After days of preparation and staging across the Hawaiian archipelago, U.S. Army forces and their multinational partners began training against opposing forces during a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center Rotation, Nov. 4. This phase of the exercise tests the 25th Infantry Division’...
Surely a highlight of a long, frenetic, and eclectic career in an out of uniform was the work I did on HBO’s “Band of Brothers.” That epic miniseries is passing a milestone 25th Anniversary this year, causing me to review how we managed to capture lightning in a bottle and turn it into the ...
There is a comfortable lie sold by war movies and video games that a tank survives incoming fire simply by being an absurdly thick wall of solid steel. You take a hit, the hull rings like a church bell, sparks fly into the dirt, and the crew rolls forward without spilling their coffee. Anyone who...
Northrop Grumman and Barrett Firearms have entered a teaming agreement to produce the weapon portion of the Precision Grenadier System, a shoulder-fired 25mm grenade launcher. Northrop Grumman is advancing the PGS and its accompanying ammunition development to address domestic and int...
Rheinmetall has once again received a major order in the field of 8×8 combat vehicles. The European defence organisation OCCAR (Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en Matière d’Armement) has commissioned Artec GmbH to deliver further Schakal (German for “jackal”) wheeled infantry f...
John looked like a character on Hee Haw, if a character on Hee Haw was not terribly silly. He carried himself like a grandfather. He was thin and always wore the same basic uniform — a pressed collared shirt buttoned at the neck and wrists, spotlessly clean bib overalls, and a ball cap. He had ...
The Russo-Japanese War was one of the first major conflicts in which two modern industrial powers employed machine guns extensively against one another. Russian forces primarily used the Maxim machine gun, while the Japanese increasingly used the Hotchkiss machine gun. Both armies initially had r...
The U.S. Small Caliber High Velocity concept started in 1950 with a study, then evolved into testing and evaluation. By the late 1950s, they discussed a .22 caliber rifle with respectable accuracy at 300 yards. The Army Infantry Board brought Armalite’s Eugene Stoner, designer of the AR-10,...
The Soviet RPD (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova) was a pioneering light machine gun that played a short but vital role in early Soviet weapon development and in adopting new intermediate-caliber weapon systems; it was adopted in 1949 alongside the AK and SKS, which significantly influenced the Cold ...