It seems like you all are talking alot about the Magpul/Bushmaster ACR, so I dug up this YouTube video from Future Weapons (I want that guy's job) and decided to post it here.
As more of you make convincing pitches for M4 replacements, I'll dig up whatever video I can find and feature it here...
Army (might) Abandon "Leap" for M4 Replacement
In a move that could reverse years of Army small arms policy, the service is asking industry to send in ideas for a new combat rifle that could replace the M4 carbine.
In late August, the Army issued a solicitation to the arms industry asking companies to submit proposals that would demonstrate "improvements in individual weapon performance in the areas of accuracy and dispersion ... reliability and durability in all environments, modularity and terminal performance."
And in a dramatic gesture that could throw the door wide open to a totally new carbine, the service did not constrain ideas to the current 5.56mm round used in the M4.
"We're at the point now where we're going to go out and compete," said Richard Audette, project manager for Soldier weapons at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal.
"We're looking for anyone that has a world-class carbine," Audette told Military.com in a Sept 15 interview. "We're interested in any new technologies out there."
Audette couldn't remember an Army weapons program that opened up the competition to ideas so diverse; he cited the M240 request in the 1990s and M9 solicitation in the 1980s as examples of broad requests, but they stuck with specific caliber ammunition.
The most excellent Bill Sweetman of Aviation Week posted a few pictures of Boeing's Next Generation Bomber display at the Air Force Association Convention earlier today. Pretty slick looking, though after all these tanker/raptor/csar-x fiascoes you've gotta wonder what the price tag will read.
I've heard rumors that this joint Lockheed-Boeing project would produce a medium range, medium payload bomber, but Sweetman's pics kinda/sorta resemble a long range, heavy payload B-2 Spirit.
More photos and commentary here . Be sure to check out the Northrop Grumman computer model as well. We won't know a thing about capabilities for years now, but I think NG has already inched ahead in the sexiness department.
[EDITOR'S NOTE:We're covering the Air Force Association convention this week in DC and we'll keep bringing you updates of cool tech from the show. I thought you'd be interested in the V-22 story, but I can see from the lack of comments it was ho-hum.
Here's another story from Bryant on a cool as heck drone the makers hope can be used to medivac or insert troops under fire. Sooo Alien 2...I love it. But I doubt we're at a point where a special operator would be willing to hitch a ride with a robot plane...]
A Virginia-based company is hoping to test-fly a vertical take-off and landing drone before the end of this year that, ultimately, could do triple duty as strike vehicle, medevac or special ops insertion/extraction plane.
The Excalibur is currently being developed as an armed, tactical unmanned aerial vehicle by Aurora Flight Sciences of Manassas, Va., capable of carrying Hellfire anti-tank missiles and Viper Strike missiles. The Hellfire is currently mounted on Predator UAVs, while Viper Strike missiles are used for strikes on the Army's RQ-5B Hunter UAV, both fixed wing aircraft requiring traditional runway take-offs and landings.
Excalibur anticipates giving the Army -- if it chooses to follow through in developing the weapons system -- a way of delivering strikes with a VTOL-capable UAV, according to Tim Dawson-Townsend, Excalibur program manager.
The plane uses a turbine-electric hybrid propulsion system for VTOL capability and a turbine engine for horizontal flight, according to Excalibur's specs. Because the plane's flight control system would operate with a high level of autonomy, it would not be remotely controlled. The focus of the operators would be on mission planning, locating and engaging targets, the company says.
But with modifications, said Dawson-Townsend, the aircraft could carry a man. Ground forces could such a UAV to move an injured or wounded Soldier, while special operators could be dropped into our extracted from a location without the need of a pilot or even flying the vehicle themselves, he said.
EXCLUSIVE: Osprey Takes First Rescue Flight in Ike
The CV-22 Osprey got its first encounter with a massive storm on Sept. 11 when it joined several other Air Force planes in an effort to rescue crewmen from a freighter ship in the path of the Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the end, all the aircraft had to turn back and the ship's crew rode out the storm, said Lt. Col. Stephanie A. Holcombe, director of public affairs for Air Force Special Operations Command.
