Author: Grumpy
Categories
Definitely Good To Go !!!
SIG Sauer this week officially introduced the version of the military’s new Next Generation rifle that won’t require talking to a recruiter.
Last April, the New Hampshire-based firearms giant made headlines around the globe by pulling down the award for the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons, a series of 6.8mm rifles and light machine guns and their companion suppressors that are planned to replace the current 5.56 NATO small arms in front line service. The rifle, originally introduced as the XM5 and recently renamed the XM7, is based on the company’s gas-piston action MCX platform and uses SIG’s in-house developed SLX suppressor system.
While the as-issued XM7 currently being sent to the Army runs a standard 15.3-inch barrel (as measured over its muzzle device) and SIG released to the public a limited run of suppressed 13-inch barreled commemoratives last year that required two tax stamps, the MCX Spear will be fully NFA-compliant in at least most of its variants.
We were able to get a sneak peek at the consumer MCX Spear late last year while visiting SIG’s plant in New Hampshire but were sworn to secrecy on the program.
I thought it was pretty cool.
Maybe not $4,000 kinda cool, but still pretty neat.
Categories
Remember when…
It took three minutes for the TV to warm up.
Nobody owned a purebred dog.
When a quarter was a decent allowance, and made with real Silver!
You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. Made with real copper! Looking to see if it was a 1943 copper penny!***
You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time. And you didn’t pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot.
Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box. Not to mention Cracker Jacks!
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed…and they did it!
When a 57 Chevy was everyone’s dream car… to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady.
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked.
Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game.
Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
*** According to the American Numismatic Association, the 1943 copper–alloy cent is one of the most idealized and potentially one of the most sought–after items in American numismatics. Nearly all circulating pennies at that time were struck in zinc–coated steel because copper and nickel were needed for the Allied war effort.
Approximately 40 1943 copper–alloy cents are known to remain in existence. Coin experts speculate that they were struck by accident when copper–alloy 1–cent blanks remained in the press hopper when production began on the new steel pennies.
The tiger shark eats most anything it can catch.
On Thursday, April 25, 1935, a proof reader for The Sydney Morning Herald named Narcisse Leo Young was out enjoying the collection of exotic fish at the Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths near Sydney, Australia. Their accumulated menagerie was impressive for its day. The newest addition was an 11.5-foot Tiger shark that had been caught by an angler a week before some two miles out to sea. All were mesmerized by the massive beast as it cruised menacingly around its ample tank.
Narcisse saw the big shark begin to behave erratically. The beast suddenly wretched and deposited some unfortunate guy’s left arm in the pool. Aquarium personnel duly retrieved the ghastly limb. She later reported that the stench was “frightful.”
The arm was duly presented to police on the justifiable assumption that its former owner might yet have a vested interest in it. A forensic analysis showed that the stump had been severed cleanly with a cutting tool. There the case likely would have languished had it not been for a certain distinctive tattoo.
Adorning the unfortunate man’s severed limb was a crude depiction of two boxers in mid-punch. There was also a short length of rope tied around the wrist. While the arm had clearly seen better days, the tattoo remained both unique and intact. The authorities documented the curious ink extensively.
Three days after the shark’s unfortunate performance it was sacrificed for the greater good. Here the tale gets even weirder. Inside the creature was found a smaller shark that had apparently done the actual arm eating.
Behold the regurgitated shark arm. This distinctive tattoo gave
police insight as to the arm’s original owner.
The fingers were surprisingly intact, so the cops were able to retrieve usable fingerprints. The prints were traced to a small-time thug named Jim Smith, who had gone missing nearly three weeks before. His wife Gladys and brother Edward positively identified the tattoo.
Jim Smith was a known associate of a crooked local businessman named Reginald Holmes and a former soldier-turned-criminal named Patrick Brady. Holmes was a boat-builder by trade who used his fast powerboats to retrieve cocaine shipments dropped from passing ships to make a little dark money on the side. These three model citizens supported themselves by running a variety of rackets ranging from check forgery to insurance fraud.
The criminal fraternity is a fickle thing indeed, and the successful businessman Reginald Holmes had the most to lose. Diligent police work uncovered some compelling circumstantial evidence tying the now unarmed (an intentionally awkward metaphor) Smith with the veteran Brady, as well as some good old-fashioned blackmail of the bent businessman Holmes. Now distraught over the inevitable brewing scandal, Reginald Holmes retired to Sydney harbor aboard one of his boats and shot himself in the forehead with a .32-caliber automatic pistol.
Alas, the synergistic combination of Holmes’ thick skull and his little mouse gun resulted in nothing more than a flattened slug and a killer headache. Reggie Holmes was knocked into the water by the blow but revived in short order. He then remounted his personal speedboat and led the harbor patrol on a merry chase for several hours before finally being apprehended.
What likely got Jim Smith in deep with the criminal Brady in the first place was his reported cooperation with police as an informant. Now, Reginald Holmes saw a cozy relationship with law enforcement as his lifeline out of this mess. The following month he spilled the beans to Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews.
