Some people think it was a dud.

While others think it was a fake.

But, at least the Russians are impressed. Russian news release.

Useful summary from Q&O.

Aram Bakshi says it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. And Tim F., John Cole’s pocket-edition Grima Wormtongue, agrees.

Ben Johnson blames Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

I think you can go right back to Harry Truman on this one. He should have allowed MacArthur to win the war. Truman provided the still commonly-implemented model of wasting American money and lives in pursuit of lesser objectives than victory. In the case of Vietnam, avoiding aiming at victory ultimately produced defeat. The original version of the policy was so good a choice, that, technically speaking, we’re still engaged in Harry Truman’s unfinished war.

Veniamin Yefremov

Russian News and Information Military Commentator Viktor Litovkin pays tribute to the technical skill and strategic cunning of Veniamin Yefremov, general designer of the Almaz-Antei Air Defense Concern, who passed away September 16th.

Working at R&D Institute No. 20 (NII-20), renamed the Electrical Mechanical R&D Institute (NIEMI) and (after 1983) known as NPO Antei, Efremov was the General Designer of a number of highly effective mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems for the Sovet Army’s air-defense forces.

The list of such weapons includes the world-famous Osa-AKM SAM system with an effective horizontal range between 1,500 meters and 10 km. This system, which can hit targets at an altitude of 6 km, was supplied to 25 countries.

Yefremov also developed the self-contained army-level Tor-M1 SAM system with a horizontal range of 1-12 km and a vertical range from 100 meters to six km. Apart from Russia, the Tor-M1 system is used by China and Greece.

One should also mention the Krug medium-range SAM system and its modified versions with a horizontal range of four to 50 km and a vertical range from 150 meters to 25 km, the S-300V long-range SAM system (horizontal range: 7-100 km; vertical range: from 250 meters to 25 km).

Yefremov’s greatest achievement is the Antei-2500 theater-level anti-ballistic missile (ABM), which (as Litovkin takes great satisfaction in noting) far surpasses the capabilities of the US Raytheon-manufactured Patriot Missile System.

His latest invention was the little-known Antei-2500 theater-level anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, which can destroy aircraft and ballistic missiles at a range of up to 200 km and 40 km, respectively. The system’s vertical range is 250 meters to 30 km.

Most importantly, the Antei-2500’s range considerably exceeds that of its predecessor. This is the world’s only defensive SAM system which can destroy aircraft and helicopters, including AWACS surveillance planes, Stealth-type fighters and bombers, as well as non-strategic medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles. The Antei-2500 has a horizontal and vertical range of 200 km and 30 km, while the corresponding ranges for the S-300V were only 100 and 25 km, respectively.

In addition, the Antei-2500 can destroy ballistic missiles with a range of up to 2,500 km flying at 4,500 meters per second, and this explains the system’s official name.

These missiles are China’s Dunfen-3, Dunfen-15 and Dunfen-25, the United States’ ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) and Pershing, France’s Ades, the Iraqi Scud-S and Israel’s Jericho-2. Incidentally, obsolete Scuds and Pershings are still in service all over the world.

The S-300V could destroy ballistic missiles with a range of 1,000 km and a speed of 3,000 meters per second, whereas the Patriot PAC-2 missile, which was widely advertised during both Gulf Wars, has a maximum horizontal and vertical range of just 40 km and 24 km. The defense company Raytheon estimates that the PAC-3 missile’s horizontal and vertical ranges were increased to 150 km and 25 km after an upgrade last year. The PAC-3 can destroy missiles with a 1,000-km range.

But it is unclear whether U.S. designers will manage to cope with the Patriot system’s main drawback. Patriot missiles usually hit enemy-missile bodies and sustainer engines, rather than their warheads, which usually reach preset targets. Ninety percent of the 65 Scud missiles launched by Iraq in the first Gulf War hit their targets. However, during the second Gulf War Iraqi air-defense units missed numerous U.S. missiles that were launched from the sea.

