Category: Military

To absent friends
Chief Warrant Officer Five Robert Selje ⭐
Master Sergeant Benjamin Stevenson ⭐
Master Sergeant Jared Van Aalst ⭐
Sergeant First Class Ron Grider ⭐
Sergeant First Class Ryan Savard ⭐
Sergeant Paul Dumont jr. ⭐
Sergeant Jose Regalado ⭐

Criticisms of the Military’s XM7 Rifle Spill Into the Open

When it comes to those of us who choose our own rifles, it’s possible to get the “perfect” gun. We each have our own wants, needs, and and preferences we can accommodate. Only the thickness of our wallets limit how satisfied we can ultimately be. Hunters, target shooters, people defending their families, and many law enforcement officers can pick the platform, choose the caliber, and select the accessories that will ride on it.

But the United States Army doesn’t get to do that. No matter how many wants and needs the military may specify in its procurement process, they still need to come up with a “one size fits most” solution. Sure, every soldier could theoretically build their own rifle that fits their tastes and the needs of their particular job, but that would make things far too expensive and complicated logistically. Worse, the military has to be prepared to go up against the mass manufacturing power of China, so volume has to be an important consideration, too.

The military’s answer in its search for a next generation rifle has been the XM7. Unlike the intermediate cartridge M16 and M4 rifles, the plan this time was to pack in a lot more pep, even at the cost of how much ammunition a given soldier can carry into the fight. That decision has, of course, led to inevitable comparisons with the M14 rifle, and virtual barrels of digital ink have been spilled criticizing the philosophy of battle rifles versus the intermediate-cartridge rifles virtually every military has shifted to since World War II.

But, despite widespread criticism, the Army has gone all-in on defending the brass’s choice of the XM7. The first soldiers to experiment with the weapon, we’ve been told, gave it glowing reviews. Then, subsequent units that picked it up had nothing but good to say about it. This led public opinion to waver a bit. Maybe the brass was right if all of the grunts love it…right?

It turns out that (as is often the case) we may not have been told the whole story. This video by Cappy Army goes into great detail on what the public and lawmakers were told about the XM7 versus what was actually said when soldiers were handed a copy of the rifle.

In short, the soldiers weren’t big fans. The rifle certainly has some upsides, and legitimate praise for it was passed on to the public. But, when anyone had something negative to say about the gun, that part got left out of press releases, reports, and other materials the public was given. As happens these days, many soldiers then took their unedited and uncensored feedback online, while a few more stubborn and brave officers decided to push against the chain of command to look at both the good and the bad.

The video itself is worth watching, but in a nutshell, it’s a mix of “the M14 haters were right,” technical problems with the gun (sloppy accuracy, jams, cases coming apart), and problems with overheating cans and faulty “smart” optics. Worst of all, feature bloat has led to the weapon weighing several pounds more than the old M14 ever did. There’s more recoil and reduced barrel life. And then there’s the fact that soldiers can only carry about two-thirds as many rounds into combat as they can for an M16/M4.

When faced with a captain’s report detailing these criticisms and calling the rifle “unfit” for its intended use, SIG SAUER said that he wasn’t close enough to the program and its goals to understand it. The company also made it clear that the rifle’s development isn’t yet fully complete, and that problems will still be resolved.

Again, it’s very much worth reading about the issues and responses to them in depth and watching the video above. I’m just scratching the surface here.

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May 8, 2025

80 years ago, today, the Germans surrendered to the Allies, ending World War 2 in Europe. As the veterans called the ‘Greatest Generation’ steadily succumb to the ravages of time, let’s not forget the sacrifice of those few still living and dead.

VE – Victory in Europe DAY. Under terms of the surrender by Germany, the order for “all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations” takes effect.

“The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of freeborn men. They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their children and murdered their loved ones. Our armies of liberation have restored freedom to those suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressor could never enslave.”
— President Harry S. Truman, V-E Day Proclamation, 8 May 1945

 

To the shores of Tripoli….

