ARs for everyone

 awesomeness, news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 242019
 

I have no idea of how legit this is. The claim is that what we have here is a complete set of specs (both old-school machinists drawings as well as 3D models) for an AR-15 including heat treating. So if you have CAD-CAM capability, or *really* advanced metal 3D printing capability… well, here ya go. Caveat emptor.

I’m in favor of the idea of personal weapons technology being readily available to the public. One thing I do worry about: if the files are flawed in some way,either accidentally or because they’ve been hacked or, perhaps worse, they were intentionally made flawed. Rest assured that anti-gun groups, from whacko activists to government agencies, would love to flood the internet with designs for guns that look good but blow up in your face. It’s a common enough tactic in war: leave some ammo where the enemy will find it.Grenades that explode the moment you pull the pin, bullets that lock up the gun, ammo that simply detonates when someone touches the box. Makes the enemy wary of picking up anything they might happen to find.

 

 Posted by at 4:31 am

Orbital railgun

 history, nukes, projects, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 232019
 

An illustration from 1984 showing the main features of an orbital railgun for the Strategic Defense Initiative program. While the design looks reasonable enough, almost certainly this is either missing a whole lot of important details or has changed them into unrecognizability. Scale is impossible to determine, but a practical space-based railgun capable of generating the projectile velocities needed (typically 10 km/sec) would have been an impressive structure indeed.

 

 Posted by at 2:39 am

“Big Stick” art

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, nukes, projects, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 112019
 

The San Diego Air and Space Museums Flickr account recently added this illustration, showing a Convair “Big Stick” being launched off the back of mobile transporter. “Big Stick” was a Convair concept for a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile of nearly unlimited range, a less-known competing design against Voughts Pluto vehicle.

A higher rez (though, sadly, not a whole lot higher) version is available HERE.

If you are interested in Big Stick and Project Pluto, I recommend Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1, which covers both in detail.

 

 Posted by at 7:43 pm

Who needs a bump stock?

 awesomeness, Hmm..., weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 082019
 

Humans can be ingenious. Take this, for example: a simple piece of twisted coat hangar, and all of a sudden your dullsville AR-15 becomes more interesting, without making any actual mods to the receiver.

It’s this level of mechanical cleverness that will allow the Green New Deal to easily an inexpensively convert every car in Amercan from internal combustion to electrical, with the same or greater range and speed, surely.

 Posted by at 9:01 pm

Non-Semi-Automatic carbine

 Hmm..., politics, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 032019
 

This seems like a lot of work just to make a pistol-caliber carbine that isn’t actually semi-auto. It is more of a double action, like a revolver; the action of pulling the trigger moves all the bits to cycle a new round. This would seem to make each trigger pull substantially more tiresome than for a conventional semi-auto carbine… more force needed, longer draw. The only obvious advantage would be that, being non-semi-auto, it just might play hell with various nutty local laws that foolishly ban semi-autos.

How the Providence Non Semi-Automatic Pistol Works, Shot Show 2019

One of the commenters over yonder says that this won’t be able to get around Californias laws, because California has written into law specifically what pistols are legal, not just which ones are illegal. My knowledge of California gun law is a little fuzzy, as I long ago put that blighted state in my rear view mirror.

 

 Posted by at 7:14 pm

Hypervelocity Missile

 art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 032019
 

The Vought Hypervelocity Missile program began in the 1980’s as an effort to create a relatively low-cost anti-armor missile. Instead of a massive warhead, the HVM would use kinetic energy to simply punch a hole through the armor of Soviet tanks. it would do this by accelerating to in excess of Mach 4. The HVM program continued on in several modified forms into the 21st century, but eventually did not result in production.

A recent pile of stuff purchased on eBay included two Vought prints of the HVM, one showing either a test round or a mockup, the other an artists concept showing an armored vehicle with a large turret for the storage and launch of HVMs, in the process of ruining the day of the crews of two Soviet T-72s. Sadly the prints have seen better days, having gotten a bit crumpled over the years, but they’re better than nothing. I have scanned them in full color/300 DPI and uploaded the scans to the 2019-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available to all APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents subscribers at the $4 level or higher.

 Posted by at 3:40 pm

Yay, missile defense

 news, nukes, politics, rockets, spacecraft, THIS is why Trump won, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 182019
 

Yesterday the Trump Administration announced that the US is going to get back into the “Star Wars” business. Not to the scale of the original Strategic Defense Initiative days, when the goal was to put a dent in a Soviet full strike, but to knock down a strike from the likes of Iran or North Korea or Canada.

“Star Wars” Lite? We Explain Trump’s Missile Defense Strategy

A direct link to the Missile Defense Review is HERE. Ideas include F-35’s and drones armed with lasers and/or interceptor missiles to do boost phase interception… which would, of course, require that the aircraft be on-station near the launch site as it happens. This might work for the likes of North Korea or Iran, but wouldn’t be valuable against Russian or Chinese land or sea based ICBMs. For those, they also want to use space based interceptors. Yay! If the US actually goes ahead and fields a flock of Brilliant Pebbles, as was planned late in the SDI days, it will require a *lot* of low-cost launch capability.

It ain’t gonna happen, of course.

 Posted by at 2:23 am

Some are more equal than others

 dumbassery, Forward!, I'm from the government, Meh., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112019
 

Why Ald. Ed Burke May Have Been Allowed To Have 23 Guns In Government Building

Y’all will doubtless be shocked to hear that a Chicago politician is corrupt.

He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November.

It’s still not known if the guns that were found in November were discovered at Burke’s ward office or at City Hall, but it’s hard to miss the irony of a staunch gun control advocate having to turn over 23 guns as a condition of his bond.

Things could be sped up by the simple expedient of simply arresting anyone suspected of being a Chicago politician.

 Posted by at 7:05 pm

And so it begins… again

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, religion, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112019
 

Diane Feinstein Proposes New Gun Ban

The bill bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name, but it does say existing owners may keep existing weapons.

Any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine, has one or more military characteristics (including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock) will be banned. Owners may keep existing weapons.

Magazines and “ammunition feeding devices” that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload will be banned.

Unlikely to pass the Senate or White House, but eternal vigilance against this sort of evil should nevertheless be forever maintained.

Full text and list of everything Feinstein wants to ban (for now) follows…

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:54 am

“Compromise” = “Do what I want”

 AARRRGH, art, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, politics, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 032019
 

Where the Debunkers take on what is surely one of the most intellectually bereft civilian enfeeblement propaganda videos that the far left has ever excreted.

I looked up the original anti-rights video that they are debunking. The comments section – which surprising hasn’t been closed – appears to be almost all negative. The video right now has a total of 72 likes… and six THOUSAND dislikes. More importantly, it’s been up since March and has only been viewed 28,000 times; the Debunkers video went up today and currently has 13,000 views.

As with many areas of life, the numbers certainly indicate that the people behind the original video are the fringe extremists, out of touch with the public at large. But that particular fringe is *very* good at screaming and yelling and making the media think that the issues they’re throwing tantrums over are real issues.

 

 Posted by at 6:49 pm
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