Category Archives: War On Terror

The Navy’s Mk 22 ‘Hush puppy’ Pistol

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So you are a Navy SEAL crawling around deep in the enemy’s back yard. You are vastly outnumbered which means your primary weapon is stealth. You are a shadow—you have to be if you expect to get out of this alive. The thing is, the enemy’s camp has dogs that are bound to bark. What do you do to keep hidden?

Bring a Hushpuppy.

Today the US Navy’s 2000+ Special Warfare operators, commonly referred to as SEALs for their mastery of SEa, Air-and Land insertion and extraction techniques, are well-known. In the 1960s, however the concept was brand new and just a few hundred men formed two small teams of frogmen. The majority of these divers, trained to fight in small groups, were forward deployed in a nice slice of green hell and brown water known as Vietnam. Operating in an intensive and unforgiving environment, these early Seals were always on the lookout for non-standard firearms to help give them an edge. Besides the myriad of standard-issue military weapons in Uncle Sam’s deep closets, the Seals used Swedish K-guns, commercial shotguns, and non-standard pistols.

Among these was the Smith and Wesson M39, a 9mm handgun. Originally bought as a commercial off the shelf design this compact semi-auto pistol was coupled to an effective detachable suppressor and dubbed the Mk 22. Since its use was in taking out sentries and the occasional yapping stray dog, it was commonly referred to as the Hush Puppy.

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

hushpuppy in seal museum

Glock Shows Up on the FBI CT Team

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Former members call it “The best job in the FBI.” It’s officially designated the Hostage Rescue
Team. The federal government calls it in when they have a sticky situation that involves high profile operations.

In the 1972 Munich Olympics, Islamic terrorists seized a dorm housing Israeli athletes and in the resulting botched efforts to free them, 11 coaches and athletes were killed. This incident as well as a wave of terrorist attacks throughout the world led to the formation of units like the German GSG, British SAS, and US Army’s Delta Force to take the fight to those who would attack innocents. With the 1984 Summer Olympics set for Los Angeles, and the US military forbidden from acting
inside the borders of the United States, the FBI started the Hostage Rescue Team in 1982. After 18 months of training the team, made up of 50 members, was ready for duty by October 1983.

Since 1983, they have taken part in more than 800 operations including the recent rescue of a
kidnapped 5-year old autistic boy in Alabama held by a killer in an underground bunker. Today the HRT remains the US government’s only full time law-enforcement counter-terrorism team. Unlike the well-known US Army Special Forces Group Delta and the US Navy’s DEVGRU (better known as Seal Team Six) who take the war on terrorism overseas, the HRT is the designated hitter inside the borders of the US itself. Based at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, actual strength is classified but is believed to be around 90 individuals in three rotating units.

They could choose any firearm in the world.

And lately, they use Glocks….

Read the rest in my column at Glock Forums

srt glock

Navy Hemms Up Own Carriers

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With the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) decommed, the US Navy is down to 10 Nimitz class flattops until the USS Gerald Ford commissions in 2015. One of these ten, the USS Lincoln, is basically up on blocks at Norfolk waiting to begin a 4-year refueling of her reactor cores (RCOH). Sistership Theodore Roosevelt is still in RCOH until this summer at the earliest.

The thing is…the Navy can’t afford it.

An article at USNI News   states that a navy spokesmen passed on “CVN-72 will remain at Norfolk Naval Base where the ships force personnel will continue to conduct routine maintenance until sufficient funding is received for the initial execution of the RCOH.”

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This comes only a week after the USS Truman’s Carrier Battle Group was sidelined the day before they were due to head to the Persian Gulf for a six month deployment due to budgetary reasons. Its deployment had been affected earlier by the Nimitz, now pushing 40 years of age and scheduled herself to strike around 2020, having increasing mechanical issues.

So to recount in the past few months : Enterprise stricken, Nimitz cranky, Lincoln laid up, Truman sidelined due to funding, Theodore Roosevelt still in RCOH…

Then again, in terms of carrier math, China still only has one as does Russia.

Good thing.

USN Tests Griffin For Littorial

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To give the lightly armed LCS, the remaining 179-foot Cyclone class coastal patrol craft, and the new 85-foot MK VI boats, the US Navy is testing the lightweight Griffin missile. This economical ($45,000 a pop, which is cheap as far as this type of stuff goes) little bottle rocket is just the thing for splashing a small boat (such as a Iranian Boghammer) or a quiet sea-side hut full of pirates. Small in profile, it can be used in an 8-pack launcher that is all above deck, fitting in any area that can accept a Mk38 sized mount.

Cheap and effective, the Griffin is smaller even than the vaunted Hellfire missile. And they could be coming to a LCS near you.

Cheap and effective, the Griffin is smaller even than the vaunted Hellfire missile. And they could be coming to a LCS near you.

Designed for small UAVs to be used in precision strikes against buildings and vehicles, the AGM-176 Griffin has a proven track record in air-to-ground use. The 45-pound missile uses components of the FGM-148 Javelin and the AIM-9X Sidewinder. It can send a 13-pound warhead guided by laser, GPS, or INS out to 12-miles. The Navy is at least using a proven missile for once. In its surfaced launched version it can reach out to 5500-meters (3.5-miles), which is still well past the range of heavy machine guns and RPGs which are the probable weapons of any small boats that the Griffin would defend against.

