In 2015, FK BRNO introduced their proprietary 7,5 FK cartridge/pistol combo, which is a very spicy 7.5x27mm pill on a very Bren Ten looking CZ75ish double-action semi-auto handgun with a few lessons borrowed from the FN Hi-Power. The bottle-necked 7.5×27 FK round, according to BRNO had been through some 150,000 test fires, and delivers about twice the energy as a 9mm NATO round out to (an optimistic) 100 yards with an optional buttstock attachment.
Shown off at the recent IWA Outdoor Classics trade show in Germany, the 7,5 pistol is a big boy, with a six-inch barrel and 46-ounce weight, or about the same as the old AMT Hardballer longslide 10mm, though with very Central European styling. Best yet, it has a 14+1 inch double stack mag on the beast.
It looks good for hunting (feral hogs come to mind, a task I use my own Glock 20 for), or as an offensive operations handgun such as the HK Mark 23 .45ACP (SOCOM)– though for such use you would want it to be suppressed which would be a challenge due to the high velo of the FK round.
Sure, you know the M134 Minigun, but how about the hand-held XM556 Microgun that tips the scales at about one-fifth the weight?
The Minigun, which weighs in at about 85 pounds in its traditional format and fires 7.62x51mm NATO about as fast as a fat kid can go through a stack of twinkees, is well-known and loved among those who ain’t got time to bleed. However, Empty Shell LLC of Spring, Texas went all-in on a tiny little variant of the Mingun that they like to call the XM556 Microgun.
And it only weighs 16 pounds, but still rips out green tip at 2,000 rounds per minute.
Soldiers, assigned to 1st Armored Division, Task Force Al Taqaddum, fire an M109A6 Paladin howitzer during a fire mission at Al Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq, June 27, 2016. The strikes were conducted in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and aimed at eliminating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Alpha 6 (Paladin) variant is mega sweet as far as 155mm SP guns go and only about a sixth of all M109s operational in the world got the upgrade which includes the longer 39-caliber 155 mm M284 cannon (which gives a max range of over 30,000m with RAP rounds) in a more advanced M182A1 mount, an increased 39 shell internal mag, beefier engine and an integrated fire direction center which moves well beyond the 1960s tech the gun originally carried, allowing it to be fed data in real time from brigade level and pop off a round in seconds after moving if doing “shoot-and-scoot” artillery fire, which is the only way to ensure survival on the modern combined armed battlefield.
Then of course there are hyper velocity projectiles (HVP) in the testing phase for Paladin that could hit Mach 3 and enable larger caliber guns to launch HVPs at air and missile threats over medium ranges (10–30 nautical miles) turning the howitzer into a very capable surface to air defense weapon if needed.
Fort Benning’s Army Marksmanship Unit has put out a short training film on Disassembly and Maintenance of the M-4, and it isn’t half bad.
The AMU has been producing “Shooter’s Corner” clips for the past several month and most have focused on weapon’s manipulation and nomenclature of the M4 and M9.
In this latest production, SSG Michael Howard with the AMU’s master firearms shop, walks you through basic field stripping, cleaning and PM.
Sure, sure, we know this is all stuff you already can do upside down and blindfolded, and you have a piston gun anyway (or a Kalash) but it’s still interesting to see how the AMU guys do things.
And in the end, it’s always something you can pass on.
“Sir John MacDonald. Jacobite captain of cavalry. Aged, frequently intoxicated, described as a man of the most limited capacities.”
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“A cast iron ball of 3-pounds weight, fired from open sights. This is round shot. This is what it does…”
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“A cylindrical canvas bag, eight inches in length, packed with musket balls and pieces of jagged iron. This is grapeshot. This is what it does…”
Culloden is a 1964 docudrama written and directed by Peter Watkins for BBC TV.
It portrays the 1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted in the British Army’s destruction of the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745 and, in the words of the narrator, “tore apart forever the clan system of the Scottish Highlands.”
