The Marine Corps has inked an $11 million contract with electronic warfare company Epirus for a vehicle-mounted weapon that can take down dozens of drones in a single zap. The contract, awarded through the Office of Naval Research, will result in the delivery early next year of a High-power Microwave Autonomous Vehicle Operational Capability (HAVOC) system that can autonomously identify drone targets to be dropped from the sky with an electromagnetic pulse.The award follows prototype testing of the similar Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm (ExDECS) weapon prototype that Epirus delivered to the Corps for testing last year under a $5.5 million…
Author: Tommy Grant
A fire starter is one of the smallest items in a survival kit, yet it can be the single piece of gear that keeps you alive. Fire dries wet clothing, boils contaminated water, cooks food, signals rescuers, and holds off hypothermia when temperatures drop. Losing body heat is more dangerous than most people realize. Even mild exposure can push core temperature below 95°F, a threshold the National Weather Service warns can cause lasting organ damage if it is not corrected quickly. That single fact is why every prepper, hiker, and homesteader treats fire starting as a non-negotiable skill, not just…
Two winters ago, I went online looking for heirloom tomato seeds and ended up reading about a mountain in the Arctic until one in the morning. What pulled me in was a photograph: a slab of concrete jutting out of a snowbank on a Norwegian island, with a tunnel running back into the rock. Apparently, behind that door sit 1.4 million seed samples, sealed in foil packets, frozen at minus 18 Celsius. No government spends that kind of money as a backup for a bad harvest. What got me, though, was the sorting. Somebody sat down and decided which seeds…
A self-feeding fire is a bushcraft marvel that takes the outdoor experience to a new level, particularly when camping. It’s a strategically built fire set-up designed so the logs burn and collapse in a way that feeds the fire over time. What makes it truly remarkable is its ability to burn for several hours unattended, freeing up campers to focus on other tasks or enjoy a restful sleep. The practicality, convenience, and extended burn time make it an essential skill for any wilderness enthusiast. Want to save this post for later? Click Here to Pin It On Pinterest! The Effectiveness…
Sign up for the Outdoor Life Newsletter Get the hottest outdoor news from Outdoor Life. There are more than 600 species of oaks found growing around the world, and every one of them produces acorns. Acorns are different from other tree nuts because of their interesting two-part shell. The nuts have a smooth shell that is held inside a second cup-like shell called a “cupule.” This “shell and cap” structure is much different from other tree nuts like hickory and walnut, whose inner nut shells are surrounded by outer husks. Acorn cups (or caps) can have very different sizes, shapes,…
What happens when you mount a premium suppressor to a basic rifle? I put a Sig Sauer HEXIUM on an AK to find out.As a gun writer with a predilection for outdated firearms, sometimes I find myself a bit out of my element. Case in point, Sig Sauer recently sent me one of its new HEXIUM762 suppressors to test out, and I didn’t really have an appropriate host for it in my gun safe.HEXIUM suppressors are state-of-the-art, 3D-printed, low-backpressure cans that really belong on a modern carbine. Something like a Sig MCX. But I don’t have one of those, or…
Sign up for the Outdoor Life Newsletter Get the hottest outdoor news from Outdoor Life. There are some wonderful wild edible plants scattered across this continent. Pick up a foraging book or take an edible plant class and you’re in for a surprise. You’ll start to see these edible plants everywhere. And then, as you dig a little deeper, brace yourself for another surprise. Hunger can start to make anything look like food. And when the nasty wild plants look appetizing, getting caught in the wilds without food becomes an even more dangerous scenario. Some of the most common and…
Sign up for the Outdoor Life Newsletter Get the hottest outdoor news from Outdoor Life. A 72-year-old woman is in the hospital after she bumped into a sow grizzly with a cub on a trail Sunday afternoon near Tyaughton Lake in British Columbia. “The bear was batting them around in the altercation,” David McKenzie, Pemberton Search and Rescue president told CBC. “It was quite serious. They have several lacerations of the face, arms, neck, along with an actual C1 (neck) fracture.” A B.C. Wildfire Service crew fighting a fire in the area found the hiker and coordinated with rescue teams…
In an effort to fill its ranks, the Air National Guard is appealing to eligible service members to remain in uniform with a $7,500 bonus in exchange for a three-year reenlistment. The “Summer Surge Incentive,” announced this week with other recruiting reforms, is open to current members who reenlist and airmen transferring from active duty or the Air Force Reserve. The incentive, first reported by Task & Purpose, comes as other services are offering large bonuses to retain talent. The Army is offering bonuses exceeding $200,000 to keep aviation warrant officers in the ranks, and the Navy is offering up…
The Marine Corps is bringing artificial intelligence developers together this fall to build tools that can be quickly refined or immediately moved into use, the service announced in an administrative message this week.The event, scheduled for Oct. 26-30 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, will bring together military personnel, government employees, industry and academic partners and contractors supporting the government. Participants will choose one of two tracks: developing AI agents on the Defense Department’s GenAI.mil platform or advanced AI development using the service and school’s resources. The hackathon’s intent, according to the message, is to “generate practical, digital…