Marine Special Operations Command Raiders often travel to exotic places to make friends and influence people. And that sometimes needs some fresh driving skills.
The above video, in which Raiders get some trigger time on (sorta) concealed Glock 19s and not so-concealed Mk 18 rifles while driving like Fast and Furious extras, is the type of thing that has recruiters in strip malls across the nation thanking the ghost of Chesty Puller.
Beretta who?
Dallas Police Headquarters Friday morning at sunrise
Both the Navy’s Legacy and Super Hornet fleets are having devastating readiness issues.
Currently, three out of four F-18s are not ready to go to war (In April 2016, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis — the Marines’ deputy commandant for aviation — told the U.S. Senate that just 87 of the Corps’ 276 Hornets were flightworthy — a mere 32 percent) and there has been a scramble to find parts that has seen perfectly good airframes cannibalized while Marines have even gone out combing for parts on static display aircraft.
A few months ago U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry blasted the brass in a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee about Marines coming to a military museum looking for spare parts as the current sequestration-driven budget crisis, exacerbated by the ongoing and very real live shooting war against ISIS and company that gets little press, has left the Corps aviation readiness looking like a soup sandwich.
This was duly reported by military blogs and other media though some pundits later scoffed and argued it never happened or no such part was acquired.
Well, according to the museum manager, that of Patriot’s Point where a vintage F/A-18A on loan from the Naval Air and Space Museum graces the desk of the former USS Yorktown (CV/CVA/CVS-10), it happened.
The aircraft on display at Patriots Point, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18A-15-MC Hornet, Bu.No. 162435, carries VMFA-142 markings and was SOC Jun 27, 2007. She was in a fatal accident in 1985 and rebuilt for display purposes, which may have been why the MCAS personnel came looking, since she had particularly low hours.
As reported by the Post and Courier
“We said, ‘Come on down. She’s yours,’” Mac Burdette said Wednesday at the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual military update, which highlighted the broad impact the Pentagon makes on the regional economy.
A team of Marines from Beaufort removed the part [a forward left nose landing gear door hinge that’s no longer manufactured] and replaced it with a manufactured duplicate that was suitable for display purposes but not for flight, said Patriots Point public information officer Chris Hauff.
“The Marines don’t tell us everything … but their plane is now fixed,” he said. “Whether they used the part, we don’t know.”
The good news is there are at least 15 other F-18As on display around the country– most of which are on military bases which makes it easier to cannibalize parts from on the quiet.
Unless that’s what already happened…
HI Sutton, who has been kinda enough to mirror some of our posts from LSOZI before at his excellent Covert Shores blog (and I do recommend going over there and checking it out regularly) penned a piece for Foreign Brief on the evolution of Narco Subs, which included this dope (no pun intended) info graphic (click to very much big up!)
2400-x1152
From the article:
2016 looks set to be a bumper year for narco-sub incidents.
Just last month, Colombian security forces discovered a 15-metre narco-sub in the jungle near the Pacific coast. A few weeks earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard published footage of a narco-sub intercepted off the Panamanian coast with 5.5 tonnes of cocaine on board, valued at $200 million. In March, an abandoned narco-sub was found stranded on a reef off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, its load of narcotics already unloaded by drug smugglers.
On Sept. 17, 2009, President Obama announced that the United States would provide missile defenses to NATO, to include the deployment of SM-3 interceptor missiles at landbased sites in Romania and Poland. Now of course the SM-3 is a naval missile, so this led to a new take on an old idea.
The Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) at Naval Support Facility (NSF) Deveselu, Romania is Phase 2 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to ballistic missile defense. AAMDS has many of the same components used at sea on guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, to include the Aegis Weapon System, Mk. 41 Vertical Launch System, and SPY-1 radar, but it can only fire the SM-3.
In short, it’s an unsinkable cruiser in a corn field so to speak.
The Navy just released some B-roll footage of the base inside and out including the “Deckhouse” and CIC, which is kinda rare access, so take the silent tour in the two videos below, before they disappear in the name of OPSEC.
In the 1960-1970s a lot of NATO (and some Warsaw Pact) countries came up with micro machines for niche jobs. We here in the U.S. were stuck with the Chance-Vought M561 Gamma Goat and the M422 Mighty Mite, the first weighing in at 4-tons and the second barely topping 1,700 lbs curb weight. Armoring up, there was the Marines M50 Ontos (Greek for “thing”) at 9.5-tons with a four-pack of M40 recoillessrifles, and the Army’s M551 “Sheridan” AR/AAV which had a M81E1 Rifled 152 mm Gun/Launcher and could withstand anything (up to) .50 cal but weighed 15-tons.
For comparison, the Soviets had their ASU-57 assault gun, which was a 3.4-ton 57mm motorized gun that could be airmailed into forward positions.
In West Germany, they went with the Porsche/Rheinmetall AG Wiesel armored weapons carrier.
This cute 2.75-ton armored vehicle is the closest thing there is to a modern tankette and uses either a commercial 86 hp Audi 2.1-litre diesel or a beefed up 109hp 1.9L Volkswagen in-line four-cylinder turbo diesel– either of which can be serviced by a local Audi or VW/Porsche dealer.
