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Maybe its incompetence or maybe it's something more, but in the end does it really matter when dead is dead? According to State Department and military sources, dozens of highly armored vehicles called GMV's, provided by the United States, are now missing. The vehicles feature GPS navigation as well as various sets of weapon mounts and can be outfitted with smoke-grenade launchers. U.S. Special Forces undergo significant training to operate these vehicles. Fox News is told the vehicles provided to the Libyans are now gone. Along with the GMV's, hundreds of weapons are now missing, including roughly 100 Glock pistols...

Shooting and discussing the iconic M16 / AR15 / M4 platform. The upper on this select fire lower is actually my 6920 Colt, which performs flawlessly. Thanks again to Silencerco for bringing by a nice bag of "toys."

Bikini-clad, gun-toting Israeli woman becomes an Internet sensation A photo of a gun-wielding, bikini-clad woman standing on a crowded Tel Aviv beach has become an Internet sensation, with thousands of viewers curious about whether the brunette beauty is part of Israel's military and why she wasn't in uniform with her weapon in tow. The newspaper Haaretz notes that 'To an Israeli, the photo makes perfectly practical sense. When soldiers take their weapon off military premises, they must guard it closely and keep it on their person, at all times. Having one's weapon stolen is harshly punished with time in military...

I need a little research help. I am looking for info about companies that ‘rehab’ or refurbish small weapons for the military. Most interested in rehab of Colt M4 and Bushmaster M4. Large scale projects under contracts Who’s doing it. What specs. Costs or bids per unit.

Kit Up spoke with Army Secretary John McHugh this morning at a round table interview with top defense scribes in DC. I pinged him on the glacial pace of the improved carbine program (the replacement or redesign of the M4) and he seemed to indicate that while he sees the program as proceeding apace — given the requirements and bureaucratic hurdles with such a massive change — the end result will be a "replacement" of the M4, not just a revamped version, say, with a gas piston operating system or tweaked components. We have a two part plan to over...

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Looking for advice on M4 alternatives

Calling it “the biggest overhaul of service rifles in nearly 50 years,” the Army soon will send soldiers to Afghanistan with new M4A1 carbines. Upgrades to the M4 include a more resilient barrel, ambidextrous controls and a full-automatic setting. Add better ammunition, and soldiers will have a more lethal weapon to fight insurgents, according to Program Executive Office Soldier, which introduced the improvements. The new carbines are expected to be integrated into the force starting next year. Soldiers in Afghanistan expressed enthusiasm about the improvements, especially the ability to shoot on fully automatic. “That would be sweet. You could definitely...

I'm considering the purchase of an improvable automatic rifle to augment my personal collection, and am looking for some input and guidance. There are a lot of options available and I hate reinventing the wheel. I would like to find a mainframe AR-15 that I can improve and expand upon but I am not sure of the best way to do it. I've had my eye on the gun trader classified for my area here and to no surprise there are a lot of guns to choose from. I've found a couple of AR-15's that are way up in price...

..."The Gilboa is an assault rifle "based on the M-16, but with all the necessary improvements" and the Corner-Shot is a special Israeli technology which allows soldiers to shoot from behind a corner with the use of video camera and a special rotating rifle."

The Army expects to field the new sniper rifle, the XM2010, by January. And conversion kits for the M4 rifle will come next year. A panel of program managers from Program Executive Office Soldier met Oct. 14 at the Pentagon to discuss the status of several programs in the PEO's portfolio. Included in the discussion was the status of the new sniper rifle, development of the Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern uniform for use in Afghanistan, Mounted Soldier System development, and the improvement program for the M4 carbine. Col. Douglas Tamilio, program manager for Soldier Weapons, said the Army will...

Okay, this wasn't a bench-by-bench comparison. But I did shoot one rifle last week at my range, and the other rifle today at a guest range. Both ranges are in Florida, if you care, on opposite coasts. Both rifles were comparable M-4gerys. Top end or close to to top end. (Not junk.) Similar stocks, barrels, etc. I'm not going to mention the makes, because it's not the point of my essay tonight. Trust me, both are fine, fine rifles that are capable of greater accuracy than I ever will lend to them. Okay. Rifle #1 sports a 1 power EOTech...

