Previously in this series, we talked about the FN FAL and the G3 rifle families. Throughout the period from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, those two weapons systems competed on an equal footing with the AR and AK platforms. The end of the Cold War however, brought a worldwide contraction in the arms industry, as nations around the world – with no looming global war in the offing any longer, and terrorism still being viewed as a strictly local security problem – began to demobilize large sectors of their armed forces. One result of this was a desire in many nations to standardize on one weapon or another, to reduce their logistical costs even further. Ultimately, although some nations clung to legacy small arms, the rest of the world more or less standardized on either the AR-platform (the M-16 and its derivatives) or the venerable AK-platform, both of which had frequently either been given away as “gifts” or “sold” at ridiculous discounts…It’s hard to beat “free“.
G-11 Rifle, developed by Heckler & Koch
One casualty of this rush to military standardization and downsizing was the G-11 rifle, from Heckler & Koch, builders of the G3. An expensive project that H&K had sunk mountains of money and talent into developing over nearly twenty years, the G-11 – a thoroughly radical design (video) – was actually adopted for service by West Germany, as a test run of the “caseless ammunition” concept that all the other NATO countries were watching closely…Then, of course, the Berlin Wallcollapsed, the Germanies reunified, and the newly reunited Germany was suddenly awash in a literal mountain of Warsaw Pact-standard weaponry, as well as few realistic enemies to turn those weapons against. The G-11, which would require a completely new – and staggeringly expensive – logistical system from the ground up, in ways far exceeding anything required by more conventional small arms, was immediately cancelled as unnecessary.
Which left H&K with a serious problem.
US Army (USA) 1st Infantry Division (ID) soldiers fire Heckler&Koch 5.56mm G36 assault rifles
The German Government realized that it still needed a new rifle; the G3’s were getting a bit “long in the tooth,” as it were, and H&K did not want to get beaten out by another company in supplying the German military. So H&K thought fast, and scrapped its “intermediate cartridge” rifle projects and started a crash design program from scratch. That new design became the G-36, which has become so popular, it has been adopted by many national armies and police forces throughout the world…The G-36, however, has a secret hiding under its hood: H&K did not develop the G-36 from scratch — the guts of the G-36 derive directly from one of the most unsung, unloved and underrated (in its time) weapons of the post-World War 2 era:
The AR-18 was developed by Eugene Stoner, the chief engineer of the AR-15/M-16 rifle series. (The “AR” in those designs, incidentally, derives from “Armalite Rifle”, not “Assault Rifle”, which was seen – somewhat ironically – as being “too German”, since the term is a direct translation from the German of “Sturmgewehr”, literally “Storm/Assault Rifle”, of Nazi “StG-44” fame.) After successfully developing several weapons for ArmaLite (then a division of Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corporation in the 1950’s) – including the AR-5 (which later became the AR-7) for the US Air Force, Stoner’s AR-15 rifle design was adopted for general general issue by the entire US military establishment. As neither ArmaLite nor Fairchild were geared to produce firearms on the industrial scale needed by the US military, a complicated series of boardroom dances resulted in Fairchild divesting itself of ArmaLite, and selling all the rights to the AR-15 to Colt Manufacturing, who would go on to reap immense profits from the design.
Eugene Stoner – who had had left ArmaLite in 1961, just before the divestiture and sale of rights – had been working on a follow-on design, which he abandoned after taking consulting jobs for Colt on the M-16, and ultimately landed at Cadillac Gage, where he would go on to design the “Stoner62(video) and 63“ (video). After the sale, ArmaLite’s new chief engineer, Arthur Miller, took over the remnants of Stoner’s last project, and worked those notes into a new design and concept, in an attempt to compete with Colt.
AR-18, Left & Right views, with scope attached
The military AR-18 (a civilian-legal version, the “AR-180”, would come later) was envisioned as an “entry-level” rifle for 3rd World nations wanting to upgrade their national arsenals and jump-starting their national industrial bases. It was designed to be easy to produce, in addition to being reliable and capable in action, and the goal was to license production and tooling to a 3rd World government in one package, while only needing to sell the country a few production weapons to get them started.
AR-18, stock folded, with scope attached
In the technical sector, ArmaLite succeeded: the AR-18 was, indeed, reliable, capable and simple to produce. Unfortunately for ArmaLite’s business strategy, not many nations of the 1960’s and 1970’s were willing to invest the money to set up an arms manufacturing system to produce only a few thousand weapons. Only fournationsever purchasedlarge numbers for military use, and it did become famous as the signature weapon of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland. Prior to the mid-1980’s, only three licenses were let, the first to the Nederlandsche Wapen-en Munitiefabriek (NWM) division of Den Bosch of the Netherlands, although none are known to have been produced there; one to Howa Manufacturing Co. of Japan (which ended production in 1974, when new Japanese regulations closed the company’s export market); and the Sterling Armaments Company in England (which ended production in 1985). Along with ArmaLite’s own manufacturing center in Costa Mesa, California, fewer than 22,000 AR-18’s and AR-180’s were ever built. The company – which had been sold to Elisco Tool & Manufacturing of the Philippines in 1983 – would close its own doors in 1985, and Elisco itself was liquidated [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidation] in the late-1980’s. Although a few companies tried to revive the design over the years, the AR-18/-180 looked like it would fade into historical obscurity…
…Or not.
The core of the AR-18/-180 was its bolt carrier and gas system. The bolt itself was based on the multi-lug design of the AR-15 bolt, although the carrier was a unique design. Similarly, the gas system was a short-stroke gas piston design that had not been widely used before. The combination of those two systems, either as direct copies or as derivatives, live on in most of the major small arms systems developed since 1990, including the G36, HK416, FN F2000, FN-SCAR, Steyr AUG, CZ 805 BREN, Chinese QBZ-95, Daewoo K1, HOWA Type 89, SAR-80, T-91 and British SA80 family of weapon systems.
Without any kind of doubt, the AR-18 has had more impact on the world’s small arms design than virtually any other weapon in nearly a century, and will continue to do so, potentially outliving the rivals that killed the AR-18 in the 1980’s.
The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
To make it easier for readers to follow story source links: anytime you see a bracketed number marked in green – [1] – those are the source links relating to that story.
South America
Leading off, this week, a “tear gas grenade” was thrown into a student body election meeting at the Tomas Frías Autonomous University in the city of Potosí, Bolivia on the 9th. In the resulting panic-induced stampede, four young women were killed, and over 80 students were injured. Bolivian police have arrested four suspects: Manfred Flores, 25, Mauricio Quintanilla, 25, Milton Fuentes, 35 and Ariel Quispe, 40, on suspicion (currently) of homicide and possession of a gas grenade.
Bolivian authorities have not speculated on the reason for the attack, and are attempting to discover how the men obtained the grenade, which is normally very difficult to obtain in Bolivia.
The odd nature of the on-going wave of bomb threats against schools continued to develop in the United States this week, with four incidents of note: two handwritten notes making threats were found, resulting in one arrest [1] and police seeking a “person of interest” [4]; another, in which an 8th Grader apparently called in a threat [2], and another threat made via Instagram [3]. As usual, there were many other similar incidents, but those stories had too little information to reference. While these threats are widely dispersed, they do cluster, and this new tack in the course of the wave remains an object of interest, deviating from the previously reported robocall format.
In Mali, four soldiers were killed and one was wounded, when their patrol vehicle struck an IED near Djenné in the central part of the country. Two children were killed and four other people were wounded in Diondiori, also in central Mali, by what officials describe as “shellfire” from “Armed Terrorist Groups“, as authorities frequently do not know which of the many groups that have been fighting inside the beleaguered nation since 2012 are responsible. [1]
In neighboring Burkina Faso, meanwhile, army units reported that they successfully ambushed a group of terrorists in Mouhoun Province, killing 40, and capturing a large amount of weapons and equipment. In another incident, however, other terrorists attacked a prison in the town of Nouna, on the border with neighboring Mali, freed and escaped with all 60 prisoners, leaving one person dead. [2]
Burkina Faso has battled their insurgency since 2015, when fighting in Mali spilled over the border.
In what may be a disturbing expansion of the ongoing war in the north, the nation of Togo saw an attack on an army outpost in the Kpendjal prefecture on its northern frontier border with Burkina Faso. Officials report that some eight troops were killed and 13 wounded. Togo has remained largely free of violence in the last ten years, but that could be changing, as violence continues moving south. [3][4]
In related news, the West Africa Centre for Counter-Extremism (WACCE) released a report warning that the nation of Ghana, which has also escaped the violence to its north so far, was increasingly exposed to danger, pointing out that some 53% of ECOWAS (the “Economic Community of West African States”) nations are currently in the midst of mostly Islamist terrorist insurgencies, and that the contagion is spreading.
