What To Get Me For Christmas
Via Dan here’s the perfect gift for your favorite blogger
Since the dawn of modern warfare, the best way to stay alive in the face of incoming fire has been to take cover behind a wall. But thanks to a game-changing “revolutionary” rifle, the U.S. Army has made that tactic dead on arrival. Now the enemy can run, but he can’t hide.
After years of development, the U.S. Army has unleashed a new weapon in Afghanistan — the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, a high-tech rifle that can be programmed so that its 25-mm. ammunition detonates either in front of or behind a target, meaning it can be fired just above a wall before it explodes and kills the enemy.
Unlike many gifts that are seemingly forgotten very soon after they’re unwrapped I can assure you, Dear Readers, that I will lovingly cherish this and use it on the New Jersey Turnpike nearly every day as a measure of my deep abiding appreciation for you and your thoughtfulness.
Oh sure, some people want a Lexus or a Mercedes but I am far more sensible and thrifty with you hard-earned dollars
Lehner said the first XM25s were distributed to combat units in Afghanistan this month. The 12-pound, 29-inch system, which was designed by Minnesota’s Alliant Techsystems, costs up to $35,000 per unit and, while highly sophisticated, is so easy to use that soldiers become proficient within minutes.
So pretty please allow me to be the first kid on the block with one!
The military isn’t overly concerned that the weapon might be captured by the enemy, because they would be unable to obtain its highly specialized ammunition, batteries and other components. Lehner said he expects other nations will try to copy its technology, but it will be very cost-prohibitive.
Until, of course, Bill Clinton sells some to his Chinese friends.
Or some pimply turd-muncher wanders in to a secure facility with a cd-rw disk.
Sigh.
Fun, Military Thingies | Mr. Bingley | 
November 30, 2010 7:01 am
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You know, I was gonna send you one of these to clear out the Parkway, too. But I thought I’d wait ’til that shoot-around-the-corner toy hits the market. Maybe next year, Mr. B.
They started on this road in Vietnam.
Technology will not win wars. We need this rifle like we need a hole in the head.
Every time one of these bullets hits a target and kills some jerk who desperately needs to be killed, we win a small pyhrric victory.
We cannot sustain the conduct of this war if we keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars while the enemy spends a few hundred thousand. They will wear us down and grind our economy even further.
We need to commit to victory and send a whole lot more people into the fight. We don’t need special weapons, our enemy is not at all sophisticated. We don’t really even need much in the way of air craft or even artillery. What we need are lots and lots of people on the ground all over in every place where the people live. We need to inspire trust from the people that we will protect them.
All these jets and fancy rifles, as cool as they are, will have virtually no impact on the conduct of the war. Putting a few more divisions into the country will have enormous impact, and it won’t even cost much money. We just need to pull them out of Germany and Japan. That war is over and done with. Let’s move on to the current war.
Our stretch of the Parkway is pretty easy to clear up, Gary.
“We need to commit to victory…”
That’s kind of the whole problem right there, Skyler.
As soon as that Nigerian money comes in I’ll divert the contribution from the “Bingley for Just About Everything” campaign fund to the “Bingley Urban Renewal Enterprises” fund.
I’m sure the learning curve for a soldier or Marine would be quite short on this. The Bingley learning curve? Maybe I should include some extra change for an hourglass.
I think you should get two.
Yeah, Gary – I’m waiting for that shoot around the corner toy too.
But Skyler’s got the money quote. We’d have WON in Vietnam way before Nixon was even elected to substitute his ‘peace with(out) honor’ for a win.
Had we ever committed to victory, we’d have won. See Korea as well.
We seem, since WWII, to have gotten some idiot idea that we can fight wars ‘politely’ – umm. Ain’t no such thing as a polite war. But we keep trying to fight them.
Wouldn’t want the enemy to really LOSE, would we? Might hurt their feelings.
Pardon me while I go off to my corner and growl a bit.