Fifth-Gen Kalashnikov

Seems more of an evolutionary 'tart-up' job than revolutionary and 'next-gen'.

Though in the old days, incorporation of Picatinny rails in the design would have been considered a Counter-Revolutionary  'gulag' offense.  Oh, they would have copied them, they just would have named it something else.

Hat Tip: The Unwanted Blog

Making 'Global Hawk' Brand Defense Sausage

Narrative Building in lieu of say, actual Defense Planning

RQ-4 Global Hawk Preflight at 0-Dark Hundred Hours

Exhibit 1
June 14, 2011. A Secretary of Defense Acquisition Memorandum released following a review of the Global Hawk program. The memorandum states:
1. “…the continuation of the program is essential to national security.”
2. “…there are no alternatives to the program which will provide acceptable capability to meet the joint military requirement at less cost.”

Exhibit 2.
January 27, 2012. Air Force To Cut 10,000; Global Hawks Get Warehoused

Hmmmm….

So what is the only thing that has ‘changed’ that could have caused such a shift in the Global hawk fortunes in the interim?

Oh yeah - A fatally-flawed world-view was fraudulently packaged into a document posing as a National Defense Strategy and unleashed to provide ‘cover’ for a ton of stupidity that we will experience between now and the end of the current Administration with which we are now plagued.

2013 can’t come soon enough.

BTW: Someone must have telegraphed the ‘Narrative’ early. Senator John Hoven of North Dakota (Where the Global Hawks were to be based) was calling for the Global Hawk to continue back in December ’11.

DoDBuzz Debuzzed, With A 'Major' Tool Running Amok in the Threads

I'm going hammer and tong (see comments to this article) with a poser (On Airpower & CAS in this case) going by the handle 'major.rod' over 'CAS Myths' and after I came back to the thread today I find he dropped another steaming 'pile' a  day or two ago. Suddenly DODBuzz isn't letting me respond to this guy's idiotic comments. DOD Buzz won't even let me post the following as a 'Reply' to one of my own comments:

F-35 Tail Hook Risks? Meh.

Other than using the word ‘blame’ in the headline to draw the reader’s eye there’s a pretty good piece at the Navy Times on the F-35 tail hook ‘issue’.
While I don’t know who made the “claim” mentioned within this excerpt, this seems to contain a series of reasonable observations:

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group, Fairfax, Va., said the claim that the F-35C could never land on a ship was always highly dubious. ''They turned the YF-17 into a carrier plane, why couldn't they correct carrier-hook problems here?'' he said. ''This does not appear to be a killer problem.'' Flight testing is designed to uncover and fix problems with a new aircraft, Aboulafia said. ''This is the kind of problem that might come out during the flight testing of a carrier-based plane,'' he said.

Lest someone think arresting gear functionality should have been a ‘slam dunk’ out of the box, “History” has shown it more to be something that has to be worked out with every plane. See this excellent blog for a pretty decent survey of past designs and challenges. Even if the 'first round redesign' doesn’t provide the final ‘answer‘ to the problem, it will probably provide more data to support further tweaking of the arresting gear. But if the problem isn’t fixed the first time, I can almost guarantee there will be near-instantaneous 'doomsayer' claims that something much more draconian/costly/delaying 'will have to be done’. I am just mentioning it now so you can get some ear protection before the caterwauling commences. I'd wait to get the data from the next round of tests, and get excited only if the data told me I should.
PS: I’d discuss the technical challenges of successful arresting gear development in more detail, (beginning with the fact that when it comes to an aircraft system interacting with the ship system what we are talking about is essentially a chaotic meta-system) but most people’s eyes would glaze over before I was finished. OK, I admit it, since I deal with this kind of stuff from 9 to 5 it would be no fun for me either. The article linked above covers what may be the critical bits in this case anyway.
Just think about ALL the variables that might be involved and you’ll get the idea.