In Nigeria, the last few weeks of relative calm were shattered this week, as a combination of terror groups and simple bandits emerged on the attack, killing dozens (including civilians, soldiers and police), hijacking buses – crucial to Nigeria’s infrastructure – and kidnapping victims that ranged from a pair of nursing mothers to traditional monarchs and tribal chiefs.
Elsewhere on the continent, 14 people were reported killed in an attack on a “displaced persons” camp outside the town of Fataki, near the city of Bunia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the 10th. The CODECO terror group, accused of being loosely affiliated with IS-CAP, is believed to have been responsible, as they were responsible for an attack on a nearby mining camp on the 8th. The fighting is part of the Ituri Conflict, which has been continuing in fits and starts since 2003. [1][2]
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have reportedly begun to actively recruit child soldiers, although the Taliban leadership have said that they are forbidding the recruitment of “teenagers”…video footage under the link. [1]
In Pakistan, a spate of attacks this week killed at least eight people, including three children and three soldiers. This comes as the country’s government denied, yet again, that it was harboring terror groups that targeted its neighbors. [2]-[5]
In India, the long-running conflict in the northern Jammu & Kashmir region saw a burst of violence, as well, this week, with several operations – both jihadist and national – taking place during the week, leading to multiple arrests, but also to the death of a police officer by assassination. [1]-[7]
The week also saw the emergence of a little-known group, JKFF (‘Jammu Kashmir Freedom Fighters’), who hurled an explosive device at a bus loaded with Hindu religious pilgrims. Very little is known about the group, aside from them being ‘broadly‘ Muslim, and “jihadist” in nature. [8]
On Friday, at least 12 schools in the city of Bhopal received bomb threats via email, in a manner similar to a wave a month ago, that targeted schools in the southern city of Bangalore. In this case, some school received as many as 50 emails with bomb threats, coming from several email addresses. Police bomb squads cleared all of the targeted schools, and are continuing their investigation to attempt to trace the emails’ ISP addresses. [9]
India’s “Red Corridor” saw a sudden burst of activity this week, with multiple arrests and arson attacks throughout the troubled region. Small arms and explosives were recovered in several areas. As well, a Naxal couple surrendered to authorities in the Gadchiroli district, citing the constant threat from security forces and wild animals, forced sterilization and separation of couples and attractive surrender policy of the Maharashtra government. [10]-[15]
Finally, Sri Lanka‘s economic crisis – the worst since its independence in 1948 – came off the rails this week, as protests turned into riots, and violence has escalated to the point of the government in Colombo issuing orders to the armed forces to open fire on anyone vandalizing or looting public property. The violence has left over two hundred people injured and eight dead, including a member of Parliament and his bodyguard.
“Security forces have been ordered to shoot on sight anyone looting public property or causing harm to life,” the ministry said as reported by news agency AFP.
The protests that began on April 9th, are over the country’s downward economic spiral, brought on by a combination of the government’s response to the 2019 Easter Bombings, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, staggeringly bad economic and monetary policy decisions, and the continuing economic shock-waves of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Hidden Conflict With The Potential To Shatter Global Trade
Beginnings
Since 2017, a war has been raging. This war has remained largely ignored in the world media, because, as wars go, this war has been rather “low-level”. As well, this war is the living example of an uncomfortable truth – that the so-called “Islamic State” is not dead, despite losing its major base areas in Iraq and Syria.
Following the same broad strategy as the rest of IS’s offshoots (extreme violence and torture, brutal oppression of women, use of child soldiers, etc.), ISCAP initially appeared to be focusing on destabilizing the Great Rift Valley region of Central Africa. Long unstable and prone to large-scale violence, ISCAP’s entry into this region of staggering mineral and agricultural wealth initially went rather unnoticed — Central Africa was not seen as having significant potential for the IS, and while of some concern, ISCAP was relegated to the figurative “back burner”, as there were much more immediate terrorism problems in Africa, like “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)” and Boko Haram.
But then…Mozambique exploded. Somewhat literally.
Map of the region of Cabo Delgado-Mozambique with Kirimba archipelago
Cabo Delgado Province is one of only two provinces in Mozambique with a majority-Muslim population (the other being neighboring Niassa Province). Both of these northern-most provinces are badly underdeveloped, economically speaking, and are grindingly poor as a result. Things seemed to be looking up, however, as the American energy company Anadarko Petroleum (now a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum) decided to launch a major expansion onshore of its previously discovered offshore liquid natural gas (LNG) fields. This would create a large number of well-paying jobs, directly, and create “knock-on” industries to support development of the region.
The future looked bright.
But then, beginning on 5 October 2017, a predawn raid was staged on police stations in the seaside town of Mocímboa da Praia that killed some seventeen people, including two police officers and a community leader. The attack quickly fell apart, and nearly half the raid force was captured. Interrogations of the prisoners indicated that the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabaab terror group from Somalia (also known as “Ansar al-Sunna”) had suborned some disgruntled ex-police officers to train local recruits.
Not being known for having a delicate touch, the Mozambican response was rather heavy-handed, with widespread arrests on questionable evidence, and the closing of several mosques in the provincial capitol of Pemba for “suspected connections” with “Islamic fundamentalism“. A subsequent attack on the village of Mitumbate reportedly killed some fifty people, including women and children, although it remains unclear as to what, if any, connection the casualties may have had to the insurgents.
Attacks continues apace through the remainder of 2017, and continued throughout 2018 and into 2019. Increasing numbers of people were kidnapped or murdered outright, houses, businesses and government buildings were burned, and civilians began fleeing the area, in numbers that would eventually displace an estimated 400,000 people by 2020, resulting in panicked calls to the international community for help by various national, international and non-governmental agencies.
ISCAP Arrives
At some point, likely in late-2018 or early-2019, ISCAP seems to have arrived in Cabo Delgado, and either displaced or absorbed the Al Qaeda affiliate. It is important to understand the implications of this event. Where Al Qaeda-aligned groups at that time rarely left the terrorist model to engage in actual guerrilla warfare tactics, the Islamic State was almost the exact reverse – while certainly not shying away from terrorist attacks, the IS usually focuses on trying to act as an “actual” army.
This difference quickly became apparent.
On June 4, 2019, “Islamist” forces attacked a Mozambican Army outpost in the town of Mitopy, reportedly killing or wounding some 30 people, and capturing equipment. Attacks continued to escalate, as Russia began delivering military equipment to the Mozambique government (Russia, recall, had intevened in Syria in 2015 to shore up Bashar Al Assad’s government against relentless IS offensives), and the “Wagner Group“, the PMC aligned to the Russian government. This did not go well…for the Russian contractors. Despite some initial successes, the ISCAP forces repeatedly hit back at least as hard as they were being attacked.
(One of the ongoing frustrations in this conflict is the lack of press freedom, which dramatically limits the range of detail available.)
This activity continued through the end of 2019, when a break in ISCAP’s offensive seems to have occurred. The cautious optimism engendered by the break was shattered when ISCAP came roaring out of the forests, in a Syria-style offensive, on March 23, 2020. ISCAP forces stormed Mocímboa da Praia and captured the town, destroying government buildings, looting banks…and then distributing much of the loot to locals, in an apparent propaganda campaign. ISCAP withdrew from the town the next day, and launched a wide-ranging offensive across the province. Worryingly for military observers at the time, this particular attack was a coordinated land-sea assault. This period also saw South Africanspecial forces units deployed to the country.
The see-saw series of skirmishes continued for the next five months, with Mozambique government forces claiming to have killed hundreds of insurgents, even as attacks increased. ISCAP forces seem to have focused on Mocímboa da Praia in particular; the reason for this focus would not become apparent until August of 2020.
Beginning on August 5th, ISCAP launched a ferocious assault that focused on Mocímboa da Praia. after skillfully isolating the town, ISCAP forces hammered their way into the town. Mozambican forces, although supported by helicopters of the the South African PMC “Dyck Advisory Group (DAG)“, were either overrun and destroyed or captured, with the survivors fleeing the town by sea in commandeered boats. ISCAP forces engaged the retreating boats from the shore, sinking a French-built HSI-32 “interceptor” vessel with fire from RPG-7‘s. After the town’s capture, ISCAP declared it to be their “capitol”, and began a series of amphibious raids throughout the neighboring Quirimbas Islands, driving local island inhabitants ashore as refugees.
