The major problem isn’t with quantity of evidence, it’s quality of evidence. More fundamentally, it’s a question of the very nature of evidence. As far as I understand it — which is “not very” — contemporary accounts of the Battle of Crecy seem wildly implausible, even by medieval standards. And that’s the first indicator of the problem right there: By medieval standards. Medieval numbers, as we’ve noted probably ad nauseam, are Rachel Maddowesque — they’re there to augment The Narrative, nothing more. “We were opposed by fifty thousand Saracens” thus can mean anything from “bad guys as far as the eye could see” to “it just wasn’t our day, so we ran”.
And yet, you can’t entirely discount them, either. Crecy (along with of course Agincourt) is supposed to be the triumph of the English longbow, and that’s the thing: We’ve reconstructed English longbows, and put them through all kinds of trials. The results, as I understand it — which, again, ain’t much — were highly variable. A very strong, well-fed, highly trained longbowman, firing an ideally constructed and maintained bow under optimal conditions, really can put X number of arrows up a flea’s ass at Y range in Z time.
Or they could miss the broad side of a barn at twenty feet, depending.
So: What was the weather like in Northern France on 26 August 1346? That’s not an idle question. Rather, it’s the central question. Assume perfect shooting conditions, and you’ve got a far, far different picture of the battle than if you assume poor ones. And if that seems to be giving too much credit to the weather, watch a few baseball games — you’ll quickly discover that quite often, the difference between a home run and a long out is just a few percentage points of relative humidity.
Ultimately it comes down to judgment. More importantly, it’s a judgment on how any particular event fits into the larger argument you’re trying to make. In a way, then, the details really don’t matter very much on their own — the mechanics of how the English won are almost irrelevant, except insofar as they feed into an analysis of why they won. Why did the French king attack uphill, in the mud? Was he stupid? Overconfident? Did he feel he had to, because of political problems inside his host? Did he have faulty information? Did he have accurate information, but just made a bad call?
That’s the art of History, and why, despite what the Peter Turchin (and Karl Marx) crowd keeps insisting, it will always be an art, not a science. We can have a high degree of confidence, most times, in what happened — there really was a battle at Crecy, and the English really did win it. It’s the why that is susceptible to radical reinterpretation.
Severian, “Friday Mailbag”, Founding Questions, 2022-06-17.
April 20, 2026
QotD: The quality of evidence problem for historians
April 18, 2026
The First M60 Prototype: FG42 + MG42 = T44
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Dec 2025The FG-42 caught the attention of a lot of countries at the end of World War Two. The British and Swiss both used it as the starting point for some developments. The US went one step simpler, and simply cut up a captured FG-42 to make into the T44, the first prototype of what would become the M60 machine gun.
This project was done in 1946 by the Bridge Tool & Die Company, who spent about six months reinforcing an FG42 and adding an MG42 feed system to it to create an unholy hybrid kludge of a gun. It was, however, successful enough to justify continuing the project. Only this one example was made before moving on to much more practical models built from the ground up instead of hacking up captured German guns.
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April 15, 2026
Origins of the Legendary CZ-75: Short Rail and Pre-B Models
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Nov 2025The CZ-75 began development in the late 1960s as a commercial project. It was not intended for Czechoslovak military use, but instead for export sales to bring foreign currency into Czechoslovakia. It was designed by František Koucký with some elements from other pistols (like frame rails and camming lug from the SIG P210 and a magazine based on the Browning High Power) and a healthy dose of original creativity (including the trigger mechanism). The design was finalized in 1973, approved for production in 1976, and the first production models were ready in June 1977.
The first model of the pistol is quite distinctive, with frame rails much shorter than what we see on examples today. This is called the Short Rail or Slab Side model, and it comprised just the first 16,000 guns produced, with the last ones made very early in 1980. This frame design proved prone to cracking, and in 1980 a longer frame replaced it. A half-cock notch was also added to the hammer in 1980. A few additional points in the production timeline include:
1984: Heavy black enamel paint replaces bluing as the standard finish
1986: Slightly enlarged trigger guard, grip panel design changes
1987: Magazines cease being marked with serial numbers
1988: Serial numbering changes to from 6 digits to 1 letter and 4 digits
1989: Ring hammer replaces spot
1993: CZ-75B introduced with a firing pin block in the slideIn 1992 the communist government in Czechoslovakia fell, and the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. CZ became a privately owned company, and a slew of new options on the CZ-75 were rapidly introduced — so we will leave those for a separate video.
