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International warfare has created some of the most profound advances in technology and concepts, and the underwater arena is no exception. Following up on last issue’s look at the pistols of combat divers in Russia’s, Germany’s and America’s navies, we dive here into long guns of frogmen. APS Underwater RifleThe APS or Avtomat Podvodnyj Spetsialnyj Underwater Rifle was developed during the early 1970s by the Soviet Central Institute for Precision Machine Building (TsNIITochMash plant). The inspiration for this was that Russian combat divers only had knives and the SPP-1 underwater pistol (see American Shooting Journal, June 2015 issue) as their...

The attack on the 1,220-ton Cheonan, which sank on March 26 with the loss of 46 of its 104 crew, was carried out in retaliation for a skirmish between warships of the two nations' navies in November of last year, South Korea claims. The South Korean government has refused to comment officially on the reports but Defence Minister Kim Tae Young told a parliamentary session that the military believed that the sinking was a deliberate act by North Korea. Officials in military intelligence say they warned the government earlier this year that North Korea was preparing a suicide-squad submarine attack...

The US Navy SEALs, America's secretive frogman-commando elite, are to get a new and enlarged pocket submarine which will allow them to travel most of the way to an objective inside in the dry and then exit through an airlock before swimming on for their final approach. Ordinary "wet" SDV mini-sub in action. The SEALs and comparable elite forces such as the British SBS have long used "wet" Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs) to approach an objective below the waves, allowing them to move faster and further than an unaided frogman can. With a normal SDV, the frog-trooper isn't inside a...