GORE-TEX Defense Fabrics’ All Weather Integrated Clothing System

SilencerCo Introduces New Titanium Suppressor: The Scythe-Ti

August 2nd, 2023

August, 2, 2023 — West Valley City, UT —  SilencerCo is excited to introduce the Scythe-Ti, SilencerCo’s first suppressor completely constructed from titanium. This premium .30 caliber silencer is extremely lightweight and short, with the body of the suppressor weighing just over six ounces and measuring under six inches in length. The real magic, however, is that the Scythe-Ti boasts impressive sound suppression while maintaining this featherlight quality – a unique accomplishment for suppressors in its class. It’s the optimal choice for suppressed hunting, long-range precision shooting or days at the range. The Scythe-Ti will be shipping later this month and available at local dealers.

With no barrel length restrictions and rated for calibers all the way up to .300 RUM, the capabilities of the Scythe-Ti are extensive. It’s finished in a Type II Anodize and rubbed with oil for durability and resistance to chipping or flaking. The Scythe-Ti also features a new single-port anchor brake to give added recoil reduction while maintaining a minimum length. It ships with a custom titanium direct thread mount in 5/8 x 24 to keep the overall weight impressively low.

“Titanium has a lot of benefits over other materials,” said SilencerCo Product Manager Andrew Herbst. “Not only is it freakishly lightweight, but it also cools down a lot quicker than steel so it’s easier to handle after shooting. Plus it looks sleek.”

The Scythe-Ti takes sleek to the next level by replacing wrench flats with a special tool that threads onto the top of the suppressor for easy detachment. It’s also anodized on both the inside and the outside of the suppressor to reduce the common sparking that comes with titanium.

The Scythe-Ti shines in sound performance on 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5 PRC, .300WM and .300 BLK calibers. When used with the SilencerCo ASR Mount, it’s the quietest suppressor SilencerCo has ever tested on .300 WM.

“When we started our testing for the Scythe-Ti, we were aiming to dominate the titanium market in minimal weight and length,” said Herbst. “We were happily surprised when we found out that the Scythe-Ti also dominates in sound suppression. Overall, it’s a very well-rounded suppressor.”

Product Specifications:

• Rated for calibers ranging from .223 REM/5.56 NATO to .300 RUM

• Weighs 6.3 oz. without anchor brake, 7.3 oz. with included anchor brake

• Measures 6.16” in length

• Pairs with Bravo accessories and mounting systems

• MSRP of $1,174

• Extremely lightweight and short

• Features a new single-port anchor brake

• Rated all the way up to .300 RUM

• No barrel length restrictions

• Bolt-gun and semi-auto rated — not rated for full-auto fire

• Finished in Type II Anodize and rubbed with oil

To learn more about the Scythe-Ti, go to silencerco.com/silencers/scythe-ti. To purchase a Scythe-Ti, find a SilencerCo dealer near you.

PDW 72 Hour Short

August 2nd, 2023

The One Grab-and-Go, Hot Weather Short to Rule Them All

The 72 Hour Short in All Terrain Cloth is a high performance short built to go the distance and then some, in warm and hot environments, anywhere in the world. Let’s face it, summers are getting hotter and longer. This short is designed as the one grab-and-go-short for the next 72 hot hours of adventure, on land or in the water. With the built-in waist belt, technical properties and signature feature set for this style are dialed for high versatility and as a multiplier for a wide breadth of activities. From summer trekking in the high Sierra, to exploring the jungles of Vale do Javari, mountain trail running in the Andes, or packrafting. Uncompromising quality of make and the best materials. Made in USA. 

The 72 Hour Short is a part of Prometheus Design Werx’s CORE-Line. Available in Universal Field Gray, All Terrain Brown and All Terrain Green.

The Design and R&D Team at PDW states:

“The design harkens back to old school rock climber’s shorts, but significantly updated with modern construction, best grade technical materials and trims. No belt needed. Lightweight, durable, quick-dry, 4-way stretch, amphibious and secure-EDC ready. So comfortable and airy, the 72 Hour Short is the next best thing to going commando…and staying cool in the withering heat. While seemingly a simple design, these shorts feature multiple pockets, the four major pockets secured with a YKK zipper to keep your EDC items safe and secure, two additional EDC-Tool pockets, two soft clip-in points to attach lanyard, carabiners, key chains, etc. And of course, are expertly made in the California, USA, the birthplace of the modern core outdoor/mountain sports industry. These are one of the last shorts of its type still being made here Stateside. This is one highly versatile and capable hot weather short. The one hot weather technical short to rule them all. Like all of our apparel, we follow our own Long Life Apparel ethos where we design and produce our apparel to last far beyond the typical industry life cycle standards and do not subscribe to ‘fast fashion’ or disposable consumerism.”