Even for regular, professional militaries, these were not “simple” operations.
ISCAP would hold Mocímboa da Praia for a full year, until August of 2021, following the intervention of Malawian and Rwandan army units deployed to the country to help stem the tide. However, before pushing ISCAP out of Mocímboa da Praia, ISCAP attempted to capture the border town and port of Palma in a 12-day long battle, a murderous fight that – while ultimately beaten back by Mozambian forces – left the city largely destroyed, suspending oil and gas company operations in the area, and killing numerous civlians, both Mozambicans and foreigners.
Although, as of February of 2022, ISCAP seems to have been battered back into the forests, there have been multi-month-long lulls in the fighting before. This fight is not over.
Meanwhile, though, as Mozambique burned, other things were happening…..
Two Unconnected Events & A Brutal Attack Make Three
While all the fighting was happening in Mozambique, the rest of the world lumbered onward, as it always does. Amid all of the other things going on in the military and security spheres of that time, there occurred yet another massive, bloody attack on civilians…
Religion in Sri Lanka, 2012; Source: Government of Sri LankaBloodstained statue of Risen Jesus after renovation of 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings at St. Sebastian’s Church, Katuwapitiya
On Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019, suicide bombers struck three Christian churches and three luxury hotels in the city of Coloumbo in coordinated attacks between 8:25am and 9:20am, local time; two smaller explosions occurred later in the day in other parts of the city. In total, 261 people were killed and over 500 were injured.
Sri Lanka’s population is less than 10% Muslim, inclusive of several different sects, which seriously calls into question how much support the NJT – a hyper-radical, Sunni-based sect – would have had. Another problem is that Sri Lanka is simply not on IS’s radar; it is well outside IS operational theaters, and committing more than “lip service” resources to an operational group there would be wasted effort, when the IS itself was under continuous attack elsewhere, and was hemorrhaging money, fighters, trainers and resources trying to defend its core territories.
While Sri Lanka is absolutely no stranger to suicide bombing attacks, having fought a blood-soaked 26-year war against the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)“; that group, though, was wiped out quite decisively in 2009. The LTTE, however, could in hindsight be viewed as “Islamic State, Beta“, in that it created a functional government from scratch, with very little external support, as well as a functional military establishment, including an air force and a navy.
As these kinds of things usually do, the Sri Lankan attacks quickly faded from the news, and the world shuffled onwards. Then, as ISCAP was preparing to launch its offensive against Mocímboa da Praia in August of 2020, a blunder of staggering incompetence happened.
At roughly 5:45pm local time, fire crews were summoned to Warehouse 12 at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, on a report of a warehouse fire. The first crew to arrive on-scene immediately called for backup — the blazing warehouse was massively engulfed, and completely out of control. Some twenty minutes later, at 6:07pm local time, the dockside warehouse exploded in a titanic blast, registering an estimated 3.3 on the Richter Scale. The blast was heard in Cyprus and Israel, some 150 miles/240km distant, and was felt as far away as parts of Europe. Estimates of the blast force ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 tons of TNT, equivalent to a small nuclear warhead.
Port of Beirut, Lebanon. Before (Left, 7/30/2020) and after (R) comparison showing blast damage from the August 4,2020 explosion (circled area)
Despite early attempts by various terrorist groups, both inside and outside of Lebanon, to claiming responsibility for the attack, it was quickly determined to have been the result of a level of bureaucratic lethargy and incompetence, coupled to irresponsible work practices on a scale that boggles the imagination.
In November of 2013, the Moldovan-flagged cargo ship ‘MV Rhosus‘, carrying 2,750 tonnes (3,030 short tons) of ammonium nitrate bound for Mozambique (this was well before the current war there), was seized by the Port of Beirut’s Port state control officials for, according to Lloyd’s List, some US$100,000 in unpaid bills. Ammonium nitrate, while used primarily as and agricultural fertilizer, is also a significant component in explosives. As the ‘MV Rhosus‘ was deemed unseaworthy by Port state control, the ship was condemned and her cargo was unloaded in February of 2014 and stored in Warehouse 12. The crew, all either Ukrainian or Russian, were allowed to return home on compassionate grounds, as the ship owner had reportedly gone bankrupt, and was unable to either repair the ship or pay the fines it had accrued.
The ammonium nitrate cargo then sat in Warehouse 12 for the next six years, as Lebanese officialdom tepidly argued over what to do with it. During this time, in a staggering display of irresponsibility, a massive load of fireworks were stored in a section of the warehouse complex, right next to the bays holding the ammonium nitrate. Inevitably, a construction crew working on a loading door with a welding torch apparently set the fireworks alight, and as the blaze spread, the heat and pressure eventually touched off the ammonium nitrate…..
Over 200 people are known to have been killed in the blast of August 4th, and over 7,000 wounded, collapsing local medical capacity. Somewhere in the ballpark of 300,000 people were left homeless. Damages exceeded US$15 billion, a staggering sum for a small country with a wobbly economy. Numerous terro groups in the region tried to claim responsibility in the aftermath, in the end it was a disaster brought on simply by monumental levels of incompetence.
Aerial photo of the explosion in West, Texas, taken several days after blast (4/22/2013)Texas City disaster. Parking lot 1/4 of a mile away from the explosion
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened…and it certainly wasn’t the last…
Contrary to popular belief, ocean-going vessels — even in the modern day — run aground all the time. No one is perfect. However, sometimes, all the stars will align in the worst possible way.
Today, contanerization is the primary mode of moving “non-bulk” freight loads via ship; somewhere near 90% of all non-bulk freight moving by ship moves in intermodal containers. The “Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU)” is the one of the standards for measuring the capacity of a container ship. The more than 9,000 vessels of this type (per UNCTAD, 2010) are typically massive vessels, with truly massive carrying capacities.
Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 24th, 2021
The “Ever Given“, with a capacity of over 20,000 TEUs (if loaded onto trucks, those trucks (all 10,000 of them) – if lined up nose-to-tail, all at once – would stretch from Downtown Dallas, TX to north of Durant, OK, a distance of over 100mi/160km), was transiting the Suez Canal that March day, bound for the port of Rotterdam. Although the precise details of the incident remain a bone of contention, the “Ever Given” ended up jammed hard into the banks of the canal, in one of the worst possible stretches of the canal. As a result, at least 300 cargo vessels – including five other container ships of similar size, 41 bulk carriers and 24 crude oil tankers – were stuck waiting at either end of the canal for six days.
“Ita quomodo huc venisti?” (So, how did we get here?)
So — What point are we making, here? While the foregoing are certainly interesting points for study, they have little, if anything, to do with each other on the surface. However, there is a time-bomb lurking beneath the surface. The following is an example of “predictive analytics.” The key points are as follows:
It is a given, that the “Islamic State” (IS) sees itself as the enemy of the West. It is also a given that IS operatives around the world very much watch the news. They are fully aware, at the very least, of every event outlined above. Believing otherwise is simply not a valid world-view.
Given the IS’ proclivities for grandiose attacks, and given the fact that they have been heavily battered – being on their third leader in four years – IS is increasingly desperate to stage a major attack to regain its former prestige in the world.
Mozambique as a theater of operations for the IS – or Al Qaeda, for that matter – makes little sense at this point, if taken as a circumstance by itself. While only roughly three days via boat from Somalia at 10 knots (11.5mph/18.5kph), the rest of the factors are out of whack: the Muslim population in the country is tiny; the country as a whole is economically depressed; language is a serious issue; and the nation’s infrastucture is rudimentary, at best. These are all significant negatives to IS’ normal mode of operation…And yet — someone is expending a significant amount of resources and manpower to secure an Islamist foothold in the country.
Locally in Cabo Delgado, the Islamist insurgents are known as “Al Shabaab“…and, significantly, as “Somalis“. Despite insistance from certain quarters that there is no known connection between the “Ansar Al-Sunna/Al Shabaab” group in Mozambique and the similarly-named group in Somalia, the connection from the operational area in question is too significant to ignore.
If a connection does exist, that bodes ill all by itself, as it indicates a potential thaw in relations between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as the two have been, at the very least, “not friends” since the IS separated from the Al Qaeda orbit in 2014.
Then, there is the curious case of the Easter, 2019 bombings in Sri Lanka. For the reasons outlined above, there was little to be gained by these attacks. While they certainly demonstrated the potential reach and influence of the IS, it gained them very little, either tactically or strategically.
