Category: Expert Analysis

Read Part Three HERE. This was it—the Trees Phase of selection. We were just above the canopy and traveling at speed, contouring the tops of the trees. The vastness of the jungle was immense; before we were airborne for 10 minutes, all you could see was trees. Clearings came and went, bends in rivers were just visible sometimes, […]

America never hesitates to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, often posting political campaigners to important positions in government rather than actual subject matter experts.  For instance, Ben Rhodes was nothing more than a failed novelist, speech writer and campaigner for President Obama, but none the less became a national security advisor.  Contrary to […]

The backlog. The backlog of pending claims for veterans’ disability benefits has become the bogeyman that haunts the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Over the past several years, VA has exerted substantial efforts to exorcise this demon at the initial filing stage. In other words, VA focused its attention, with mixed results, on shortening the time it […]

Prevention is better than a cure. Six ex-British soldiers are being held in India for not having the correct paperwork with company weapons whilst working on a floating armoury. The company who was responsible for them and their ship is nowhere to be seen in defence of the men who now languish in squalor. I am […]

My first impression of the Barrett MRAD (Multi-Role Adaptive Design) straight out of the box was that Barrett had designed a beautiful rifle.  The rifle I received for my evaluation was a bolt-action chambered for .338 Lapua Magnum. The concept behind Barrett’s MRAD system, is that it provides the shooter with an adaptable modular shooting […]

Read Part Two HERE We set off out of the camp gate in Brunei in three ranks at a fairly brisk pace, marching along a dusty track. It was early, so it wasn’t unbearably hot and damp yet. Still, we weren’t in the trees proper yet, and it was already humid. I could hear the waves crashing on […]

Ah, the Facebook comments section.  A place where well-informed discourse gives way to emotional rants intended to insult an author or entire site.  Honestly, I don’t mind it – we all need a way to blow off some steam, and not everyone shares my hobbies.  For me, my punching bag is… well, a punching bag.  […]

At the time of its 1997 launch, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was among the most advanced space exploration tools ever built, but after nearly twenty years of exploring our solar system, its fuel reserves are nearly depleted.  Like it or not, Cassini’s days of sending back data about the heavenly bodies littering our celestial neighborhood are […]

59 American cruise missiles rained down on Syria yesterday as punishment for the Assad regime allegedly deploying chemical weapons against civilians in Idlib.  The chemical weapon used was most likely sarin gas, a nasty type of nerve agent that causes respiratory failure.  Images from Syria showed dead women and children, limp and lifeless as if someone […]

We covered a variety of subjects during our Land Navigation articles and one of the points we made was to tie down all of your equipment as to not lose track of any of it. This will play into our hands-on video this morning. I have received some questions on my Twitter account, which I […]

Guerrilla warfare is nothing new. Neither is proxy war. China’s history of using indirect methods to erode and undermine their enemies without battle goes back to the earliest treatises on warfare written by the general T’ai Kung. (Sun Tzu’s admonition that supreme excellence is found in victory without fighting has nothing to do with pacifism […]

In a move that should come as a surprise to few, Russia has rejected what amounts to near international consensus regarding those responsible for Tuesday’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians in a rebel controlled region of the country. The attack, which U.S. officials believe to have been perpetrated using Sarin gas, a chemical weapon banned […]