I’m sorry to have to tell you all that my brother Kevin O’Brien, host of this blog, passed away peacefully this morning at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Let me start with some housekeeping. First, the email address hognosecommuni[email protected] remains active and you may get more and better updates there. I say this because …
Hi, this is Brendan, Hognose’s brother. I wanted to let you know that Hognose is dealing with a serious medical situation and has had to step away from the blog. He cannot answer email or texts or take calls at this time. I am not planning to post or moderate comments during this time and …
The Avtomat Kalashnikova obrazets 1974g and its successors have an enviable reputation for reliability, especially under adverse conditions. There are a number of reasons for this, and we’ll go into them in some depth here. First, though, let’s say what is not a cause: It’s not because of blind luck. It’s not because the weapon is orders of magnitude …
(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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The attached document is the actual judge’s verdict in the Manning case. The Army has said previously that: Manning was charged with aiding the enemy in violation of Article 104 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. He was also charged with 16 specifications under Article 134 of the UCMJ: wrongfully causing intelligence to be …
Perhaps “meeting” isn’t exactly the word, because she didn’t see us coming, and we’re only here at all because we saw her first. She was pretty, blonde, liberal, preoccupied, and in a hurry. The first two characteristics were evident at a glance (we did not explore the blonde-ness for authenticity. Odds are, not; but there’s …
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). …
