer, it was a pistol built *around* an integral silencer.
To keep gas from escaping due to a cylinder like on a revolver, or a cycling action like on a semi-automatic, the Welrod was bolt action. The simple and effective bolt action could be worked rapidly for a follow-up shot if needed, and doubled as a safety device. The integral suppressor built around the barrel was made up of 12 thin metal washer baffles separated in groups by three leather wipes.
The baffles would start to deteriorate with use and typically was no longer suppressed after about 15-20 rounds. The nose cap of the suppressor was hollowed out to allow it to be pressed into an intended target without undue back blast. The magazine itself, encased in a rubber sleeve like a bicycle grip, formed the pistol grip. With few moving parts, it could be broken down and stored in pieces that did not resemble a firearm. In fact when disassembled it rather looks like a bicycle pump.
Chambered in either the British and German army’s standard submachine gun round, 9x19mm Parabellum; or 32ACP (7.65x17mm), the same caliber as many popular Italian, German, and Japanese pistols, they were heavy at 52-ounces besides being large with an overall length of 14.22-inches. Nevertheless, they were quiet and word is although just over 16,000 were produced, at least some have remained in service with the British military for those special moments even though they are now some 70+ years of age.
Custom integrally suppressed pistols
Over the past couple of decades, a number of companies here in the U.S. have been in the business of taking otherwise factory-stock rimfire semi-autos and making them integrally suppressed. These companies include SRT who take a Browning Buckmark or Challenger; or Ruger MkIII, MkII, or MkI and add a 7-inch tube directly to the gun designed for the US military specifically for use with 40 gr CCI MiniMags.
SRTs Rugers
The cost $725 and up.
Others who do similar are Dark Horse, Norrell, AWC and Coastal but you can be sure with something like 3,026 National Firearms Act Special Occupational Taxpayers (SOTs= gunshops cleared to make suppressors) there are likely far more.
AWC’s awesome Ruger-based Amphibian
However, these are all rimfire designs. Sure, you can get a screw-on can for the heavier .45/9mm stuff, but where is the fun in that?
The BT Vet gun
Several years ago the Swiss company of B+T AG (formerly known as Brugger & Thomet) came up with the spooky quiet VP-9 “veterinary pistol.”
Can you say, “polymer welrod?”
This modern take on the WWII Welrod made with polymers and modern metallurgy is a single-action (cock it each time) 6-shot 9mm that tips the scales at just 30-ounces and is (only) 11.3-inches long which is something of an improvement size-wise over the 1940s tech its based on. However this rare bird is meant to put down sick and injured wildlife, not make hits on random SS sentries guarding der fuhrer.
Although it could be used for that purpose if you really wanted and had a time machine.
Nevertheless, you can’t walk into your average gun shop and place an order for a VP-9 here in the states.
Which brings us to the…
Maxim 9
No, that’s not a holster on the end of that SW M&P
Quiet Glock use by the U.S. military
Increasingly, various model Glocks are showing up overseas in the hands of the country’s elite forces, which could have interesting implications for the upcoming Army handgun contract.
Widespread adoption around the world
Its should be mentioned that the entire reason Glock handguns exist is that in the late 1970s Gaston Glock went vying for the Austrian Army contract to replace their 1950s era Steyr pistols with something more modern. The result, adopted as the Pistole 80 in Austria, was modified ever so slightly and sold on the world market as the first generation G17.
Since then the company has gone on to win contracts to supply the militaries of some of our closest allies to include France, Israel, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden with various model Glocks.
In 2013, the British Army announced they were replacing their standard sidearm, the John Browning-designed Hi Power with the Glock 17. In all, the Queen decided to purchase some 25,000 new fourth Generation Glock 17s at a price of $14.5-million. This breaks down to about $580 per new pistol, which is slightly less than the MSRP of a new Glock 17. However, you can be sure that Gaston is probably throwing in a few extra magazines and spare parts as value added.
For law enforcement use in the U.S., the Glock is the weapon of choice more often than not. A recent survey of some 6,000 law enforcement officers from across the country conducted by a police website found that some 68 percent of all respondents carried Glocks and, further, an impressive 61 percent would choose the gun if given an option. This validates the company’s often-cited claim that approximately “65 percent of police departments in America already put a Glock police pistol in between them and the problem.”
