From his island lair somewhere in the Caribbean, Longtime Friend Knal N. Domp writes (with my response underneath):
I think the preference of the Afghan Muzzies for the AK demonstrates that it’s the choice of insurgents all over the world — mostly because it’s easy to operate, reliable and needs little maintenance. (Pretty much the same reasons that I like them, incidentally.)
Not that I’m an insurgent, or anything.
So why would anyone believe or have any time for a movie stuntman (!) talking about his favorite tanks?
About one-and-a-half minutes in, you’ll see exactly why.
Money quote: “If you can’t afford a Spitfire, [an Achilles tank] is the next best thing.”
Absolutely brilliant.
Then there’s this caustic take on horrible British tanks by a man after my own heart.
Money Quote: “It’s not really bullet-proof. Except from a revolver. For a while. From a distance.”
I have never before subscribed to any EwwwChoob channel, but I think I’ll do so for The Tank Channel.
I could basically just mine Tucker Carlson’s nightly FNC show for a QOTD, but that would involve watching FNC.
This one of Tucker’s, however, is specifically on target:
“Here’s a reminder: the U.S. military exists to fight and win wars. That’s its only purpose. The U.S. military is not an NGO. It is not a vehicle for achieving ‘equity.’ It’s not a social experiment. It’s definitely not an employment agency. Nobody has a God-given right to work in the military. No one does, and that includes all of us.”
‘Nuff said.
Except that women don’t belong in the fucking military. There, I said it, and I will never change my opinion.
Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941
And just so we can also be reminded of the end result:
Nagasaki, August 6, 1945
I was sucked into the Forgotten Weapons Matrix a little while ago, and during Ian McCollum’s dissertation on the Sig-Manhurin 542 rifle, my train of thought went off down a branch line — I’m an old guy, it happens — and I ended up wondering: why was the .243 Win never adopted as a military cartridge?
(In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out here that I am a HUGE fan of the .243 Win, especially when loaded with a 90gr bullet.)
Run with me on this one. The .243 Win is based on a necked-down .308 Win casing so that it can shoot a smaller 6mm (.243″) bullet. Here’s the side-by-side comparison:
That’s a lot of powder (assuming that it stays the same amount as in a .308 Win cartridge) to send a much-smaller bullet downrange, which means of course that there’s a lot of velocity involved — and, as a welcome side-benefit, because there’s less inertia to overcome to get a smaller bullet moving than a bigger one, less recoil.
The latter was given as being one of the reasons that the 5.56mm NATO was adopted, by the way (that and the reduced weight of the cartridges themselves), but it came at the expense of knockdown power. Also of interest is that the 5.56 NATO generally uses a 55gr bullet — but, for that matter, the .243 can handle a 55gr bullet as well, and it really races out of the barrel. Once again, a comparison:
The only problem with the 5.56 NATO is that if you try to increase the knockdown power of the poodleshooter by shooting a heavier bullet like (say) one of 90gr, that little casing can’t hold more powder to make up for the severe loss in velocity — whereas in a larger casing like the .308 Win, bullet weight could even be doubled to 110gr without too much effect on velocity, or recoil.
So just as an intellectual question, I ask myself: why would the .dotmil settle for a hot .22 cartridge when a downloaded .308 would do the same job (at worst), and could easily do a lot more with only a modest increase in bullet weight (say, from 55gr to 75gr)?
If we accept the fact that the earlier .30-06/.308 Win battle cartridges were just Too Much Muscle (or required too much muscle) for our soldiers (as suggested by the military brass), and we ended up adopting a vastly inferior cartridge (the poodleshooter .223); then why should we not have compromised and used instead a 6x52mm / .243 Win cartridge? (Of course, I am still of the opinion that the British suggestion of a .276″/6.5mm chambering was the best of all, but let’s not revisit that old story.)
Frankly, I think we missed a good opportunity here, and I think that had we adopted the .243 Win chambering in something like the aforementioned SIG-Manhurin 542 (essentially, a higher-quality AK-47 design) as our mail battle rifle, we would have been a lot better off.
For that matter, the AR-10 (suitably barreled) would have been just as good a choice, if the thought of dumping Eugene Stoner’s rifle for Sergei Kalashnikov’s gives one the vapors.
Either way, the question is this:
Over at Insty’s place, there’s a post linking to a thing about the Marxists and the military, also containing the story of Gurgle censoring a blogger by hiding his site when you search for an article he wrote (specifically: “Under Obama, there came to be a cancer in the Pentagon” with the addition of his website: “site:bookwormroom.com” in the search string.
Under Gurgle, nada. Using DuckDuckGo, however:
Yup, it’s #1.
I don’t think I’ve used Gurgle for over two years, for just this reason.