Nice short F-8 tail hook...but a loooooong way back from the landing gear. Image from Wikipedia Commons

Why The Public is So Poorly Informed...

(about on just about da** near everything)

It is the convergence of the Chump Effect with the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

Providers and Consumers: there's plenty of 'blame' to go around.

H/T Instapundit.

Sweetman Goes "All In" on F-35 QLR

I think maybe he is trying to 'nag' his way onto the F-35 program.
(But it's just too much fun watching him flail around)

Bill Sweetman has his spleen vent set to ‘Full Snark Mode’ in an ongoing series of posts that tail-twist the F-35 program over the F-35 Quick Look Report and what (he thinks) 'it all means’ from the Ragin’ Hedge Baby from the Shires© perspective. I noticed that in the manner of Brave Sir Robin said gadfly decided to go deep (as in shovel ready) on this topic while the Aerospace industry in general is in its ‘end of year’ hiatus. I have had more important things to do (and kill) than negative memes over the Christmas break, so I haven’t given too much attention to the uninformed ruminations of itinerant journolistas, their codependent Non-State-Actor friends, or the rest of the merry Anti-JSF tribe until tonight.

I hit the ARES blog looking for details on the latest Saudi/F-15 deal before I head back to work tomorrow and what do I find? Yeah…. another Sweetman ‘piece’ taking a swipe at the F-35 and ‘its supporters’ titled: “F-35 Proponents Say The Darndest Things”. No snark there eh?
The article is as full of the simplton-ian analysis we’ve come to expect from the source, but what really caught my eye was the closer:

So where do all these tales come from? Check out an Australian government audit report, released on December 20. In its discussion of Australia's JSF program (p261), it notes that one of 11 "major challenges" to the project, on the same level as dealing with schedule and cost changes, is to

"appropriately manage JSF misinformation in the media".

Do they mean correcting misinformation, or maintaining misinformation at an appropriate level?

Since Mr. Sweetman is apparently at a loss (in more ways than one) as to what the Australian GOVERNMENT AUDIT (i.e. outside the JSF program) report means, let us use a suitable example of media misinformation to help correct misinformation and perhaps clarify for Mr. Sweetman to what the Australian Government seems to be referring.

Let’s see. How about a corrective rewrite of of Bill Sweetman’s “Why the QLR is News” piece, so that it is a little less ‘misinformative’? (Corrections and new content in Blue)

-------------

There is no faster way for an adept flack to kill take 'cheap shots' at a story program than to conflate a the "nothing really new on the technical front” report into a “this program is as bad as we wished” gambit. We've seen a good deal of that in the six days since the Quick Look Review report escaped from its cage.
A typical story might use a report that quotes an unattributed analyst as saying that:

"the F-35 was turning out to have the same schedule, cost and technical issues suffered by most aircraft programs, including Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner. 'It's not a pleasant picture, but it's far from a terminal one either'."

and diminish the impact of said quote by adding something like:

If "most programs" had the Dreamliner's issues, this would be one depressingly incompetent industry to work in. And the 787's problems so far have translated into strategic failure: The goal was to bury Airbus in the mid-market, but the old-school A330 is still alive and kicking, while Airbus outmaneuvered a distracted Boeing in the narrow-body segment.