Described in its opening credits as “an account of one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Britain,” Culloden was hailed as a breakthrough for its cinematography as well as its use of non-professional actors and its presentation of a historical event in the style of modern TV war reporting.
The film was based on John Prebble’s study of the battle.
160704-N-NU281-142 ATLANTIC OCEAN (July 4, 2016) The guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio (CG 68) transits the Atlantic Ocean alongside aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), not pictured. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is on an 8-month combat deployment in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Justin R. Pacheco/Released)
At first glance, the ANZIO Beach Head flag strikes one as a colorful, almost pirate-esque decoration. However, there is a much greater meaning to this symbol. In examining the flag, we see the representation of ship and aircraft that symbolize that massive loss of these American, British, and Canadian assets of war.
The skull represents Adolf Hitler’s personal guarantee to “turn the Anzio beach head into ‘death’s head'”
The red reminds us of the massive carnage of the battle that claimed the lives of over 28,000 Allied servicemen.
The blue represents the ocean, from which the assault was launched.
The line between the 2 colors exhibits the “Gustav Line” that divided Italy from Nazi control.
Warship Wednesday July 27, 2016: The RNs factory for curiosities in gun-mountings
Via IWM
Here we see the Powerful-type first-class protected cruiser HMS Terrible during her brief career, decked in a tropical white scheme that she used around 1900. Although beautiful in her own respect as a late 19th Century brawler, it was the use of her guns ashore that brought her lasting fame.
Built to rule the waves as independent units capable of raiding enemy merchant ships in time of war– while safeguarding HMs own from the enemy’s similar raiders– the Powerfuls were a two-ship class of very large cruisers with lots of coal bunkerage that enabled them to sail 7,000 nm at 14 knots. Should they stumble on an enemy surface raider, their twin 9.2″/40 (23.4 cm) Mark VIII cocoa-powder breechloaders could fire a 382-pound CPC shell out to 12,846 yards, which was pretty good for the era. A large number of QF 6-inch and QF 12-pounder 12 cwt naval gun (3-inch) guns made up secondary and tertiary armament (though at some point a few 6-inchers were traded for 4.7-inchers, but more on this later).
Class leader HMS Powerful was laid down in 1894 at Vickers Limited, Barrow-in-Furness while her sister and the subject of our tale, HMS Terrible, was laid down at the same time at J.& G. Thomson, Clydebank (Glasgow). As such, she was the seventh such RN vessel with that name dating back to 1694.
HMS Powerful Steaming up the English Channel, 1900, by maritime painter Charles Dixon RI. Note the black hull, buff stacks/masts, and white superstructure. Both ships of this class carried this scheme through about 1900.
Completed 8 June 1897 at a cost of £740,584, Terrible beat her design top speed of 22 knots on her trials by hitting 22.4 kn over a four-hour period and made Portsmouth to Gibraltar with an average speed of 18, which was fast for a pre-Dreadnought era cruiser, especially one of some 15,000-tons.
They were stately ships.
The Captain’s cabin was ornate
HMS Terrible portrait via Royal Grenwich Museum
Note how Terrible differed from the first image in this post as she looked in 1897 in these two images.
Her first use in war came when the Boers kicked it off against the British in South Africa.
In November 1899, HMS Terrible disembarked six naval guns (two 4.7″, 4 12 pounders) at Durban and, accompanied by 280 members of the Naval Brigade, saw them off by train to Ladysmith, just before the Boers closed the ring and began the storied Siege of Ladysmith. The naval guns were to play an important role in disabling the fire from the Boer Long Toms long enough till a relieving column rescued the town some months later.
Her sister HMS Powerful likewise dismounted a contingent and more guns at Simonstown, and under Commander AP Ethelston above became part of a Naval Brigade, with four guns, and several hundred men. They were sent by train to join the army of Lord Methuen, which was following the western Cape Colony railway hoping to rout the Boers blocking its advance to relieve the town of Kimberley, and engaging the Boers at Graspan on 25 November, which left half the force dead or wounded.
