The U.S. Army’s Global Response Force will begin assessing the Bumblebee V2 drone interceptor in March following a $5.2 million contract award inked on January 30 by the Pentagon. The Defense Department’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 announced the agreement with Perennial Autonomy on February 4, which will see deliveries of the Bumblebee V2 start next month. The Bumblebee V2, a first-person view drone with four rotors, acts as its own drone hunter-killer system. Advanced artificial intelligence software enables it to identify other unmanned aerial vehicles and engage them in combat. It attacks other drones and knocks them out of…

With no agreement on funding for the Department of Homeland Security by Friday and Congress on recess until Feb. 23, the U.S. Coast Guard is expected to undergo a shutdown beginning at midnight on Friday. For more than 41,000 active-duty and activated Reserve members, the lack of funding means working without pay, although they likely will not feel the effects until the next scheduled military payday Feb. 27, which they could miss if Congress can’t reach an agreement immediately after reconvening. Coast Guard Vice Commandant Vice Adm. Thomas Allan said Wednesday that a shutdown of more than a few days…

For 15 hours beginning on the night of Feb. 13, 1945, the historic city of Dresden, celebrated as the “German Florence” was battered by Allied warplanes. Until that date, Germany’s seventh largest city with its 600,000 inhabitants — and roughly 700,000 refugees — had emerged from the Allied bombing campaign of World War II relatively unscathed. The United States Army Air Force had bombed it twice — once in early October 1944 and again three months later, but even those attacks were considered relatively mild in comparison to the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne, each of which had…

In this episode of the RECOIL Podcast, host Tom Marshall sits down with Freddy Osuna, founder and lead instructor of Green Side Training, for one of the most wide-ranging, thought-provoking conversations we’ve ever recorded. Freddy’s story starts long before the military. Raised on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation in southern Arizona, his earliest lessons in tracking came from his grandmother and tribal elders, learning to read sign, behavior, and patterns in the desert as a way of life. Those early foundations followed him into the United States Marine Corps, where he served as an infantryman, sniper, and combat veteran during the…

With the focus on short-barreled-everything, we figured it only appropriate to spend a little time talking about the legal process to obtain your very own not-so-long gun. One way is to wait for a regular tax stamp, another is to complete an ATF Form 1 eFile. Despite the undisputed sex appeal of SBRs, the extraneous red tape required to get one is more than a little intimidating at times. In a rare stroke of common sense, the ATF has established an electronic system for filing some of their NFA-related forms, including the Form 1 “Application to Make and Register a…

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — President Donald Trump on Friday for the first time publicly revealed the nature of the injuries suffered by U.S. personnel in the daring raid to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their Caracas home.Operation Absolute Resolve — which involved more than 200 forces and 150 aircraft — left American helicopter pilots wounded “pretty bad in the legs,” Trump said during an address to troops at Fort Bragg, a major Army installation in North Carolina.Trump explained that the pilots landed on a “couple of machine gunners” who made it through a “thicket of bombs,”…

Charter Arms has just launched the Boomer series, snub-nosed revolvers that feature ported barrels.Ported barrels are a very hot trend for carry pistols at the moment, and Charter Arms figured, why not give the same treatment to their revolvers? The result is the new Boomer series.Based on Charter Arms’ Bulldog line, the Boomer revolvers feature 2-inch extruded 416 stainless steel barrels with twin vertical ports for reduced muzzle flip, trenched rear sighting systems and concealed hammers. The lack of a traditional front sight or hammer should really help facilitate a snag-free draw, but you’re probably not going to win any…

Why If you Form 1 an NFA item, disregard whatever purported “truth” a low-information trash weblog told you and listen to what we’ve heard directly from the BATFE: You have to mark any personally manufactured NFA item. The BATFE has gotten so many questions due to this garbage rumor they’ve even been stamping some forms reminding folks it needs to take place. Minimum Requirements The depth must be no more shallow than .003 inch with a text size no smaller than 1/16th of an inch. But we actually recommend going deeper and larger. Here’s why: If you only engrave to…

We know that when we are faced with the threat of serious bodily injury or death, our focus will be on the threat. This is not so much a conscious effort as a fact that our natural survival system has taken over. For that reason, our manipulation of our defensive equipment must be practiced until its operation and deployment almost become subconscious functions. This is the main reason so many of us caution against the continual switching back and forth of that equipment—especially our daily-carry guns. While firing the defensive shot should certainly be a conscious decision, getting the gun…

Chiappa Firearms is starting out the new year by introducing a new L-Frame Rhino chambered in .44 Magnum, the new Chiappa 60 DS series. This product expansion represents the brand exploring larger-bore revolvers in its unique bottom-barrel, low-bore-axis revolver designs. Built around the Rhino’s trademark bottom-chamber-firing geometry, the new .44 Magnum 60 DS reduces muzzle rise and straightens recoil impulse, a decisive advantage when moving a high-pressure cartridge through a revolver platform. The enlarged L-Frame introduces updated ergonomics, including twin finger stops and a revised grip interface for improved leverage and repeatable hand placement. Despite the larger chambering, the frame…

The late 1970s was an interesting era when it came to compact pistols. In the United States, the .45 ACP was king; 9 mm was something best left to Europeans. This was well before NRA helped pass the first Right-To-Carry law in Florida in 1987, and there was limited demand for concealable pistols—but there was some. To combine .45 ACP punch with a very compact pistol, inventor and manufacturer Philip R. Lichtman set up the Semmerling Corporation in Massachusetts. The Semmerling LM-4 was the smallest .45 ACP handgun available to date. It was not a semi-automatic, but rather a manually…

In this review, Dr. Will Dabbs gets hands-on with the new Springfield Armory SAINT Victor pistol chambered in .300 AAC Blackout. This new handgun sports a threaded 9.5″ barrel, making it a perfect choice for suppressed shooting. Read on to see how well it performed with a can and a variety of super- and subsonic ammo loads. The SAINT Victor pistol was loaned to the author by the company for this evaluation. The Springfield Armory SAINT Victor pistol chambered in .300 BLK makes for an excellent truck gun due to its size and versatility. The Springfield Armory SAINT Victor .300…