Notice the overt obfuscation of the main “same schedule, cost and technical issues suffered by most aircraft programs” point by focusing on an alleged Dreamliner failure? So what if the final Dreamliner story is yet to be written? It would appear that it is apparently within “someone’s” journalistic license to ‘beg the question’ even when employing misdirection.
Using evidence in hand, and avoiding unsubstantiated speculation, a disinterested observer would have to conclude that the JSF problems are not may or may not be terminal, and he or she would be cautious concerning a report that was built upon largely antiquated data and not assert that but the idea that a major take-away from the first full year of flying (F-35s this year have flown twice as many sorties as the program had notched up a year ago) is that the production ramp-up needs to be stopped is something new, and not normal. After all, greater concurrency has been seen more often since at least WW2.
For the F-35, it's also not news that a critical report leaked as ‘fast’ as it did. That Such a leak in this day and age can just as readily be  usually an indication of a malcontent in any of the program office, test, operational, or competing (F-18?) communities rather than evidence of any high-level dissent. It could even be evidence of political hardball coming from the office of the Acting Undersecretary’s office (After all, it was, Jame G. Burton, one of the less famous and perhaps less capable but slightly more honorable of the so-called ‘reformers’in the 70s-80s who observed (to paraphrase) ‘Acting’ Something-secretaries tend to very much want to be permanent Something-secretaries.
Most Some of the press coverage to-date misses the point of the report’s incomplete nature on the subject of concurrency,and instead the coverage seems to be focusing on building a narrative which is asserts there is an unusual and the looming collision between discovery in flight and fatigue testing and planned production increases .
If one desired to build a narrative around the meaning of the QLR supporting a ‘negative’ POV, they might focus on the report’s concerns that Ggiven the status of testing, and the lag time in developing and implementing fixes, the report concludes that there is:

"a high risk that rework and retrofit costs... will continue to be realized across the entire LRIP production flow" - including LRIP-9 deliveries in 2017. Those aircraft are due to be ordered just after high-angle-of-attack flight tests are completed, and while second-lifetime fatigue tests are still under way.”

While the previous is 'true' (to a point), informed and balanced reporting would also note that the QLR does not take into consideration the risks and associated costs of NOT proceeding as planned and the threats those risks pose to the program. It is not as if the fact that the technical aspects of a program pose far less total cost risk to a program than programmatic aspects is not well known. The largest drivers have been shown to be #1: quantity changes (22 percent), #2: requirements growth (13 percent), and #3: schedule changes (9 percent).
Competent reportage would take into consideration what is missing from the QLR and what the impacts of following the recommendations might afflict on the program. The QLR recommends changing quantities and schedule, two of the three largest cost drivers? Where is the reportage asking the hard questions on that apparent conflict?

A cynical member of the press might attempt to counter the fact that the The ‘play-down’ reports also invariably note that the report did not recommend terminating production. Such an approach might employ a snark-laden false allegory such as:

That's the good-news story? "Hi, dear, how was the check-up?" "Fantastic! I don't have Ebola yet!"

When a truer, albeit far less entertaining, one might read:

“That's the good-news story? "Hi, dear, how was the check-up?" "Doc says I have to work on things but nothing that we don't think we can work out."

Of course, why bring up the allegory at all if it doesn’t support the negative meme drivng a story in the first place?
Let's look at that the wording in detail (page 7). The QLR team separated the program issues into four categories. Category I: "Areas where a fundamental design risk has been identified with realized consequences sufficient to preclude further production."
They didn't find any, but those with bias, or insufficient technical backgrounds and experience might brush this point off by asserting something akin to:

"it would have been a damning indictment of program management if they had. For a team of outsiders to walk in and, in 30 days, discover an unfixable problem sufficient to terminate the program on the spot would point to ineptitude at best."

 When in reality, a problem of that magnitude on a program as far along as the F-35 is more often as plainly obvious to an experienced program manager as the nose on any obdurate journalist’s face.
As noted above, the categories were set by the QLR team on the basis of what they found. Also, the team's original charter was not to determine whether the program should be whacked, but to investigate concerns about testing delays, and concurrency costs.
It would be beyond the pale, but alas I fear not beyond the limits of some in the aerospace trade press to read into the QLR something that is not there: to create a ‘absence of evidence is evidence of something’ argument. Perhaps by contriving a question similar to:

So if they didn't find any Category I issues, why is there a Category I at all - except to provide the program's defenders with a soundbite? If anyone has a brilliant alternative answer to that question, I'm all ears.

But you may ask “Certainly, no journalist, not even one apparently having an axe to grind on this particular topic, would fail to grasp that when one organizes information, the FIRST step is to create the categories for what you MIGHT find and THEN categorize what is found, as it is found, by the predetermined categories?”

