Looking at cool guns can be pretty exciting.

Looking at the effects of cool guns on other people can be pretty scary. 

Overall handguns are not made to protect people, but shot them. A bullet does not protect, but injure and kill.

There are not many guns and rifles a normal person will know by name (unless you are a gun nut anyway). The Magnum .44 is something everybody knows - and the famous Winchester Rifle, which appear in any old western movie.

But capitalism is able to bring down even well armed icons. The company Winchester that produces the gun has moved abroad and no longer wants to manufacture this gun (BBC article here). It’s simply not profitable.

I wish that would happen to all guns and riffles!

More? Winchester Rifle @ Wikipedia and the movie Winchester 73

The ‘invention’ - the AK-47

The original German Sturmgewehr

Usually I am don’t give a peep about nationalistic sentiments - but it just drives me nuts, when history gets abused. Mr Kalashnikov recently bragged about his invention and how much American soldiers loved his AK-47. Well, I am no weapons expert, but you can read about the AK-47 reliability in any recent war reports. The American M-16 never seems so popular - since it has hardly improved since it was introduced 30 years ago.

BUT … the AK47 is a perfect of the German Sturmgewehr 44, which was introduced in the last battles at the eastern front and deeply impressed the Soviets. No surprise they endorsed further developments of these fast firing attack weapons and even adapted their infantry doctrines to reflect this.

I love the irony: a flying human carries the birds who symbolize peace, but are now both used to fly for the great european war. Life is … weird!

Chemical warfare is not a modern invention. Although the french were the first to use it in WWI they certainly didn’t invent it. Read this fascinating article at Wikipedia on chemical warfare - and that we can be very lucky that it is still very much out of fashion. Too bad that many big nations like the US, Russia and China own huge quantities of that stuff.

Isn’t shooting or nuking people enough?

It must have been an eerie scene: flying between the cloud in bright daylight, coldness and bullets around you. The air war over Germany cost the lives of many thousands of Soldiers and Civilians - and till today it’s not really ‘proven’ it stopped Hitler’s war machine. Albert Speer moved the production underground and the output never declined. The ever shrinking number of troops (pilots) and fuel put a serious dent into the war machine of the third Reich.

Two way radio changed warfare forever. Before this invention allowed commanders and troops to communicate they tried all sort of devices and methods: carrier pigeons, couriers, smoke signals, flags … hand waving (in WWI airplanes).

Hitler’s invasion of Poland and France showed how tanks and airplanes could cooperate perfectly via radio in the so called Blitzkrieg. The polish army hardly had any tanks anyway, but the French had tanks - but these were not equipped with radio and they had not developed any new tactics since WWI.

The tank is a British invention and was used by the allied troops to break that dreadful stalemate in World War I. Tanks easily rolled over the fortified trenches and pushed the German troops back.

The Allies were actually not too impressed by this new weapon, since those tanks were a nuisance: they had many technical problems and were expensive. It were the German generals that were impressed and pushed tank warfare to new heights: the Blitzkrieg.

More? Wikipedia

Every decent army develops new weapons and defenses against other armies. Especially in war you want your people to be superior, kill and dominate the enemy - it’s as simple as that.

The web is often full of stories of secret weapons, military experiments and strange sightings of new deadly toys.

I think it’s only normal and actually the duty of your countries military to ‘waste’ some money on improved weapons and keep their development secret as long as they can. There is no such thing as a friendly war - but there is a mechanism called ‘the balance of power‘.

We are not a peaceful global society yet, so the military and the balance of power will stay with us for a some time.

So we need our military guys to watch the other military guys and give them the same toys. Plus we have to allow them to do stupid research projects.

But our politicians have to watch them carefully and make sure that other countries don’t feel threatened by your own military and gimmicks.

Imbalance, fear and over confidence can be as much a reason for war as race, religion, resources and football.

Inspired by Edosan’s links: The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract and Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon

“You can do anything with a bayonet - except sit on it.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

In a world before Radar it paid off to listen. This must have been a strange job. "Reginald, I think I can hear the Jerrys coming from 6 o’clock!"