Free Republic

WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) - New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David issued a statement Thursday in response to a planned “armed march” of the local chapter of the Revolutionary Black Panther Party.

National-security agencies counseled Ottawa against allowing a Chinese firm to take over a Montreal high-tech company, warning it would undermine a technological edge that Western militaries have over China, The Globe and Mail has learned. “If the technology is transferred, China would be able to domestically-produce advanced-military laser technology to Western standards sooner than would otherwise be the case, which diminishes Canadian and allied military advantages,” said a national-security assessment prepared for cabinet by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 2015. The acquisition of ITF Technologies of Montreal by Hong Kong-based O-Net Communications is...

In the early 2000s the Turkish army began looking for a replacement rifle for its aging, locally manufactured 7.62-by-51-millimeter Heckler & Koch G3A7s. It was a difficult process that finally resulted in the MPT-76 — an AR-10 derivative — entering service in January 2017.

Video footage shot by a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet squadron over Syria shows a pair of Russian Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker-E fighters armed with a pair of older R-27 air-to-air missiles but what appears to be a single R-77-1 RVV-SD active radar-guided missile.

The German defense company Rheinmetall has teamed with Austrian arms manufacturer Steyr Mannlicher to manufacture and market the RS556 – a German version of the 5.56mm x 45 cal. modular assault rifle system based on Steyr’s STM556. The Austrian weapon was first unveiled in 2012. Eying the German market, Rheinmetall positions the new weapon as a candidate for the German “System Sturmgewehr Bundeswehr” – the planned replacement of the G36 – the standard German military assault rifle made by Heckler & Koch. This project is set to begin in 2019. Rheinmetall will offer the new assault rifle as a joint...

Woman found two guns in a violin case along Potomac River in Washington D.C.Police found more guns and ammunition stashed in pails and bags nearbyAuthorities were trying to work out why the weapons were left there The D.C. police bomb squad conducted a sweep of the area soon afterA number of weapons, including two guns in a violin case, have been found stashed along the Potomac River in Washington D.C. U.S. Park Police said a woman walking in the woods near the C&O Canal, which runs along the river, found the case on Wednesday. When police arrived they found...

t. Gen. Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army’s top commander in Europe, recently slammed the Russian military campaign in Syria, branding it a “live-fire training opportunity” for Moscow that shows clear “disregard for civilian casualties.” Hodges statement coincided with the Russia’s confirmation that its troops had indeed fired more than 150 weapons from its arsenal in combat.

President Obama and his mouthpieces have embarked on a bizarre scheme to hypnotize America into forgetting the many scandals of his presidency. They seem to think that intoning “this administration hasn’t had a scandal” over and over again will make history disappear. It’s the lamest Jedi Mind Trick ever, and is being pushed on people who know Star Wars is just a movie. Here’s a short list of the many scandals Team Obama thinks it can make America forget:

The US army's commander in Europe has accused Russia of using its military campaign in Syria as a "live-fire training opportunity". Lt Gen Ben Hodges said Russia's "disregard for civilian casualties... is not the conduct of a nation that wants to be treated like a superpower".

US President Barack Obama has ordered a waiver for restrictions on military aid for foreign forces and others in Syria, deeming it “essential to the national security interests” of the US to allow exceptions from provisions in the Arms Export Control Act.

Pakistan is getting a new infantry rifle. In late November at the IDEAS-2016 Expo in Karachi, Pakistan’s state-run arsenal Pakistan Ordnance Factories signed a letter of understanding with the Czech small arms manufacturer Česká Zbrojovka. This suggests that Pakistan and C.Z. are about to begin negotiations for Pakistan to adopt, and eventually begin license-production of, C.Z.’s 806 BREN 2 rifle.

Between February and March 2016, Australian and French sailors in the Arabian Sea seized small ships — or dhows — smuggling weapons, most likely to militants in Somalia and Yemen. These caches aboard the dhows included examples of one particularly rare firearm, the North Korean Type 73 machine gun. In November 2016, independent monitoring group Conflict Armament Research released a report detailing the captured weapons and their likely points of origins and destinations. According to the analysis, the shipments showed links between Iran and armed groups Tehran supports in the Gulf of Aden region.

In the late 1980s, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force decided to replace its aging 7.62-by-51-millimeter Howa Type 64 battle rifles. The JGSDF selected a lighter, modern assault rifle — the Howa Type 89 — in 1989. It’s a solid weapon, but one with a few weird features. Its biggest problem, however, is that there aren’t enough copies of it in existence.

In the mid-1970s, India began development on a totally new, advanced main battle tank that would satisfy the needs of the country’s Armored Corps. An impressive combination of firepower, armor protection and mobility, the tank was to be India’s first indigenously produced tank—and one of the best in the world. The service date for the tank, known as Arjun, was confidently set for 1985. Instead, the Arjun suffered a tortuously long development period spanning two centuries. The final result, introduced into the army twenty-six years later than originally planned, is a mess of a tank that not even the Indian...

The mammoth Lahti L-39 anti-tank rifle, designed by Aimo Lahti — Finland’s greatest gun-designer — served Finland well during the 1940s. The 20-millimeter, semi-automatic anti-tank rifle’s barrel alone was 51.2 inches long, and the overall weapon weighed a staggering 109 pounds. Through the 1930s, the Finnish military had debated the optimum caliber of weapon for use against armor. Officials suggested 12.7 millimeter, 13.2 millimeter and 20 millimeter — and planned to use the same caliber round in both anti-armor and anti-aircraft roles.

In 1946, two Swedes named Hugo Abramson and Harald Jentzen designed the Carl Gustaf, which at the time appeared to be just another recoilless rifle. Many of these weapons fell out of use in the following decades as anti-tank missiles took over. But the Carl Gustaf stuck around — and for a different role than Abramson and Jentzen had planned in the 1940s. For one, it’s now just as much an anti-infantry weapon owing to its range, low cost and types of ammunition.

Of the 31 states that have declared their opposition to taking in Syrian refugees, one state, Kentucky, has a specific reason to be wary of the background check process: previously two Iraqi refugees who settled in Bowling Green turned out to be al Qaeda-linked terrorists with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, an ABC News investigation found. In the wake of the Kentucky case, the U.S. halted the refugee program for Iraqis for six months, a fact the Obama administration did not disclose to Congress at the time, officials told ABC News in the 2013 investigation.

One of the more brutal weapons to see use on both sides of the war in Iraq is the KPV, a belt-fed heavy machine gun designed to take down aircraft — using a round dating back to tank-busting guns in World War II. The 14.5x114-millimeter KPV is not as pervasive as the smaller DShK, a rough equivalent to the U.S. M2 Browning. But the 108-pound KPV is nonetheless a big, unwieldy and extremely dangerous threat the Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga have encountered on their push toward Mosul. The Islamic State seized dozens of them in Syria and Iraq, bolting the guns...

Iraqi troops fighting for Mosul’s outskirts have brought along one of their most fearsome weapons — the 60-ton, Russian-made TOS-1A Buratino. A photograph and tweet from the Jerusalem Post’s Seth Frantzman shows Iraqi troops posing with the rocket launcher near Bartella, a battle-scarred Assyrian Christian town less than 10 miles from Mosul. Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service troops took over the town on Oct. 20, one of dozens freed since the offensive began Oct. 16.

Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France. The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems. The new Sarmat missile could deliver warheads of 40 megatons - 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to replace the country's older SS-18 Satan weapons with the new missiles.