In addition, Patriot missiles are launched at a certain angle to the horizon and cannot therefore hit targets approaching from the opposite direction. Consequently, at least four Patriot launchers are needed to cover a 360-degree sector, whereas only one Antei-2500 system is needed to do the same. Its vertically launched missiles streak in the direction of the target at 60-100-meter altitudes.

Most importantly, the highly accurate Antei-2500 and S-300V warheads can hit any missile warhead with a 100% success rate. Each Antei-2500 system can simultaneously fire at 16 ballistic missiles, including even those with small Stealth-type echo areas. This makes it unique in the world.

Ironically, as Litovkin gloatingly recounts, Yefremov successfully overcame the Russian military’s bankrupty and inability to fund his development efforts in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism, with US funding (!). He managed to arrange the sale of a less-than-complete version of the S-300V system to Washington.

The S-300V system was officially removed from a factory in the presence of officials from the FSB, other export-control agencies and The S-300V system was officially removed from a factory in the presence of officials from the FSB, other export-control agencies and Rosvooruzheniye (State Company for the Export and Import of Armaments and Military Equipment) . The United States received only two batteries, including an all-round radar, a command center, two Gigant launchers and two Gladiator launchers with 23 missiles, rather than the standard 144-missile reserve, for $90 million.

True, NPO Antei received only $45 million because the Pentagon and Rosvooruzheniye were playing some mysterious game apparently involving the Russian and U.S. secret services.

Anyway, Rosvooruzheniye never sold the system’s core element, the sector-scanning radar, to Washington. But Yefremov did not care because he had received enough money to streamline the Antei-2500 system, which has now been tested and placed on combat duty.

May the earth lie lightly upon a worthy adversary.

Dr. Robert Beeman, founder of Beeman’s Precision Airguns, has produced a fascinating paper on the intriguing question of the identity of the repeating air gun, mentioned 39 times in the expedition’s journals, carried on the 1804-1806 Voyage of the Corps of Discovery by Captain Merriwether Lewis.

Colonel Thomas Rodney, en route to the Mississippi Territory where he had been appointed by Thomas Jefferson as federal judge, met Lewis at Wheeling (now in West Virginia) on September 8, 1803, and witnessed a demonstration of the air gun, which he recorded in his diary.

Visited Captain Lewess barge. He shewed us his air gun which fired 22 times at one charge. He shewed us the mode of charging her and then loaded with 12 balls which he intended to fire one at a time; but she by some means lost the whole charge of air at the first fire. He charged her again and then she fired twice. He then found the cause and in some measure prevented the airs escaping, and then she fired seven times; but when in perfect order she fires 22 times in a minute. All the balls are put at once into a short side barrel and are then droped into the chamber of the gun one at a time by moving a spring; and when the triger is pulled just so much air escapes out of the air bag which forms the britch of the gun as serves for one ball. It is a curious peice of workmanship not easily discribed and therefore I omit attempting it.

Beeman concludes that the Lewis’ air gun must have been one of the 1500 air guns produced for use by the Austrian Army upon the design of the Tyrolean clockmaker Bartolomeo Girandoni between 1787 and 1801, when the weapon was withdrawn from service.

A repeating rifle capable of firing 22 balls from a pre-loaded magazine was a revolutionary advance, but this complex technology undoubtedly required more maintenance and care in operation than the ordinary soldier operating in the field could typically supply. Perhaps, also, threats from the French adversary of denial of quarter to troops found using this unconventional weapon helped bring about its withdrawal from service.

The Beeman article.

A Curious Piece of Workmanship by Joseph Mussulman.

Lewis & Clark demonstrating the airgun to the Yankton Sioux. Warren Lee, 2005.

The Iranians are supplying insurgents in Iraq with much more deadly ordinance, some of Chinese origin, General John Abizaid told reporters today.