One has been mounted on the USS Monsoon (PC-4) for trials and seems to work just fine so far.

Seal Sniper Chris Kyle killed by Gunman at shooting range

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Details are sketchy but it seems that the greatest American sniper in US history, SOC Chris Kyle, USN, was killed by a gunman at a range in Texas yesterday.

Nicknamed Al-Shaitan Ramad (English The Devil of Rahmadi), he had an estimated 160 confirmed kills and wrote the book “American Sniper” that currently sits on my desk. Like myself he was 38.

He survived multiple tours in Centcom, won 2 silver stars, 5 bronze stars, and got zapped by a clown in the US.

What a waste. He deserved to die an old man in his sleep decades from now.

You will me missed Chief Kyle.

(photo by ABC news)

(photo by ABC news)

SIGS in the US Military

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The standard sidearm for the US armed forces as everyone knows is the Beretta M9 (92F). Before 1984, it was the legendary Colt 1911 .45 (versions of which are still in use with special operations units.) However, what you may not know is that several variants of the SIG P-series pistol also serve.

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

Digital StillCamera

Reply from My Congressman

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After an impassioned series of letters and calls to my local Congressman concerning Gun Control,  a freshman Tea Party Candidate, I received the below response.

palazoo letter

Ok, guys, do your part.

Where are your letters?

The Pancor Jackhammer: The greatest automatic shotgun that never was

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One of the more exotic shotguns that have ever crossed a drawing board was the one that John Andersen came up with in the early 1980s. He officially called it the MK3, but it will go down in history in this planet and virtual ones alike as the Jackhammer.

Firearms inventor John Andersen (sometimes-spelled Anderson) thought out the concept of a gas-operated, automatic-fire shotgun for military and police use. His gun would allow full-auto fire of new and advanced 12-gauge shells, be rapidly reloaded, and still be small and compact enough for the average foot soldier to carry into combat.

jackhammer-4

To accomplish this, he envisioned a reciprocating barrel with a fixed gas piston enclosed in a cylinder. When the gun fired, the barrel pushed forward and the action, set in a bullpup style behind the trigger group, ejected the spent shell hull and loaded another in what we would consider a very complicated process. This unique action gave the gun (which turned out looking rather industrial anyway) a very distinctive ‘jackhammer’ style of operation when firing that led to its nickname. If the trigger was kept depressed after the first shot, the weapon would continue cycling, thus producing automatic fire until the trigger was let up or the weapon ran out of ammunition. There was no option for single shot fire; the gun was full-auto only commenting directly on its philosophy of use.

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

Homeland Security Under Scrutiny in Congress

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Senator Coburn is at it again. This time he is going after the Department of Homeland Security is his 55-page report entitled “Safety At Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland security Spending in US Cities”

coburn
“If in the days after 9/11 lawmakers were able to cast their gaze forward ten years, I imagine they would be surprised to see how a counter-terrorism initiative aimed at protecting our largest cities has transformed into another parochial grant program. We would have been frustrated to learn that limited federal resources were now subsidizing the purchase of low-priority items like an armored vehicles to protect festivals in rural New Hampshire, procure an underwater robot in Ohio and to pay for first responder attendance at a five-day spa junket that featured a display of tactical prowess in the face of a “zombie apocalypse.”

DHS has since spent an estimated $35 billion on its grant programs over the past decade, including $7.144 billion for UASI Urban areas. Los Angeles alone got some $500 million in grants while smaller cities like Milwaukee got $44-million to buy gee-whiz stuff. Even tiny towns such as Keene, NH got $90k to buy an armored BearCat vehicle just in case. An incident involving the purchase of 13 sno-cone machines with $6,200 in homeland security grants illustrates the weakness of FEMA’s oversight of its grant programs. This is the focus of the report, basically throwing rocks at how local law enforcement agencies spend the Feds money on junk they probably don’t need, but hey, it’s the Fed’s offering them the money, soooooo….

What is Lake City Anyway?

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Across 3900-acres of sprawling land just outside of in Independence, Missouri lies the US Army’s primary factory that produces almost all of its supply of small arms ammunition. Founded just months before the United States’ entry into World War 2, the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant (LCAAP) is still churning out the brass.

Founded in 1940, LCAAP was put into service in October 1941 producing small arms ammunition, mainly 30.06 caliber– then the military’s standard rifle and machinegun round. By the end of the war nearly 6-billion cartridges left the city for the GI’s in the field. It was a drop in the bucket of the estimated 100-billion rounds that were produced for the military during that great war by dozens of private companies and publicly owned ammunition plants.

It is currently a Government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility, in which the Army still owns the 485 buildings, property, and machines, while a contractor staffs and operates it. Remington ran the plant for the Army from 1941-1985, and Olin (Winchester ammo) ran it from 1985-2001. The contractor since 2001 is ATK, a company that you may know best for its commercial line of ammunition that includes CCI and Federal…..

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

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