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April 12, 2026
TKIV-85: Finland’s Ultimate Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Nov 2025Finland’s final iteration of Mosin Nagant sniper was adopted in the 1980s to replace a mix-and-match assortment of m/39-43, m/27-66, and m/28-76 rifles. The two options were a Mosin system using a new bedding block (developed by Border Guard officer E. Toro) or a purpose-made new rifle made by Valmet (the Model 86). The Valmet was clearly the better rifle, but the Mosin option was acceptably good and much cheaper — so that’s what was adopted. The parts for the conversions were made by Valmet and assembled at Asevarikko 1.
Two different models were made. One was a military specific type, and the other was a dual-use rifle for competition shooting as well as potential military use. The competition rifles had a lighter barrel profile to meet the international competition weight limit and were fitted with competition aperture sights in addition to mounts for scopes.
Thanks to Frozen Trigger in Finland for giving me access to these examples to film for you!
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April 9, 2026
Aly & Kaufman AKB-23: Better Than the SA80 / L85
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Nov 2025The Aly & Kaufman AKB-23 is a set of parts that allows one to use a Brownells BRN-180 upper to create an SA80 / L85 lookalike. It’s a very clever adaptation, based on the fact that the original British L85A1 was essentially copied from the AR-180 design. By creating a new bullpup lower for Brownells’ modernized AR-180 (the BRN-180), the basic mechanics of the SA80 are used, but in a form that is well tested and reliable.
The parts include, of course, the new lower (which is legally a firearm, and requires FFL transfer). The lower is milled aluminum, and uses standard AR fire control parts. It also includes iron sights that mount onto the BRN-180 picatinny rail and a high quality 3D-printed cheek rest and front handguard.
This is a really fun rifle, and a very clever way to create an L85 analog that is affordable and accessible.
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April 6, 2026
T20 Family: Springfield Makes the Garand a Grenade Launching Sniper Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 Nov 2025Late in 1944 the Ordnance Committee recommended adoption of a magazine-fed, select-fire version of the M1 Garand as a new standard US infantry rifle. Both Springfield and Remington developed rifles to meet the requirement, with Springfield’s being the T20 and Remington’s the T22.
The Springfield design went through several iterations from the original T20 to the T20E1 and T20E2, with the capability to launch rifle grenades, mount optical sights, and fire in either semiautomatic or full auto. The first examples of the final T20E2 design were ready in June 1945, but the program lost momentum in August when Japan surrendered. It did continue slowly until 1949, providing some of the basis for the eventual M14 rifle.
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April 5, 2026
When military requirements conflict with national policies
On Substack, Holly MathNerd explains why the US military hasn’t ramped up production of drones in light of the experiences of other current conflicts:
Photo by Jonathan Lampel on Unsplash
Most people who have opinions about the war in Iran are not also reading the Federal Acquisition Regulations. I am, unfortunately for my social life, one of the people who does both.
And when you hold those two things in your head at the same time — what’s happening over the Strait of Hormuz and what’s happening in federal procurement policy — a contradiction emerges that is so glaring, and so consequential, that I could not write about anything else this week.
Here is the contradiction, in full, before I show you the data.
The United States is fighting a war where drones are the decisive tactical weapon. We are spending $2 to $4 million per intercept to stop Iranian drones that cost $50,000 each. Our own offensive drone program shipped what it had into an active war because full-rate production hadn’t started yet. Ukraine, which does not have this problem, produced two million drones in 2024 by building a distributed ecosystem of small manufacturers who iterate their designs every two weeks and sell units for $300 to $5,000 each.
We cannot do what Ukraine does, because Congress — correctly, for legitimate national security reasons — spent five consecutive National Defense Authorization Acts closing the door on Chinese drone hardware. DJI, the dominant global manufacturer, is now restricted by four separate federal authorities. There is no waiver for convenience. The wall is complete.
Which means the only path to drone dominance runs through a domestic industrial base capable of producing drones at volume, at low cost, with rapid iteration.
