Free Republic

Yesterday, reservist Nathan Cirillo was murdered while guarding Canada’s National War Memorial. Today, Halifax Chronicle-Herald cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon paid tribute to Cirillo — in an absolutely gorgeous way:

They show footage taken from security cameras of the shooter getting out of his beige car near the war memorial. Pedestrians are seen approaching the car and then running away. Then you see the shooter with his long gun running out of the car. The next shot is of building on Parliament Hill. (Sorry, I am not Canadian and do not know these places. But yesterday I wrote on FR, a Canadian reporter said these were office buildings, one of which was for the PM.) The shooter is running towards a row of cars park alongside the street. He choses...

The M-4 Sherman was the workhorse medium tank of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps during World War II. It fought in every theater of operation—North Africa, the Pacific and Europe. The Sherman was renown for its mechanical reliability, owing to its standardized parts and quality construction on the assembly line. It was roomy, easily repaired, easy to drive. It should have been the ideal tank. But the Sherman was also a death trap.

Do any Freepers know anything about the Battle Rifle Company? I saw one of their rifles in the latest issue of America's 1st Freedom.

The U.S. Navy is slowly preparing the first of its massive, 15,500-ton Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers for sea next year. But questions remain about many of the technologies onboard the new ships. First and foremost: can the thing even stay afloat? The vessel—which is the largest American surface warship since the 1950s--brings a new untried “tumblehome” hull design, new power systems and gun technology that have not been used on a modern warship before. The ship is highly automated with a crew of just 142 -- compared to older ships that have a complement of about 300. But despite its massive...

Rich Shelton loves airplanes and San Francisco, which shows in all his beautiful photos. He was able to take this incredible image of a Blue Angels' F/A-18 zooming through the Golden Gate bridge at Fleet Week in San Francisco.

Bulicz is a member of the California National Guard. Prosecutors say she submitted fake documents that allowed her to take more than $5,400 worth of paid time off from the Police Department.

(CNN) -- The U.S. military is forming a 30-person "quick strike team" equipped to provide direct treatment to Ebola patients inside the United States, a Defense Department official told CNN's Barbara Starr on Sunday. A Pentagon spokesman later confirmed portions of the official's information. The team will be under orders to deploy within 72 hours at any time over the next month, the official said. The Department of Health and Human Services requested the military team, and the Pentagon has given verbal approval, the official said. The team will include five doctors, 20 nurses and five trainers, Pentagon press secretary...

DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program, announced earlier this year, aims to move away from the traditional battle tank paradigm – creating a new class of faster, more agile vehicles that are better at negotiating terrain and detecting targets. Today, the agency has provided the first details on what this new breed of ground-based armoured vehicles might look like. While a lot of military research continues to focus on adding greater resilience to existing vehicles, DARPA’s new initiative is tackling the problem in a different way. The goal of the GXV-T program is to create a new type of all-terrain...

American fighter jets take off from abroad this aircraft carrier everyday to bomb the positions of the Islamic State (IS) in the Kurdistan Region and Rojava. Video at source...

This is the SIG P320 MHS, a key competitor in the hunt for the Army’s next sidearm. With the Army’s many Beretta pistols showing their age, the military is considering a completely new sidearm that meets today’s standards and compensates for some of the issues they’ve run into with the M9 series, including the open slide, slide-mounted safety and oversized grip. The SIG P320 MHS solves all the problems and delivers a modern pistol to replace it. Key differences between this edition and current commercial versions of the P320 Compact include a new color scheme, an ambidextrous manual thumb safety,...

Last year, the German armed forces announced they would purchase Heckler and Koch’s MG-5 machine gun to finally replace a World War II-era weapon. The new machine gun should put the Bundeswehr’s existing weapons to shame—and make up for past failures. “Its main feature is that it is much more accurate than its predecessor,” German army colonel Christian Brandes told U.S. Army reporters at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona during testing of the new gun on Oct. 14. The predecessor Brandes was referring to is the MG-3. That aging weapon is essentially just an upgrade of a machine gun Adolf...

The last week of September marks the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980. Formal ceremonies for Sacred Defense Week include a nationwide parade, war remembrance gatherings and—of the most interest to War Is Boring—theatrical unveiling events for new weaponry. This year Iranian authorities extended the weapons unveilings into the first week of October—national police week in Iran—and then a few days more. The extensive show of military might came amid the growing threat of Sunni militia groups inside Iran. Tehran is eager to project an image of strength. But that doesn’t mean all of this new weaponry...

Don't know where else to express this frustration, so I put it in chat. The Oval Office occupant is sending boots on the ground to fight UNSEEN virus Ebola....but won't commit to eradicating ISIS.

Has anyone else seen Fury? I just got back and it wasn't a bad movie at all. The character building scenes are a bit clumsy at times but the combat bits were top notch. It wasn't Blackhawk Down or Saving Private Ryan intense but there were tense moments. I recommend it.

On Oct. 12, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln must have breathed a bit easier. Not because the war was over — it would last another six months. Not because he had been re-elected — the election remained nearly a month away. And not because Gen. William T. Sherman had begun his decisive march through Georgia — the general was still holding Atlanta. While much remained unsettled, Lincoln’s achievements as president seemed more secure that autumn day because the president learned that his old nemesis Roger B. Taney, the Maryland-born chief justice of the Supreme Court, had died. Ever since Taney had...

For nearly 30 years, soldiers heard an unforgettable sound coming from a weapon firing from behind the rubble in Stalingrad. Or echoing in the frozen hills of the Korean Peninsula during human-wave attacks. Or even rattling the jungles of Vietnam during firefights with the Viet Cong. BRRAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP! Before the AK-47 became the symbol of Soviet armed forces, there was the “burp gun”—officially, the PPSh-41. It’s an ugly gun that makes an ugly sound during extended fire. Looks aside, the burp gun sure did work.

Russia is currently in the process of expanding and modernizing its navy. This might have something to do with Moscow’s apparent appetite for military conquest — although Russia also has a few nuclear submarines that are dangerously past their prime, considering the fissile materials that are still stored onboard. In 2009, one rusted behemoth was transported to a factory in the far eastern port city of Vladivostok, close to the Korean peninsula, for decommissioning. With the vessel fully out of water, the pictures offer an amazing perspective on how massive and complex even an outdated class of nuclear submarine really...

The World War II-era B-24 aircraft was so stiff, heavy, and hard to control that its American crews dubbed it the "flying coffin." Not only was its only exit hard to reach at the tail—leaving many trapped before being able to parachute out—but it was intended to drop bombs on bridges, train stations, and airports run by the Germans, thus living up to its name for those below it as well.

Few weapons in the modern era ever had a poem penned its honor. But few weapons were ever like the Sten gun. Hastily contrived in the early, desperate days of World War II, it looked like a last-ditch effort to arm British troops—and it was. Terrified Britons knew they did not have enough weapons to repel a German invasion force. The British lost thousands of small arms that were destroyed or simply abandoned after the devastating rout at Dunkirk.