Fun: semi-automatic short barreled 12-guage shotgun with fore and aft pistol grips and a twenty-round drum magazine.
Dangerous: getting it away from a tempermental cat using it as a pillow.
Nov 242008
Nov 122008
You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this….
Secret Rocket Balls Target WMD Bunkers
The Pentagon has a new secret weapon to neutralize sites containing chemical or biological weapons: rocket balls. These are hollow spheres, made of rubberized rocket fuel; when ignited, they propel themselves around at random at high speed, bouncing off the walls and breaking through doors, turning the entire building into an inferno. The makers call them “kinetic fireball incendiaries.” The Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about them, but published documents show that the fireballs have undergone tests on underground bunkers.
…
Each fireball is a hollow spherical shell with a hole in it; when the inside is ignited, the hole acts as a rocket nozzle. The kinetic fireballs eject an extremely high-temperature exhaust which will heat up the surrounding volume to over 1,000 F within seconds. Their random ricocheting around ensures that they will fill any space they occupy, and they are capable of diffusing throughout a multiroom structure.
Nov 082008
According to The One’s website:
Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
So, let’s see:
1: Tiahrt Amendment. According to Wikipedia:
Since its passage in 2003 as an amendment to an appropriations bill, the Amendment has forbidden the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives *(ATF) from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation, and any data so released is deemed inadmissible in a civil lawsuit.[6] The mayors contend that the Amendment restricts access of cities and law enforcement to gun trace data, hindering municipal police departments’ ability to track down sellers of illegal guns.[7] Mayor Bloomberg has called the Amendment “an insult to the thousands of police officers that face the threat of illegal guns.”[8]
In July, 2007, after the House Appropriations Committee rebuffed attempts to repeal the amendment, the Senate Appropriations Committee went further, approving a bill that, according to the New York Times, “threatens law enforcement officials with prison time for using gun tracing data beyond a specific investigation, say, for identifying and targeting trafficking patterns.”
Obama wants to make it easier for the government to track law-abiding citizens and their legal activities.
2: commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment. Translation: stomping on the Second Amendment and gun owners, while at the same time telling them to enjoy and appreciate it. See “rapist” for further examples.
3: closing the gun show loophole. The “gun show loophole” is every bit as real as the “used book store loophole.”
4: making guns in this country childproof. Ho-lee shit. “Childproof?” This means they want to do nationally what the local D.C government unConstitutionally did locally… make guns incapable of being used for self-defense.
5: making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. Oddly, the Assault Weapons Ban did not ban assault weapons. Weapons capable of being fired fully automatically – a requirement to be an “assault weapon” – have been illegal since the 1930’s. The AWB was just a way to annoy the hell out of gun owners.
<>I say we begin impeachment proceedings *now.* Obama/Biden are announcing their intent to crap all over the Constitution. That would be “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Oct 312008
Sometimes you find just what you wanted just a little bit late. This happened with the most recent issue of Aerospace Projects Review; it had a big article on the Project Pluto nuclear ramjet cruise missile, with some discussion of early designs including a few lines on a reported North American study from 1947 describing nuclear rockets and ramjets. When the article was published, the North American study was unavailable, and was thought to be likely to be a vague mathematical treatise. However, not long after publishing I came across and photocopied/scanned a copy of that very report. Far from being vague, it was fairly massive and contains detailed engineering schematics of a Mach 3 nuclear ramjet cruise missile, its liquid rocket booster, and what is essentially an enlarged V-2 with a nuclear rocket, capable not only of serving as an ICBM, but also capable of sending a payload onto an interplanetary trajectory.
The next issue of APR will have an update article describing these.
Oct 242008
Visited the Rock Island Arsenal Museum today. Used to live near there (parents still do), but I haven’t been to this museum in nigh on a quarter century (egad, I’m old).
The museum has a display case that runs floor-to-ceiling along two walls, and is filled with firearms from flintlocks to, seemingly, the 1970’s or so (not a whole lot in evidence of truly modern firearms). Included are the standards – M-16s, M-1 Garands, AK-47s and so on – as well as some rare and sometimes bizarre one-offs, including several versions of the “SPIW,” numerous versions of the M-79 grenade launcher (including versions with magazines or clips with multiple rounds), and a range of one-offs and experimentals.
