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Archive for the ‘Military’ Category

How Not To Throw A Hand Grenade

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

Title says it all. According to the video source this is a Chinese Army exercise, which in all honestly doesn’t surprise me that much. To the instructor’s credit, he was pretty calm about the whole thing.

Some Military Christmas Imagery from History

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

Hope all of you are having a great Christmas Day and are able to spend it with your families, even you Godless atheists that just want presents! Tactical Fanboy would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, especially all of those who have to work today or tonight, whether they’re military personnel at home or abroad, police, fire, EMS, the staff at the few stores that are open-any of you that aren’t able to stay at home, lounge about and read TFB.

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Kill Cam: Now for MilSim & Real Steel

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Okay, it’s not really a “KillCam” like in your fps game, but the FLASHBACK option of Looxcie is pretty close. Looxcie is a video camera you wear on your ear like a bluetooth earpiece. You turn it on and it records everything in POV format from that perspective. You can stream it live (which might be pretty damn cool for military/LE training events, or for airsoft fights or whatever). You can store data in it, obviously, and also send clips to e-mail, social media, etc.

Check out the rest of the story on Soldier Systems Daily.

 

 

Zombie Targets and Real Steel Training for Cops and Military

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

There are a lot of different zombie targets out there, as we’ve reported before. The ones from Zero Heavy are really good too.

Some of our favorites come from the same place as Zombie Ammo, mostly because the female victims on the hostage “shoot-don’t shoot” targets all have big boobs. Granted, some of the actual zombie targets are lush and buxom too…but since they’re rotting and trying to eat you, it’s not as appealing.

Zombie Targets are good for training for the zombie apocalypse and any TEOTWAWKI and SHTF type scenario.

The poor, hapless victim on this target definitely deserves saving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Busty female zombie shoot/no-shoot targets for the zombie apocalypse and TEOTWAWKI/SHTF training are a Good Thing.

Sexual harassment is bad enough. Being groped and possibly eaten by a zombie is entirely worse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In any case, the point of this is that some police agencies and (so we hear) military units with a sense of humor are using zombie scenarios for training (like in this story over on BOLO Report). If you are doing anything similar, or are part of an “official” organization doing something similar, we’d love to hear from you and see some pictures.

Racquetball Using NVGs: Epic

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

This came to us from the Mad Duo. It came to them via one of their tens of thousands of loyal warrior fans…well, that’s an exaggeration, but it did come from one of their friends. Unfortunately we can’t track down whom, to give him credit. Either way, awesome picture!

 Edit: This picture hails from the imagination and low light operations of Mike Slutzky, of SCD and the Kit FOB. Please go check ’em out, and thanks Mike!

NVG Racquetball is Epic

Hard to imagine doing anything but hunting Muj with thermals and a crossbow would be cooler (well, other than Jai Alai by NVGs).

12 Tactical Days of Christmas are Coming!

Monday, December 12th, 2011

What It Is
Everybody knows the popular Christmas Carol, “The 12 Days of Christmas” but what many people don’t know is that it actually starts on the day after Christmas and ends on the 6th of January. Well this year, Tactical Fanboy will be working with The BOLO Report and Soldier Systems Daily to bring you the 12 Days of Tactical Christmas.

How It Works
We have lined up a seriously cool (and tacti-cool) list of sponsors and, just like in the song, each day we will give away the requisite number of items. For example on the fist day we will give away a single item to a single winner. On the second day we will give away two of the same item, one each to two different winners. On the third day, three winners will each receive an item and so on, and so on until 78 total prizes have been awarded.

12 Tactical Days of Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Enter
Each day, we will post the days giveaway on one of the three websites. The rules for that day will be included in the post. To enter, you will have to follow the instructions which will consist of responding to a question in the comments section of THAT post. There will be a limited period of time to respond and then the comments will be closed. Once the comments are closed the day’s winners will be randomly selected and contacted via the email provided in the comments. This is why it is imperative that you provide a valid email address. If you don’t, we can’t contact you to tell you you’ve won.

