The first grenade core was accidentally discovered on Nov. 28, 2018, by Virginia Department of Historic Resources staff examining relics recovered from the Betsy, a British ship scuttled during the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. The grenade's iron jacket had dissolved, but its core of black powder remained potent. Within a month or so, more than two dozen were found. (Virginia Department of Historic Resources via The Virginian-Pilot)
In an uh-oh episode of historic proportions, hand grenades from the last major battle of the Revolutionary War recently and repeatedly scrambled bomb squads in Virginia's capital city.
Wait – they had hand grenades in the Revolutionary War? Indeed. Hollow iron balls, filled with black powder, outfitted with a fuse, then lit and thrown.
And more than two dozen have been sitting in cardboard boxes at the Department of Historic Resources, undetected for 30 years.
Editor’s Note: This article by Oriana Pawlyk originally appeared on Military.com, the premier source of information for the military and veteran community.
The MQ-9 Reaper drone is already the deadliest UAV in the U.S. Air Force’s arsenal. Designed with a payload capacity of 3,700 pounds and armament of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 Paveway II bombs, it’s no wonder that Air Force officials announced in February that the Reaper would gradually come to replace the iconic MG-1 Predator drone as a fixture of the global war on terror.
At the beginning of March, U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center unveiled an unusual new addition to the military’s arsenal in the form of a grenade launcher made almost exclusively from 3D-printed components — and fires 3D-printed grenades. Even better, the gearheads at ARDEC gave this fearsome weapon a name worthy of its firepower: RAMBO.