Two Ospreys, along with an MH-53 Pave Low, an MC-130W and an MC-130 P were ordered to the mission around 11 a.m. on Sept. 11 after getting the report earlier about the stranded oil freighter named Antalina. The mission was launched after the Coast Guard requested Air Force help with the rescue, Holcombe said.
The ship was reported to be floating without power about 12 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas. However, the ship in fact did have power, according to Holcombe. The Air Force planes carried four rescue crews made up of three pararescuemen and a combat controller.
But as the Ospreys encountered winds in excess of 100 miles an hour they had to turn back. Those same winds prevented the Coast Guard from extending its rescue hoists from their own HH-60 helicopters, according to reports, prompting them to ask the Air Force for help.
The AP story is short on details, but a version run in the Jerusalem Post describes the order as one for about 1,000 GBU-39s. That's the small diameter bomb, which as you know was not developed to bust bunkers, but to give planes more munitions with the same lethality that they had before with 500 lb. or 2K lb. GBUs.
Now the J Post story says the GBU-39 can penetrate 90cm of "steel-reinforced concrete." According to our friends at Globalsecurity.org, the SDB "has been demonstrated" to penetrate six feet of "reinforced concrete."
Seems to me the real "bunker buster" can do a heck of a lot more than that. And the idea that Iran's nuke program is sitting only six feet under (pun intended) the Earth doesn't seem logical to me.
The real bunker buster -- the GBU-28 -- (or at least the one I associate with "bunker bustin') can drill through 20 feet of concrete and 100 feet of Earth. So why is it that the story we ran leads the reader to believe that the GBU-39 is a bunker buster? As someone who's been reporting this kind of stuff for 10 years I'll tell you there's two reasons. One is that the editor doesn't know the difference and two is because they want to convey the idea that the U.S. is arming the Israelis for a strike against Iran.
Now, we may very well be arming Israel for a strike against Iran. But this SDB contract sure ain't for taking out the Mullahs' nukes.
-- Christian
Where will you be when the lights go out?
Nearly eight months ago the Defense Tech contributors from Technolytics and Spy Ops covered a CIA presentation that disclosed to 300 U.S. and foreign government officials, engineers and security managers from the critical infrastructure sectors (gas, oil and electricity asset owners) that they had intelligence from multiple regions outside the United States of cyber intrusions into utilities followed by extortion demands.
On the heels of this announcement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a final set of security standards designed to protect the United States electric grid against a cyber attack.
The eight security standards include:
1. Critical cyber asset identification
2. Security management controls
3. Personnel and training
4. Electronic security perimeters
5. Physical security of critical cyber assets
6. System security management
7. Incident reporting and response planning
8. Recovery plans for critical cyber assets
Back in May the Government Accountability Office's assessment and report found that the Tennessee Valley Authority is vulnerable to cyber attacks that could sabotage critical systems. TVA is the nation's largest public power company that provides electricity to 159 local distributors that serve 8.8 million people and 650,000 businesses and industries in a seven-state area. The 62 page report cited one reason for the concern is that TVA had not consistently implemented significant elements of its information security program. The report was requested by a House Homeland Security panel on cyber security.
The Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management recommended the Air Force put all its nuclear missions under Air Force Space Command and call the whole thing Air Force Strategic Command.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates organized the task force — which was headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger — after axing the Air Force’s top two leaders last June due to its nuclear problems.
The recommendations Schlesinger announced Friday at the Pentagon also would mean that Air Combat Command would lose its nuclear bomber mission.
The task force recommended assigning a group of bombers to a numbered Air Force that would fall under AFSTRAT and have a sole nuclear mission.
Solid. And just in time to meet the challenges of a newly aggressive Russia!
The big changes, as I see them, call for (1) Air Force Space Command to morph into Air Force Strategic Command (2) New billets and career opportunities for the long-neglected nuclear officer (3) Shifting the entire bomber force into Strategic Command.
That's the largest organizational shake up since the much-lamented days of Merrill McPeak. The times, they are a-changing. Or -depending on how far Putin plans to take Russia's nuclear revitalization- could be returning to the old status quo.
The most excellent Bill Sweetman of 
Chin up kids -- Strategic Air Command's back!