It seemed that Brady had indeed killed and dismembered the hapless Jim Smith. Always game to optimize his return on investment, Brady then materialized at Holmes’ domicile with Mr. Smith’s severed arm in tow. He brandished the appendage to prove he was serious and then purportedly demanded Holmes pay him 500 pounds. Brady left the arm at Holmes’ place as a token of his sincerity. Not wishing to alarm the missus unduly, Reggie Holmes drove to nearby Maroubra and disarmed himself in the ocean. It was here that the sharks apparently first became involved.
A few days later, the businessman Holmes was found dead in his car of an apparent suicide. This time he had been shot three times in the chest. Though sometimes forensic evidence can indeed be difficult to interpret, even I know that it is nigh impossible to commit suicide by shooting yourself three times in succession. Holmes had an appointment to testify against Brady later that day. It was here the lawyers got involved.
Brady’s Solicitor, Clive Evatt, asserted that his client could not be convicted of murder on the strength of a single severed arm barfed up by a shark with gastrointestinal issues. He alleged that the arm “did not constitute a body” and that many people were thriving who had lost an arm or worse. With the prosecution’s star witness now finally demised, the case imploded, and Brady walked free.
Patrick Brady maintained his innocence for the next 30 years. In the spring of 1965, he died peacefully at the Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney at the age of 76. Recent analysis has posited that Holmes actually hired a hitman to end his own moral misery and that Brady had indeed been innocent of that particular crime, at least. Despite some diligent Googling, I was unable to ascertain a final disposition on the arm.
The one-year anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine was marked by a torrent of commentary and events remarking on what the war has meant and speculation about what is in store. For the most part, however, there has been little reflection on how much was incorrectly assessed since late 2021, particularly by persons or institutions who were wrong. That may be one of the biggest lessons of the war that should be taken to heart in 2023 and beyond: Assessments must be better.
It is hard to measure in hindsight what the consensus was, but it is worth reviewing some of the dominant projections and views and just how wrong they were. Here are a few, for example: “Russia would not invade Ukraine.” It did. “If Russia invaded Ukraine, it would only have minor aims in the Donbas.” Its goals were far larger. “Russia would crush the Ukrainian military in a couple of weeks.” It did not.
Western anti-tank weapons such as the Lockheed Martin Javelin and Saab’s NLAW were decisive. They helped Ukraine but did not defeat Russia. Tanks were again pronounced obsolete. Yet Ukraine wants at least 300 tanks, and Poland announced major orders from the U.S. and South Korea. The value of rotary-wing aircraft also was questioned after an initial Russian helicopter assault failed. But then Poland ordered Boeing AH-64 Apaches, and the U.S. proceeded to award a Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft contract to Bell Textron.
Another projection was that sanctions and export controls would crush Russia’s economy. They have imposed costs on Russia, but it is manufacturing weapons that include Western microelectronics, and its economy is not in the gutter.
Some observers said China would not dare help Russia. But it has in minor ways, and China could provide substantially more help in 2023. Some said that Putin would not risk a broader mobilization of Russia or that he would fall. Putin has mobilized more widely, but he has not fallen. Many expected that Ukraine would not be able to mount a major counteroffensive, and yet it has. And there were worries that countries in the Middle East and North Africa would starve and Europe would freeze. Fortunately, neither has happened.
I used to work for a research director who stated that “surprises” were a Wall Street myth. Someone knew if a quarter’s shipments were going to be missed or there was a major cost overrun. A turnaround could be delivering far better results than recognized by outsiders. Bob Lutz of Chrysler discusses this in his book Guts.
“Surprises” also may be a military-geopolitical myth. The U.S. and other European intelligence communities were prescient in warning that Russia would invade. People who had observed Russian military exercises or worked with its military units could attest to its performance. Some individuals know how Russian logistics and maintenance compare with NATO practices and standards. Some know the quality of Ukraine’s officers and soldiers.
Another “surprise” is economic and defense-industrial: In the spring of 2022, analyses noted how dependent Russia’s industry had become on European and Asian machine tools. Coupled with the brain drain of Russian engineers fleeing the country, I thought its defense sector would face insurmountable problems supplying the military.
Clearly, Russia’s defense sector has struggled, but the Royal Services Institute has done excellent work documenting how Western microelectronics are still finding their way into Russian weapons. Data compiled by Matt Klein and published on his blog “The Overshoot” shows that the value of total exports at the end of 2022 were 15% below their monthly preinvasion average.
Some current and emerging narratives on the Russia-Ukraine war are worth probing. One is the provision of Western combat aircraft to Ukraine, notably Lockheed Martin F-16s. The fighters will be provided eventually, I expect, but I doubt they will be decisive in tipping the balance of the war in Ukraine’s favor.
Another narrative is that no end to the war is in sight. I don’t know how this war will end, but wars typically end in a negotiated armistice or cease-fire—the Korean War in 1953, multiple Arab-Israeli wars, Iran and Iraq in 1988 and the Desert Storm conflict of 1991 are all examples. Or they end with the total defeat and collapse of one of the combatants, such as happened in South Vietnam in 1975 and Iraq in 2003.
Surprises are part of war, as 2022 has amply demonstrated, and we are certain to see more surprises in 2023 that confound dominant narratives. Ukraine’s offensive could be highly successful in routing Russian forces. Or Ukraine could lose the armor and other kit supplied to it in a poorly executed offensive against a Russian military that might have learned from events last year.
Contributing columnist Byron Callan is a director at Capital Alpha Partne
