Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Jul 2025When the Luftwaffe was looking for its new universal paratrooper rifle, six different German arms companies were asked to submit proposals. Only two actually did; Krieghoff and Rheinmetall. Krieghoff designed this very interesting system, clearly optimized to reduce weight and length as required by the design brief. It uses a tiny vertically traveling locking block and an unusual gas trap system combined with an under-barrel piston. The total number made is unknown, but both fixed- and folding-stock models were produced (the German museum at Koblenz has a fixed-stock example on display). This particular example appears to have been tested after the war by engineers at Springfield Armory by drilling a hole in the gas tube to measure pressure while it cycled.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this rare prototype 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:
December 9, 2025
Krieghoff’s Bizarre Prototype FG42 Proposal
December 3, 2025
The clankers aren’t going away
In the National Post, Colby Cosh says that we should think of the clankers as they exist right now in the same way we consider verifiably insane people:
The market-liberal economist/pundit Noah Smith has written a fun “stranger in a strange land” essay about his unusual fondness for the emerging species of “generative” artificial-intelligence bots. Smith points out that 100 years of science fiction has prepared us all to have convenient, convincingly intelligent, multilingual automaton life assistants; they are an accepted part of the background of almost all imagined futures, with exceptions like Frank Herbert’s Dune universe (wherein even basic mathematical computing is outlawed on religious principle).
Now these creatures have appeared in our midst overnight, and Smith feels delight, but he acknowledges that the public reaction is mostly dominated by hostility and suspicion. The rule that technological advancements are in general good, even if they have some bad initial effects, seems to apply only in retrospect: we laugh at the Luddites of old, little suspecting that we might just be the same people at a different cusp of progress.
The caveat about “bad initial effects” is extremely important (as is remembering that the Luddites really were personally endangered by progress). Technological leaps creating social fracture and mass violence are a real feature of history going back to the Neolithic Revolution. The printing press set off an orgy of religious wars, aviation created strategic bombing and the carnage of the First World War (along with its 19th-century nationalist and imperialist preludes) couldn’t have happened without railways and the telegraph. Twentieth-century fascism and communism can both be understood as mass-media phenomena, as consequences of asymmetrical human adoption of mass media. I’m sure some of you are keeping one eye on the horrible AI-driven mini-arms-race happening in Ukraine, as the interceptor drones and the attack drones of both sides in the war co-evolve at warp speed, and, like me, you wonder about the implications for the entire political order of the world.
Those news stories are a reminder that Darwin never sleeps, and that you don’t get to take a nap break from history — but also that our species survived these crises and has (so far!) prevailed, escaping the old Malthusian prison to arrive at a period of relative plenty and peace even for the worst-off. In any event, technological leaps are one-way doors: the only way out is through.
Consumer artificial intelligences really are marvels, but you’ve heard me emphasize that they are to be regarded for the moment as insane, and to be trusted only as far as you would trust a genuinely insane human being. We don’t yet know whether, or to what degree, this feature of generative AIs can be corrected.
Full disclosure, while I’ve used Elon Musk’s Grok a few times to generate images to accompany stories here on the blog, I do not use clankers to generate text and I can’t imagine doing so in the immediate future. One of the better signs that we’ll be able to adapt to clankers being omnipresent (as tech bros seem to be all of one mind that they need to add AI to everything they can, accelerating the enshittification of so much technology) was this little anecdote reposted on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
Update, 4 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
November 21, 2025
URZ: Czech Prototype Universal Modular Weapon
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Jul 2025The URZ (Univerzální Ruční Zbraň, or Universal Hand Weapon) was a 1966 project designed by Jiří Čermák (designer of the vz.58 rifle). He envisioned a weapons system family with largely interchangeable elements that could be configured as a service rifle, carbine, light machine gun, vehicular machine gun, or precision rifle. The Czech military was not interested, but Čermák was able to convince the government to allow its development for export instead.