On April 27, 1805, during the 1st Barbary War, after a march of over 500 miles from Alexandria, Egypt, U.S. Marines, and allied troops under the command of U.S. Army Lieutenant William Eaton, diplomatic Consul to Tripoli, and U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, staged an assault, supported by U.S. naval gunfire, on the port city of Derna, Cyrenaica, on the Mediterranean sea shores of Tripolitania, taking the city in a little over an hour.

 

 

DARPA requests proposals for water-prospecting lunar orbiter.

WASHINGTON — DARPA is seeking proposals for a small lunar orbiter that could be used to test operations in very low orbits while prospecting for water ice.

DARPA issued a program solicitation April 14 for a mission concept called Lunar Assay via Small Satellite Orbiter (LASSO). The agency is seeking proposals for design studies that could lead to construction of a spacecraft.

In its solicitation, DARPA said its interest in LASSO is two-fold. One is to test navigation and propulsion technologies needed for operating in very low orbits around the moon, at altitudes as low as 10 kilometers. At those low altitudes, irregularities in the moon’s gravitational field caused by mass concentrations make it challenging to maintain a safe orbit, requiring frequent maneuvers.

The technologies needed for operating in those low orbits could have applications more generally in cislunar space, DARPA argues, citing the Space Force’s interest in cislunar space situational awareness (SSA). “Sustained and advanced maneuverability for spacecraft is key to enabling further improvements of SSA in cislunar space,” the solicitation states.

Besides testing operations in low orbits, LASSO would also map the lunar surface for concentrations of water ice “that are large enough and with a high enough confidence to justify the expense and energy required to retrieve it,” the solicitation states. The goal would be to cover the entire lunar surface in no more than four years, identifying all regions where subsurface water ice concentrations are at least 5%.

“LASSO will benefit DARPA, and eventually [the U.S. Space Force], by establishing new technologies that can offer increased maneuverability and SSA while also supporting commercial space capabilities and NASA missions by identifying the existence of proven reserves of water,” DARPA concluded in the solicitation.

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The Pentagon Must Go on the Offensive to Defeat Politicized Officers.

That Space Force colonel in command in Greenland – well, formerly in command in Greenland – who ran her fool mouth to undermine her commander-in-chief demonstrates an all-too-common problem with today’s senior military officers.

We keep seeing these passive-aggressive, and not so passively aggressive, officers acting out and throwing childish tantrums of resistance to the President that the people of the United States elected. It’s inconceivable to those of us from the military who won the Cold War; we stayed the hell out of politics. Somehow, they must have missed that civilian control block of instruction; non-partisanship is a vital principle of our officer corps.

To be political on duty is a violation of our oaths. It’s a violation of our ethos as officers. And it’s got to be brutally crushed – even Barack Obama understood that when he properly canned General Stanley McChrystal for having a staff that thought it was okay to diss the President to reporters (incredibly, after this massive leadership failure, McChrystal has gone on to sell his leadership insights to eager civilian suckers, but that’s another story).

We simply cannot have a functioning military that tolerates individuals putting their own personal prerogatives ahead of the mission – and that’s exactly what this political posturing is.

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DoD Courts Service Members Wrongfully Discharged for Not Getting the COVID Jab.

The Pentagon has begun sending letters of apology to thousands of service members who were discharged from military service for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. The Pentagon is also trying to assist these service members if they wish to return to active duty.

“They never should have had to leave military service, and the department is committed to assisting them in their return,” Tim Hill, the Defense Department’s acting deputy undersecretary of personnel and readiness, told reporters. He added that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are “eager to welcome back those who are impacted” by the Pentagon’s 2021 vaccine mandate.

In August 2021, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the vaccine mandate, claiming it was critical in keeping service members ready to fight. It was so critical that the Pentagon dropped the rule in January 2023.

Almost 9,000 service members refused vaccination and were dismissed from the armed forces. The effort to get them to reenlist includes telephone calls, emails, website information, and social media posts.

Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 27, reinstating service members discharged under the Pentagon’s COVID vaccine mandate.

“In spite of the scientific evidence, the Biden Administration discharged healthy service members—many of whom had natural immunity and dedicated their entire lives to serving our country—for refusing the COVID vaccine,” a fact sheet released with the executive order said. “Government redress of these wrongful dismissals is overdue.”