HMS TERRIBLE He who sups with me require a devil of a long spoon
Note the straw hats common to RN sailors, coupled with Army style field uniforms
4.7 Naval Gun on Carriage Improvised by Capt. Percy Scott of H.M.S. Terrible. Photo by E. Kennard
“You may be interested to hear a little about the Navy, who have come to the front as usual and met an emergency. From the first it would seem that what was wanted were long-range guns which could shell the enemy at a distance outside the range of their Mauser rifles, and the captain of the Terrible, therefore, proposed a field-mounting for the Naval long 12-pounder of 12 cwt., which has a much longer range than any artillery gun out here. A pair of waggon wheels were picked up, a balk of timber used as a trail, and in twenty-four hours a 12-pounder was ready for land service. Captain Scott then designed a mounting for a 4.7-inch Naval gun by simply bolting a ship’s mounting down on to four pieces of pile. Experts declared that the 12-pounder would smash up the trail, and that the 4.7-inch would turn a somersault; the designer insisted, however, on a trial. When it took place, nothing of the kind happened, except that at extreme elevation the 12-pounder shell went 9000 yards and the 4.7-inch (lyddite) projectile 12,000 yards. Captain Scott was, therefore, encouraged to go ahead, and four 12-pounders were fitted and sent round to Durban in the Powerful, and also two 4.7-inch guns. People say here that these guns saved the situation at Ladysmith. A Naval friend writing to me from the camp says: ‘The Boers complain that we are not “playing the game”; they only expected to fight rooineks, not sailors who use guns that range seven miles, and they want us to go back to our ships. One of our lyddite shells went over a hill into their camp, killed fourteen men and wounded thirty. Guns of this description are not, according to the Boer idea, at all proper, and[Pg 142] they do not like our way of staggering humanity. Had these guns been landed earlier, how much might have been saved? It is a peculiar sight to see the 4.7-inch fired. Many thought it would turn over, but Captain Percy Scott appears to have well calculated the stresses; there is with a full charge of cordite a slight rise of the fore end, which practically relieves all the fastenings. Hastily put together, and crude as it looks, it really embraces all the points of a scientific mounting, and it wants a great expert to pronounce an opinion on it. The gun is mounted so high that to the uninitiated it looks as if it must turn over on firing, but it does not, and the higher angle of elevation the less strain there is on it. The arrival of our guns practically put the Royal Artillery guns out of use, for they can come into action 2000 yards behind those supplied to the soldiers and then make better practice. Their arrival has, every one admits, quite changed the situation.’
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“Captain Scott has also rigged up a searchlight on a railway truck with a flasher attachment, the idea being to use it for communication with Kimberley and Ladysmith if these places are surrounded. It has been tested at a distance of forty miles, and proved a great success. I am told, too, that he is now engaged in designing a travelling carriage for a 6-inch gun, and has, indeed, converted the Terrible into a factory for curiosities in gun-mountings.
“Each mounting, by the way, has an inscription upon it, presumably concocted by the ship’s painter. One, a parody upon the Scotch proverb, runs, ‘Those who sup with me will require a devil of a long spoon’; another, ‘For what we are going to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful—Oom Paul’; and a third, ‘Lay me true and load me tight, the Boers will soon be out of sight.’ I saw one of these guns fired with an elevation of 24 degrees and a range of 12,000 yards, and fully expected to see the whole thing capsize, but it hardly moved. After the firing of several rounds I carefully examined the mounting, and noticed that, crude as it might appear, a wonderful amount of practical knowledge was apparent in its construction; the strain was beautifully distributed, every bolt and each balk bearing its proportionate share. It is in every way creditable to the navy that when emergency arises such a thing could be devised and made by the ship’s engineering staff in twenty-four hours.”
Besides her 4.7’s in use, Terrible‘s Marines and Tars manned a series of armored trains that they helped craft.