The design is a delayed-blowback system using rollers, and belt-fed. The first few examples were made in 7.62x39mm, but development switched to 7.62x51mm NATO in a rather surprising move. Presumably this was intended for sale to unaligned nations who were interested in the NATO cartridge, but still — seeing its development in then-communist Czechoslovakia is pretty unusual. Ultimately only 9 examples were built before the project was abandoned.
Thanks to the Czech Military History Institute (VHU) for graciously giving me access to this one-of-a-kind prototype to film for you! If you have the opportunity, don’t miss seeing their museums in Prague:
https://www.vhu.cz/en/english-summary/
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November 14, 2025
This is in your house … and you’ve never noticed
Rex Krueger
Published 12 Nov 2025The Secret History of Wood – Rubber wood
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November 12, 2025
The Jet Age: How War Put Us in the Sky – W2W 052
TimeGhost History
Published 10 Nov 2025From the Wright Brothers’ fragile first flight to supersonic jets that shattered the sound barrier — this is the story of how war turned humanity’s dream of flight into the most powerful force on Earth. In just fifty years, aviation evolved from wooden propellers and canvas wings to turbojet engines and supersonic bombers.
What began as a symbol of wonder became the defining weapon of the 20th century — an arms race in the skies that shaped our modern world.
In this episode of War 2 War, we trace how the Second World War and the Cold War pushed aviation to its limits: how Nazi Germany’s Me 262 and Britain’s Gloster Meteor launched the jet age, how the MiG-15 and F-86 Sabre clashed in the skies over Korea, and how the United States and Soviet Union raced for speed, power, and dominance.
Discover:
• How WW2 research built the first jet fighters
• Why the Me 262 and Meteor changed everything
• The jet dogfights of the Korean War (MiG-15 vs F-86 Sabre)
• The rise of supersonic flight and guided missiles
• How the Jet Age reshaped both war and peace
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November 3, 2025
Plastic Fantastic: How the Modern World Became Synthetic – W2W 051
TimeGhost History
Published 2 Nov 2025From the miracle material of the 1950s to the global crisis of the 21st century — this is the story of how plastic reshaped our lives, our economies, and our planet.
Born from wartime innovation, plastic promised a future of convenience, color, and endless possibility. From nylon stockings to Tupperware parties, it defined modern life — light, bright, and disposable. But the same durability that made it revolutionary also made it permanent.
In this episode of War 2 War, we trace how postwar optimism turned into an age of overproduction and pollution — how a chemical miracle became the material legacy of the modern world. Join us as we uncover how the postwar dream of “Better Living Through Chemistry” changed everything — forever.
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October 28, 2025
AR-1 “Parasniper” – The First Armalite
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Jun 2025The first rifle produced by Armalite began in 1952 as a project between the brothers-in-law, Charles Dorchester and George Sullivan (no relation to later Armalite engineer L. James Sullivan). Sullivan is the chief patent attorney for the Lockheed Aircraft Company, and the two have the idea to produce an ultra-light rifle using aircraft industry materials like fiberglass and aluminum. They create a company called SF Projects and get to work using Remington actions. They fit aluminum (and then later aluminum/steel composite) barrels and foam-filled stocks and the result is a rifle that weighs less than 6 pounds with a 4x scope fitted. The first ones are chambered in .257 Roberts, but this shortly gives way to the new .308 Winchester cartridge.
Sullivan and Dorchester make a connection with Richard Boutelle, who is very much a “gun guy” himself and also head of the Fairchild aircraft company. The idea of the rifle appeals to Boutelle, and Fairchild was looking to diversify its operations – and so Fairchild agrees to buy SF Projects, renaming it the Armalite Division of Fairchild.
The idea of the rifle was for civilian hunters who want a gun that is light to carry for long distances and also military specialists like airborne troops who need lightweight gear. The Army tests the AR-1 in 1955 and finds some fairly serious problems with it. There are reliability issues, and also accuracy shortfalls. When the composite barrel heats up, differential stresses cause the point of impact to shift. This foreshadows the catastrophic failure of a composite barrel in AR-10 testing, but that is a story for another video. Ultimately after two rounds of testing the Army rejects the rifle, and that is pretty much the end of it. Armalite moves its focus to other projects, namely combining aircraft industry materials with the self-loading rifle of their other designer, Eugene Stoner. That, of course, will become the AR-10.