Finally, the seeming outlier points are the explosion in Beirut and the stranding of the “Ever Given”. Both were absolutely accidents, and not connected to any known terror group.
There are too many coincidences in the above points for the total picture to be some random splatter of a bizarre avant-garde art movement. Something is missing.
The Corporal and the Sea Pigeons
The problem in dealing with all “non-state actors” is that they are able to remain largely anonymous, until they surface publicly and act. There are so many possibilities, they get lost in the shuffle.
U.S. Marine artillerymen set up their 155 mm M198 howitzer…20 January 1991 during Operation Desert Storm
Hussein was activated with the rest of his unit, and served in Operation Desert Storm in 1990-1991. Later, as Operation Restore Hope got underway in his native country in late 1992, Hussein was activated again, being assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, as an interpreter, being the only person in the Marine Corps at that time who spoke any Somali dialect, and to provide a link to his father. He would serve in this capacity only briefly, being withdrawn after three weeks, once other Somali volunteers from the United States (mostly college students) volunteered to return. The Marine Corps was well aware of Hussein’s family background, and as his father was a prominent warlord in the country’s worsening civil war, following the ouster of dicator Siad Barre, they wanted no possibility of a conflict of interest arising for the young Marine. As a result, he was not present in Somalia when US forces launched Operation Gothic Serpent in an attempt to arrest some of his father’s lieutenants, in what became known as the “Battle of Mogadishu“.
At some point between 1993 and 1996, Hussein was named as his father’s ‘heir apparent’ to the leadership of Habir Gidir clan. When his father died during surgery after being shot during a battle with rival forces, Hussein Farrah Aidid advised his reserve unit that he would be traveling abroad for a number of months, and would miss his next several drills. Traveling to Somalia, he assumed the leadership of his clan, and initially continued his father’s policies of armed confrontation with opposition forces. However, this did not last — by 1997, Hussein turned to negotiation instead of armed conflict, and actively advocated working with not only the international community, but the United States directly.
Although he would later be named to several cabinet-level posts in Somalia’s shaky transitional government, Hussein would not simply be forced out of the Somali government structure, but out of the country itself — by 2007, Hussein Farrah Aidid had been forced into exile in Eritrea, making accusations that Ethiopia was guilty of “genocide” in its intervention into Somalia and calling for the withdrawal of its forces from the country. Ethiopia stated that it intervened “reluctantly”, but with the support of the United States and the African Union (AU), and it did withdraw its forces as soon as AU troops entered the country.
Although staying well under the radar in the years since his exile, confidential intelligence sources (speaking on condition of anonymity) reveal that a potential link to Hussein Farrah Aidid is being seriously investigated. The probability of his involvement in southern Africa is considered to be high, although absolute proof has not been uncovered.
The reasons for this are as simple as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend“. While seeming to be nominally friendly to the Ethiopian government by aiding it in its ongoing conflict with the Tigray people, Eritrea is out for revenge against the Tigray, with whom it fought a sharp war in 1998-2000. There are indications that militia’s loyal to the younger Aidid are taking part in Eritrean operations, at the very least in supporting capacities.
The thinking behind the notion of Hussien Farrah Aidid siding with Islamist groups lays in the fact that he appears to have valued his personal connections to both the United States and its Marine Corps highly, but those connections have done him little good over the years, as his attempts at diplomacy and conciliation have left him in exile. While many people would regard him as a “mere corporal” (and likely make allusions to a certain Austrian of similar rank), it is important to remember that one of the core principles of leadership is the willingness to delegate – the catch being, that a leader still needs to give guidance on what to look for, in order for the subordinate to get started.
Hussein Aidid possesses exactly those abilities. In a direct sense while he, himself, was almost certainly never involved in any form of higher-level strategic planning, he would know what to look for, if he wanted to set up a training program for his loyalists. As well, being exiled to Eritrea freed him, in a sense, from focusing on his father’s form of “desert power“, and shifting to the other major form of Somali warfare…
The ability to move troops, equipment and supplies by sea is a huge challenge over any significant distance…but, if a person – or a staff – were able to think in those terms, the oceans of the world provide a nearly-uncontested avenue for movement.
Which brings us to the next puzzle piece: the Sea Pigeons.
When Sri Lanka was deep in its war against the Tamil Tigers, the Tigers maintained a naval force that conducted suicide and interdiction attacks against Sri Lankan naval and merchant vessels throughout the long war. These “Sea Tigers“, however, had another asset.
The so-called “Sea Pigeons” were a kind of “ghost fleet” of ocean-going merchant vessels, usually operating with “flexible” papers. The ships of this merchant fleet carried arms and equipment to resupply the LTTE directly, but also operated around the world, carrying legitimate cargo’s for profits like any other shipping company, profits that were a major source of funding to the LTTE. While at least ten of these ships were destroyed by the Sri Lankan Navy by 2009, no one is entirely certain how many ocean-going vessels the LTTE operated…And, while the remnants of the LTTE have struggled to keep the glimmer of resistance alive since the destruction of the main movement in May of 2009, there has been little word of any remaining Sea Pigeons.
Which brings us back to the Easter Bombings of 2019, from above.
IF Hussein Farrah Aidid was looking for a way to strike a blow that could greatly elevate his status within both the radical Islamist and African spheres…and, IF he were in contact with surviving Sea Pigeons, HOW could he entice those former guerrillas – after surviving underground for a decade – to aid him?
Getting the Islamic State to stage a significant attack in Sri Lanka – as a “sign of good faith” – could be viewed as a “down payment” to gain access to the remaining Sea Pigeon fleet.
But to what end?
The Threat
The international shipping and trade network is the critical artery of the modern Western world. And it is anchored on two locations: The Suez Canal, and the Panama Canal.
The panamax ship MSC Poh Lin exiting the Miraflores locks, March 2013
Along with the Suez Canal, discussed previously, the Panama Canal is the other major choke point of international shipping, as it removed the need to use the highly dangerous route around South America‘s Cape Horn. A relatively minor accident in the Suez Canal, solved in six days, nearly unhinged world trade.
What would a pair of attacks, against both canals simultaneously, do? Especially if those attacks did not simply close the routes for a few days, but for months, if not years? But – how would such attacks play out?
In the case of Suez, simply limpet mining or scuttling one or two very large vessels in the right place[s] would be sufficient, as the ships and their cargoes would have to be fully cleared before traffic could resume.
Panama, however, is more difficult. The lock system that makes up the canal is not really susceptible to scuttling, because of the canal’s layout. A ship scuttling inside a lock, while certainly a disaster, would be relatively easily to resolve.
But — what about a ship carrying three or four thousand tones of ammonium nitrate “suddenly” exploding in the Panama Canal?
The explosion of the ammonium nitrate cargo in the Port of Beirut left a blast crater over 400ft/124m in diameter, and some 140ft/43m deep. What effect would a larger explosion have, in the tight confines of a lock system like Panama’s? At the very least, the Panama Canal would cease operations for months, if not a full year…
…And, coupled to a similar closure of Suez, world trade would be forced to make long and dangerous detours…
So — Why would this benefit the Islamic State, encouraging it to expend significant resources in an attempt to establish a base in northern Mozambique, well outside their normal operational zones?
Because, if Suez were to be closed, the shipping detour around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope has to run right past Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region.
Location of Mayotte and neighboring countries in the Mozambique Channel
But — If the above is true, what would the benefit be for the surviving Sea Pigeons to help Hussein Farrah Aidid and the Islamic State? Simply put: Revenge.
The United States – as well as India – aided the Sri Lankan Navy in attacking the Sea Tiger/Sea Pigeon layover areas with satellite imagery showing those assembly area’s locations and layouts. Both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia directly supplied the Sri Lankan government with military weapons, equipment, vehicles and aircraft for its final, apocalyptic campaigns against the LTTE. Great Britain was largely responsible for the confused and messy end of Colonialism in Sri Lanka, and was directly responsible for the ethinc divisions that ultimately led to the island’s civil war. France and the rest of the major nations of the world eagerly lined up to proscribe and hunt down the remainder of the LTTE outside of Sri Lanka, and actively worked to dismantle the group’s international financing network…And every one of these states would be critically damaged by an attack of this nature.
If any non-religious group has reason to want to destroy the West, it is the remnants of the LTTE.
Turkey, as we pointed out in April, was deeply involved in the creation and expansion of the Islamic State’s original form. However, once Erdogan’s plan to launch a religious war against Iran failed, he dropped the Islamic State like a hot potato, leaving it to die on the vine…except that, like troublesome weeds, it refused to die quietly.