 

The 72 Hour Short is available for purchase for $133.00 via their website, prometheusdesignwerx.com.

The NERD from Shaw Concepts

August 2nd, 2023

The Necessary Equipment Readily Deployable Pouch was created in two sizes, small and large, to offer folks more control and selection when putting together their kit.

The NERD Pouch was designed to be a thin, flat laying pouch one could add on their placard in front of their mags in a way that didn’t stick out too far and offered plenty of organization for their frequently accessed items that would be a pain to reach for, if placed elsewhere.

shaw-concepts.com/collections/all-products/products/nerd-pouch

Edgar Brothers Announces Partnership with Sentinel Photonics as the Exclusive UK Distributor

August 2nd, 2023

Macclesfield, UK, 1st August 2023. Edgar Brothers is pleased to announce its partnership with Sentinel Photonics as the exclusive and sole distributor for all Sentinel Photonics products within the UK MOD and Police Markets. This exclusive collaboration underlines Edgar Brothers’ commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions to its customers.

Sentinel Photonics has been rapidly emerging as a market leader in the Laser Detection and Protection industry. Their revolutionary products, including FROST, LASERD® MAX, and LASERD® MICRO, have garnered significant attention for their exceptional performance and innovative design.

FROST is a series of protective filters specifically designed to be attached to the objective lens of optics. Protecting personnel by eliminating the risk of detection by laser retroflection and enhancing signature management. By offering advanced protection, these filters greatly enhance the safety and efficiency of Users operating in challenging environments.

LASERD® MAX is a comprehensive laser detection and intelligence gathering system that effectively tackles a wide range of real-world threats by establishing a laser intelligence picture of the battlespace or chosen environment. Its high-performance capabilities make it an essential tool for organisations operating in laser-prone environments.

Additionally, LASERD® MICRO, a compact body worn laser threat detector, provides enhanced security by alerting Users to the presence of pulsed laser radiation typically associated with laser designators and rangefinders.

Mike Newman, Director of Edgar Brothers expressed his excitement about the partnership, stating, “Having collaborated with Sentinel for several months, we firmly believe that their innovative solutions in the laser detection and protection markets will be game-changing for our customer base. Our ability to expedite the product to market will be a significant advantage for our End-Users, who will ultimately benefit from these exceptional products.”

GBRS x Unity Tactical – Axon Switches

August 2nd, 2023

Unity Tactical has created special versions of their Axon & Axon SL with custom cable lengths of 10″ and 14” exclusively for GBRS for use with Hydra mounts which require longer cables.

Axon

Featuring a Picatinny mount, the AXON switch provides complete control of lights and aiming devices in a single, compact, and rugged housing. Lights and aiming devices can be fired from individual buttons with versions available for popular issued devices. Its unique design provides tactile differentiation between the two buttons to eliminate confusion in dark, cold, and high-stress situations. The light (angled) button features a switch that allows for both momentary and constant activation, while the aiming device button features a momentary-only button that supports the double-click-for-constant-on feature.

AXON SL

The AXON SL is the smaller, single-button switch in Unity’s AXON family and hard mounts directly to an M1913 Rail. AXON SL features a 45-degree angled button face for an ergonomically correct activation angle, making it easy to index under stress while wearing PPE or facing extreme environmental conditions.

These longer cable versions of Unity AXON buttons are exclusive to GBRS. Currently in-stock are variants for Crane and SureFire plugs with NGAL plugs coming in the next few months.

Pershing Strike Lays the Groundwork for Successful Large-Scale Mobilizations

August 2nd, 2023

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — If the nation requires a large-scale mobilization of troops, First Army and its enterprise partners must be ready to deliver.

With that in mind, First Army has joined with nearly a dozen of those partners for Pershing Strike 23, a deliberate command post exercise, which began July 25 and runs through August 4. The event incorporates mobilization exercises conducted at mobilization force generation installations and involves more than 3,000 personnel at several installations including: Rock Island Arsenal; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Stewart, Georgia; Camp Atterbury, Indiana; and Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.

Also participating are staff members from First Army Division East and First Army Division West, at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Fort Cavazos, Texas, respectively.

