A number of apparently new missiles, with range capabilities of 300 to 2,000 kilometers were (apparently) successfully test fired.
I’ve got a good feeling about those nuclear agreements!
One thing you don’t want your high-tech safe to do is pop open if someone jams a stick into it.
Anybody else? Decades in the slammer.
Yee was a gun-grabbing State Senator from California who was put on the “Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll” by the Brady Campaign for, in part, co-authoring the nations first bill to require “micro-stamping,” where a gun would stamp an identified into each cartridge it fired. He tried to ban conversion kits. He was quoted as saying “It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion.” He pushed bills to ban the sale of violent (read: fun) video games.
Yee was also a gun-runner, nabbed trying to buy rocket launchers from Filipino Islamic terrorists to resell to someone who turned out to be the FBI. He has been sentenced to a whole five years.
Guess what his party affiliation he is. Go on, guess.
A shot from 1,200 meters knocked the noggin off a scumbag while in the process of scumbaggery. What’s not to like?
The shooter seems to have used a DAN 338, an Israeli (ha!) bolt action rifle chambering .338 Lapua. Sadly, the story does not explain what happened next. One hopes that a fuller description would include phrases like “subsequent shots killed all the ISIS jackholes” and “the prisoners were rescued.”
The US has a bad problem with institutional stupidity… ignoring history and science and whatnot. But compared to some countries, we’re the friggen’ Jedi Archives. Take, for example, Monino.
The US has – among others – the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton; Russia has the Monino Central Air Force Museum, where they’ve got all their neato aircraft developed by the USSR and Russia over the decades. Well, they’ve got it at the moment, but apparently not for long. Two Russian-language articles, because there doesn’t yet seem to be anything out there in English on this (I used Chrome to auto translate):
and
The auto-translate is a bit iffy, but it seems that the museum is closing and the exhibits will relocate to Kubinka, which is some distance from Monino (according to Google maps, about 135 kilometers). At first this doesn’t seem *too* bad, but apparently they want to do it in a hurry (by *July* of THIS YEAR). As a result of that, a lot of exhibits will be simply tossed, and some larger aircraft will be chopped up for easy transport, and presumably welded back together at the new place. You know, kinda like slicing up the Mona Lisa and sticking it back together with Gorilla Glue.
The aircraft at Monimo will largely never fly again, due to simply not being maintained. So the only way to transport hem would be to chopper the smaller aircraft, and take the larger ones via truck. But cargo planes, strategic bombers and jetliners tend to not fit very well on surface streets. Thus the plan to disassemble the planes. But a lot of aircraft simply weren’t designed to be unbolted to the point where they’d fit on roads; instead, a lot of major components will *need* to be cut apart.
The photo below is marked to show the aircraft that are expected to be sliced up for transport:
Oh, *hell* no.
Come on, people. This is Russia. They’re used to thinking and building big. So how about this: build yourselves some *big* balloons. Big enough to lift these aircraft. Tether the balloons to massively laden trucks, and then, on days where the weather permits, simply drive them to the new place, suspended under the balloons. This might require severing power lines, but that’d be a temporary disruption and easily planned for and easily restored. So long as the truck will fit under any overpasses, the tethers can be disconnected on one side of the overpass and reconnected on the other. Use multiple trucks and a tether with multiple connections on the ground end, and do it a truck at a time. Might be slow… but it’d be a hell of a show.
A video describing the Mars Automatic Pistol, an early, failed attempt at marketing a semi-automatic pistol. Like many early automatics, this gun was ridiculously over-complicated; dirt, dust, water, mud, blood and sunlight all would have no doubt caused it to seize up in the field. It is noteworthy in having been just about the most powerful semi-auto handgun for many decades, firing the proprietary .45 Mars Long round.
It took quite a while for firearms designers to really figure out practical, powerful semi-auto pistols. John Browning nailed it with the M1911 which, more than a century later, is still the basis for most modern automatics. The parts count reduction alone…
Gentlemen, behold! The absolutely dumbest thing you’ll read all day. And unless you also read Donald Trumps dream journal, very likely the dumbest thing you’ll read all week:
The sheer amount of dishonest propaganda contained in this screed simply boggles the mind. For instance:
States that allow guns on campus. Since guns are carried in a concealed fashion, it will never be clear who is packing one, so these are the most dangerous states: Colorado, Idaho, and Utah.
The author is attempting to claim that university campii in Colorado, Idaho and Utah are particularly dangerous places because they allow concealed carry on campus. Guess how many students have been shot by a concealed carry license holder on Utah or Idaho since 1990. Go on, GUESS.
Here’s a hint for anyone considering visiting the US, as a student, tourist, on business travel or whatever: if you don’t want to get shot, follow this one simple rule: don’t engage in criminal behavior. That’s the number on thing that gets people shot: their own criminality. Yes, there are some places to avoid. Seedy areas. Run down areas. Chicago. Detroit. Anyplace with a long record of Democratic party dominance. But these are unlikely to be the places you want to go anyway.
Boggle:
And if you don’t have the talent, try the technology:
In digging through my files, I came across a few photos showing John Glenn being presented with a gift sometime after his Mercury flight. Somehow I suspect that today the chances of an astronaut being presented a firearm as a recognition gift seems slim, especially as the presenters seem to be NASA itself. The placard in the box and engraved on the rifle state that it’s from the “PROJECT ENGINEERING OFFICE.”
A nice video describing the Gyrojet pistol. For those who somehow don’t know, the Gyrojet was a neat idea that just didn’t work out: a rocket pistol. The pistols (and associated carbine) were lightweight structures since they were not subjected to the usual stresses associated with firearms… rather than one high pressure explosion, the Gyrojet rounds were propelled by an internal rocket motor that burned for 0.1 seconds or so. While that was great for the firearm, it sucked for the bullet itself: muzzle velocity for the pistol version was about ten feet per second. Over the next fifty or so feet the projectile continued to accelerate to something like 1200 feet per second, creating a nicely lethal round. But the initial slow velocity meant that wind would easily blow the thing around… accuracy was a bit of a joke.
I’ve often wondered about modernizing the Gyrojet. Apart from the lame fixed internal magazine the firearm itself is fine, but the projectiles could do with an update. A two-stage motor would seem the way to go… a very fast burning first stage so that the muzzle velocity is stepped up to something meaningful, several hundred feet per second. Additional ballistics work to assure something resembling accuracy. Advanced versions with laser seekers and thrust vectoring.
Even the best modern Gyrojet will almost certainly be an inferior weapon compared to a proper automatic. But it’d make a dandy weapon for the Space Marines… the minimal recoil and low system mass would be useful for guys in space suits. Plus, it’d just be durned cool. And let’s face it, that’s reason enough.