The Turkish Press reports:

A new armor-busting rocket-propelled grenade believed to be of Iranian origin has shown up in Iraq in what may be “a hint about things to come,” the commander of US forces in the Middle East said Tuesday.

General John Abizaid said the weapon, an RPG-29, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

“The first time we saw it was not in Iraq. We saw it in Lebanon. So to me it indicates, number one, an Iranian connection,” he told defense reporters here.

“It`s hard to say in our part of the world that we operate in as to whether or not people have given us a hint about things to come,” he said.

He said only a single RPG-29 has turned up in Iraq so far, and it was unclear how it was smuggled into the country.

But he said it was the latest in a number of new and more sophisticated weapons that appear to be moving onto the region`s battlefields from Iran.

He said longer-range Chinese rockets that looked new also have been found in Iraq.

Abizaid said he believed the Chinese rockets ca
me from Iran although they may have been taken from the arms inventories of the former Iraqi regime and cleaned up.

“It looked brand new to us,” he said.

The new weapons are in addition to more sophisticated roadside bombs with explosively shaped charges that the US military has long charged are being manufactured in Iran and brought into the country by Iran`s Revolutionary Guards-Quds Force.

Andre Pachter does not believe these are old inventory weapons:

Military experts tell China Confidential that Iran supplied the rockets and that they are in fact brand new, Chinese-made weapons.
Energy-starved China and oil-rich, Islamist Iran have deepening economic, political, and military ties. Beijing, as we have reported for months, is firmly committed to blocking meaningful sanctions against America’s arch-enemy. And Chinese arms have been instrumental in Iran’s military modernization.

Abizaid also said that a new, armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade has turned up in Iraq. The weapon, which was first used in Lebanon by Iran’s Shiite proxy, Hezbollah, in its month-long war with Israel, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

Citing links between Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq, the US commander said the RPG could be “a hint of things to come.”

DEBKAfile reports that American experts are currently in Israel looking at the Israeli EW experience during the fighting with Hezbollah.

The American EW experts are interested in four areas. 1. The Israeli EW systems’ failure to block Hizballah’s command and communications and the links between the Lebanese command and the Syria-based Iranian headquarters. 2. How Iranian technicians helped Hizballah eavesdrop on Israel’s communications networks and mobile telephones, including Israeli soldiers’ conversations from inside Lebanon. 3. How Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hizballah to hit the Israeli corvette Hanith. 4. Why Israeli EW was unable to jam the military systems at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which hosted the underground war room out of which Hassan Nasrallah and his top commanders, including Imad Mughniyeh, functioned.

Until the watershed date of July 12, 2006, when the Hizballah triggered the Lebanon War, Israel was accounted an important world power in the development of electronic warfare systems — so much so that a symbiotic relationship evolved for the research and development of many US and Israeli electronic warfare systems, in which a mix of complementary American and Israeli devices and methods were invested.

In combat against Hizballah, both were not only found wanting, but had been actively neutralized, so that none performed the functions for which they were designed. This poses both the US and Israel with a serious problem in a further round of the Lebanon war and any military clash with Iran.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Both intelligence services underestimated the tremendous effort Iran invested in state of the art electronic warfare gadgetry designed to disable American military operations in Iraq and IDF functions in Israel and Lebanon. Israel’s electronic warfare units were taken by surprise by the sophisticated protective mechanisms attached to Hizballah’s communications networks, which were discovered to be connected by optical fibers which are not susceptible to electronic jamming.

American and Israeli experts realize now that they overlooked the key feature of the naval exercise Iran staged in the Persian Gulf last April: Iran’s leap ahead in electronic warfare. They dismissed most the weapons systems as old-fashioned. But among them were the C-802 cruise missile and several electronic warfare systems, both of which turned up in the Lebanon war with deadly effect.

Some people living on the West Coast do. They may soon find themselves within range of North Korean missiles.

The SF Examiner is grateful that President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system is as operational as it is today, and it knows who resisted its development.