Bradley White, chief of the First Army Plans and Mobilization Division, said the exercise serves to “demonstrate First Army’s ability to provide the pre- and post-mobilization training and support that our Reserve component partners will require to successfully prepare for a deployment in support of a combatant commander.”

The process gives insight into the effort, coordination, and cooperation that would be required of First Army and its enterprise partners in event of a large-scale mobilization operation, or LSMO. Such operations are crucial to the nation’s defense, noted Col. Shawn Creamer, First Army director of operations.

“The Reserve component comprises 52 percent of the total Army and many of the key enabler capabilities resident within the Army — engineers, logistics units, military police, etc. — disproportionately reside within the Reserve Component,” he said. “The Army and the joint force rely on the Reserve component, our citizen Soldiers, to sustain our global operations and activities, and to advance U.S. national interests. Without the efficient and effective mobilization of a well-trained Reserve component, the Army cannot deliver land power when asked and the joint force cannot win when called.”

This statement speaks to the importance of holding the exercise. “We use training and exercises like Pershing Strike to both validate our current plans and test out new concepts,” Creamer said. “We press these plans and concepts to the breaking point, to see what works and what doesn’t. Out of this we can not only adjust our plans to correct identified shortfalls, but more importantly, articulate areas of risk to Army senior leaders.”

Being ready to fight is what the Army is all about, noted Rick Fink, First Army director of training and exercises. “LSMO is the reason there is an Army and Pershing Strike stresses our entire system,” he said.

During Pershing Strike 23, units and Soldiers are hit with an array of challenges they must respond to quickly and calmly. Injects, be they related to weather, personnel or logistics, force the participants to react and adapt.

It is a continually improving process, Fink said, adding that First Army and its enterprise partners have taken lessons learned from previous Pershing Strike exercises, refined them and applied them to today’s environment. That momentum will continue as input from this iteration will be applied going forward.

“We’ve seen what works and we see what changes we need to make and asked how can we do this better, more efficiently and quicker,” he said. “All the information we’re collecting, the purpose is to enable leaders to better understand what is happening on the ground. They are empowered with the best information to make the best decisions.”

Along those lines, White said key goals of Pershing Strike include establishing a shared understanding “of the sheer heavy lifting (required) by the entire mobilization enterprise to successfully execute LSMO” and identifying “critical gaps in the enterprises’ capability and capacity to support LSMO and work towards solutions.”

He added that Pershing Strike and its associated mobilization exercises also serve to increase readiness of the involved units: “By bringing together the critical mobilization enterprise partners and providing a representation of the workload and stress on the mobilization enterprise that would be experienced during a LSMO event, each unit, headquarters and the enterprise partners can flesh out their policies, processes and procedures required to execute mobilization operations.”

While most First Army personnel were doing their usual jobs during Pershing Strike, Col. Stew James stepped back from his role as senior advisor to the Army National Guard for Pennsylvania to serve as an observer coach/trainer during the exercise. He explained his responsibility in that capacity was to “observe processes and provide feedback. I take what they said they did well last year and make sure they’re still progressing. We want to expand our knowledge and not take a step back.”

That requires working toward a common goal. “It’s a team effort,” James said. “You have to crosspollinate that knowledge across the enterprise to make it efficient. By getting enterprise partners involved, we’re going to be better at knowing the problem sets that will appear if we have to do a large-scale mobilization. Every commander’s update brief and battle update brief, there is knowledge shared and that’s the benefit of this.”

It’s all geared toward First Army and its partners leaving the exercise better than when they started. “We should see growth,” James said. “Each iteration of Pershing Strike, we are gaining organizational knowledge and experience. Building that mobilization knowledge is critical so that we are solving new problems, not re-learning old problems.”

White emphasized the crucial role played by First Army’s enterprise partners, which include U.S. Army Forces Command, Installation Management Command, the Army National Guard, U.S. Army Reserve, U.S. Army Medical Command, U.S. Army North, U.S. Transportation Command, Army Sustainment Command, Army Materiel Command, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command and Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command.

“Without the enterprise we will be unable to be successful at our mission of providing trained and validated (Reserve component) forces for the combatant commander,” he said. “Without the enterprise we can’t move our mobilizing units and their equipment to and through the [mobilization force generation installation] to the port. We can’t feed, billet or move our mobilizing units during post-mobilization training and without the enterprise support at our [mobilization force generation installations] our training brigades cannot execute their training and validation mission.”