Military Times:

Service members who involuntarily separated would be granted the opportunity to receive back pay for the time they otherwise would’ve been in the military, Hill said. It would include base pay, allowance for housing and subsistence and potentially medical benefits. The back pay calculation would also factor in other forms of compensation a service member received while out of service, including salary and health care.

These benefits would only apply to service members who seek to return under the new Trump administration guidelines and would not retroactively apply to those who had returned after the 2023 rescission, a number Hill estimated at under 80 service members.

“It’s also something we can seek to address but there is not currently a mechanism,” he said.

The enlistment period would be either two or four years, and there are other administrative hurdles that an applicant would have to get over in order to rejoin.

There’s also a question of back pay and the fact that most of the service members lost considerable pay because they didn’t get promotions and pay raises.

“How can the department make them whole so that they would stand financially in the same position they would’ve stood in had they never been discharged?” asked Hill.

Returning service members would also be assessed for medical retention standards — a test to determine whether someone who’s already been serving in the military is fit to continue — rather than traditional accession standards, which encompass a much higher level of scrutiny used to determine whether an individual prior to military experience is fit to join the military.

The Army has reenlisted more than 23 soldiers who were discharged for refusing the vaccine as of Monday, the AP reported. None of the other services had completed reenlistments yet, but all are reaching out to former troops.

According to Army spokesman Christopher Surridge, about 400 soldiers have inquired so far about the reenlistment program, the AP reported. Of those, about 100 are in the application process. The Army did not have estimates on how much it has given the soldiers in total back pay.

There’s a lot to sort out, and given the Biden administration’s reluctance to reach out to discharged service members, it’s not surprising that less than 700 service members have expressed any interest in reenlisting.

Shawn Ryan (Former Navy Seal) “There are 480,000 VA employees and there are 450,000 active duty army veterans all over the country have been dying waiting to get treatment, commit suicide”

Space Force General: Chinese Satellites ‘Dogfighting’ in Orbit.

The vice chief of the U.S. Space Force said Chinese satellites have been observed rehearsing “dogfighting” maneuvers in low Earth orbit, a display of the communist nation’s ability to perform complex maneuvers in orbit.

The maneuvers, referred to as rendezvous and proximity operations, involve not only navigating around other objects but also inspecting them, the Air Force Times reported Tuesday.

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Tuesday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington, D.C.

A Space Force spokesperson told the Air Force Times the observation occurred in 2024 and involved three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two other Chinese experimental spacecraft, the Shijian-605 A and B. The Shijian-6 systems were believed to be on a signals intelligence mission, which could be used to determine the geolocation of a signal’s origin, which helps in identifying the location and movements of adversaries, according to the American Military Institute.

Guetlein’s comments came as the Space Force intensifies efforts to establish dominance in space, both by defending its satellites from enemy attacks and through offensive measures of its own, according to the Air Force Times.

“The purpose of the Space Force is to guarantee space superiority for the joint force — not space for space’s sake,” Guetlein said. “Space [operations] guarantee that, just like all the other domains, we can fight as a joint force, and we can depend on those capabilities.”

Guetlein used the satellite dogfighting demonstration among other concerning activities from “near-peer” U.S. adversaries. That included Russia’s 2019 demonstration of a “nesting doll,” during which a satellite released a smaller spacecraft that then performed several stalking maneuvers near a U.S. satellite.

Such operations indicate the space capability gap between the U.S. military and its closest adversaries is shrinking, a concern Space Force leaders have been raising for years, the Air Force Times reported.

“That capability gap used to be massive,” Guetlein said. “We’ve got to change the way we look at space or that capability gap may reverse and not be in our favor anymore.”

Actually I think the other nations that want to use the Suez canal and Red Sea for commerce should be upping their patrolling too

Head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed, Iraqi prime minister says

BAGHDAD (AP) — The head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed in Iraq in an operation by members of the Iraqi national intelligence service along with U.S.-led coalition forces, the Iraqi prime minister announced Friday.

“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.

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On March 11, 1963, US Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara ordered the adoption of the M16 rifle by the US military. Designed by Eugene Stoner, it was a scaled down and improved version of his 7.62 NATO chambered AR-10