North Korea’s threatening spate of missile launches — including an unsuccessful try with an advanced version of its Taepodong 2 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile that is capable of hitting the United States — has sparked a cacophony of talk from leaders and foreign policy experts around the world.

As they debate and discuss various options at the United Nations and in capitals around the globe, the rudimentary U.S. missile defense system is poised to shoot down anything launched from North Korea that threatens the American homeland or the critical interests of our regional allies like Japan and Australia.

Noticeably absent are the voices of those who, since President Reagan first proposed such a system in 1984, have fought development and deployment of the missile defense system the U.S. must now depend upon in dealing with North Korea. These folks have claimed over and over that the system they derisively call “Star Wars” can’t possibly work, would be too expensive, would incite a new world arms race, etc., etc. Names that come to mind in this regard include senators like Joe Biden, D-Del., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the Clinton-Gore administration that delayed and dilly-dallied with work on missile defense for most of the ’90s.

It is important that the American people understand two aspects of the current crisis as it relates to missile defense. First, the system President Bush recently ordered advanced from its testing stage to operational status when the North Koreans began preparing the Taepodong 2 launch is extremely rudimentary because it is still being developed. The system now includes only 11 ground-based launch sites in Alaska and California capable of knocking out long-range missiles like the Taepodong 2, and four Aegis-class Navy destroyers equipped with missile defense battle management systems and Standard-3 missiles capable of hitting medium range threats.

Second, they will no doubt protest to high heaven, but “Star Wars” critics must bear the major burden of responsibility for the delays and setbacks that have prevented the missile defense system from becoming fully operational long before the present crisis with North Korea. There have been technological problems, especially in the very early stages, but those were temporary and subject to American technological prowess.

Far more serious have been the setbacks engineered by the critics — like then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s maneuvers to kill the first Bush administration’s Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (G-PALS) plan, the Clinton-Gore gutting of the Strategic Defense Initiative office in 1993 and the delaying tactics used by Senate Democrats in the first years of this decade to reduce the current program’s funding.

It is a sobering thought to wonder how much more secure the United States and its allies would be today in the face of madness like North Korea’s launches if instead of a limited defense still in development we could depend upon the robust protection first proposed many years ago.

North Korea ignored the protestations of the United States and other countries, and went ahead and tested a long-range missile intended to be capable of striking the Wester Coast of the United States.

Their long range test failed 40 seconds into its flight this time.

It strike me that it’s exceedingly foolish to wait until outlaw regimes like North Korea and Iran perfect their capabilities, and proceed to use them or distribute them to other parties.

Depkafile, presumed voice of Mossad, reports that new Iran-sponsored Shiite insurgent groups have begun operating in Iraq, and that Iran supplied the surface to air missiles used to shoot down a British helicopter at Basra and an American helicopter over Yussifiya. According to this report, Iran has supplied insurgents in Iraq with 1000 such missiles and a large number of newly developed, enhanced lethality roadside bombs.

In the past two weeks, Iran has been pumping into Iraq two types of extra-lethal weapons in very large quantities. They have already taken their toll in the shooting down of two military helicopters – one American and one British — and an estimated 19 deaths of US military personnel.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources estimate the delivery to Iraqi insurgents as consisting of around 1,000 SA-7 Strela ground-air missiles made in Iran, and a very large quantity of a newly-developed roadside bomb, loaded with compressed gas instead of ball bearings and cartridges, to magnify their blast and explosive power.

The supplies have been distributed across Iraq – Basra and Amara in the south, Baghdad and its environs, Haditha in the west, and Mosul in the north.

The new bombs, developed jointly by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Hizballah, have already gone into service with the Shiite terrorists on the Lebanese border with Israel. Israeli military sources say it is only a matter of time before the deadly roadside bombs, already used in Iraq, will also reach Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

If this Israeli-supplied information is correct, Iran has certainly committed acts of war. Of course, one expects that Israel would very much like the US to invade Iran, and Depkafile has not always been completely accurate, so….