It Islamic State learned from this. And the primary lesson it learned, was that it was just as much of a pawn in international “realpolitik” as any other group. And – like their institutional ancestors, Al Qaeda, in the aftermath of carrying the CIA’s water in expelling the Soviet’s from Afghanistan – they refused to simply go home.
Turkey Opens Largest Foreign Military Base in Mogadishu, 2017
Money is money, after all — and everyone’s money is good, if it buys you ammunition.
But Turkey has gone a step further, expanding its reach into Africa, but especially into Somalia and Libya where it is actively working with other major powers against Islamist militant groups, even as it plays multiple sides in Ethiopia. An attack that closed the Suez Canal would do as much, if not more, damage to the Turkish economy as it would to the wider world.
Again — the Islamic State is capable of assembling all of the above points into a strategic picture; the Freedomistis not saying anything not publicly-available. Additionally, even if the educated guesses about Aidid and the Sea Pigeons are completely wrong, if we can work through this, so can the Islamic State. In fact, any competent intelligence analyst can see it, if they do the work…as many have.
The question is: Will those the analysts work for, listen to them?
In our first installment of this series, we talked about the FN FAL, as one of the “other” assault rifles of the world, post-World War 2. Today, we will talk about the next one in line. (Also, there will be a Part 3 to this story, coming later.)
In the aftermath of World War 2, Germany was a shambles: it had been heavily bombed, many millions of its civilians, as well as the bulk of its professional armed forces, had been killed or displaced, and the country itself had been occupied and partitioned off between the victorious Allied powers, and its industry was severely restricted in what it was allowed to manufacture. (We are not here to discuss the morality of those actions; that is another conversation, entirely.) For Germany’s many weaponsmiths, they had to either find something else to make, or they had to leave the country for other nations, nations in need of innovative weapons designers.
German soldiers armed with HK G3 rifles exiting a Marder IFV
The world of 1946 was not “standardized“, as we would think of the term, now. There were few industries that even attempted to design to internationally accepted standards. As of 1946, a quick (and thoroughly unscientific) glance shows that there were some ten or eleven different rifle calibers in “widespread” use in the world, minimum, depending upon how one describes “widespread” and “rifle caliber“.
Spain – still recovering from a brutal civil war in the mid-1930’s, as well as a grain blight and a recovering agriculture industry that caused severe food shortages during WW2 – had largelysat out the war, but had had paid careful attention to its course and the technological developments emerging from it. After the war was over, Spain decided that it needed to catch up to the other major powers, beginning by revamping its pre-war small arms inventory.
The design is rugged, robust, reliable and adaptable. As well, it is a relatively simple system to manufacture, making great use of stamped-steel construction, rivaling (almost) even the AK-47 in its simplicity. It is also highly modular, able to swap major components between various models, in a manner only approached (but not equaled) by the AR-15/M-16/M4 series.
MP5 A3. This is the retractable buttstock version of the MP5
The G3 rifle and its many legendary derivatives – the H&K MP-5, HK21, HK33, SG-1, and PSG-1 – would go on to be adopted by over 40 nations and anyone else who could lay hands on them, and with manufacturing licenses being sold to some 18 countries, there were – and are – plenty to go around.
HK21 Light Machine Gun
The G3 and it’s descendants have fought – and continue to fight – in virtually every theater of conflict in the world, today. Whatever conflict zone you might find yourself in, you will likely find G3’s in abundance; knowing how they – and other major small arms – operate is in your own best interest.
The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
To make it easier for readers to follow story source links: anytime you see a bracketed number marked in green – [1] – those are the source links relating to that story.
North America
Leading off in North America, a series of three “homemade bombs” were detonated along a two-mile long area of Vista, California over a 3-hour period on Thursday. The explosions occurred in open areas and parking lots. No injuries or property damage was reported, although two small fires were quickly extinguished. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said that there was no obvious target or motivation for the bombs, and that no threat had been received. However, it should be kept in mind that Vista is also a “bedroom community” for the nearby US Marine base at Camp Pendleton and the attached extension of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station in nearby Fallbrook, and is home to numerous married personnel and their families. [1]
Elsewhere in the nation, bomb threats targeting schools continued unabated this week, although – as we reported last week – there is a perceptible shift occurring, as more threats are coming in the form of physical notes and social media, the last being especially odd, given the ease of tracking posters. [2]-[8]
In Burkina Faso‘s northern region, a total of eleven soldiers were killed in two separate incidents on Thursday and Friday; nine people were reportedly wounded, while the military claims to have killed at least twenty suspected islamist jihadis in turn. Burkina Faso has been fighting various jihadist groups since 2015; operations continue to grind onwards. [1]
In Nigeria, fighting continued steadily across the nation, as military and police forces worked to counter the tide of attacks by groups such as Boko Haram and the “Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP)” in their continuing offensives to collapse the government and create their varying versions of Islamist rule. [2]-[7]
Meanwhile, in neighboring Cameroon, separatists from the Ambazonia Defence Forces, an armed wing of the breakaway “Federal Republic of Ambazonia” kidnapped Regina Mundi, a Senator of the country’s ruling “Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement” and her driver on the 2nd. “Ambazonia“, also known as the “Southern Cameroons” are an English-speaking region in northwest Cameroon, bordering Nigeria. When Cameroon became independent in 1961, the English-speaking areas agreed via plebiscite to join the French-speaking side of the colony in a federal union. However, tensions over the years finally boiled over in 2016, resulting in what is now termed the “Anglophone Crisis”, or the “Ambazonia War”. The issue is messy and complicated – as most of the colonial independence breakups were – because the french-speaking side of Cameroon is supported by Nigeria, because factions of the Ambazonians and the Ibo people of Nigeria – still agitating for an independent Biafran state – actively support each other. [8]-[10]
The Middle East remained surprisingly (and refreshingly) quiet this week, with few incidents of note making their way onto the news wires. Chief among these, the ceasefire in Yemen continues to hold, albeit shakily, as the Houthi side of the conflict claimed to have launched a drone attack on a Saudi command center, and in turn, shot down a Saudi drone in a separate incident. [1][2]
In Israel, meanwhile, at least three people were killed and another nine were injured in a terrorist attack in the city of Elad, on Thursday. Police have arrested the attackers, 19-year-old As’sad al-Rafai and 20-year-old Emad Subhi Abu Shqeir, who carried out their attack with hand axes, according to witnesses. [3]-[5]
On Friday, CPRF and officers from other security agencies arrested two suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group, in Northern Kashmir’s Baramulla district, recovering some light arms. Also on Friday, security forces killed Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist “Commander” Ashraf Molvi along with two other terrorists in an encounter in Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Molvi was at the top of the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) “Most Wanted” list. [2][3]
Apparently taking a page from both North Korean and Mexican Drug Cartel operations, India’s “Border Security Force (BSF)” discovered a 150 meter-long tunnel, shored up with sandbags, in an area under the Chak Faquira outpost in Samba on Wednesday evening, according to BSF officials. The tunnel is still being cleared at press time. [4]
On the opposite side of the country, in the state of Mizoram, units of the Assam Rifles seized massive caches of explosives in two separate incidents. The finds are believed to be related to the ongoing violence in Myanmar, just over the border from Mizoram, following the 2021 military coup d’état in that country. [5][6] In neighboring Manipur, the state capitol of Imphal saw two IED attacks in a 24-hour period, on May 5th and 6th. [7] Meanwhile, troops of the 14th Battalion of the Rajput Regiment discovered a small cache of weapons in the Changlang area of the far-northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. [8]
Northeastern India has been plagued by low-level insurgency groups for decades.
These days, a (rational) person within the United States who hears the term “assault rifle” will likely think automatically of one of two weapons: the AR-15 or the AK-47 or one of those weapons derivatives. Both are, in fact, not “technically” assault rifles, as the models the vast majority of Americans can access are not capable of selective fire, but humans are visual creatures, so that’s an issue we can leave aside for the time being.
There are, obviously, a vast array of “other” assault rifles that have been made since World War 2, but the vast majority of those were either based in some fashion on the AR- or AK- platforms, or never really achieved widespread adoption. Today, we’ll look at one that did…and still does.
This article is the first of two parts.
