Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Apr 2026In 1958, Val Forgett of Navy Arms contracted with Beretta engineer Aldo Uberti to produce 1,000 reproductions of the Colt 1851 Navy revolver. That turned into the beginning of many decades of production of a wide variety of revolvers and rifles, from the LeMat to a line of Winchester lever actions. Fueled by both organized Cowboy Action competition and general widespread interest in these guns, Navy Arms grew very successful in the market, attracting many other companies who continue to exist to this day. Today I’m talking with Val Forgett’s son (also Val Forgett) about some of the interesting details of the business.
(more…)
August 29, 2026
The Origins of Aldo Uberti and Reproduction Cowboy Guns
August 25, 2026
The new missile gap – between manufacture and deployment
Edward Luttwak offers some suggestions to help explain why the vast and lavishly funded US Military-Industrial Complex seems incapable of manufacturing enough weapons to allow the US military to fight more than a brief demonstration war before running short of the things that go boom:
Royal Navy Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) in flight.
MOD photo via Wikimedia Commons.
It is a strange thing indeed that among the countless stories about America’s shortage of long-range weapons — a truly crippling scarcity that now both limits President Trump’s strike options against the Islamic Republic, and might weaken responses to other looming threats — I have not found one that raises the most elementary question of all: why?
Why was Iran attacked with scarce and expensive BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles — costing around $3 million each — rather than ordinary gravity bombs dropped by fighter-bombers? Accuracy cannot be the answer: with so-called “JDAM” guidance kits, regular bombs become very accurate indeed, and they are still simple enough to be mass-produced cheaply.
Nevertheless, US forces had launched 850 Tomahawk missiles against Iran by 27 March this year, amounting to almost half the country’s global stockpile, though the Pentagon has since announced a huge $22.9 billion contract for more Tomahawks. Air-launched AGM-158 missiles, some of whose models can fly up to 1,000 miles, and which cost as much as $1.6 million apiece, were also used, along with Army’s Precision Strike Missiles are yet more expensive.
What makes these missiles so costly is their great virtue: they are all so-called “stand-off” weapons, which can safely be launched hundreds of miles from their targets. This means an attacker’s aircraft can remain outside enemy air space, where they could be exposed to detection by radars, and then to interception by air-defence fighters and surface-to-air missiles. There is simply no way of producing such missiles cheaply. They need powerful rocket propulsion and complicated electronic guidance to fly such vast distances and hit their targets successfully.
[…]
Nor, of course, are the implications here limited to Iran and the Gulf. Having needlessly used so many stand-off missiles to target Iran, US inventories are worryingly low in the event of the “Chinese contingency”: the invasion of Taiwan that Xi Jinping, unlike his predecessors, refuses to rule out. Any Chinese assault might start with subversion, with the activation of Chinese agents in Taiwan’s armed forces, but amphibious landings would have to follow — against which Tomahawk missiles would be the prime US weapon, alongside local anti-ship missiles.
But having examined all these technical details, we nonetheless arrive at something else entirely, a much more intractable problem than any munitions shortage could ever be: a fundamental change in the entire American attitude to war, which I described as “post-heroic” as far back as the Nineties when its first signs emerged.
This amounts to a truly drastic shift. What started with a proper striving to limit the casualties of war by every means possible — starting with prudent statecraft to avoid war in the first place, and extending to prudent tactics — has now devolved into the current predicament: whereby the US must spend billions on extremely elaborate stand-off missiles so as to further reduce risks to its pilots, which were already very low to begin with, against the vainglorious and incompetent Iranian enemy.
Of course, it’s always a possible explanation that the big defence contractors felt the need for another boost in their income, so it wouldn’t take much to persuade friends in the War Department or in the US Navy to toss a few more TLAMs at Iranian positions …
Battle Rifles in the Jungle: Guatemalan AR-10
Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Apr 2026Guatemala was one of the handful of countries to purchase original AR-10 rifles, made at Artillerie Inrichtingen (AI) in the Netherlands. The sale was made by Sam Cummings, legendary arms dealer. He spent much of 1957 and 1958 traveling through Central and South America demonstrating the new AR-10 to virtually every country’s military. In Guatemala, his demonstration resulted in an immediate order for 450 rifles to be delivered to the Escuela Politécnica (the military academy) for more extensive testing. The guns were delivered in late 1958, with serial numbers between approximately 3000 and 3500 (they were made immediately following production of the Sudanese contract batch). These Guatemalan rifles are distinctive for their ventilated bayonet shrouds, which were provided on no other rifles. While none of the Guatemalan rifles were fitted with bipods, a shortage of regular hand guards led AI to fit many of them with leftover Sudanese contract hand guards contoured for folding bipod legs.
