An archive of Kevin O’Brien’s posts from the original WeaponsMan website he created in 2011.
Please excuse any typos and issues resulting from scraping the old site. Posts might be out of chronological order.
The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon is widely distributed in the US Army and Marine Corps (even after the Marines replaced many SAWs with M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles). But how did we get to that point, and what other weapons were considered along the way? This series will look at each of the four contenders in …
In Monday’s installment, we gave you the overview of the SAW program as of 1979, and we looked in depth at the least radical design, the magazine-fed M16 variant, XM-106 automatic rifle, a product of the Army’s own Ballistic Research Laboratory. Today’s installment will fill you in with a little more on the competition and …
We were going to move on to the XM262 before circling back to the XM249 (the ultimate winner), but despite having devoted two posts to the Rodman Labs ingenious XM235/XM248 LMB, we’re still getting questions about it. Many of them relate to the feed mechanism, and why it’s better. Well, along with the patent for …
(Note: there’s an update and acknowledgements at the end, which you might not have seen if you got this by RSS or read it between 0600 and 0830R 9 Nov 13). Afghans have a saying about the cruel and charismatic guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatayar: “If a man is ever once Gulbuddin’s man, he’s Gulbuddin’s man …
The last couple of days have been spent, in part (not a large enough part, damn responsibilities!) in the company of some men who are not as young, and not as hard, as they once were. In those days, they never thought they would be encumbered with ex-wives, and mortgages, and crabgrass. Indeed, some of …
“Hero” is a little-used word these days, and when it is used it is thrown about casually, applied to the pretty faces of prolefeed entertainers or the physical talent of some guys who throw a ball. That is, when it’s not used ironically, by hipsters who take joy in being far beyond such antiquated subjects …
“This is my hammer…there are many like it, but this one is mine — wait, does this pink tie make me look gay?” Although, to be sure, the hammer was only used to make the kid unrecognizable after his tormentors — his mother and stepfather — killed him with other means. “Ah,” you think, “this …
Well, it’s official. Bradley Manning’s court-martial is over, and all that remains is his sentencing, which should take place tomorrow. (Justice is seldom denied by delay in the military justice system. Manning will be serving his sentence by Wednesday afternoon, and will probably be in the US Disciplinary Barracks in Leavenworth, Kansas by the weekend). …
What a week… …working on long form and on rapidly-developing stuff means, never getting finished. Jeez. We don’t think we’ve had one gun technology post go up all week. Our apologies to our faithful readers, and “stuff is coming.” Today, we may finally get the post on Bull’s space gun up, as well as a …
There’s been a lot of news lately about the furloughs of DOD employees; we were curious about what it really meant. A friend obliged with a copy of his furlough notice, received in May, which took effect in July. We have redacted both his information, and other personally identifying information of the Pentagon personnel bureaucrats …