British Army patrol crossing a stream during the Mau Mau rebellion, armed with Belgian-made 7.62mm FN FAL’s (1st and 2nd soldiers from right)
The first “assault rifle” (or “battle rifle”, if you prefer that term) to come along after World War 2 was the “FAL” (Fusil Automatique Léger), known simply as the “FAL“, made by Fabrique Nationale Herstal, Belgium, and was designed primarily by Dieudonné Saive, one-time assistant to legendary arms designer John Browning. Introduced in 1951 and completed in 1953, the FAL rapidly became one of the baseline standards of Western and Western-aligned military forces, so much so, that it became known as the “Right Hand of the Free World“, eventually being adopted at some level by some 90 nations (recall that the number of recognized nations as of press time is 216).
Members of the Eastern Caribbean Defense Force in Operation URGENT FURY, 1983, armed with Belgian-made 7.62mm FN FAL rifles
Using a short-stroke gas piston system, the FAL offered a soldier twenty rounds of “full power” 7.62x51mm ammunition in a reasonably lightweight (for the time) package. Despite some reliability issues in desert and arctic climates, the FAL was a serious contender against what became the M-14 rifle in the US military’s service rifle trials of the mid-1950’s; that rather shoddy affair is the subject for a later rant. (The other contender in that trial, the AR-10, was the father of the AR-15/M-16.)
Despite the United States not adopting it, the FAL went on to be adopted by so many countries, it ended up on both (or all) sides in conflicts all over the world, most notably in the Falklands War of 1982.
British troops armed with L1A1 (L), and piles of captured Argentine FALs (R), Falklands, 1982
A fighter of the Siddiq Battalions fire a scoped FN FAL at Syrian government forces
Although now approaching its 70th year, the FAL remains in action around the world, fighting on
A Bolivian soldier armed with a Belgian-designed 7.62 FN FAL
battlefields as diverse as Syria and Bolivia. This is one of those tools that humanity has made that, for good or ill, will not go quietly into the night…nor should it.
Rifles are tools – nothing more. They are no different from hammers or saws…or computers and pencils. They are just tools. It is what is done with those tools that defines “good” or “evil”, “right” or “wrong”. Learn about these tools, even if you never have need or cause to use them. They are important. They matter.
Depiction of sixteenth century cannon placements, with gabion baskets in front of them, from “Le diverse et artificiose machine del capitano Agostino Ramelli”
First deployed in 1991 by the British firm HESCO Bastion, Ltd, the HESCO Barrier is a modern-day gabion originally developed for flood and coastal erosion control in the late 1980’s. However, as soon as the British military’s Royal Engineers saw it, they instantly recognized its military potential.
In the hoary old days of “pre-Gulf War 1“, the fastest way to create a fortified camp in the wilderness was sandbags. These are extremely labor-intensive, and not terribly efficient (although they certainly do* offer real protection* at a cheap price). It was also a waste of manpower, as troops who should have been briefing, resting or patrolling were out shovel-filling sandbags by hand, instead. There is really very little that can be done to automate the process of filling sandbags, given their size and flimsiness. But, in the absence of a better alternative, sandbags were the only alternative.
HESCO barriers changed that landscape overnight.
The prefabricated gabion system is easily deployable either by hand, or by being laid from a truck-dragged container. The company’s containerized “RAID” system can deploy a gabion wall, approximately 1,000 feet long, in under one minute. At that point, front-end loaders begin dumping bucket-loads of dirt into the gabions, and a barrier wall that would have taken days, if not weeks, to build with sandbags and shovels, is built in a few hours, using fill scooped out from what become perimeter trenches.
A crew of workers using skid loaders to fill Hesco bastions around the University of Iowa’s Advanced Technology Laboratories, in preparation for flood defense along the Iowa River
The company’s product line has expanded, based on their products wide-ranging success in war and natural disaster zones around the world. The company is now expanding rapidly into the oil and gas market, with the deployable gabions acting as blast containment walls to limit blast damage from accidents, as well as spills.
The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
To make it easier for readers to follow story source links: anytime you see a bracketed number marked in green – [1] – those are the source links relating to that story.
North America
While the wave of bomb threats made against schools across the country continued this week, including to multiple schools in the state of Maine [1][2], there seems to be a shift underway, as fat more calls were phoned in, apparently by live people, with some arrests being made. [3]-[11] It is important to understand that stupid, bored people sometimes call in bomb threats for what they think is a “laugh”; that has been happening for a very long time. But in the case of the last several years, the number of these hoax-threats has been steadily increasing…and this week, we have seen at least two cases on the East Coast of actual, physical notes [12][13] being left on bathroom mirrors in student lavatories. This may be nothing — or it could indicate the possibility of some sort of “Slender Man“-style “creepypasta” being weaponized by some internet-based Fagin character, luring children into something that could result in a deliberate “Slender Man Stabbing“-style campaign.
Keep in mind, not all of these are hoaxes. On Wednesday the 27th, police in Porter County, Indiana arrested and charged a middle-school student [14] who was discovered to be carrying two IED’s in their backpack.
Turning to Europe, we have another wave of emailed bomb threats swamping over two dozens schools in the nations of Serbia and Montenegro. This has been an increasing issue within Europe over the last couple of years, similar to the waves of similar threats within the United States, as well as several other nations since at least 2015.
In Mali, five Malian Army soldiers were killed when their truck triggered an IED, during their pursuit of a hijacked tanker truck. Also, the Al Qaeda-linked terror group JNIM claimed to have captured an unspecified number of Russian “security contractors” from the “Wagner Group“, a PMC linked to the Russian government. Mali has been effectively left to its own devices in its decade-long war against Islamic terror groups, following its break with European and African nations after it announced delays in transitioning back to civilian rule, following a series of coups d’état that began in 2020. [1][2]
In Nigeria, steady attacks, including assassinations and arson attacks, continue throughout the country, as fighting against the Boko Haram group spilled over the border into neighboring Cameroon. [3]-[7]
Despite the seemingly numerous incidents listed as sources, this is actually a downward trend over the last several week. This may be related to the fighting in Ukraine, as Russian air units may be in the process of shuffling between the Middle East and the Ukrainian fronts.
In Afghanistan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan], tensions continue to boil, as multiple bombing attacks against Muslim minorities and laborers continue, threatening to tear apart the fragile coalition of the Taliban [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban]. [1][2][3]
In Pakistan, meanwhile, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) have doubled down in the aftermath of its suicide attack on Karachi University, which killed three visiting teachers from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and their Pakistani driver. The Balochi group warned that attacks against Chinese workers in the country. The Balochi are not alone, as multiple terror groups in Pakistan have staged attacks against Chinese citizens in recent years, in numbers that are increasing. The PRC has been increasing its “footprint” in Pakistan, as part of its neocolonialist “Belt and Road Initiative“, [4][5]
Elsewhere in Pakistan, multiple attacks killed and wounded several police officers, soldiers, and terrorists. [6][7][8]
In India’s conflict-ridden northern state of Jammu & Kashmir, scattered incidents continued this week, with IED attacks on vehicles and an attempted attack on a hospital, and a pepper attack on security forces personnel, in an apparent attempt to grab the soldier’s weapon. [9]-[14]
In the eastern state of Manipur, an IED attack damaged several road construction vehicles in the Thoubal District. Police investigations continue, but at press time, it remains unclear if this was an act by an insurgent group, or some sort of labor dispute. [15]
In the central part of the nation, the Red Corridor was largely quiet this week, with four Naxals being arrested in two separate incidents, and one incicent of Naxals burning a charter bus, although no injuries were reported to police. [16]-[18]
Finally, 4 NPA guerrilla’s were killed in two separate incidents in the Pacificarchipelagic nation’s long war against the Communist rebels. Elsewhere, three suspected NPA guerrilla’s were arrested and arms were seized in two incidents in the country.
“Military Stuff” is a wide, deep, and vast canyon of a subject. Most people – even within established militaries – try to impart as deep a knowledge of military items and terms to their troops – not only about their own items but also about as many foreign weapons as they can realistically report on – as quickly as possible. This is, however, frequently a spotty and haphazard process, and seldom takes a firm hold in memory for any but the most commonly-used items and terms.
This is a much greater problem when civilians, or even military veterans, try to catch up on short notice because of “Situation X” has happened “suddenly”, and people watching the TV or news websites have no idea of the terminology being casually thrown around by professional presenters — who are also largely clueless about the terms they just dropped…
The results are misleading and frustrating, to say nothing of alarming and potentially very damaging, as people who may not trust their government or news agencies very much, don’t know how to make sound judgements based upon what they are seeing.
As a result, we need to correct some mistakes of terminology. This should not be understood as pointless doting, as confused terminology results in all of the evils above. This will almost certainly not be a complete list, and we will likely make this into a multi-part series.