The Guatemalan AR-10s were sold as surplus by the Escuela Politécnica to an American importer in 1985, and they were brought into the US as a mix of parts kits and pre-86 Dealer Samples. Today, most of the intact and unmodified Dutch-production AR-10s in the US (including this example) are from the Guatemalan contract.
(more…)
Comments Off on Battle Rifles in the Jungle: Guatemalan AR-10
August 22, 2026
TRW Low Maintenance Rifle: America’s Roller Locked Flechette Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Mar 2026TRW’s Low Maintenance Rifle seems to have been the result of a program to use a blank slate and a modern space age scientific mindset to develop a rifle that would be more reliable and effective than other existing designs. It was contracted to TRW during the Vietnam War, and they produced a very light, long stroke gas piston rifle with a roller-locked bolt. It was chambered for the XM216 single-flechette cartridge, with a muzzle velocity of a screaming 4700 fps. After production of three prototypes, the design was revised to use standard 5.56mm M193 and M196 ammunition. Three more rifles were made in this form before the program was cancelled in 1973 as the end of the Vietnam War caused funding to dry up for this sort of thing.
(more…)
Comments Off on TRW Low Maintenance Rifle: America’s Roller Locked Flechette Rifle
August 18, 2026
M15 Automatic Rifle (aka T44E5): Adopted But Not Produced
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Mar 2026When the US replaced the M1 Garand, the plan was to adopt both a select-fire infantry rifle and a heavy-barreled support weapon on the same platform. During development, both the T44 (later M14) and T48 (FAL) rifles had heavy-barreled versions. In the case of the M14, the final iteration of the heavy-barreled weapon was the T44E5, which was formally adopted as the M15. Before it could be actually put into production, though, it was cancelled as unnecessary.
In testing, first the Marine Corps and then the Infantry Board found that fitting a standard M14 with a detachable bipod gave the same performance as the M15 — and so why bother with an extra version of the gun? Of course, the equal performance was really quite poor compared to proper light machine guns, and once the M14 got into service this shortcoming was noticed. this led to the M14A1 aka M14E2 project, to essentially recreate the M15 with a pistol grip stock and front grip.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this truly unique specimen from their reference collection to film for you! Don’t miss the chance to visit the museum there if you have a day free in Springfield, Massachusetts: https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm
(more…)
Comments Off on M15 Automatic Rifle (aka T44E5): Adopted But Not Produced
August 17, 2026
QotD: The real reason that MilSpec stuff sucks
Something I ran across in a video by @Fat_Electrician made sense of something I and most military personnel have never understood: Why military equipment sucks compared to most civilian.
@Fat_Electrician was talking about super cars and why they don’t generally work as well as, say, a regular car. Super cars break down a lot. Some are worse than others. His point, apparently from Jay Leno, is that a Ferrari has much less actual engineering in it than, say, a Dodge minivan. Why?
Because there are thousand more engineers working on the minivan and tens of thousands more background hours of engineering. The minivan comes from a long history of similar vehicles with much more engineering in the actual design.
So, think about a military vehicle. Say the Humvee. It’s not that it’s designed to fail, it’s that there is much much less engineering in it. Ditto any military equipment. Thus, it’s much more likely to break down, just like a Ferrari.
I was thinking about this in light of the current series I’m working on not to mention any milSF. The current series the main character is leading a group that works with a mix of civilian small freighter starships and military warships. The civilian ships, even the old ones, are relatively maintenance free vs the military ships. Why?
1. There’s way more engineering in the civilian ships because the companies sell more of them and can spend more on engineering.
