by David Crane david@defensereview.com DefenseReview recently attended the 24th Army Science Conference, in sunny Orlando, FL. The conference was held at the truly spectacular JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes (where we stayed, thanks to the U.S. Army). The conference itself was pretty terrific, as well. O.k., I’m going to discuss a number of very interesting military/military-applicable technologies I observed inside …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com DefenseReview has been interested in the Nikonov AN-94 "Abakan" assault rifle for a pretty long time, now. I believe I first read about it in 1994 or 1995. Designed by Russian small arms designer Gennadiy Nikonov, the AN-94 is an interesting rifle, as it enjoys one of the same (major) advantages as the Ultimax 100 Mk3 …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com The Refaim Advanced Infantry Weapon System, or "Advanced Infantry Rifle Grenade", manufactured by Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI), is an air-burst telescopic bullet trap rifle grenade that incorporates point detonation, time delay, and self-destruct functions. "Defense Update", an Israeli online publication, has some excellent information on the Refaim rifle grenade. The following is what "Defense Update" …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com O.k., this one looks legit. It comes to us straight from the U.S. Army’s PEO Soldier website. "PEO" stands for "Program Executive Office". DefRev was tipped to it by one of our readers. The article discusses the XM8 "Lightweight Assault Carbine" and the Army’s desire to field "the entire family of XM-8 rifles and not just …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com March 16, 2004 The SAR-21, manufactured by ST Kinetics Land Systems (out of Singapore) and marketed by VT Kinetics in the U.S., is a roughly 2 1/2 year old, "state-of-the-art" bullpup 5.56mm assault rifle that is currently going head to head with the Israeli TAR-21(Tavor) bullpup rifle, and all other modern 5.56 assault rifles on the …

The QBZ-95 bullpup infantry rifle from China, a.ka. Type 95 rifle, fires the proprietary 5.8x42mm round. Many small arms experts consider the ideal infantry/light machine gun caliber to be between 6mm and 6.5mm in diameter, and between 39mm and 45mm in length, making the new Chinese caliber very close to the ideal dual-purpose infantry round. Click here for pics and …

The Russians have been doing some very interesting things for the last number of years with assault rifles while our own infantry soldiers are still saddled with a rifle that’s now over 40 years old(yes, the M16). The Russians’ focus seems to be in the area of higher hit probability, promulgated by some rather ingenious recoil-reduction mechanisms. DefRev has already …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com All photos contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are copyrighted. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. The photos were shot with a Canon PowerShot S90 10-megapixel digital camera (still camera with video capability). December 30, 2010 Silencer/sound suppressor designer/engineer Mark White, M.S. of Sound Technology a.k.a. Sound Tech …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com June 2, 2010 In their ongoing efforts to upgrade/improve and/or replace the Colt SOPMOD M4/M4A1 Carbine with the “Next Carbine”, the U.S. Army Contracting Command just issued a sources sought notice/solicitation (Solicitation Number: W15QKN-10-X-0455) on May 27, 2010 requesting information on potential weapon capabilities for an “Individual Carbine” as part of a “market …

by David Crane defrev at gmail.com December 17, 2007 This article was updated on 12/19/07 and 5/15/09. Ya’ know that Colt M4 Carbine vs. Heckler & Koch (HK) HK416 vs. FN MK16 SCAR-Light (SCAR-L) vs. HK XM8 LAR extreme dust conditions reliability test that the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Center (ATEC) at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Md. was conducting? …