After years in the works, the Army has finally deemed its new Modular Handgun System is officially ready for action — and that includes a few hundred just for general officers.
More than seven years ago, Iraq War hero Benjamin M. Wassell became the first person to be criminally prosecuted under New York State's SAFE Act, a controversial gun control law that has been applauded by advocates for victims of violent crimes but attacked by defenders of the right to bear arms.
State Police arrested Wassell, of Silver Creek, after alleging that he sold two semiautomatic "assault weapons" to an undercover investigator. Wassell, who suffered a brain injury from the explosion of an improvised bomb in Iraq, claimed he was confused by differing information that people gave him about the SAFE Act.
Engineers with the Army Research Laboratory are working on a new infantry weapon that, at half the weight and length of the M4 carbine, is capable of firing rounds at double the muzzle velocity of a standard-issue sidearm that could easily defeat enemy body armor.
Editor's Note: This article by Gina Harkins originally appeared on Military.com, a leading source of news for the military and veteran community.
U.S. Army weapons officials recently invited defense firms to design and build prototypes of an advanced fire control system that could equip the service's Next-Generation Squad Weapon with wind-sensing as well as facial-recognition technology.
The Prototype Opportunity Notice for the NGSW-Fire Control is intended to develop a system that "increases the soldier's ability to rapidly engage man sized targets out to 600 [meters] or greater while maintaining the ability to conduct Close Quarters Battle," according to the solicitation posted May 30 on FedBizOpps.gov.
In December 2003, soldiers of the U.S. Special Operations Command captured the Ace of Spades himself: Saddam Hussein.
The former Iraqi president, on the run since the capture of Baghdad, had appeared in a deck of playing cards with the profiles of other fugitive war criminals and naturally was the top card. Hussein, bedraggled and bereft, was armed with one of the rarest of handguns: the Glock 18, the full auto Glock.
The GAU-5A Aircrew Self Defense Weapon (U.S. Air Force/3rd Wing via Facebook)
After decades with nothing but pistols to defend themselves with in the event of a successful ejection over enemy territory, Air Force pilots are officially rocking compact versions of a rifle that the U.S. military has used since Vietnam.
In the last month, airmen have started receiving the GAU-5A Aircrew Self Defense Weapon, a heavily-modified version of the shortened 5.56mm M16 derivative that U.S. service members once brandished in the 1960s as the CAR-15 or "Colt Commando"
