Ink and Iron Magazine is a Veteran produced digital-only 40-page publication for the “front towards enemy” lifestyle. The coverage includes “Weapons. Women. Metal. More.”, with interviews, centerfolds, and reviews found throughout. Issue 1 is available as a free download in .pdf format and on the iTunes store.
www.facebook.com/inkandironmagazine
The Annual Beef and Beer benefit for Mike Duskin and Riley Stephens was started in April 2013 by two former members of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group after their former teammates Mike Duskin and Riley Stephens were KIA in Wardak Province, Afghanistan.
For this year’s event, local beer and food will be provided, and silent and raffle-style auctions will be held. This year, 2/3rds of the money generated by the event will go to fund scholarships for two children of USASOC soldiers. Last year, over $80,000 was generated during the event.
The event takes place this Thursday, May 29th from 1800 – 2330 EST at The Fair Barn located in Pinehurst, NC.
For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit www.duskinandstephens.com/2014-beef—beer.
Think tank Battelle has developed a new Line-of-Sight millimeter wave comms system that offers 10 Gb per second transmission rates.
Operating in the E and W bands, it boasts a mere 64 nano-seconds of latency and is already being looked at to transmit wide area persistent surveillance data to ground stations and in the commercial sector to support financial transactions. The 2′ antenna (seen above) offers 53 dB gain and has a 4.8m beam width.
For more info contact GDataWave@battelle.org.
The SIG MPX is a machine pistol. That’s right, a machine pistol even though it seems like a word we don’t use much anymore.
It combines SIG’s short-stroke gas piston system with the AR-style controls you are familiar with. Additionally, it can be set up to shoot 9mm, .357 SIG or .40 S&W. This is the MPX-K but barrel lengths and types of stocks can be swapped out to change the configuration at the operator level.
All told, there are four models: MPX-K, MPX-P, MPX-SD with integral suppressor and MPX-C.
One of the things I miss about this new super-sized SOFIC is the small business aspect. You used to walk into SOFIC and see lots of innovative small companies that develop products to support SOF. Some of those things are still there, but now they’re generally tucked into a larger company’s booth. This year, in the booth of Faircount Media, publishers of “The Year In Special Operations” were a couple of such products. One was the Strykr Covert Carry pant but the one that caught my eye was a wooden box containing a knife.
Turns out, it was the G1 Urban Bayonet from Saevus. It’s a very innovative design and I definitely give the creator some credit for thinking outside the box. Essentially, what you are looking at, is a knife that pulls double duty as a foregrip. Granted, most of us have abandoned full length foregrip a due to weight and ergonomics. But look past that because the blade of the G1 stores in the grip and being spring activated, telescopes out into position once deployed. The 3-1/2″ Dual Edge Dagger Blade is made from 440 stainless and the handle is of urethane casting resin.
While it’s time may have already passed due to TTP changes, it’s definitely an interesting design and I look forward to seeing what else SAEVUS comes up with.
When you visit the SureFire booth, your attention is immediately drawn to the Polaris RAZR, set center stage. Atop that RAZR are mounted several Arc series lights.
The Arc series includes the handheld Arc-2 and Arc-3 as well as the highly successful Hellfighter weapon mounted lights including the new Hellfighter-5 which boasts 4500 lumens at 80 minutes with its integral battery pack (continuous with vehicle DC power).
We all know how well the Hellfighter family of lights work but what you really need to read up on are the Arc- and Arc-3 handhelds. The Arc-2 offers the same 4500 lumens at 1,000,000 candela as the Hellfighter-5 but in a handheld! This means you can reach out over 2,000m.
During last week’s SOFIC we mentioned the new AJAX Armor System from Tactical Revolution for use with crew served weapons in fixed positions that are not equipped with gun shields.
Now, we’d like to share the video of ballistic testing of the system so you can see that it works and why it has such an elaborate mounting system. In this high speed camera footage, you’ll notice how the plate returns to its proper position after mitigating the energy of the projectile strike.
Available through International Armored Group and manufactured by Tactical Revolution, LLC
We still have a few articles from last week’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Florida.