Capable of being parachuted or choppered in (the HEER operates CH-53s, which can carry two at once!), Wiesel is a fast little critter capable of speeds over 40 mph on roads while maintaining good off-road capability. The Germans ordered more than 500 of these in a bunch of different packages including some with a Rheinmetall MK 20 Rh202 20mm cannon (though tests have been done with 25mm and 30mm) and others with a TOW launcher.
In the longest version, they are just 15.75 feet from front to back, or about as long as a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited.
Due to their small footprint, which includes the ability to operate on narrow roads and over bridges made out of well wishes, the Germans have extensively deployed them on NATO/EU/UN missions to abroad such as in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Afghanistan (where these images are from).
As you know, the Dragunov SVD sniper rifle is a semi-automatic, gas-operated designated marksman rifle, chambered in old-school Mosin 7.62×54R, and developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. While the Russians have moved on to more advanced DMRs, the classic SVD is still in widespread use in the Third World and former Warsaw Bloc.
Click to big up. 1280×273. BATFE Photo
This particular firearm was used on June 2, 2005, by insurgents who shot at U.S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division while they were on patrol in Baghdad. In a videotaped attack, you can see one soldier being hit in the chest by the enemy sniper. Seconds after impact he was able to get up and take cover behind a Humvee.
Luckily, modern SAPI plate is rated to withstand .30-06 AP, which thumps a little harder than 7.62x54R.
After making contact with the enemies who shot him, the soldier rendered medical aide and took them into custody. The Army managed to retrieve the rifle in that attack and donated it to the ATF to add to their 15,000 gun reference library, where it remains today.
Das HK G28E im Cal. 7.62mmx51 Foto: © Tomas Moll
The modern U.S. Army’s flirtation with dedicated sniper rifles is now in about it’s 99th year, if you disregard the brief fling with the Sharps used by Hiram Berdan’s United States Sharpshooters during the Civil War. Over that time, Big Green kept the same more or less standard rifle in service for decades: The M1903 in both World Wars, the M1C/D in Korea, the M21 in Vietnam (augmented by a few Winchester Model 70 and Remington 700 target guns pressed into sevice).
In the 1980s, the Army went with a supped up Remmy 700 heavy barrel, designated the M24, and has been using it for roughly the past 30~ years, being augmented by the remaining M21/DMRs and some new AR-10-based Knights Armarment M110 semi-autos in recent years.
Well, now it seems that is about to change as a $44 million contract was announced Friday to Heckler & Koch Defense Inc. for up to 3,673 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System (CSASS) units along with spares, accessories and support. This works out to about $12,000 per rifle system, which sounds like a lot but if it includes optics, et. al may actually be a bargain.
The good folks over at The Firearm Blog talk about the HK in question– the G28E.
The CSASS program aimed to address issues of size and length with the original SASS program that was won by Knight’s Armament Company in 2005, resulting in the M110. The CSASS solicitation appears to combine the concept of a carbine-length 7.62mm semiautomatic support weapon adopted by the British Army and New Zealand Defence Forces with the optionally suppressed flexibility of the original M110 SASS weapon.
The G28E is based on Heckler & Koch’s G28 designated marksman’s rifle designed for the Bundeswehr, itself in turn based on the HK 417 7.62 caliber bigger brother to the HK 416. The G28E incorporates a large, lightweight octagonal KeyMod-like rail with seven sets of mounting positions for attachment of rail segments and accessories.
Now the Army currently has about 15,000 precision rifles of all types (M21/M110/M24) and just dropped some serious skrilla on 2,520 revamped .300 Win Mag caliber M24s, dubbed the M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle in 2014 so it’s doubtful the new HK rifle will make a clean sweep of the service’s needs, but I could see the lingering Vietnam-era M21 and its DMR’d M14 cousins finally being put to pasture while the M24s/2010s/110s head to Guard and Reserve units.
We shall see…
The USMC is updating their Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV) as the shiny new replacement, the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV), will not be operational for like another decade (insert the sound of holding your breath here).
Some 392 AAV7A1s are to receive an extensive survivability upgrade in a $194 million contract. Most of these are improvement to survive improvised explosive devices (IED) with the Marines inside being able to actually survive and walk away, and other weapons when operating in Iraq and elsewhere. Improvements to be made include flat-sided buoyant ceramic armor panels, new shock-mitigation seats, replacing benches in older AAVs, and a new transmission, increasing the vehicle’s top speed from a slow crawl to more of a full-out crawl.
If you have ever ridden in an AAV, you know exactly where I am coming from.
In modern warfare, it seems that you know more veterans who have left by their own hand than by the enemy’s. I am leaving far too many coins on headstones these days.
1-877-927-8387 – 24/7 Veteran Combat Call Center
1-800-273-8255 – Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-342-9647 – Military OneSource
1-800-273-8255 (press 1) – Veterans’ Crisis Line
Text 838255 if your phone allows short numbers
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!..Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung,” Sir Walter Scott.