2. There’s a lineage of what works and what doesn’t.
3. Civilian companies cannot spend enormous sums on maintenance.But it’s mostly the first one.
I’m not even sure I’m going to insert a discussion of it in the book. It’s the sort of thing I occasionally insert just because my readers sometimes find stuff like that interesting. But mostly I thought you might.
MilSpec sucks because there’s not as much of it as civilian.
John Ringo, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2026-05-07.
Comments Off on QotD: The real reason that MilSpec stuff sucks
August 15, 2026
Laugo Alien Remus: Making the Best Pistol Better
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Mar 2026The Remus is the new version of the Laugo Alien pistol. It was released about a year ago, and just recently also made available in a left-handed version — which I have been eagerly awaiting. The Remus is designed to be a more general-purpose and carry-suited pistol in contrast to the competition focus of the original Alien. It adds a manual safety, system for racking the slide with the optic while having a 0.8″ shorter barrel and weighing 25% less. The optics mounting options now include the Aimpoint COA, which I am also a big fan of.
Disclosure: Laugo gave me this pistol, so you will have to judge for yourself if I am being bought or if I genuinely believe this pistol is as good as I say.
(more…)
Comments Off on Laugo Alien Remus: Making the Best Pistol Better
August 12, 2026
US Army M68 Close Combat Optic aka Aimpoint CompM Series
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Mar 2026When Aimpoint entered the competition for a US Army standard-issue combat optic in the 1990s, they really didn’t expect to win. The other finalists were Trijicon and Meprolite, and it seems like a safe bet that the American firm — Trijicon — would get the contract. However, it ended up going to Aimpoint’s CompM on both price and technical capability. This meant an order for 100,000 of the optics, requiring Aimpoint to massively scale up. It also led to a series of improvements to the design, which became the CompM2, CompM3, and CompM4.
Today, we are looking at the history of this evolution. How the Aimpoint 3000 became the Comp[etition], how the Comp was ruggedized to the CompM[ilitary], and how the Swedish Army Aimpoint CS led to the current CompM4.
(more…)
Comments Off on US Army M68 Close Combat Optic aka Aimpoint CompM Series
August 11, 2026
How the Royal Navy’s budget cuts built foreign navies
Warships & Warriors
Published 10 Apr 2026When the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence faces a budget crisis, the rest of the world goes shopping. Welcome to Warships And Warriors! Today, we are exploring the global “Ghost Fleet” of the Royal Navy.
Through decades of cyclic Strategic Defence Reviews, the UK has repeatedly cut its fleet, selling off highly capable surface combatants, submarines, and massive amphibious assault ships decades before the end of their mechanical lifespans. In this video, we track down these decommissioned British warships to see how middle-power navies in South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia have transformed them.
From Brazil snapping up the Royal Navy’s amphibious heavyweights like HMS Ocean (now the Atlântico) and HMS Bulwark, to Chile bolting advanced missile systems onto ex-British Type 22 and Type 23 frigates, we uncover how foreign navies are gaining massive frontline capabilities at bargain prices. We also look at the strategic transfers of Upholder-class submarines to Canada, armed patrol vessels in Bangladesh, and the legally complex deployment of Sandown-class minehunters in the Black Sea.
0:00 – The Royal Navy Fire Sale
01:16 – Chapter 1: The Amphibious Heavyweights (Brazil)
04:31 – Chapter 2: The Frigates (Brazil, Chile & Romania)
07:16 – Chapter 3: The Submarines (Canada)
08:36 – Chapter 4: The Offshore Upgrades (Bangladesh & Philippines)
10:27 – Chapter 5: Clearing the Minefields (Lithuania, Greece, Ukraine & Estonia)
13:01 – Chapter 6: Mapping the Deep (Bangladesh)
13:48 – The Wrap-Up & The Tragic Fate of the Type 22 Batch 3
(more…)
Comments Off on How the Royal Navy’s budget cuts built foreign navies
August 10, 2026
Was Canada’s Victoria-class submarine deal a massive procurement failure?
Dominion Defence Review
Published 8 Aug 2026Plagued by chronic low availability while also being expensive to maintain, the purchase of used British submarines seems to be a good reminder that a low sticker price isn’t everything …
Comments Off on Was Canada’s Victoria-class submarine deal a massive procurement failure?