Apparently not.

 -------------

"Happy New Year" indeed

Merry Christmas To All GIs Everywhere

(Bumped: Originally posted Christmas Eve 2007 & time hasn't changed a thing)

Just after Thanksgiving every year I start thinking about how Christmas in the military can be a little different than the average American’s. Maybe it is because when you join up, you gain another family to think about: and you think about them every year, whether we’re at war or at peace.
I get particularly sappy about it I guess, because I worked my first 10 Christmas Eves and Days.
My first Christmas Eve with my new family was when I was still in Basic Training. We were far enough along in the program that on “non-training” days we had some liberty in the immediate area of our WWII-era barracks (only the wusses were in the 1000-man dorms at that time ~wink). We actually built a Christmas tree of sorts, out of 7-Up and Coke cans on a picnic-type table while waiting our turn to call home from an adjacent bank of payphones. I spent my first Military Christmas Eve sitting around the aluminum can tree exchanging family Christmas traditions and stories.
My second Christmas was when I learned about “SP Augmentees”. I spent 12 hours guarding a stateside bomb dump with a brick (radio) and an empty M-16. The single guys pulled ‘the duty’ on Christmas Eve and Day so the married guys could be with their families and the married guys who “didn’t party” pulled the duty on New Year’s Eve and Day. It was a ‘win-win’ for everyone. For the next eight years it was usually the same thing. In Alaska and Iceland, the Godless Soviets liked to exercise the Air Defense Intercept Zones on holidays -- So we’d spend Christmas building, fixing, and hauling weapons to the flight line or, if we were lucky, we’d just spend all night plowing and re-plowing the road between the munitions storage and alert facilities IN CASE the Bears came to town. Now in the end we weren’t getting shot at, and we were always pretty thankful for that. But we knew it could have been different any time some world leader cleared his throat or tripped over his own feet.
The public tends to forget how close we came to Armageddon several times over the length of the Cold War, if they ever noticed at all, and the American Military is what lets them get away with such poor situational awareness and a peculiar forgetfulness. As our brothers and sisters now serving can attest, a lot of the Public doesn’t really like to think too much about how dangerous the rest of world is, and some of the less gifted in the populace actually think it isn’t that dangerous of a world at all.
Thank you to all of those now serving EVERYWHERE for joining and becoming part of the continuum: forever protecting the appreciative and the oblivious alike and without reservation. May you have a most merry and memorable Christmas with many, many, more to come.
(original photo was ABC News)

Success! Thanks Again For Everything Brother B!

I'd like to thank the fine folks at B&L Outfitters at the Clairette Bar and Grill once again for hosting me on my hunts this season, and for setting the standards so high while providing brotherly encouragement.
A couple of old adages about hunting have certainly applied this year.

First: If you're going to hunt, Hunt! The deer don't have a schedule and nothing beats persistence and consistency. Yesterday I did the AM and PM hunts and was still exhausted at 4AM today when the alarm went off. I almost slept in based upon what happened yesterday, but today, the ebbing moon rose an hour later this morning (new moon on Christmas BTW) and there was a little more cloud cover which gave me the edge moving to the blind. Yesterday, all the deer were jumpy due to high winds. In the morning I had some of the 'local girls' show up, then a forked-horn I've come to think of as Decoy Boy would show up to chase them. The doe would run away and then come back, then Decoy Boy would come back. All through the morning hunt. They were even looping behind me and coming in from different directions. The old doe did not like my blind, and stomped and huffed a couple of times, but she was more concerned with Decoy Boy, and then it was as if she forgot about me. Afternoon session was much the same, only Decoy Boy came in first. Normally what has happened in the PM is his running-buddy, a marginally-legal, "barely-8" point (Eastern Count) would soon follow. Not last night. Last night Decoy Boy moved off quickly and was hanging in the bushes until the doe showed up, and then it was the AM session all over again, until it got too dark to shoot. I had to sit it out to keep from being busted until the Decoy Boy finally moved off. This AM was also projected to be colder and calmer, so I dragged myself out of bed, knowing full well adage number two still applied, but also knowing that the deer weren't going to parade past at midday either.