A lot of people (this blog included) laughed at poor little Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, just because he didn’t know how to work the FN M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) machinegun, and C.J. Chivers at the New York Times thinks we were being unfair. He’s even found some experts he can quote defending Zarqawi.

(You know how it is: Whenever any enemy of the United States is under attack, you can count on the New York Times to come bustling to his defense.)

An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun — suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill — was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers…

But several veterans of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as active-duty officers, said in telephone interviews yesterday that the clips of Mr. Zarqawi’s supposed martial incompetence were unconvincing.

The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi’s hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it…

An active-duty Special Forces colonel who served in Iraq also said that what the video showed actually had little relationship to Mr. Zarqawi’s level of terrorist skill. “Looking at the video, I enjoy it; I like that he looks kind of goofy,” said the Special Forces officer, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on military matters. “But as a military guy, I shrug my shoulders and say: ‘Of course he doesn’t know how to use it. It’s our gun.’ He doesn’t look as stupid as they said he looks.”

Oh, is that so, now?

Well, even Zarqawi’s defenders in the Times admit that he looked awkward handling the M249 SAW, and was unfamiliar with its mechanism.

Experienced shooters undoubtedly also noticed that Zarqawi is holding that machinegun tucked under his arm, Hollywood gangster fashion, and is making no effort actually to use the gun’s sights.

“Many days of training” may be required to teach soldiers how to disassemble and reassemble such a weapon by feel in the dark, how to maintain it, repair it, and to inculcate intimate familiarity with its shooting characteristics and capabilities; but, on the other hand, all semi-automatic and full automatic weapons have in common the same kind of operating lever, used to pull back the bolt and chamber the first round, or to clear a misfed cartridge.

An “older variant” might have a greater tendency to jam, but there is no difference whatsoever in the way you clear the jam between that M248 SAW and the AK-47 or the M16, or even the Remington 1100 semi-auto shotgun you use for pheasant hunting or to shoot trap for that matter. You just do what Zarqawi’s jihadi helper did: you pull back the lever, ejecting the misfed round, and then release it to go forward and chamber another one. That is not a complicated procedure, and it works essentially identically on all semi- and full-auto weapons. Anyone basically familiar with guns could do it without assistance.

Zarqawi looked and behaved exactly like somebody who had never shot a gun in his life.

———————–
And Times’ Reporter Quivers even finds another expert to make yet another point defending Zarqawi’s honor, and to warn us to watch out about whom we speak disrespectfully.

But the retired and active officers said the public presentation of the tape did not address elements that were disturbing, rather than amusing: the weapon was probably captured from American soldiers, indicating a tactical victory for the insurgents. And Mr. Zarqawi looked clean and plump.

“I see a guy who is getting a lot of groceries and local support,” said Nick Pratt, a Marine Corps veteran and professor of terrorism studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. “You cannot say he is a bad operator.” He added, “People should be careful who they poke fun at.”

Captured in combat? Right! Zarqawi won how many engagements against American forces? That SAW was either pre-war Iraqi army stock, looted from some military arsenal, or it just “fell off the truck” in the course of being delivered to Iraqi army or police units.

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UPDATE

Patricia, in a comment at Tim Bair:

Can you imagine the effort it took for reporters to locate and call sympathetic ex-military and solicit quotes about what a he-man Zarqawi is? Stunning, especially for a paper that is supposedly the gold standard of world news.

That sound you hear is their stock price hitting bottom…

Sister Toldjah: Zarqawi looks like a fool on camera, and MSM utilizes its excuse-making machine.

Confederate Yankee asks: Who do you choose to believe?

Jason at COUNTERCOLUMN goes into CNN’s echo of the Times story in detail.

Interesting. The designer apparently was prevously an engineer for Barrett. Sounds pretty cool, if it actually works, but none of this material notes that this is strictly a vehicular-carried weapon.

Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?