Further, the Federal government loves Glocks, with most of the Department of Justice (FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.) issuing the .40S&W Glock 22 in various models over the past decades.
This likely led to the decision by the U.S. to buy over 100,000 Glocks for the new police forces of Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years.
And, very quietly, they have been popping up in service with Leathernecks and Joes at the sharp end.
You would have no idea where it was coming from…
Boeing showed off their portable Compact Laser Weapons System (CLWS) last month in a test,
flaming out a radio controlled aircraft is less time than it takes to heat a pop tart. These lasers have been around for a minute but they weigh a few thousand pounds and are about the size of a VW Bus.
This one looks like it packs up in a couple saxophone cases.
Glomar Explorer headed to the scrap heap
With global oil prices falling to $40 a barrel in the wake of oil sands fracking and Iran coming back online, TransOcean is scrapping some 20 of their older deepwater oil drilling ships. One of these, the MV Glomar Explorer, is kinda famous.
On March 1, 1968, a Soviet Golf-II ballistic missile sub (basically a Zulu-class diesel attack sub modified to carry three Scud missiles), the K-129 (pennant 722), carrying three advanced SS-N-4 R-21 Sark nukes, sailed from Petropavlovsk to take up its peacetime patrol station 1,600 miles northeast of Hawaii.
Well something went bad fast and K-129 went down with all hands sometime around March 8th or so. The Navy’s SOSUS underwater sonar system got close enough to the wreck for government work and, after the Soviet effort to find their lost boat died down (reported by USS Barb, SSN-596, who was reportedly trailing K-129) , the USN pinpointed the wreck with deep diving research submarines and forwarded the info to Langley.
That’s when the CIA decided they wanted a ship that could lift a 1,750-ton submarine off the seafloor from a depth of 16,500 feet– 3 miles– back to the surface.
So they called Howard Hughes and opened the pocketbook (she cost over $1.6 billion in today’s money) for an immense custom built deepwater salvage ship, the 50,500-ton, 619-foot long GSF Hughes Glomar Explorer. In all, she was a big girl, the size of a WWII aircraft carrier and is today capable of reaching down to 30,000 feet to conduct exploratory oil field drilling and mining.
But back in 1973 her mission was veiled in secrecy. Operated by the Suma Corporation under the cover of harvesting manganese nodules from the ocean floor, she was semi-secretly added to the Navy as USNS Glomar Explorer (AG-193) in July and soon headed out to literally pick up K-129 and bring it home as part of a secret operation named Project Azorian.
The story of the salvage was tense (detailed here in this really interesting 50-page redacted intelligence brief) , with two different Soviet naval auxiliaries approaching danger close.
The first the 459-foot missile range instrumentation ship Chazhma, approached and hung around for a couple days, with her helicopter buzzing the ship several times taking pictures while sending a series of signals asking just WTF Glomar Explorer was up to.
The second, SB-10, a 155-foot submarine support ship/salvage tug, remained on station for 13 days and 16 hours, closing to within 75 yards at times and having to be repeatedly warned off.
Unarmed and capable of just 10 knots when wide open, the Hughes ship was a sitting duck.
In the end, Glomar Explorer picked up a 145-foot section of the sub with its giant central claw and brought it back to the states.
While the intelligence community hasn’t really broke down the contents of the section– which was reportedly radioactive– it was thought to include a couple of nuclear-tipped torpedoes but no missiles or code books in the 24 vans of material removed from the wreckage.
What is known is that it contained the bodies of six lost Soviet Red Banner Fleet sailors, who were buried at sea with full military honors in Sept. 1974 as seen in the CIA video below.
DCI Robert Gates presented a film of the burial ceremony to Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992.
However, before Glomar Explorer could sail back and pick up the rest of the stricken sub, a Feb. 1975 leak in the LA Times relating the involvement of Hughes, CIA and the operation itself (incorrectly termed Project Jennifer) blew the cover on the whole op, ending it (as far as we know).
Glomar Explorer was soon shuffled over to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, Benecia, California where she sat until 5 November 1996, when she was leased out for $1 million per year to a string of oil companies, the last of which is TransOcean, who purchased the ship from the Navy for $15 million in 2010.
Currently under the flag of Vanuatu, she is set to be scrapped in coming months.