Second: They call it "hunting" and not "shooting" for a reason. It's a good thing I like the 'hunt' as much as, if not more than, the 'kill'. Because there is a whole lot of the former and little of the latter even if you are lucky AND you're doing it right. In my younger days, I tended to focus on the finish and would feel disappointed when it didn't 'happen'. This year (and the last season about three years ago), I could have and did get 'skunked' (i.e. struck out) and still felt the season was worthwhile, and worth remembering.  I saw deer almost every session, knowing there was the right one (or three-four) cruising my Brother's ranch and surrounding area. This AM, before it was really light enough to count points on an antler, a big buck came in and didn't like my blind (my setup worked better for afternoon light. I think what he REALLY didn't like was the steam of my breath rising in the still air. I could see his breath coming out of him easier than I could see him. He was traveling with two other bucks, and he feinted into the clearing a couple of times, raised a false alarm flag but didn't spook. Those three bucks slinked through the brush on the other side of the clearing and  I got one look at the big guy's head when he paused to check my way once. Perhaps longer, higher tines on his rack, but they were also lighter in color and weight.
I thought that the AM session was going to end early on that note, when 2 then 3 then 4 doe moved in front of me, coming from the same direction as the earlier bucks. They were only on the scene a short while with the old doe casting evil looks my way and being the most cautious about moving into the clearing, when out stepped.....

The Chocolate 8 Point.

He's shown up on the trail cameras quite a bit, and considering it is a drought year, he was remarkably heavy-bodied. And I've always been impressed with his rack color, weight, and shape, but the real kicker was the mass and length of his brow tines.

 Gnarly Baby! 

With all the doe and this buck present I had to be painfully careful getting into firing position. I elected to only project my barrel out of the blind and scope the buck through the blind screen (still blew a small hole in the screen though ).

I dropped him in his tracks, but still don't understand how I could have missed my aimpoint as much as I did. I sighted in the new scope on this rifle with only 9 rounds, and the last 3 holes in my target you could cover with a nickel. Some of the error could be from having a live target and my excitement, but not all of it. I think it could be due to the fact I was using a shooting stick for the very first time (but not the last!) and I didn't secure my foregrip well enough. It would bother me a lot more if my poor aim had resulted in a prolonged death of the animal, but as the shot dropped him in place, I'm extremely pleased with the result.

BTW: I also learned that field dressing a deer is not the same as learning to ride a bike. If it has been more than 2 decades, you should probably have someone on your shoulder to knock the rust off.

Update 12/25/11: After reviewing game camera films, and a snapshot my Brother's neighbor took on Dec 7th, I've determined that this buck was the same one as in the first encounter that morning, and that he had just double-backed into the field of fire once his does came up and he thought the coast was clear. I'm always amazed at how different the deer appear in different light and backgrounds. I'm also convinced now that this is the same buck I watched for 20 minutes behind some brush back on the evening of the 8th and never gave me an opportunity to take a high percentage shot.
Later Note: made some typo and grammar corrections on 28Dec11.

F-35: STILL Just a Typical "High-Tech" Program

But the point seems to gets lost on the casual observers, the Druids and the 'droids. I wonder if pictures would help them understand?

I've been considering for some time doing a graphic or series of graphics that would show the comparable development milestones and the fielding of technical capabilities of the F-35 and the planes it is slated to replace or other 'successful' legacy programs . I think this would help get the point across to the illiterate, innumerate, and just plain lazy. Of course it won't do a thing for the 'Haters', but they're more manageable without their chorus of enablers.

This is actually more time consuming than just iterating the facts in words, but points can be more compelling when graphically shown.  For example, when someone trots out the F-16XL as a 'simple' replacement for the F-16, do they know exactly how different the two designs are?