That would really be something, wouldn’t it? Some of you might be wondering, “how big would it be”, or “how much would it weigh”? Others might want to know what it’s ammunition capacity would be. These are all good questions, assuming of course that a weapon like this were actually possible.

According to its inventor, not only is it possible, it’s already happened. An updated version of the weapon will be available soon. It will arrive in the form of a tactically-configured pre-production anti-personnel weapon firing .308 caliber projectiles (accurately) at 2,500-3000 fps, at a variable/programmable cyclic rate of 5,000-120,000 rpm (rounds-per-minute). The weapon’s designer/inventor has informed DefRev that future versions of the weapon will be capable of achieving projectile velocities in the 5,000-8,000 fps range with no difficulty. The technology already exists.

The weapon itself is called the DREAD, or Multiple Projectile Delivery System (MPDS), and it may just be the most revolutionary infantry weapon system concept that DefenseReview has EVER come across.

The DREAD Weapon System is the brainchild of weapons designer/inventor Charles St. George. It will be 40 inches long, 32 inches wide, and 3 inches high (20 inches high with the pintel swivel mount). It will be comprised of only 30 component parts, and will have an empty weight of only 28 pounds. That’s right, 28 pounds. The weapon will be capable of rotating 360 degrees and enjoy the same elevation and declination capabilities of any conventional vehicle-mounted gun/weapon.

The first generation DREAD (production version), derived from the tactically-configured pre-production weapon, will most likely be a ground vehicle-mounted anti-personnel weapon. Military Humvees (HMMWV’s) and other ground vehicles (including Chevy Suburbans) equipped with the DREAD will enjoy magazine capacities of at least 50,000 rounds of .308 Cal., or 10,000 rounds of .50 Cal. ammo.

But, what is the DREAD, really? How does it work? In a sentence, the DREAD is an electrically-powered centrifuge weapon, or centrifuge “gun”. So, instead of using self-contained cartridges containing powdered propellant (gunpowder), the DREAD’s ammunition will be .308 and .50 caliber round metal balls (steel, tungsten, tungsten carbide, ceramic-coated tungsten, etc…) that will be literally spun out of the weapon at speeds as high as 8000 fps (give or take a few hundred feet-per-second) at rather extreme rpm’s, striking their targets with overwhelming and devastating firepower. We’re talking about total target saturation, here. All this, of course, makes the DREAD revolutionary in the literal sense, as well as the conceptual one.

video –Be patient, it takes over a minute to download.

86-year-old Mikhail Kalashnikov has read some of the reports coming out of Iraq, and he’s delighted. Reuters reports that the old rascal was goating over the superiority of his own assault rifle at a recent news conference in Moscow:

“Even after lying in a swamp you can pick up this rifle [the AK47], aim it and shoot. That’s the best job description there is for a gun. Real soldiers know that and understand it,” the 86-year-old gunmaker told a weekend news conference in Moscow.

“In Vietnam, American soldiers threw away their M-16 rifles and used [Kalashnikov] AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers, with bullets they captured. That was because the climate is different to America, where M-16s may work properly,” he said.

The old fellow is getting perhaps a little too carried away, but there is clearly some basis for a claim to superiority for his rifle in field conditons. A letter from a Marine serving in Iraq, published here last November 10th, observed:

The M-16 rifle : Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the Picatinny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits cant be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.

AK47’s. The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably… Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined “spray and pray” type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. (Iran, again) Fun fact: Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let’s just say they know better now.

Defense Review has an article & video on the weaponized AutoCopter, a self-stabiized unmanned mini-helicopter, armed with the full-auto Auto Assault-12 shotgun designed to utilize the FRAG-12 family of 12-Gauge ammunition, offering a choice of High-Explosive (HE), High-Explosive Fragmenting Antipersonnel (HE-FA, or HEFA), and High-Explosive Armor-Piercing (HE-AP, or HEAP) rounds.

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More on the Auto Assault-12.