Navy gets in some Hellfire action
Tests in adding a 24-pack of Hellfire missiles, guided by the Army’s Apache Longbow system, to thier LCS fleet seems to be moving forward rather well. Now don’t freak out, LCS is also supposed to get a real anti-shipping missile such as Harpoon or the really neat new Norwegian Naval Strike Missile (NSM) and the Hellfire is just supposed to batter small boat swarm attacks that are just aren’t worth wasting a 13 foot long over-the-horizon missile on. But we’ll see I guess
Integration of the Longbow Hellfire missile system, designated the Surface-to-Surface Missile Module (SSMM), will increase the lethality of the Navy’s fleet of littoral combat ships. The SSMM is expected to be fully integrated and ready to deploy on LCS missions in late 2017.
“This test was very successful and overall represents a big step forward in SSMM development for LCS,” said Capt. Casey Moton, LCS Mission Modules program manager.
Termed Guided Test Vehicle-1, the event was designed to specifically test the Longbow Hellfire launcher, the missile, and its seeker versus high speed maneuvering surface targets (HSMSTs). The HSMSTs served as surrogates for fast inshore attack craft that are a potential threat to Navy ships worldwide.
During the mid-June tests off the coast of Virginia, the modified Longbow Hellfire missiles successfully destroyed a series of maneuvering small boat targets. The system “hit” seven of eight targets engaged, with the lone miss attributed to a target issue not related to the missile’s capability. The shots were launched from the Navy’s research vessel Relentless.
The test scenarios included hitting targets at both maximum and minimum missile ranges. After a stationary target was engaged, subsequent targets, conducting serpentine maneuvers were engaged. The tests culminated in a three-target “raid” scenario. During this scenario all missiles from a three-shot “ripple fire” response struck their individual targets.
Integration of the “fire-and-forget” Longbow Hellfire missile on LCS represents the next evolution in capability being developed for inclusion in the Increment 3 version of the surface warfare mission package for LCS. When fully integrated and tested, each 24-shot missile module will bring added firepower to complement the LCS’s existing 57mm gun, SEARAM missiles and armed MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter.
The print-a-drone aircraft carriers of the future?
HMS Mersey is not an impressive warship. The 261-foot River-class OPV is slow, armed with just three guns all under 20mm in caliber, and is tasked primarily with coast guard style missions. However, last week she pulled off something that could revolutionize how drones are used at sea in the next generation.
You see she launched a UAV that was made from 3D printed parts.
FIRST LAUNCH OF 3D PRINTED UMANED AERIAL VEHICLE – 21/7/15 Today, 21st July 2015, a 3D printed Umaned Aerial Vehicle was launched from a Royal Navy warship for the first time. HMS Mersey provided the perfect platform for the University of Southampton to test out their SULSA unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Weighing 3kg and measuring 1.5m the airframe was created on a 3D printer using laser sintered nylon and catapulted off HMS Mersey into the Wyke Regis Training Facility in Weymouth, before landing on Chesil Beach.The flight, which covered roughly 500 metres, lasted less than few minutes but demonstrated the potential use of small lightweight UAVs, which can be easily launched at sea, in a maritime environment. The aircraft carried a small video camera to record its flight and Southampton researchers monitored the flight from their UAV control van with its on-board video-cameras.Known as Project Triangle the capability demonstration was led by Southampton researchers, making use of the coastal patrol and fisheries protection ship.With a wingspan of nearly 1.5 metres, the UAV being trialled has a cruise speed of 50kts (58mph) but can fly almost silently.The aircraft is printed in four major parts and can be assembled without the use of any tools. MOD Crown Copyright
The 7-pound Sulsa with its 5-foot wingspan can make 100 knots and was assembled on the ship with its body and wings made via 3D desktop printer and a prepackaged battery, control electronics, propeller, and motor.
The Sulsa can be printed for just a few thousand dollars, says Jim Scanlan, a professor at Southampton who works on the craft design. He concedes that it can fly for only 40 minutes. But that could be enough for missions such as responding to reports of piracy, where being able to easily check out a vessel from a distance of 10 miles or so is valuable. “If they shoot at it, who cares? You send another one up,” says Scanlan.
He envisages ships putting out to sea carrying printed parts to make up to 50 drones as well as a 3-D printer and the powder feedstock needed to print spares or bespoke vehicles for different missions, which might require different sensors. However, work remains to be done to prove that printing planes at sea makes sense. Printing the parts for a Sulsa takes hours, and existing printers would need to be modified so they could stay level at sea.