F-16 Block52 vs. F-16XL

The recent Admiral Venlet Vent-let has stirred much of the "hater" noise making the last few days and   graphics, a timeline perhaps,  might prove handy to point to in the future when beating down hysteria over the next gasping F-35 factoid-of-doom that comes up. 

Constructive and serious suggestions as to the design(s) to get the point across are welcome.

AR Project: Lower Complete

I got a great deal on a mil-spec UTG Pro 6-position collapsible stock, and buffer tube assembly. My initial thinking was that it would be "suitable" at least until I decided on one of the more 'robust' options, but when it arrived I found it of impressive quality (AND made in the USA). Right now, I think I'll keep it.

To install the stock, I needed an M4 stock wrench.  Several phone calls later and after dropping by 'Cheaper than Dirt' (CTD) first,  I found none available and all on 'backorder'. I was also looking for some spare piece parts, and those were unavailable at CTD at the moment as well. The catalog desk rep at CTD recommended I order the parts through Rock River Arms - and it was a good tip. I ordered the parts AND the wrench at what were the lowest prices that I'd seen (wrench was 6 bucks!) and the shipping via USPS was trivial. The magazine is a Magpul 5.56 20 Rd, picked up at the Carswell JRB BX gun shop (no sales tax). 

Next Decisions:

1) 16" or 20" stainless steel bull barrel?

2) Buy or build the upper? Dollar wise, it's very close. May come down to what bells and whistles I 'need' vs 'want'  

Poser Update: DT is aware of the problem

A DT/Military.com rep has contacted me: they're doing what they can.
The person responsible for managing the 'back-end' of the Military.com blogs is aware of the troll who has posed as me and is making sue DT is doing what it can to contain the outbreak'. I don't want to mention details because that could be counterproductive.

I know they're only able to do so much and I know what their limitations are. I also understand that they can't provide me with the little troll's e-mail and IP address, but I still wish they could - as I have access to certain...ahem,,,'technical' capabilities that I wouldn't mind employing in a just cause.

The 'troll factor' was a minor contributor to my getting out of a side web-design business I had in the 90's [main reasons being 1) the unreasonableness of small business demands for the $: the smaller the business, the more unreasonable the demands, and 2) getting stiffed by the same small businesses].

Of Imposters and Living Life

Well, yesterday an impostor using my handle trashed the Marine Corps at Defense Tech in the opening comment. I made a couple of comments in the last couple of days in different places but nothing about the Marine Corps Birthday. [An odd honor of sorts I suppose, having the trolls take a personal interest in you.]

So while the troll with no life is trying to smear my good name, I'm on vacation and was again out at my Brother's ranch yesterday and today (got back tonight).  Last night, the 'local girls' were out early.

It was a cloudless, gorgeous evening last night (tonight we had high clouds).

Tonight, the two older doe were out so early that there was only a few feet of shadow on the oat field, and I had to move the two early birds off just to get to my stand.  They came back later with three friends and moved down the field in front of me. I kept watching the top of the field and pretty soon (almost too dark) a nice buck came out. He scraped the ground and ran his antlers into some low branches and proceeded to move towards my position almost on a bee line.

He's that spot at the top of the field (sorry about the poor quality, but it was so dark I had the camera on 'aperature priority' and had to snap a quick one so I could have my rifle ready before he got too close.). He veered straight down the field towards the doe such that his line took him even to my position. As he approached, I decided he was the same pretty boy I saw last Saturday night pacing a doe in the same place, only tonight I could ID him as the non-typical 10-point (Eastern count) that has been showing up on my Brother's game cameras.

He looks like an 'eight' but he has nice little double brow tines. Nice buck, but next year (if he makes it) he might be a 'great' buck --his peak is yet to come. This guy worked his way down in front of me no more than thirty yards out. About the time he pulled even the wind from behind me picked up, and he caught some of my scent. He couldn't locate me, but he knew he didn't like me very much and after giving me a left view, a front view, and a right view, he decided to pull out fast - back to whence he came. It was a great show tonight. Thanks Brother B!