That base exists. Partially. Precariously. And it is built on exactly the kind of small, specialized, distributed manufacturers that the 8(a) federal contracting program was designed to bring into the market.
April 2, 2026
m/27PH aka m/37: Finland’s First Standard Sniper Rifle (and it’s really bad)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Nov 2025The m27PH, aka the m/37, was the first standardized Finnish sniper rifle. It was developed as part of the plan to make a whole family of m/27 rifles for the Finnish Army, including cavalry, trainer, and sniper models. The sniper model was delayed because of the structural problems with the m/27 base rifle, and it was not formally adopted until 1937. The rifle used a 2.2x prismatic scope made by Finnish company Physica Oy. The scope was heavy, fragile, and had a very short eye relief.
When first adopted, the rifles had short, slightly bent bolt handled and standard stocks. Once they began to see use in the Winter War (for which they were Finland’s only standardized sniper rifle), experience showed these features to be problems. The bolt handles were largely replaced with much longer Soviet-style sniper bolts, and wooden cheek rests were added to the stocks.
During the Continuation War, m/27PH rifles were still in service, but as they were damaged their scopes were generally used to build new m/39PH sniper rifles instead. Today they are extremely rare rifles.
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March 31, 2026
Japan’s navy … uh, I mean the “Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force”
On Substack, Francis Turner discusses what serious countries do (so you know the topic isn’t anything to do with Canada), and part of the post is about the Japanese Navy Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and its latest ship building program:
Last month Japan started work on its second ASEV (Aegis System Equipped Vessel), which should probably classed a Guided Missile Cruiser, though it is unclear if the C designation will be used (let’s face it Japan still calls its two “not really aircraft carriers, honest guv” aircraft carrying warships “Helicopter Destroyers”. Though apparently it plans to change that soon).
At 190m long and 25m broad, the ASEVs will be some of the largest non-aircraft carrier ships being built by anyone this century1 until the Trump battleships start construction. The Trump battleships are projected to be about 50% larger but they haven’t yet been funded let alone contracted. The USN’s Zumwalts are roughly the same size.
It isn’t just the size that is impressive, it is also the speed of construction. The ASEV as a concept showed up in ~2020 when Japan decided the land based Aegis Ashore program was a failure and cancelled it. In October 2024, after about four years, plans had been made, budget allocated and contracts awarded for the two ships. Construction of the first started last July (2025) and the second last month (February 2026). Construction time is estimated to be around three years, with the first delivered/commissioned in March 2028 and the second one year later. Why one year later and not six months earlier? My guess is that the reason is to incorporate lessons learned from sea trials and operating the first in the final construction stages of the second. This seems similar to the Izumo/Kaga construction a decade ago.
Put together and you have ships that will have gone from concept to contract award in 4 years and contract award to fully-functioning delivery in under 5 years — assuming there are no delays. That seems plausible, the Izumo and Kaga were built in about the same time frame, and stands in stark contrast to the procurement speed of the US Navy and any European navy. The first Zumwalt, for example took over 5 years to go from concept to start of construction and another 5+ from there to commissioning and then another 4 to full acceptance. The ASEVs are also expected to be a lot cheaper, costing around JPY400B or about US$2.5 billion for the initial version. There will undoubtedly be upgrades — e.g. drone defenses, laser or rail guns — and there are some new features compared to previous ships — the SPY7 radar from Lockheed Martin for example — but this is an evolution of existing Japanese and US Aegis destroyers rather than a brand new concept which helps explain why I am confident about the timeline and budget.
Although the ASEV’s primary role is missile defense, there is no reason why one might not, in the fullness of time, be loaded with offensive missiles such as the TLAM or antiship missiles. Indeed the Naval News article lists both as options:
Each vessel will feature a 128-cell Vertical Launch System (VLS) — significantly more than the 96 cells installed on Japan’s latest Aegis destroyers.
The VLS will be capable of launching:
– SM-3 Block IIA interceptors, jointly developed by Japan and the United States for ballistic missile defense
– SM-6 missiles, capable of engaging advanced aerial threats, including hypersonic glide vehicles
The ships will also support Japan’s emerging counterstrike capability.
Planned armament includes:
– the extended-range Type 12 anti-ship missile (ship-launched improved variant)
– the U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile
Is that TLAM in your launcher or are you pleased to see me?