A British armored train designed and manned by Terrible’s crew during the Second Boer War, covered with 6 inch anchor rope, provided by the Royal Navy, to provide it protection. The improvised additional armor was the source of its name, “Hairy Mary.” (Photo from the McGregor Museum)
Royal Navy bluejackets of HMS Terrible pose by an armored train at Durban during the Boer War. Mounted on the flatbed carriage is an improvised signal lamp consisting of a searchlight and shutter mechanism, powered by a dynamo attached to the train. The officer to the right of the image is possibly Capt. Percy Scott RN. The tower of Durban Post Office can be seen in the background. IWM Q 115145
They also found time to do a spot of fishing:
The next year, Terrible sailed for China station where she repeated her efforts ashore though in a smaller scale, during the Boxer Rebellion. On that trip, she carried 300 Tommies of 2 Btln. Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 40 Royal Engineers.
Arriving in Tientsin 21 June 1900, Terrible landed four of her 12 pounders and, with the help of muscle from Col. Bower’s Wei-hai-Wei (1st Chinese) Regiment, engaged in the relief of that city the next month.
1902 Crewmen of HMS Terrible at Hong Kong. Note the teak decking and that flatcaps have replaced straw hats. The RN was changing…
Returning to the UK, she and her sister were soon obsolete (their 9.2-inch guns were unique) and, after a brief refit, were placed in ordinary in 1904 after less than a decade’s service.
During WWI, she was reactivated and used as a high speed troop transport (sans most of her armament and with reduced crews) in the Med and Northern Africa, bringing as many as 2,000 soldiers at a time to far off ports to support operations in Salonika, Egypt and Palestine.
Great War service had her in a more sedate haze gray with only her small casemate guns still mounted.
In 1920, she was disarmed, renamed the ignoble TS Fisgard III (taken from the old central-battery ironclad ex-HMS Hercules), and used as an accommodations and training ship for another decade. She was sold in July 1932 for scrap.
Likewise, Powerful was renamed TS Impregnable in November 1919, and was sold on 31 August 1929 for breaking up.
The teak decking from both of these vessels was extensively salvaged and crafted into everything from ashtrays to inkwells, chairs and desks and are out there, typically with commemorative brass plates in great numbers.
Her most enduring legacy, and that of her sister Powerful, is the long-running Royal Navy Field Gun competition which has in turn evolved into the Royal Military Tournament race, which celebrates the epic Ladysmith (and later Tientsin) gun train that saw the scratch Naval Brigade manhandle six field guns each weighing nearly half a metric tonne over rough terrain to save their Army brethren.
Although a Majestic-class carrier, HMS Terrible (R93), was to carry on the old cruiser’s memory, that vessel was instead sold to Australia who commissioned her as HMAS Sydney (R17/A214/P214/L134) in 1948. Thus, the Royal Navy has not had a “Terrible” on their active list since 1920 when our old girl took the “Fisgard” moniker.
Speaking of which, TS Fisgard itself remains as the National Sea Cadet Engineering Training Centre aboard RNAS Prestwick.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Recently two tactically loaded Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boats containing nine Army Green Berets and three communications specialists made a beach landing and stormed Camp Rilea, an Oregon Army National Guard Training Center in Warrenton, Oregon.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army 10th Special Forces Group, out of Army Base Fort Carson, Colo., prepare their Zodiac rigid-hulled inflatable boats for deployment while aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Fir, a 225-foot Sea-going Buoy Tender during transit off the northern coast of Oregon, June 22, 2016. The cutter supplied equipment storage and deployment during a joint-agency operation. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Class Levi Read.
Sure, it’s a training exercise involving National Guard SF guys, but it shows how such assets could be used if needed in an asymmetric maritime environment such as seizing oil rigs, conducting raids or recon on offshore islands and coastal zones, etc.
It should be noted that the Coast Guard uses the 225-foot Juniper-class seagoing buoy tenders such as Fir in conducting sovereignty and fishery patrols of outlying Pacific territories with allied shipriders and along the Alaskan Arctic coast.
If things go squirrely, say with non-nation actors, pirates or other rogues in those areas that a small group of pipehitters could fix and naval assets are not available, it’s clear that some may see NG SF ODAs or the Coast Guard’s own MSST units carried from buoy tenders as a low-tech option.