P.S. I'm looking for something more along the lines of a mature 'Hard Eight' or another mature buck that's showing up in the cameras. Meet Mr. Midnight:

DT, Winslow Wheeler and 'Manufacturing' Problems

Defense Tech is 'moderating' a comment of mine I tried to post on this thread. The last time they did this my comment disappeared into the Ether. I suspect it is an administrative thing where they don't like a .com, or an acronym vs. malevolence (how petty would it be otherwise?), but no matter-- I saved a draft first. I tried to post:

Stop the presses! Winslow Wheeler has discovered that the entire logistics support package for the F-35B was not prepositioned on the Wasp. Someone tell Winslow that the WASP is cruising about 80 miles from F-35B home base in Pax River and that this is NOT a supportability test. Then ask him exactly DoubleU Tee Eff is his point?  I would also suggest the unattributed 'author' of this piece refer to earlier Mil.com articles that note the 2 weeks was the shortest(!) expected period expected for this round of shipboard trials and that the WASP was booked for much longer. Are 'we' now beating up programs for accomplishing tasks slightly slower than the fastest possible time?

And this is what I got:

Update at 2005 Hrs: My guess is is that ol' Winslow Wheeler just couldn't let positive news get out on the F-35 without a little caviling. This fey attempt at shaping the budget battlefield is pathetic in light of the real story:

Bloomberg: The F-35B short-take off and vertical landing version finished three weeks of tests on the Marine amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, achieving “all planned flight envelope test points,” Joseph DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Joint Strike Fighter program, said in an e-mail. “We’ve been pleased with the initial sea trials” and the aircraft “performed to predictions.”

Update 25October2011: Eventually my comment appeared at DT sometime today with the original time tag from last night.

AR Project: It Has Begun

As I've noted elsewhere, I've never been a huge fan of the AR-15/M-16 family of rifles. Not because of the issues (largely mythical or self-inflicted) surrounding the AR, but because my experience was only with full-stocked M-16s on active duty. Aside from the fact that we qualified on some pretty worn-out armory queens every year, I never liked how the M-16 'fit' me. My attitude towards the ARs started changing some when a friend stuck behind the Moron Curtain in the People's Republic of Kalifornia let me try on his custom AR with an adjustable stock. Hey! - for once it didn't feel like I was holding a 2x4.
I couldn't rationalize buying/building one though just to have a .223, and I already have (almost) enough rifles in the larger calibers for hunting so I couldn't see shelling out the bucks for one.
Then the .300 Blackout round came to town. Suddenly, I could have a rifle to take to the range all year and shoot on the 'cheap' and just either swap out the barrel or more likely the 'upper' and take the same weapon hunting.
So today I went shopping for a 'lower' at the Ft Worth Gun Show. I had a goal to get a populated Mil-Spec 'lower' for under $200. I succeeded thanks to the folks at the SOG Armory table. I also got quite a few leads on the rest of the parts that I'll need as I go along.

No hurries and no worries on this build. I'm not looking to create the UberAR, just a useful one. Anyway, my deer rifle for this year is re-stocked, re-scoped, all 'snapped in' and Good to Go.

F-35B: an 'Audacious Display'

Dave Majumdar with Defense News reports:
"In an audacious display of confidence, the U.S. Marine Corps and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program office demonstrated short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) tests of the F-35B Lightning II to reporters onboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp on Oct. 18."

 Sorry Ladies!
Audacious? I suppose in some people's minds. I'd say the opening of the article smokes the 'no news is bad news' angle I've read in the comments at other sites. The rest of the article pretty much debunks darned near every negative speculation I've heard or read about the plane on the 'major' websites and their peanut galleries.  Oh! What shall we EVER fret over next?