-3 Communications subsidiary EOTech, Inc. in Ann Arbor, MI received a $25 million sole-source, firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract, to provide their optical sighting system for U.S. Special Operations Command’s M4A1 carbines. Work will be performed in Ann Arbor, MI and is expected to be complete by May 2015. $262,636 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year, on Sept 30/10. The US Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division in Crane, IN manages this contract (N00164-10-D-JN68). EOTech offers a unique technology, thanks to its Holographic Weapon Sight. The firm says that their night-vision compatible sight combines ranging and aiming...

(WSB Radio) -- An Army veteran home on leave claims he was beaten and robbed over the weekend at a northwest Atlanta apartment complex. In a complaint filed with Atlanta police, the soldier, who doesn't want to be identified, told investigators he was sitting in his car with his cousin at the Rolling Bend Apartments when a group of men approached the car. He believes the cousin, T-J, set him up. The victim told Channel 2 Action News "they were coming up to the car and I noticed T-J hit the lock button, the unlock button, they were coming up...

The Rolling Green hills of Sonora, California, no longer lure prospectors with the promise of gold, but for Matthew Hagerty the draw is just as powerful: They’re a secluded hideaway ideal for perfecting his military invention, called SmartSight. Ten years in the making, SmartSight is a gun-cam system that allows a soldier to see around corners and shoot targets without putting himself in the line of fire. It consists of a wireless video camera mounted to the rail of an M4 or .308 SOCOM carbine, a small computer worn on a military vest, and a thumbnail-size color head-up display affixed...

The Times (the British one) has a story about the continuing debate over the 7.62mm round versus the 5.56mm as employed in the long range firefights in Afghanistan. The story asserts that the 5.56mm round used in the M4 rifle “lacks sufficient velocity and killing power in long-range firefights.” As Defense Tech readers know, we’ve covered this issue before. As for the stopping power of the 5.56mm round, that very topic came up at a roundtable discussion I attended with the Army’s Program Executive Office Soldier last month at Aberdeen Test Center, Md. It led to an interesting discussion about...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lockheed Martin a $3.93 million contract to develop a rifle-scope attachment to enhance soldiers’ marksmanship capabilities. The Dynamic Image Gunsight Optic or DInGO system will enable soldiers to accurately view targets at varying distances without changing scopes or suffering a decrease in optical resolution. The system will enhance soldiers’ ability to accurately hit targets at a range of between three and 600 meters. DInGO automatically calculates the range with a low power laser rangefinder, digitally zooms in on it and accounts for environmental conditions such as wind using sensors built into the...

Soldiers already have uniforms that blend them into their surroundings. Now there's instructions on how to have a weapon that blends in too. In April, the Army released instructions on how Soldiers can apply spray paint to their M4 or M16 rifle, without decreasing the effectiveness of either the weapon or the installed optics. "The Army has always had techniques to camouflage the Soldier ... we have techniques for the Soldier and the equipment," said Col. Douglas A. Tamilio, project manager for Soldier Weapons, Program Executive Office Soldier. "We found in Iraq and Afghanistan that Soldiers were starting to paint...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. military's workhorse rifle — used in battle for the last 40 years — is proving less effective in Afghanistan against the Taliban's more primitive but longer range weapons. As a result, the U.S. is reevaluating the performance of its standard M-4 rifle and considering a switch to weapons that fire a larger round largely discarded in the 1960s. The M-4 is an updated version of the M-16, which was designed for close quarters combat in Vietnam. It worked well in Iraq, where much of the fighting was in cities such as Baghdad, Ramadi and Fallujah.

Members of the El Paso City Council appear to favor the purchase of over 1,000 assault rifles for the police department, which says it needs them to protect the city from increasingly better armed criminals. The council will be asked on Tuesday to approve the purchase of 1,145 assault rifles at a cost of $772,646. That would supply all patrol officers with the civilian version of the M-4 military rifle. The lowest bid is from recommended bidder GT Distributors Inc. of Austin. The money would come from a federal grant of up to $899,287, funds targeted at stimulating the economy....