While the exercise ends next week, the process will continue. Lessons learned will be taken back to respective installations, added to standard operating procedures, drilled on again and integrated into a system that will have First Army ready to deliver trained and ready troops if called upon.

By Warren W. Marlow

Rheinmetall Showcases Its World-Leading Autonomous Technology During Unmanned Ground Vehicle Trials in Estonia

August 1st, 2023

After being put through a series of gruelling challenges during the Unmanned Ground Vehicle Autonomy Trials in Estonia, Rheinmetall has yet again positioned itself as a world leader in autonomous technology.

The trials, designed to test the limits of autonomy, were organized by the Estonian Military Academy and the Estonian Defence Forces. The event attracted a multinational audience of military and civilian experts from over 20 countries, all of whom were keen to experience for themselves the latest technological advancements in the field of UGVs. Rheinmetall was one of the 11 companies taking part in the trials.

From open fields with high grass to dense woodland, the Rheinmetall Mission Master SP’s on- and off-road navigation capabilities were truly put to the test as it tackled rough terrains with limited visibility. Though the trials were not designed to be competitive, Rheinmetall’s autonomous vehicle turned heads with its limited driver intervention, obstacle avoidance technology, and speed and manoeuvrability.

“These trials have shown just how far autonomous technology has come in recent years. We were proud to put our system to the test alongside some of the world’s most skilled developers. We are really pleased with our performance and look forward to seeing how our technology will evolve over the coming years” stated Alain Tremblay, Vice-President, Business Development, Innovation & Robotics at Rheinmetall Canada.

Rheinmetall Mission Master and PATH autonomy kit

The Rheinmetall Mission Master SP, which stands for “silent partner”, is a fully-electric autonomous vehicle. It was chosen for the trials due to its compact profile that can navigate through tight spaces.

Like all members of the Mission Master family of UGVs, the Mission Master SP is powered by the Rheinmetall PATH autonomy kit: an AI-powered navigation system. This agnostic suite of advanced sensors and perception algorithms enables the Mission Master vehicles to navigate through challenging environments, while keeping soldiers out of harm’s way.

In addition to autonomous navigation, the Mission Master can support crewed and remote teleoperation, and seamlessly transition between each mode. The vehicles can also be fitted with different modules, including logistic transport, fire support, and medical evacuation.

Rheinmetall produced a video during the trials in Estonia to showcase the capacities of its Mission Master platforms to a wider audience.

For more information on the family of Rheinmetall Mission Master UGVs, visit rheinmetall.ca.

Alien Gear Holsters Premiers the Versatile Photon Holster

August 1st, 2023

POST FALLS, ID—Alien Gear Holsters has released the new versatile and premium Photon™  Holster—a unique holster with a 4-in-1 design that permits owners to change the holster for IWB or OWB uses and to be easily set up for use as an ambidextrous holster by either left- or right-handed shooters. The sleek holster is offered in two models—the Photon Light Bearing Holster or the Photon (Non-Light) Holster. The Photon Light Bearing Holster is designed to accommodate handguns with lights, optics, suppressor height sights and threaded barrels.

The Photon Holster will help concealed carry firearm users to easily change holster placement locations on their body without having to buy-and-try so many holsters. This state-of-the-art holster is also crafted via a durable injection molding process which ensures a long-lasting product and a secure fit for the handgun being carried.

Adding to the versatility of the Photon Holster are easily made user adjustments for: retention; cant; and ride height. Users can also add a sidecar to carry an additional magazine. Photon Holsters will also accommodate wide range of handguns including: a dozen models of widely owned Glock pistols; 15 models of SIG pistols; 5 models of S&W pistols; and several versions of the popular Springfield Armory Hellcat pistol.

Photon Mag Carriers with Sidecar are available to accommodate single and double stack magazines, and 9mm and .40-caliber magazines. The belt clips included with each holster will allow positioning on 1.5-inch and 1.75-inch wide belts.

“At Alien Gear, we have always been dedicated to providing the best products for customers,” said Shawn Hostetter, CEO of Alien Gear. “We understand that your retail customers are looking for a product that is not only high-quality but also meets their unique needs and preferences. With that in mind, we have designed the Photon holster to be customizable and easy to use, making it the ultimate holster.”

The new Photon Holster is NOW available through major retailers, neighborhood sporting goods stores and firearms dealers from coast to coast. Additional details can be obtained on the Alien Gear Holsters website at www.aliengearholsters.com or by calling the customer service center at 208-618-8300.