Notably the Tomahawk capability has already been fitted to one of the Aegis destroyers this class is supposed to replace. A 128 cell ASEV firing TLAMs could be very unpleasant for Little Rocket Man; if it fired antiship missiles that could make a Chicom invasion of Taiwan pretty miserable just on its own. It would also make a phenomenal commerce raider / blockade enforcer if such roles were needed.
[Aside: Unlike some country’s missiles I’d be pretty confident that the Type 12 anti-ship missile will work well]
As CDR Salamander observed on X, the real question is why Japan doesn’t make a few more and sell them to countries/navies that struggle with procurement. And for that matter why it doesn’t make a couple more for itself. Perhaps it will. I figure there’s a couple of years before there will be yard space to build them so there’s no hurry to make that decision.
Russia’s Kirov class battlecruisers are larger but a) they were built in the 1970s/80s and b) only one is currently active (for some definition of active).
Japan’s decision to rebuild naval strength has been noted by others, too:
March 29, 2026
Adventures in Surplus! Finnish M28 “Ski Trooper”
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Nov 2025Today we are going to take a look at just how much historical [information can] be read from the features and markings of an individual rifle. This is an early production Finnish M28 “ski trooper” Mosin Nagant that can be traced from Russian manufacture to WW1 Russian use, Austro-Hungarian capture, rechambering to 8x50mm Mannlicher, concession to Italy as war reparations, sale to Finland, rebuilding as a Civil Guard M28, use in the Winter War and Continuation War, transfer to the Finnish Army, and finally importation into the United States.
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March 28, 2026
AK50: How Hard Could it Be? Brandon Herrera’s 10-Year Project
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Nov 2025Scaling the AK up to .50 BMG … how hard could it be? Today we find out, with a detailed look at all three iterations of Brandon Herrera’s AK-50 project.
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March 27, 2026
Protecting modern warships from new threats
CDR Salamander considers how the US Navy up-gunned their fleet after the shock of the Pearl Harbour attacks with an eye to the current day, where it appears that modern warships suddenly need far more defensive firepower than they have:
USS Tennessee (BB 43) underway in Puget Sound, Washington, on 12 May 1943, after modernization.
Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons.One of the many lessons of the modern air threat against surface ships in the last few years is simple: we need more of everything.
It isn’t really a new lesson. It is an old lesson that our peacetime accountants convinced us to pretend we didn’t know.
Since the first war in which the threat from the air targeted the surface fleet, what was a common thread after D+0 from WWII to the Falklands War?
After cursing those responsible for preparing the fleet for the next war, those tasked to fight the war in front of them would, at the first chance, put every possible weapon possible on their warships.
My favorite example is what the U.S. Navy did with its old battleships the first chance after Pearl Harbor.
The picture at the top of the post is the battleship USS Tennessee (BB 43) after the completion of her rebuild, May 12th, 1943.
- The older single 5-inch/25 cal guns were replaced by eight twin 5-inch/38 caliber dual-purpose gun mounts (totaling 16 guns).
- Ten quadruple 40 mm Bofors mounts and 43 single 20 mm Oerlikon guns replaced 1.1-inch and .50 cal machine guns.
Here she was with her “cleaner” deck from the 1930s.
USS Tennessee in the mid-1930s.
The Royal Navy reached the point in the Falklands War that they resorted to lining the decks with Seamen firing whatever weapons they could find from rifles to crew-served weapons … as they simply did not have the time to up-arm their ships properly.
Like the sudden realization that they did not quite understand the true nature of the threat from the air in the 1930s, here in the mid-2020s we are suddenly realizing that we don’t fully understand — or more likely were comfortable ignoring those warning of the problem — the high/low threat to warships from the air.
The tan, rested, ready, if the not quite battle-tested People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is comfortably unbothered, moisturized, happy, and staying in their lane as we have been emptying out magazines and wearing out sailors and ships, They continue to be focused on how to defeat the U.S. Navy should it venture west of the International Date Line in response to a future contingency — the very mission the PLAN was built to execute as the world’s largest navy.
I am quite confident, because, especially in the ballistic missile area, they were ahead of everyone, that the PLAN has a whole mix of threats they are ready to throw at our fleet should it be required.