Since I know folks will ask, the AR projects between 1 and 10 were thus:
AR3: Stoner-type rifle in hunting configuration
AR5: Air Force survival rifle
AR9: Shotgun
The designations 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 were set aside to drawing board projects that never materialized.
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October 25, 2025
A Modern Stocked Pistol: B&T’s Universal Service Weapon (USW)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Jun 2025The genesis of the B&T USW was a two and a half hour car ride home from a youth hockey game, when Karl Brugger and a friend were thinking about how to improve police effectiveness with handguns. What would make a handgun more accurate in practice? Clearly a red for and a shoulder stock. So how does one add those elements to a pistol while maintaining easy carry in a service holster? The answer was the USW.
The first prototypes were built on AT-84 Sphinx pistols (a Swiss-made copy of the CZ75). The first production run used Sphinx components, but with newly made frames and slide that incorporated cocking surfaces forward on the slide and an extension off the frame to mount the side-folding stock and Aimpoint Nano optic. Only a few of these were made, as the project was never all that popular.
Other experiments included conversions for other pistol models, with the SIG P320 being the most practical. Clamp-on conversion kits were made for guns like the CZ P10, Walther PPQ, and Glock.
Perhaps the most influential outcome of the project was the optic. Aimpoint originally developed the Nano as B&T’s request, but in the original form is was not nearly as reliable as Aimpoint desired. It was iterated and ruggedized (and renamed to avoid a lawsuit over the Beretta Nano pistol) and became the very successful Aimpoint Acro.
My 2022 Desert Brutality match with a USW-320:
• Evaluating the Modern Stocked Pistol: USW-…
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October 21, 2025
The amazing invisible detail
Rex Krueger
Published 20 Oct 2025Patrons saw this video early: / rexkrueger
October 8, 2025
QotD: Porn is always in the vanguard of new technologies
I remember seeing something years ago that commented on how soon after the development of photography we got pictures of naked women.
5 Florins says after Gutenberg invented the printing press and mass printed the Bible, guys were buying presses and cranking out copies of Thee Hornee Shepard and Thee Shye But Readye Milkmaide. 😍
(“T’would say it be a bodice ripper, but we’ve not invented bodices yet” – Johannes of Cologne, Ye Cologne Courier Newspapere)
mmack, commenting on “Why the Internet Stinks Now”, Founding Questions, 2025-07-03.
Update, 9 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
October 7, 2025
C93 Borchardt: the First Successful Self-Loading Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Nov 2015Hugo Borchardt was a brilliant and well-traveled firearms designer. He was born in Germany but emigrated to the United States at a fairly young age, where he became engaged in the gun trade. He spent time working with Winchester, Remington (where he patented improvements on James Paris Lee’s box magazine idea), and Sharps (where he designed the M1878 rifle and worked as Superintendent). With this experience under his belt, he returned to Germany and worked with the Loewe/DWM corporation.
Borchardt’s seminal invention in Germany was his C93 automatic pistol, which was the first of its kinds using a reasonably powerful cartridge and a locked-breech action. Unlike the other designs extant at the time, the C93 went into commercial production, and 3000 were ultimately made. The gun was safe and reliable, and it set the standard for locating a detachable box magazine in the grip, which remains the standard today. However, its very bulky mainspring assembly led to it being a rather awkward handgun to use (although it was a quite nice carbine when used with its detachable shoulder stock).
Borchardt’s talents came hand-in-hand with a fair amount of hubris, and he refused to consider the possibility that his pistol could be improved. Several military trials requested a smaller and handier version of the gun, and when Borchardt refused to make those changes, DWM gave the job to a man named Georg Luger. Luger was very good at taking existing designs and improving them, and he transformed the basic action of the C93 into the Luger automatic pistol, which of course became one of the most iconic handguns ever made.