Here we see the Independence-class LCS USS Coronado (LCS-4). I had the honor of seeing her pieced together fro raw steel at Austal, on Mobile Bay back in 2013, the below image being sent in to be published in Warship International.
Photo by Chris Eger, email me if you want some super rez
She is the third U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the California city that hosts the Navy SEALs BUD/s school, the first being the patrol frigate USS Coronado (PF-38), who served in World War II as a convoy escort, and the second being the all-white Austin-class amphibious transport dock “Building 11” USS Coronado (LPD/AGF-11), most famous for her long career as the flagship (and often only ship assigned) to the Persian Gulf during much of the tanker wars.
As you can see, she often flies the flag of her namesake city, “The Crown City,” which was officially adopted there in 1996.
160629-N-IY142-050 PEARL HARBOR (June 29, 2016) USS Coronado (LCS 4) arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for Rim of the Pacific 2016. Note her four-cell Harpoon mount forward, though only one-tube is mounted. The first for her class and/or type. She flies the green and white “Crown City” flag. (U.S. Navy Photo By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class John Herman/RELEASED)
“This Harpoon [demonstration] on USS Coronado supports the Navy’s larger distributed lethality concept to strengthen naval power at and from the sea to ensure the Navy maintains its maritime superiority,” said Rear Adm. Jon Hill, program executive officer for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) in a presser.
Harpoon can be launched from surface ships, submarines and aircraft and is currently used on 50 U.S. Navy surface combatants: 22 cruisers, 21 Flight I destroyers and seven Flight II destroyers. In the Coast Guard, the five remaining Hamilton-class 378′ high endurance cutters have weight and space reserved behind their 76mm gun for Harpoon and, while the follow-on National Security Cutter does not, variants of the design by Huntington-Ingalls shows two quad mounts on the vessel’s stern for the 1970s-era ship killer.
Coronado will deploy with four of the missiles later this summer.
“Kanarejka” (Canary) system, mounted below the AKS-74U assault rifle. Now this is a real assault rifle. An “assault weapon” is a political term.
“Assault weapons bans” go back a quarter century with California implementing the first such restrictions in 1989. The the California Department of Justice’s assault weapon list has some registered 145,253 firearms as of last year when I did an in-depth report on them. However, the AWB, although tweaked continually, focuses on named models and arbitrary cosmetic features such as hand grips, barrel shrouds, and threaded muzzles, deeming such guns “assaulty” while they accidentally wind up making such innocent models as the Marlin Model 60, a tubular magazine .22LR popgun, illegal in some states.
Such bans aren’t very efficient, nor do they reduce crime, as witnesses a decade after in a postmortem on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which sunsetted in 2004.
Even the sometimes left-leaning New York Times noted that, “The continuing focus on assault weapons stems from the media’s obsessive focus on mass shootings, which disproportionately involve weapons like the AR-15, a civilian version of the military M16 rifle.”
Further, manufacturers can just rename their guns and delete cosmetic features, selling state-compliant models. As such, you can still very much buy modified AR-15-ish rifles in California legally over the counter. Sure, they have bullet buttons and look funny, but at their heart they are still ARs.
A state-compliant AR. Even these abominations are banned in Massachusetts, at least for now.
However, Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura Healey last week flipped the script and decided to re-interpret the state’s 1998 ban to include an interchangeability test on the gun’s action, as ruling whether it is banned under state law. For instance, if Mass-compliant 5.56mm semi-auto rifle accepts the same bolt carrier group and magazine of the banned AR-15, it is banned as well.
So now components, such as the bolt carrier group and charging handle, define what make up an “assault rifle” under Healy’s interpretation of Mass law….not the gun itself.
Gun grabbing genius this is. Because of the extremely broad strokes used to issue her office’s new guidance, most semi-auto centerfire rifles with the exception of a few (Ruger Mini-14, Remington 7400, Winchester 1910, etc), can be outlawed.