August 9, 2026
Clearing Bannerman’s Castle: A Century of Explosive Ordnance
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Mar 2026The Bannerman family decided to sell Bannerman’s Island to the state of New York in the 1950s, but the sale required that they first clear all the ordnance off it. That was no simple task, and the military was not interested in the job. Instead, the family found Val Forgett Jr, a demolitions expert who happened to be looking for seed money to start a business making reproduction black powder revolvers. His offer to do the cleanup work was accepted, and he spent a summer doing the job and put the proceeds into the first Navy Arms reproduction 1851 Colt Navy revolvers.
This video includes the talk given by Forgett to the Armor and Arms Club of New York in the 1990s explaining the process of clearing out the ordnance from the island …
(more…)
Comments Off on Clearing Bannerman’s Castle: A Century of Explosive Ordnance
August 8, 2026
Larry Correia’s A to Z Guide to Anti-Gun Vulture Talking Points
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Larry Correia reposts his talking point guide on the issue of gun control:
Looks like it is time to once again post my A to Z Guide to Anti-Gun Vulture Talking Points!
A. Gun owners are never trained enough so are dangerous and shouldn’t be armed at all.
B. Gun owners who do train are crazy psychos living out their wannabe fantasies itching to shoot someone.
C. Even though it takes orders of magnitude more effort to become marginally effective with martial arts than a gun, you are better off using martial arts and not having a gun.
D. *Real Men* use their hands. This is why your mom and grandma shouldn’t have guns either.
E. Twitter randos who have never been punched in the face are experts on real life violence, and whatever you have personally experienced doesn’t count.
F. No matter how trained you are, it is never enough for the hypothetical attacker they make up. Sure, your concealed handgun might be enough to stop a regular robber or rapist, but what about if you get attacked by 20 Chechen terrorists with AKs, huh? Huh? (we call this the Dracula Riding Godzilla rule)
G. If the anti-gun vulture was ever in the military, this makes them a Military Trained Expert. Even though most of the time this means they got to put 20 rounds through an M-16 once in 1992.
H. No matter how many certified MMA bad asses or combat vets go “lol wut, dork? I’d rather have a gun.” the anti-gun Twitter vulture will remain undeterred.
I. Goldilocks Rules apply. No matter how much you know about guns, you’re either too ignorant and dangerous, or you know too much and that makes you dangerous. Whatever amount the anti-gun zealot knows is Just Right.
K. Whatever stats they pull out of their ass are sacrosanct. If you cite any numbers they reflexively scream “SOURCE?!” and then have some reason they won’t accept that source when provided. “The actual FBI Crime Statistics? LAME!”
L. At some point they’ll need to talk about how big our penises are, because guns are for compensation. Obviously the female gun owners are compensating for their tiny uteruses.
M. “I believe in the Second Amendment BUUUUUUUUT-” (insert statist bullshit here)
N. If you insist on using terms correctly and words having actual definitions, clearly this demonstrates you are a fanatic. Words mean whatever they need to mean in that moment, especially legal ones.
O. “Castle Doctrine” is a secret right wing code word that means that you can just shoot whoever you want.
P. Get ready for a history lesson about “what the founders really intended” from some dumb motherfucker who was stoned through every history class in high school.
Q. Everybody knows big blue cities are way safer than the scary red state flyover country.
R. Gun control isn’t racist! Sure, historical gun control was all about keeping guns out of the hands of the “undesirables” like freed slaves, Indians, and the Irish, but that’s totally different now!
S. AR-15s are the most dangerous gun that’s ever existed. It can fire ten thousand ultra deadly murder bullets a second and each one can explode a moose from a thousand yards away. There is nothing this miracle death machine can’t do.
T. lol your AR-15s are utterly useless against a tyrannical government.
U. The NRA is an all-powerful, super evil entity which has tricked innocent Americans into wanting ultra deadly assault rifles, to satisfy their incessant blood lust. They do this through their ultra powerful marketing, like giving out free hats.
V. Anti-gun organizations are all totally innocent grass roots movements made up of moms, orphans, and kittens, funded entirely by bake sales, who just want the best for all Americans.
