By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com November 29, 2009 Updated on 12/04/09 Fourteen months ago, DefenseReview broke the story on the SRSS BullDog762 bullpup M14/M1A battle rifle (7.62x51mm NATO/.308 Win.). Well, the BullDog 762 just went operational, and Defense Review is going to keep an eye on it to see how it performs in the U.S. military Special …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com October 1, 2009 What do you get when you combine a (wheeled) manpackable mini-UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) / ground robot with a flee-type (or grasshopper-type) jumping capability? You get the Precision Urban Hopper (PUH) jumping UGV. The Precision Urban Hopper, brought to you by the friendly folks at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com July 27, 2009 On July 7, 2009, Army Times published an article by Matt Cox (Matthew Cox) titled Army acquires rights to M4. It’s an interesting piece on the Colt M4 Carbine (Colt M4/M4A1 Carbine).  However, according to one of DefenseReview’s contacts at Colt Defense, Cox’s article is…how can I put this …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com May 29, 2009 While Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ decision to halt production of the costly Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor low-observable/stealth fighter aircraft is perhaps not the best long-term strategic decision he could have made, it’s certainly understandable. Given the U.S. government’s–and thus DoD’s–current money crunch vs. the program’s high cost and lack …

By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com All photographic images contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are the exclusive property of DefenseReview.com. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. All photos were shot with an Olympus Stylus 790 SW 7.1-megapixel digital camera, which is advertised as "shock + waterproof". March 2, 2009 DefenseReview has been publishing …

By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com February 5, 2009 On January 29, 2009, the Washington Times reported that the U.S. Army is recalling "more than 16,000 sets of ceramic body armor plates that the Pentagon’s inspector general believes were not properly tested and could jeopardize the lives of U.S. service personnel." This came just one day after the …

Why M4's have reliability issues…and why it's our fault! By Michael Pannone December 24, 2008 I fired 15,000 rounds through a semi-automatic M4/M4A1-type direct-gas-impingement (DGI) carbine in 31 weeks without a single malfunction attributable to anything except bad ammunition or bad magazines, with a grand total of 9 malfunctions. The least number of rounds fired between cleanings was 960 rounds, …

By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com November 19, 2008 Human Events is reporting on the use of Chinese armor-piercing a.k.a. armor-penetrating (AP) bullets by enemy snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the article, this new Chinese AP rifle ammo is copycatting U.S.-made AP ammo design, and is "sending alarm bells through the Pentagon as it hurries to …

By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com August 20, 2008 The recent dust-up in Georgia between Russian and Geogian forces, i.e. the Russian invasion of Georgia, has reinvigorated expensive, high-tech conventional-warfare/Cold-War-type weapons like the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor low-observable/stealth fighter aircraft a.k.a. F/A-22 Raptor air-to-air (air-superiority fighter)/ground attack aircraft. The F-22, in particular has been receiving a lot of …

By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com August 14, 2008 A couple of brothers—twins, actually—out of North Brunswick, Maine, Geoffrey and Michael Howe of Howe and Howe Technologies Inc., have developed a relatively large tracked tactical UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) for military applications called the Ripsaw Military Spec 1 UGV (a.k.a. Ripsaw MS1 UGV a.k.a. Rip Saw MS1 UGV). …