With that out of the way — let’s get started.
RPG, LAWS or AT-4?
RPG-7 ammunitionAn Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier fires a RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher
“RPG” is a generic term for a man-portable, rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
This can cover a wide variety of weapons, but it is also the specific designation of a Soviet-designed weapon of extraordinary utility and longevity: the legendary RPG-7 series. To avoid confusion, the term “RPG-7” should be used only when referring to that specific weapon.
U.S. Marine training with AT-4 anti-tank weaponU.S. Marines train with M-72 LAWS
In contrast, the US-designed M72 “LAWS” and the Swedish-designed “AT-4” weapons,
and their many foreign copies or equivalents, are also RPG-like devices, and perform similar functions.
“Rifle” vs. “Gun”
A rifle is not a gun, and a gun is not a rifle.
Piles of Japanese weapons and equipment surrendered to the 25th Indian Division at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
A ‘rifle’ is a small arm designed to be carried and fired by one
View looking down the barrel of a Type 99 Arisaka rifle with the bolt removed
person.
“Rifling” is a descriptive term denoting the spiral grooves cut into a barrel to impart centrifugal spin to a projectile, increasing accuracy.
A ‘gun’ is a very large, “crew-served” weapon, sometimes also called a ‘cannon’, which fires a very large (1 inch+ diameter) projectile, usually explosive-filled. Guns are either towed like a trailer behind a vehicle, or are mounted on vehicles in their own right.
Soldiers of the Royal Artillery are pictured firing 105mm Light Guns during an exercise
Magazine, Clip and Charger
These are NOT the same things!
In infantry parlance, a “magazine” is a detachable box containing a number of cartridges [q.v.] under spring tension, used as a component to the rifle’s feed system. Outside of the infantry spectrum, it can refer to both a storage facility for land and naval artillery ammunition, and as an archaic term for a general supply depot.
A “clip” is a small piece of sheet metal that holds a fixed number of cartridges in the fixed, internal magazine of a weapon.
A “charger” is a small piece of sheet metal holding a fixed number of cartridges for loading into an internal magazine by being manually pushed off of the charger.
EXAMPLES:
US Marine, reloading an M16 rifle (with attached M203 grenade launcher), Djibouti, AfricaA man aiming a Romanian built AK type rifle at an outdoor shooting range in NevadaEn Bloc Clip for M1 Garand (8 rounds) and Strip Clip for SKS Rifle (10 rounds)A U.S. soldier holding a captured M1 Garand rifle in Western Muqdadiyah, Iraq
Modern Rifles for military use. From top Snider-Enfield, SKS, M16A2, Type 56, Steyr AUG
Bullet vs. Cartridge vs. Round
Cartridge cross section
A “round” is a complete projectile/propellant/case combination containing both projectile and propellant in a metal case.
A “bullet” (or “shell” if filled with explosives) is the projectile fired by any weapon that leaves the barrel at the muzzle.
A “cartridge” is a container used to hold bullets and propellants firmly in a more or less watertight environment.
Tank vs. APC vs. “Armored Car”
This is one of the single most misunderstood terminology conflicts out there, and is one of the most important conflicts to resolve.
Leopard 2 Main Battle Tank
A “tank” is a large, heavily armored combat vehicle, capable of carrying and firing an artillery-grade weapon, usually from a rotating turret. Although there are several classes of tank (light, medium, heavy and assault), and some tanks are designed without turrets, the cue is the massive cannon they carry.
M113 Armored Personnel Carrier of the Argentine Army
In contrast, while an APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) may resemble a tank in many respects, it is most certainly not a tank. One of the earliest APC’s, the M113, have been made in such numbers (well in excess of 80,000, and remained in production from 1960 to 2014, although parts are still made in many countries), it is the “gold standard” for the class.
APC’s, or “Armored Personnel Carriers,” are used to transport infantry troops to support and protect tanks. APC’s are usually very lightly armored, compared to tanks, and usually do not possess weapons that can engage tanks successfully, although some do carry one or two anti-tank guided missile launchers. Note that APC’s and armored cars do sometimes have turrets, and relatively heavy guns; this does not make them tanks, due to their extremely thin armor (compared to that of tanks).
BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Iraq
Closely related to the APC (and developed from it), is the “Infantry Fighting Vehicle”, or IFV. This vehicle class is largely responsible for all the confusion regarding the differences between tanks and everything else. IFV’s tend to carry small infantry units, but are also armed with significantly heavier weaponry than APC’s. The Soviet-designed BMP-1 was the first IFV ever designed, and still soldiers on, all over the world.
Armored SUV used by the French GIGN counter-terrorist unit
Cadillac Gage Commando, Osan Air Base (1980)
An “armored car” is just that: essentially a large truck or “Sport Utility Vehicle” (SUV)
that has been plated in armor of some kind to make it proof (more or less) against rifle/machine-gun fire and artillery shrapnel. These vehicles are correctly employed only for security and convoy escorts, where their opponents will mainly be light infantry, who are very susceptible to the armored cars’ onboard machineguns.
“Rifle” vs. “Machinegun”
There is great confusion engendered by a heavily-politicized media establishment, either by incompetence or design, over small arms types. As described above, a ‘rifle’ is a small arm, intended to be carried and fired by one person.
Jordan Border Guard Force Soldiers manning an M2HB machine gun
In contrast, a machine-gun is a sustained-fire (meaning that it is intended to fire in automatic mode [q.v.] for extended periods), crew-served (meaning that it requires more than one person to operate) weapon intended to support infantry units.
Although some rifles may fire like machine guns, they are simply rifles with an automatic-fire function.
“Automatic” vs. “Semi-automatic” vs. “Selective Fire” vs. “Runaway Fire”
“Automatic” means that once the trigger is pulled, a weapon will continue to fire until either the trigger is released, or the weapon runs out of ammunition.
“Semi-automatic” means that when the trigger is pulled and the weapon fires, the weapon cycles the next round into the chamber with no input from the shooter, who must pull the trigger again to fire.
“Selective fire” means that a rifle can be easily transitioned back and forth between Automatic and Semi-Automatic by the operator.
A “runaway” is what happens when something goes wrong inside a semi-automatic firearm, and it begins firing in a fully-automatic state until it runs out of ammunition. This is the result of either operator error (for example, if the weapon is reassembled improperly), or parts breakage. All shooters dread a runaway condition, because it is unexpected, and very hard to control.
Cover vs. Concealment
“Cover” (as in “taking cover“) refers to any material or structure that can act as a shield or stop against direct small arms fires and light, hand grenade-sized fragments. Some structures, commonly called “bunkers“, are built to withstand fire from artillery shells and missiles.
“Concealment” refers to any material or structure that will conceal, or hide, the unit from observation by the enemy. Concealment typically offers little to no cover or protection.
Finally, there are a truly vast number of free resources online for anyone wanting to learn about the “nuts and bolts” of military systems. While a site like Wikipedia is fine – as long as one knows how to use it – it has a significant number of errors; the Freedomist doesn’t use Wikipedia because it is necessarily accurate, but because it is a fast and clean interface. Nothing at Wikipedia should be taken wholly at face value – it is a starting point, nothing more.
Other “clearing house” sites – such as MilitaryFactory, or Gary’s Olive Drab Page – are also fine, more or less, but in addition to having some accuracy issues, a user has to have a rather specific idea of what they are looking for. Below, are some free resource sites with good generalized pages…
Federation of American Scientists (FAS): The FAS does have a currently functioning and updated website, but they no longer update the pages listed below. These older pages are deliberately kept online – albeit with no further updating – because they do provide solid information to the general public about military affairs. The following links are specifically for “Land Systems” (military equipment used on land), and is very comprehensive. These links cover all sorts of vehicles and weapons, and is one of the best sites to scroll through if you are looking for something you don’t recognize; once you find it, you can use the FAS data to search Google for more information…
A “clearing house” site, Olive Drab has one of the most extensive libraries of entries on military equipment, albeit primarily US equipment. It is listed here, because it is so in-depth of a resource, its entries are frequently used by Wikipedia…
Finally, we come to the ODIN “World Equipment Guide”. This is the official – and unclassified – site that the US Army uses as a training resource. In addition to multiple wargaming environments, ODIN maintains a series of databases that cover non-US military equipment, including data on improvised combat vehicles, such as Technicals…
To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, You may not be interested in war – but War is definitely interested in YOU.
