Free Republic

Like many of our readers, I am now limited to my closest ranges being indoor. Drives me nuts when I have to zero a rifle for 3-gun and the longest range I can get too quickly is a scant 15 yards. (I can drive 45 minutes to some good long-ranges, but getting at least three hours free can be difficult).

Even as three Rafale fighters line up in Bengaluru for eye-popping aerobatics displays at the Aero India 2015 exhibition this week, senior ministry of defence (MoD) sources say the proposal to buy the French fighter is "effectively dead".The reason: During three years of negotiations between Dassault and MoD officials in the so-called "contract negotiation committee" (CNC), it has emerged that Dassault's bid was actually higher than that of the Eurofighter Typhoon, not lower as the MoD had announced on January 31, 2012. Dassault had submitted a sketchy commercial bid, and when the CNC obtained details from the French company to...

"Five or six minutes can be enough time, if you have trust, if you have communication and if you can put this machinery immediately to work," former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on the sidelines of last weekend's Munich Security Conference. Unfortunately, he argued, this machinery works very poorly today, and there is great mistrust. Deep mistrust has developed between the West and Russia, and it is having a massive effect on cooperation on security matters. In November 2014, the Russians announced that they would boycott the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in the United States. In December, the US...

David Vogt, Maryland State Delegate and 2010 Marine of the Year, calls for Maryland's Speaker of the House to repeal gun-grabbing legislation at 2nd Amendment Rally. The crowd makes him do push-ups and he throws in "one for the Corps." Oorah!! Check out the video

This week’s DTIC document is one well worth reading in the interest of understanding the AR-15’s early deployment and subsequent “fall from grace” later in the 1960s. It bears more detailed examination than I usually put into the Weekly DTIC, so this will be a longer post than usual. The document is DARPA’s Field Test Report, AR-15 Armalite Rifle, a controversial document extolling the virtues of the early AR-15 in Vietnam. The basic thesis of the document is best summed up in this quote:

In a post on their site titled “Eddie Routh: The Untold Story,” Warfighter News details their comprehensive investigation involving interviews with three Marines who served directly with Routh, and several inconsistencies with the defense. “We reached out to experts and did our own homework,” Spencer Walker, Board Chairman and CEO of Warfighter News, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The defense is trying to claim Routh had PTSD, but our analysis shows that it’s extremely unlikely. According to Dr. C. Alan Hopewell, former Senior Neuropsychologist for the Department of the Army, Routh’s actions indicate paranoid schizophrenia. PTSD has been endlessly...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hormone treatment for gender reassignment has been approved for Chelsea Manning, the former intelligence analyst convicted of espionage for sending classified documents to the WikiLeaks website. Defense Department officials said Thursday that the hormone therapy was approved Feb. 5 by Col. Erica Nelson, commandant of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Manning is serving a 35-year sentence. The Army was providing some treatment but not enough, according to the lawsuit, including psychotherapy from a mental health specialist who lacked the qualifications to treat gender dysphoria. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and many state and...

The 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will go to winner Harold Holzer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for "Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion" (Simon & Schuster). The Prize is awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Holzer was chosen from 114 nominations as the 2015 recipient. He will receive $50,000 and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' life-size bust “Lincoln the Man” in a ceremony April 23 in New York City. The Prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and...

CBS This Morning‘s Steve Hartman gets to the heart of the matter: “What’s amazing to me about you is that you’re out in the desert for weeks on end, you didn’t cry. Your friends are dying next to you and you didn’t cry. You get to talking about America and you started crying.” Kuch responds with a simple, but powerful answer: “I love this country so much.” This is why being in the military is deeply personal for Kuch. He’s not only serving his country, but it’s the best way he could find of saying “thank you” to a country...

President Barack Obama is joining with lawmakers and government leaders to cast a spotlight on the issue of suicide among veterans. Obama on Thursday will sign the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act into law. […] The measure is named for a Marine who struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. …

In the 1968 Star Trek episode Bread and Circuses, Capt. James Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Leonard McCoy beam down to Planet 892-IV, a parallel to Earth in almost every way—except Rome never fell. The aliens capture the Enterprise’s familiar trio. Kirk has a predictable romantic encounter. There are televised gladiatorial games that pit the crew against sword-wielding warriors named Flavius and Achilles. The episode even lampoons the cutthroat competition between television broadcasters and their search for ratings. When one of the gladiators refuses to fight with his usual vigor, the master of the games snarls, “You bring this network’s...

Danish photographer Thomas Bangsted sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from “spray and pray” photography. The Brooklyn-based artist often spends months or years completing individual pictures through researching, traveling, shooting, and post-processing. The 7-minute video above offers a glimpse into how Bangsted creates his art.

North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun released images on 7 February showing a new type of surface-to-surface missile (SSM) being fired from a surface-effects ship (SES) from the Korean People's Navy (KPN) Eastern Fleet. The images, which showed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, were accompanied by an article translated by the English-language website KCNA Watch. The article noted that the test-firing proved in a "scientific" way that the capabilities of the long-rumoured vessel and its weapons system had reached design and engineering specifications.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is asking Congress to formally authorize war against Islamic State militants, offering a draft resolution that says the Islamic State "poses a grave threat."

U.S. provision of military aid to Ukraine would be seen by Moscow as a declaration of war and spark a global escalation of Ukraine's separatist conflict, Russian defense analysts said. With Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine seizing new territory from the Ukrainian army, voices in Washington are demanding that Kiev be given defensive weapons and hardware — including lethal equipment — to hold the line. But if such aid were sent, "Russia would reasonably consider the U.S. to be a direct participant in the conflict," said Evgeny Buzhinsky, a military expert at the Moscow-based PIR Center. Speaking to The Moscow...

Liberals have claimed for years that the 2nd amendment was invented in the times of mere muskets, that it doesn’t apply to today’s weapons! The only problem with that, is that weaponry was far more advanced than leftists realize, and the founding fathers addressed this a LOOOONG time ago. Watch the only rebuttal to this argument that you’ll ever need to see! ;)

Originally found on E Online! It's still there now. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgcIBRxjBjY

Iran English Radio (2/9) reported that Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) have developed “the double-cockpit supersonic Saeqeh 2 fighter jet.” According to Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami, the new plane has “enhanced combat capabilities” when compared to the first generation of the Saeqeh jet.

Iran has unveiled the 'second generation' of its indigenously developed Saeghe (Thunderbolt) combat aircraft, state media announced on 9 February. The Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces Logistics agency announced the unveiling of the Saeghe-2 jet, and its delivery to the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF), the Mehr news agency reported. While the original Saeghe was based on the single-seat Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighter, the Saeghe-2 is modelled on the twin-seat F-5F operational trainer. On the surface, the Saeghe-2 bears the same twin-tail modification as the Saeghe, although it is not possible to ascertain what internal...

Could not believe when someone told me this.