September 13, 2025
Jennings 5-Shot Repeating Flintlock Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 May 2025Isaiah Jennings patented an improvement to the Belton repeating flintlock system in 1821 — but we don’t know exactly what his idea was because the Patent Office lost his patent (and many others) in a large 1836 fire. Jennings’ system was used by several gunsmiths, though. In 1828/9 the State of New York contracted to convert 521 of their muskets to Jennings’-pattern repeaters. We also have a few examples like this custom five-shot pistol made by John Caswell of upstate New York.
Jennings’ system uses superposed charges loaded in the barrel along with a movable lock. Each charge has its own touch hole, and the cover plates for them act as stops for movement of the lock, to ensure proper alignment. The trigger will fire the lock in any position, and it is also fitted with an automatic magazine frizzen — so cocking the hammer automatically charges priming powder into the pan and closes the frizzen. These were very advanced arms for the early 1800s, and expensive to produce.
Belton Repeating Flintlock:
• Belton Repeating Flintlock: A Semiaut…
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September 6, 2025
Unique British Crankfire .58 Morse Manual Machine Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Apr 2025This is a really interesting piece with a mostly unknown origin. It was manufactured in the UK (the barrel was deemed Enfield-made by former Royal Armouries curator Herb Woodend) and is chambered for the .58 Morse centerfire cartridge. The date of production is unknown. It uses a gravity-feed magazine and fires via hand crank. Turning the crank cycles the bolt forward and back, not completely unlike a Maxim gun but without the automatic operation. It came out of a small Canadian museum in the 1950s, but its provenance before that is unknown.
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August 31, 2025
Military-Issue Colt Model 1839 Paterson Revolving Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Apr 2025The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed improvement. Colt set about doing this with his 1839 pattern, which was more robust and more powerful. It had six chambers of .525″, with much greater powder capacity than the first Colt revolving rifles. A total of about 950 were made before the Paterson company failed in 1842, and nearly 700 of those were military sales. The US War Department bought 360 (including this example), the Republic of Texas bought 300, and the State of Rhode Island bought 46 — the rest were sold to private companies or individuals. Despite its improvements, though, the 1839 revolving rifle was still not a mature design and was not successful enough to keep Colt in business.
Colt 1837 Ring-Lever Rifle: Sam Colt’s Paterson No1 Model Carbine
Colt 1847 Walker Revolver: 1847 Walker Revolver: the Texas Behemoth
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August 28, 2025
QotD: The rise and fall of the chariot in combat
Horses had been domesticated long before the Scythians. Horses, along with dogs and reindeer, are the only animals domesticated by foragers, rather than farmers. The first significant use of horses in battle was to draw chariots. Chariot archers could shoot, and javelins could be thrown, further from a chariot than a horse.
The classic chariot was driver and archer or spearmen. A friend describes them as being like a pilot and a navigator (or bomb-aimer) on a bombing run. The pilot/charioteer concentrates on getting the pair of you where you need to be (or not to be). The archer/spearmen/navigator/bomb-aimer concentrates on killing the enemy.
The most famous driver/warrior pairing in myth and literature is Krishna and Prince Arjuna in the Mahabharata and, specifically, the Bhagavad Gita. (Normally, the driver serves the warrior, but if your driver is an incarnation of Vishnu, things work differently.) The warriors of the Iliad are also chariot-driving warriors — hence scenes such as Achilles dragging Hector‘s dead body behind his chariot. Chariots were a major element in Chinese warfare up to the Warring States period. New Kingdom Egypt was very much a chariot empire, as were their great rivals, the Hittites.
Once recurve bows able to match chariot archery from horseback arrived, chariots largely disappeared from combat in the major Eurasian civilisations. This began to occur around the time of the Assyrians — who were a transitional case using both chariots and cavalry — about a thousand years before the invention of the stirrup and even longer before the stirrup’s arrival in the Mediterranean world. Lancers — the heavily armoured version of which was the cataphract — then developed as a way of dealing with horse archers.
Lorenzo Warby, “Stirrups, a rant”, Lorenzo from Oz, 2025-02-28.