To quote someone far more educated and experienced than Hitchens: “Sun Tzu said: War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.” (The first line in Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’, c.500BC)
These things are paid for – both in cash, as well as in blood – by you, the Reader. You need to learn this stuff, whether or not you are carrying a rifle or making decisions about sending someone else’s children out to go and do these things.
Megacities, Musketry, Physics and Why the Intermediate Cartridge Needs to Disappear
“Megacity” is not a term in the general lexicon of most people. It is typically defined as any metropolitan area with a population of 10million or more. It is often that eyes simply glaze over when reading dry figures, though, so some perspective is useful, for the purposes of scale.
Tokyocurrently has a population in excess of 37,000,000 – or, approximately the same population as the state of California
Delhiis currently in excess of 29,000,000, roughly equal to the entire population of the state of Texas
Shanghaicomes in third, with over 26,000,000 people
Those three cities easily fall within the category of the “First World” – comparatively wealthy and reasonably peaceful. However, there are other megacities that do not fall into this category:
This second group of megacities are in extremely unstable environments. Indeed, the issue of civil crime control in Rio is an ongoing nightmare, frequently compared to low-intensity military conflict. As a result, the US Military’s Special Operations community is justifiably concerned that it will find itself operating in such an environment in very near future.
It also knows that it is not ready to do so:
Megacities Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity, Pentagon Video
Unlike certain shrill commentaries, one of the fundamental facts of military operations in the Twenty-First Century is that winning the population is far more important than winning arbitrary physical space. As of this writing, fully half the world’s populations can be considered to live in urban environments. That figure is expected to increase to c.65% by 2050 – less than thirty years away – with an estimated 90% of that growth being concentrated in Africa and Asia…and fully half of those populations will be of “fighting age” (not in the conventional, legal terminology, but in terms of reality), between 14 and 30.
Operations in large urban areas are complicated by the very infrastructure that make those cities possible: the US military had serious issues operating against insurgents in Baghdad (with a comparatively small population of c.8million) because the city was so large, it was nearly impossible to control vehicular movements to protect civilians, much less impede guerrilla’s. Likewise, even fighting in a moderately large city, such as Grozny, reveals the dangers of engaging in high-intensity operations, even when civilians are treated as an afterthought.
This is not simply a “4th Gen” problem. There are many reasons short of active, intentional conflict that could cause a military force to deploy into a megacity. From naturaldisasters, to criminal activity, to pan-national, extra-national and post-national activity, military forces around the world cannot avoid megacities, nor the concerns that accompany them.
Simply put, armies are going to have to fight in megacities. This is an absolute: whether the battle begins tomorrow, or five years from now, it will happen. Some group or groups will force a real infantry battle inside a megacity.
And the militaries of the 2020’s and beyond are neither equipped nor trained to deal with it – the US military is right to be concerned. However, in trying to identify concerns, in order to address them, the US military has a serious blind spot that they do not want to address, a proverbial “Emperor with no clothes“…That problem, seemingly easy to fix, is a fundamental question of small arms.
Captured rifles in Iraq, 2004
Since the end of the 1960’s, the US military has been fixated on the intermediate caliber class of rifle. For completely different – and frankly, rather shabby – reasons than the Soviet Union‘s adoption of an intermediatecaliber, the US military has used the 5.56x45mm round for both its primary infantry combat weapon, as well as its Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) since the early-to-mid 1960’s. Pundits who should know better, take the fact that the 5.56×45 cartridge has been deployed in combat by the US for around fifty years as a sign that it must be superior.
Based in part on data from the URBAN WARRIOR exercise series – conducted prior to 9-11 – the US Marine Corps’ Warfighting Laboratoryconstructed an outdoor laboratory to test the effects of various cartridges against commonly-encountered structural environments. The results are telling:
Urban environments are…well, “urban”: they are constructed of a variety of materials of changing density, offering considerable opportunities for concealment (i.e., materials that a person can hide behind, to avoid observation), but a wide array of material densities make for rapidly changing levels of “cover” (a barrier that offers some level of protection against various kinds of projectiles). Many of these materials are proof against lighter projectiles.
US Paratrooper in Fallujah, Iraq, c.2004, armed with an M4 CarbineM249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW)
The modern M16/M4 rifle and M249 SAW projectiles are 62 grains in weight. Even the most aggressive load commonly issued, the SS109, tops out at 3,100 feet per second (fps) in velocity. This delievers about 1,300 foot-lbs of energy onto a target.
M240 Machine Gun
In contrast, the 7.62x51mm M80 round used by the standard medium machine gun, the M240, weighs in at 147 grains, and comes out of the barrel at about 2,700fps, while delivering almost twice the energy in foot-lbs (c.2,400). Obviously, not every soldier can run around with a comparatively heavy machine gun…however, the 7.62x51mm round was – and is – used by rifles.
M21/M14 Sniper Rifle
Although now used almost exclusively by dedicated snipers, the round was used not only by the M14, with the M16-series replaced, but was the standard rifle cartridge of NATO forces for nearly thirty years. While these rifles were and are demonstrably heavier and longer than their smaller rivals, the need to batter through effective cover is a consideration that becomes increasingly important in an urban environment.
This is not a case of technical nitpicking — using lighter projectiles in an urban environment means that more rounds need to be fired to overcome barricades. And, when the only firearms that can effectively batter through such materials are fired by weapons that used to be considered a form of light artillery, it should be obvious that this is not conducive to a positive image before the ever-present, all-seeing eyes of news cameras and the ubiquitous camera-phone.
While it would be understandable if this were a simple case of “Oops! We got it wrong!“, this is not the case, as instructors at West Point, the primary officer academy of the US Army, were teaching this in the early 1980’s:
Nor is this a question of engagement ranges. The original work that created the intermediate cartridge, begun in the spring of 1918 with a report from Hauptmann (Captain) Piderit, part of the “Gewehrprüfungskommission (Small Arms Proofing Committee)” of the German General Staff in Berlin, was based on the flawed logic that since infantry combat ranges were usually well under 800m, a smaller, lighter projectile would save on materials and costs, as well as allowing for significant improvements to rifles.
While this might have been true on its face, it ignored the consideration of cover. The result has been rifles that perform well enough on rifle ranges and in open environments (although some would disagree), but are far less effective in built-up areas…which is precisely where they are about to find themselves, to say nothing of longerranges.
The US Army “solution” to the problem was announced on April 19, 2022 – the Army’s (and thus, the US military’s) new weapon would be….the SIG SauerXM5 Rifle, a derivative of the company’s “MCX SPEAR“, and its associated light machine gun, the XM250. (Certainly a feather for SIG’s plume, considering the US military already having bought their handguns.)
Technical Review Sig Sauer Next Generation Squad Weapon NGSW-R XM5 rifle NGSW-AR XM250 machine gun
Rifle cartridges – L to R: .50 BMG, 300 Win Mag, .308 Winchester, 7.62x39mm, 5.56 NATO, .22 LR
While the XM250 is, indeed, lighter than what it replacing – the M249 SAW – the XM5 is heavier than the M4 carbine it replaces. The discrepancy in rifle weights is odd, until it is realized that the 6.8x51mm “SIG FURY” round has a chamber pressure – in normal loads – of c.80,000psi, a staggering figure fully 25% higher than that of the venerable 7.62x51mm M80 cartridge, and a minimum 35% higher than the original 5.56x45mm M198 used by the M-16; it is even more than 30% higher than that generated by a .50BMGSaboted Light Armor Penetrator round. This is not “fun with numbers“: when you start dealing with this level of pressures, the measures to contain them are critical…and heavy, in the extreme. One seriously wonders if the US Army is planning on fighting flying saucers.
While “newer” is often seen as “better”, this is far more than necessary. While poorly-made barrels will certainly burst, increasing the pressure by c.30%, minimum, is dangerous enough to be irresponsible. Weaponsusing the older 7.62x51mm M80, while no lightweights, were more than sufficient for a broad range of combat tasks. Lighter weapons, firing lighter cartridges, simply had less range, poorer performance, and less utility…and, speaking from experience, the rifles weren’t all that light.
Physics do not lie, and the lighter rifles were not that much lighter.
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At some point, likely in late-2018 or early-2019, ISCAP seems to have arrived in Cabo Delgado, and either displaced or absorbed the Al Qaeda affiliate. It is important to understand the implications of this event. Where Al Qaeda-aligned groups at that time rarely left the terrorist model to engage in actual 
Although, as of February of 2022, ISCAP seems to have been battered back into the forests, there have been multi-month-long lulls in the fighting before. This fight is not over.