W. “I grew up around guns” makes you an unassailable subject matter expert on the topic.
X. The gun industry is made up of giant soulless mega corporations who make trillions of dollars off of selling Glocks to preschoolers. This message was brought to you by benevolent small businesses like the six companies that own most of the world’s media.
Y. Even though everything the anti-gunner proposes is ass backwards and would just make the problems they are crying about worse, and everywhere they get their way good people are disarmed while evil doers are empowered…they CARE HARDER than we do. So we’re the real bad guys.
Z. “You sound angry.”
August 6, 2026
B-29 Superfortress – A $3.7bn Trial By Fire
HardThrasher
Published 5 Aug 2026The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the most advanced bomber of World War Two — but also one of the most troubled and expensive aircraft ever built, and was plagued with flaws.
Developed at extraordinary speed, the B-29 could fly higher, faster and further than earlier heavy bombers while carrying a formidable bomb load.
It introduced pressurised crew compartments, remote-controlled gun turrets, advanced fire-control systems and enormous Wright R-3350 engines. But it couldn’t hit a barn door with its guns, had urine in the brakelines and engines which kept exploding due to all the flammable metal in them.
This video explores how the B-29 was designed, why it cost more than the Atomic Bomb to develop and how the United States overcame these challenges to get it into the war.
And yes, this is purely an excuse for me to make videos about the bomber war in the Pacific, so yar booh sucks 😊
00:00 Introduction
01:47 MOAR, MOAR, MOAR
05:48 Origin Story
12:52 Built It And They Will Come
17:57 The Battle of Kansas
19:12 Root Causes – The Key Problems
23:59 So Wright It’s Wrong
32:39 ConclusionsSources
1. Pace, S., Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Crowood Press, 2003 p.53
2. Werrell, K.P., Blankets of Fire, US Bombers over Japan during World War II, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996, p.82
3. Werrell, K.P., p.68
4. [Deleted Section]
5. Pace, S., p.23
6. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940–1940, NAID: 16660414
7. Werrell, K.P., p.75
8. Le May & Yenne, Superfortress – The Boeing B-29 and American Airpower in World War II, Westholme Publishing 2007 (original published 1988 by McGraw) p.78
9. Le May & Yenne, p.78
10. Werrell, K.P., p.80
11. Le May & Yenne, p.80
12. Werrell, K.P., p.67
13. Werrell, K.P., p.67
14. Werrell, K.P., p.80
Comments Off on B-29 Superfortress – A $3.7bn Trial By Fire
August 4, 2026
Madsen Model 1945: A Rather Unusual SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Mar 2026At the end of World War Two, the Danish Madsen company wanted to replace its production of licensed Suomi submachine guns with a design of its own. The result was the Model 1945, a quite unusual design with a pistol-like slide. The nearest similarities would be the Polish PM-63 and the German VG1-5. The Madsen design also used an unusual hammer firing system. It was chambered for 9mm Parabellum, feeding from Suomi box magazines (not drums). Both a fixed wooden stock version (seen here) and a folding stock version were made, but only a few sales came through (apparently to Mexico and El Salvador).
Danish M1941 Madsen video: • Danish M1941 Suomi SMG
Madsen M1950 video: • Madsen M50: From the Korean War to Star Trek
(more…)
Comments Off on Madsen Model 1945: A Rather Unusual SMG
August 1, 2026
Eugene Stoner’s Future Assault Rifle Concept (F.A.R.C.)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 6 Mar 2026After developing the AR-15 with Armalite, Eugene Stoner worked for a number of different companies. In 1972 he co-founded Ares Inc, where he and his partners worked on a wide variety of weapons platforms. Their work included rapid-fire cannons and full-fledged artillery as well as small arms. The first of those small arms was the Future Assault Rifle Concept — FARC. This was a gas piston, rotating bolt 5.56mm rifle design with a number of interested elements. The FARC-1 was a concept on paper only, leading to production of a few FARC-2 and FARC-3 prototypes. The project was cancelled in the wake of the end of the Vietnam War as funding for such things was much less readily available.
(more…)
Comments Off on Eugene Stoner’s Future Assault Rifle Concept (F.A.R.C.)