The Houthi who have been providing us unscheduled range time in the Red Sea for over two years, and Iran from Turkey to UAE over the last year. The Houthi are a fourth-rate threat, and the Iranians are on a good day, a second-rate threat. They are throwing everything from slow drones to anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) at ships.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a first-rate threat … and then some. She will do the same, but better and in higher volume. We need to be ready to face that, and we are not.
Taking advantage of the temporarily insane market price for tungsten
Tim Worstall has a business idea to capitalize on a current price fluctuation in the tungsten market … and you wouldn’t need to build a massive mine or a large smelter for the purpose:
“Making friends with the 50-cal” by 416thTEC is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0 
.
There are times when the prices of weird metals just get wholly out of hand. Like, absurdly, nonsensically, out of hand. This is of great comfort to the usual morons as they can then point out that markets are not rational. They’re morons because no one has ever used — other than morons — “rational markets” to mean always correct markets.
The actual defence of markets is that they produce less absurd prices less often than allowing morons to determine them.
But, OK, odd prices.
Those of a certain age might recall back around the millennium tantalum prices went ballistic. They had been $200 a kg and they went to $2,000 a kg. This was because a little bit of Ta is essential to make the capacitors that make a mobile phone work. Mobile phones were proving to be pretty hot shit and so demand rose, demand rose faster than new mines could be opened and so the price went ballistic.
[…]
So, tungsten. A fair old use (and while everyone’s screaming about this and China it’s a minority use, by a long way. The major use is actually in the teeth of digging machines as tungsten carbide. If you’ve a scrap yard of those drop me a line!) is in armour piercing bullets and shells. Which, when in use are dispersed on the battlefield and no, it’s not worth going out and collecting those. The brass shell casings, especially of artillery, those are but let the specialists do that — too many dud rounds that can still go bang for amateurs to do that.
Tungsten prices are weird. The price is quoted at metric tonne unit in WO3 concentrate. Which is, now, perhaps $2,400 (which is insane, but there we are). An mtu, well, WTF? To get to the tungsten price divide by 8 (OK, OK, 7.92). So, $300 kg tungsten metal. The scrap price will be less than that, obviously and etc.
And, well, something that some do do. Firing ranges.
Lead has a value, most bullets are made of lead, a lot of bullets are fired at the range. There’s a big bank of earth behind the targets at the range to ensure we don’t hurt no kangaroo etc with bullets flying over the horizon. It does actually pay, every so often, to go dig out that bank of earth for the bullets embedded in it. Lead scrap has a price.
Can you see where this is going? Find the ranges they test their armour-piercing ordinance on and offer to dig out their bank behind the targets. Collect the tungsten scrap — and the lead, but separate them — and make bank on the vast, stupid, insane price of tungsten. Shovel, wheelbarrow, sieve, sweat, this works.
If we can find the shooting ranges they try their tungsten bullets out upon. Each bullet is going to be in the 3 to 7 grammes range, that sort of thing. So we’ll need 200 bullets to get a kg at $300 (less scrap discount!) which sounds like a lot. But if we find the ranges where they teach firing the .50 cal armour piercing machine gun rounds then … well, if they’ve not dug through that bank for a few years $$!!
March 25, 2026
Apache Arms Carbine: A Saga of Compliance and Crappy Manufacture
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Nov 2025The Apache Arms carbine was a Thompson SMG lookalike that was made in small numbers in the late 1960s. It was the successor to the Spitfire carbine made by the same people, after the Spitfire was deemed a machine gun by the IRS. The Apache used M3 Grease Gun magazines and was chambered for .45 ACP. It uses a square receiver tube and many of the same cast parts as the Spitfire. It is a very interesting look at how the design was adapted to be legally considered semiautomatic.
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March 23, 2026
Canada’s NEW Rifle – the CMAR
The Armourer’s Bench
Published 22 Mar 2026The Canadian Armed Forces are set to adopt variants of Colt Canada’s MRR as the Canadian Modular Assault Rifle (CMAR). The announcement stated that more than 65,000 rifles will be procured over the next 5 years to replace the Colt Canada C7 rifles and C8 carbines currently in Canadian service.
Be sure to check out our accompanying article for this video here – https://armourersbench.com/2026/03/22/canada-adopts-new-rifle/
