A Polish tear-gas “grenade” launcher that uses an AK action and AK blanks to propel the canisters. This seems like a horrible design… overly complex and *far* too heavy. Still, *kinda* cool.
May 032022
May 022022
Previous footage showed a little drone dropping something akin to a grenade, doing damage to soft targets. Here’s one apparently kerploding a *tank.* WTF??? It drops *two* bombs, so it’s clearly not one of those dinky camera drones, but something bigger, but it still seems like a whole lot of bang for the buck.
May 012022
Very rare experimental 1913 Patton Saber for the US Cavalry
This saber was made by the Rock Island Arsenal with an additional feature not normally found on swords: a 1911 pistol. I can see this going kinda wrong, but I still kinda want to give it a shot. Clearly it was not adopted for use; it’s practicality is to be seriously doubted. I wonder if the people behind it made it hoping it would be a practical weapon, or if they did it purely as a conversation piece… or as a joke.
Apr 302022
This sort of thing is not new… I recall seeing drones like this being used like this in the middle east a few years ago. I imagine China is thrilled that they are unwittingly serving as arms dealers for the forces opposing Russia… and giving ideas to those who may soon have to face Chinese forces.
Also notice: that looked like it was, before the invasion, a pretty nice house. Russia will have one *hell* of a reconstruction bill when all this is done.
Come Back Alive fund showed work of Mavic 3 drone which they upgraded. (It costs only $3000).
The fund not only bought 17,000 body armor, 3,500 optics, 77 vehicles and more since 24 Feb but also created many IT and technical upgrades for🇺🇦armyhttps://t.co/o77FjneGq2 pic.twitter.com/u0RZqqTv9b
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) April 29, 2022
I suspect the bomb that was dropped was a fairly simple explosive, basically a hand grenade or small mortar round.For anti-infantry purposes, this works: the video shows one guy likely killed, another guy crawling away and then stopping, either injured or dead. What you *want* is a weapon that injures as many as possible, but not necessarily kills. The dead are dead… but the injured are costly liabilities, requiring resources and personnel to take care of.
But imagine if it was a shaped-charge warhead, perhaps taken from an RPG… and smuggled into a port city such as Sevastopol where cruise missiles are being loaded onto submarines. Poke a few holes in a surfaced and docked sub and boy, you might really make a mess. If you can penetrate the torpedo compartment (honestly, I suspect it would take a fairly massive warhead to do that, but who knows) or zap a cruise missile… scratch one sub, and block one dock.
🇷🇺submarine stroke Ukraine with cruise missiles. Reportedly this is the 1st time🇷🇺military used submarine strikes agst🇺🇦–Reuters
A satellite image collected this morning revealed the loading of probable Kalibr missiles on Kilo-class submarine in Black Sea Sevastopol port @Maxar pic.twitter.com/7n1CQR5GxJ
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) April 29, 2022
An armor-penetrating bomb would be useful for taking out tanks like this one that spent a good long while destroying a building that apparently had a number of civilians sheltering in the basement:
🇷🇺tank in Mariupol destroys residential building where ~20 civilians hid in basement; then, occupiers herd survivors in unknown direction
"A visual explanation why Mariupol civilians R afraid to leave basements, don't believe 🇷🇺 on safe evacuation from the city" – Azov Regiment https://t.co/2wyLwhdwcv
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) April 30, 2022
Apr 292022
The uncomfortably-named “Padraig Belton” who works for the BBC came to the US and forgot that the US doesn’t have British power outlets, so he went to WalMart. He reported on twitter his findings.
The whole thread is just filled with comedy gold.
— 🇺🇸 Aaron Harper 🇺🇸 (@AaronHarper78) April 26, 2022
There are times when I really, REALLY miss Utah. Where the local grocery store sold ammo and magazines, but if I wanted pistols, shotguns and AR-15s I’d have to walk all the way next door to the Ace Hardware.
Apr 262022
Here’s a heck of a thing to have just lying about, a late-WWII era M1 carbine fitted with an infra-red lamp and scope. Not a “sniper” scope, but an early night vision system. Cumbersome as all get-out, but apparently it worked, much to the brief surprise of a number of Japanese soldiers who tried to infiltrate Army and Marine positions under the cover of darkness.
Apr 252022
… and at the nearest gun store. Something like this, an exceedingly rare complete Borchardt “kit,” would make a fantastic subject for replicas. I have high hopes that 3D metal printing/CNC milling will make replication of odd designs like this possible. It would in no way whatsoever be a practical sidearm; the very first commercial semiautomatic pistol from 1893 can hardly be expected to be capable of comparing with a modern design like the M1911. Still… it’s cool as hell.
Apr 232022
Cameraman’s kinda of a dipᛋᚺᛁᛏ, though.
Apr 222022
A few days back I posted some videos of a guy restoring some old rusted guns. The restoration of the Luger was particularly impressive. There are a a whole bunch of gun restoration videos that run the gamut of “that’s impressive” to “that’s fraudulent,” where the firearm was pretty clearly “distressed” by the restorer.
And then there’s this one, which starts off pretty well, but then, right as I’m wondering “ok, what process is he going to use to ‘blue’ the metal parts,” it take a “ya gotta be kidding me” choice.
I guess if you just want to make it a display piece… I guess? But even so, doing it *right* seems to me to always be the correct choice.
Apr 212022
Well, not *that* Moscow, it’s at the bottom of the sea. And not quite *that* Moscow, but the city of Tver, a few miles to the north west. It’s *probably* not related to Ukrainian sabotage, but… who knows? It’d be a dandy target and a propaganda coup if this fire was started by some Ukrainian Doolitle raider.
Fire At Russian Defense Ministry’s Research Institute In Tver Kills Six People
Reportedly this facility develops missiles of kinds used in Ukraine, and space weapons. The claim is that the fire is due to old wiring, and looking at that ancient building, I can believe it. But that’s not a whole lot better of an explanation for losing a “space weapon” laboratory than enemy action, any more than “it just caught fire” was a better, more comforting explanation than “It caught a couple anti-ship missiles.” If their work was related to weapon systems currently being expended, perhaps they had ramped-up work hours and an increased demand on the power and other systems.