A YouTuber this week posted a video of the inner mechanics behind the oft-polarizing AR-15 rifle. The video, in explaining exactly how the rifle works, shows why the weapon is an efficient, and ultimately dangerous, weapon. “I have always enjoyed animation and illustrating how things work,” designer and 3D animator Matt Rittman says in his bio. “I’m especially interested in firearms and anything mechanical. My aim for this channel is to provide easy to understand, how-it-works 3D animations.” Rittman’s AR-15 rendering is one of several videos on the mechanics of firearms. The AR-15 was first ..read more

The Pentagon has come under heavy scrutiny for its actions — and its inaction — on Jan. 6, 2021. Most notably, the D.C. National Guard arrived at the Capitol more than three and a half hours after the violence began. And it emerged this summer that the Pentagon wiped the phones of top officials as they departed at the end of the Trump administration, deleting key records from that day. But in testimony given behind closed doors to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Defense Department’s top uniformed officer, has helped shed some light on wha ..read more

Pregnant airmen assigned to Air Mobility Command will now have more information privacy during their pregnancy as part of a new directive by AMC Commander Gen. Mike Minihan. Under the new guidelines, pregnant airmen will still be able to access prenatal medical care while maintaining health information privacy, a standard that aligns with other medical privacy policies, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. “Pregnancy is the only medical condition identified in profiles, personnel and readiness systems, making the diagnosis accessible to the unit before some women ar ..read more

ABOARD A C-40 MILITARY TRANSPORT JET—The National Guard is shipping doses of Novavax’s newly approved COVID-19 vaccine out to units in hopes it will help shrink the number of unvaccinated Guardsmen who face expulsion. About 10% of National Guardsmen — around 45,000 soldiers and airmen — are not fully inoculated against the coronavirus that has killed more than 1 million people in the United States and nearly 6.5 million worldwide since December 2019. They run afoul of the Pentagon’s mandate that all troops must have completed a one- or two-shot regimen by June 30 to comply with medical require ..read more

A member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is facing charges in what the Justice Department is calling a “murder for hire” plot that targeted former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Iranian national Shahram Poursafi, 45, who also goes by Mehdi Rezayi, allegedly plotted the murder-for-hire in response to the United States’ January 2020 assassination of Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force. Poursafi offered to pay $300,000 to anyone who would carry out the assassination of Bolton in or around Washington, according to a DoJ release. Soleimani ..read more

Early reports from the Russian invasion of Ukraine suggested that President Vladimir Putin’s military had deployed, of all people, actor Steven Seagal alongside its troops. And while the outlandish information released at the time turned out to be false, a Russian outlet did publish a video Tuesday that showed the former action star standing among the wreckage of eastern Ukraine’s Olenivka prison, where a recent attack left dozens of Ukrainian POWs dead. Russia and Ukraine are each casting blame for the prison’s destruction, meanwhile, with Moscow alleging that Ukrainian forces used U.S.-made ..read more

ABOARD A C-40 MILITARY TRANSPORT JET—The Pentagon is considering changing the way the D.C. National Guard is activated, following a string of recent incidents that highlight the city’s lack of autonomy in emergencies. “What they’re trying to do is to take a look at it today and make sure that all the decision-making processes make sense in how the requests come through,” National Guard Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson told Military Times in an exclusive interview during a trip to Arkansas on Monday. It’s one aspect of a broader analysis that Air Force Maj. Gen. Sherri McCandless, commanding general ..read more

Calling all college seniors. Are you worried about having to wear a suit, fetch coffee and make copies in your first job post-graduation? U.S. Army Recruiting Command would like you to consider an alternative: become a soldier. Its newest ad, “This Instead,” says that unlike civilians who enter the job market fresh out of college, you won’t be the bottom rung on the totem pole. You’ll be a leader. Because everyone knows that, just out of Officer Candidate School, Army 2nd lieutenants are in charge of everything. And they are most certainly not the butt of any jokes about rank entitlement and ..read more

DENVER — A woman and a sheriff’s deputy were fatally shot at a home in southern Colorado over the weekend and the suspected gunman, an employee at the Air Force Academy, was later found dead inside the home, authorities said Monday. El Paso County Sheriff’s Deputy Andrew Peery, 39, was wounded Sunday after he arrived with two other law enforcement officers to investigate a report of a shooting at the home in the community of Security-Widefield near Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs police said in a statement. John Paz, 33, fired at the officers, hitting Peery, and another sheriff’s deputy ret ..read more

U.S. military officials say their F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are returning to flight after a scare from potentially defective ejection seats across the fleet, but won’t answer whether they’ve found the problem on any planes. How many military aircraft have nonworking ejection seats is one of multiple questions that remain unanswered nearly three weeks into a widespread effort to ensure the safety of America’s premiere fighter jet, plus several other fleets that may be affected. At issue is the seat’s part called the cartridge, which contains magnesium powder that ignites to shoot an aviator ou ..read more