Given sufficient ammunition, the Rock Island Arsenal Museum would be the perfect place to make a stand against the forthcoming zombie apocolypse. However, in case the neighbors Just Won’t Shut The Hell Up, Rock Island Arsenal has another interesting toy: the T131 280mm “atomic cannon.” When you absolutely, positively have to blow the crap out of someone at considerable distance, few things are a more entertaining way to do it than this gun.
Oct 222008
NOTE: If you are interested in the X-14 and want to know more about it, check out issue Volume 2 Number 2 of Aerospace Projects Review. Many more of these photos are published there!
While travelling across western Indiana on I-74, I saw a few signs for the “Ropkey Armor Museum.” I figured it might be a nice little diversion, so I took the exit. As I kept driving along the farm roads, I started to lose heart… it began to seem more and more like it’d be a dinky little farm with a delapidated tank or two. When I finally got to the museum, it was in fact a privately owned farm. There were a few pieces of artillery scattered around a sizable prefab steel building. You have to drive past the house to get to the museum proper. Once inside the museum, though, all thoughts of this being a “farm with a delapidated tank or two” faded. I was flabbergasted… the collection is several dozen armored vehicles from all eras in a remarkable state of preservation.
While the collection of armored vehicle was quite impressive, there was one item on display in the back that had my jaw on the floor: the Bell X-14B VTOL research vehicle. A grand total of one X-14 was built, and it ended it’s career with a hard landing. I figured that it was either at some NASA facility, or turned into cat food cans. As it turns out, the second option was close to the truth… around ten years ago a museum staffer saw the X-14 on a list of government items to be sold as scrap metal, and they bought it sight unseen.
The Bell X-14 has clearly seen better days; but not only has it been saved from shredding and melting down into beer cans, it has been moved out of the weather. I was told that there has been interest expressed in transferring it to another museum, where it would be fully restored. All in all, I have to say a big “Thank You” to the Ropkey Armor Museum for saving an important piece of aerospace history.
In you find yourself in the area, drop in. It’s an impressive collection, and well worth the trip.
Plus, they have the one thing that every museum of real quality has to have…
Travelling across country is expensive. You can support the cause by Buying My Stuff. Or just plain Give Me Money.
Oct 102008
The smallest nuclear weapon the US ever deployed was the “Davy Crockett,” using the w54 warhead (yield about 20 *tons*) launched by a recoilless gun. Range was only a mile and a bit, but with the low yield blast effects would be negligible. But you sure as hell wouldn’t want to be downwind of it.
The US Army Ordnance Museum in Aberdeen, Maryland, has one on display. Not having my Geiger counter on me at the time, I can only assume it’s either a mockup or a disarmed unit.
Aug 312008
Photos of a diagram from 1967, showing a proposed variant of the C-119, a “gunboat.” While heavily armed C-119 gunships were built and flew missions in Viet Nam, this gunboat differed in being rather more heavily armed than normal. Three 20mm M61A1 Gatling guns and three 7.62mm MXU-470/A Gatling guns projected from the port side, and one of each projected from the starboard. The reason for that is murky, to say the least… beacuse if the plane was banked so that the port guns could lay fire on a ground target, the starboard guns would be pointed up into the sky.
The plane was also heavily armored and equipped with flares.
Click the title below for larger-format version.
Aug 172008
Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar
This is a US Navy 20mm Phalanx anti-missile gun system mounted on a trailer, and used to bring down rockets and mortar shells in Iraq. It uses special ammo that blows itself up in flight so that the shells don’t come raining down on civilian areas.
Videos of the system in use are available here, here and here. Note that the rounds in flight all sparkle out at the end and disappear… that’s the self-destruct.
One thing that occurs… the trailer system looks pretty large. Yet decades ago the same gun was mounted to APCs; I’m left to wonder why the current system requires such an extensive infrastructure. Shrug.
Aug 092008
Was previously unaware of the existence of this place, but it’s a spiffy privately-owned museum of military vehicles. Mostly trucks and the like, but a fair number of tanks, helicopters, a DUKW (being refurbed) and armament. Located just off the highway in Lexington, Nebraska, it’s easy to get to and worth visiting.
M113 “Hellfire” launcher prototype 
High speed tractor (WWII) 
M110 self-propelled Howitzer 
Two of the numerous Hueys 
M29 “Weasel” 
General Dynamics Hummer prototype 
Korean-era Jeep with armor plating 
There are several half-tracks 
German WWII “Kubelwagen” 