It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to be a fan of one or two or all three on Facebook…you know, just in case…Soldier Systems, BOLO Report and of course Tactical Fanboy.

Look for a special surprise at the end of the 12 days. It’s going to blow you away!

No purchase necessary.

Void where prohibited.

Unclaimed prizes will be forfeit.

If there’s nothing in the prize list you want or need, then you’re probably a hippie, a peace protester or the greatest and most accomplished geardo in the history of guys that collect Gucci kit.

Tactical Concealment Offering Free Shipping

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Tactical Concealment, an Arizona based company that makes sniper apparel, tactical gear and other kit for military, LE and other personnel, is offering free shipping until December 25th to any shipping address in the greater 28 states. (Sorry Alaska, Hawaii and assorted territories.) You can check them out on line or visit their Facebook page.

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Rogue American Women

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Remember reading about Rogue American Apparel? Their women’s line is now out, and not only are their shirts just as cool as the men’s line, the models are way hotter (and have more hair).  Rogue American t-shirts are hand distressed, so every one is unique, and each design has only 500 printed. RAA supports the Brothers in Arms Foundation with every sale, and frequently runs special designs that are completely devoted to helping fallen or injured Warriors (which is why you should like them on Facebook). To quote their website, “Our tees have the same cut and feel as Ed hardy, we just don’t let douchebags wear them.”

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Tactical Fanboy Gift Idea #13: I KILL TERRORISTS

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

IKT Clothing is pretty simple in its mantra. Say what you mean, mean what you say. The founder is a former Marine Scout-Sniper turned Army SF veteran who spent more than a little time in the sandbox. They have several designs, all revolving around one simple (but kick ass theme). You might guess that theme by reading the name of the whole line of apparel (though they have t-shirts, hoodies, patches, decals, et al). Learn more about them on Facebook and let ’em know Tactical Fanboy sent you. (Oh, and despite what you might think, they’re not snake-eater snobs; you don’t have to do a tab check to buy their stuff, as long as you’re a patriotic American who supports…well, killing terrorists).


I.K.T., LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB)

The Founder of IKT CLothing, on the left.



MW3 Endowment Supports the Military

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

CALL OF DUTY®: MODERN WARFARE® 3 XBOX LIVE AVATAR SALES TO BENEFIT RETURNING SOLDIERS VIA THE CALL OF DUTY® ENDOWMENT Activision Extends Commitment To Non-Profit Organization This Holiday

Santa Monica, CA – December 2, 2011 -Today, Call of Duty® fans have another opportunity to aid real-world warriors. Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), has announced that proceeds from the sale of all Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 avatars on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft between December 2 and December 16 will be donated to the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit, public benefit corporation that helps Armed Forces veterans transition back to civilian life, find work and establish careers.

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Tactical Fanboy Gift Idea #7: RE Factor Loot

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

Yes, #7. Why 7? Because their swag is just cool as hell. RE Factor Tactical.RE Factor, if you ask (and you will) means Relative Effectiveness as it pertains to TNT (which has an RE of 1). Other explosives are measured from there (in simple terms; there’s actually more to it than that).

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Tactical Fanboy Gift Suggestion #1121: C.A.T. M4

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Gotcha a little carbon build-up? Rather be hunting for Vladimir Makarov or Solomon? Better things to do than spending hours cleaning your bolt carrier group the good old fashioned way? Think about telling the Residential Sergeant Major, your girlfriend (not both at the same time) or your mom to get you a Combat Application Tools M-4 tool. You can’t go wrong throwing one of these in your kit or your range bag.

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Aussie and ANZACs

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Picture courtesy of Contact Magazine.

BOLO Report has advised there is a new issue of CONTACT magazine out. There are several interesting stories in the December issue.

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Female Doorkickers in China?

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Here’s something you don’t see every day, especially if you’re from Chengdu. Okay, that’s a lie. We have no idea what you would see ever day in Chengdu, but we’ll bet it’s not this. Still…are they really “special forces” or are they a police tactical unit, or is this just some kind of cool photo opportunity? In fairness, they might be very professional and very well trained, and just as unhappy about parading about in a dog and pony show as a lot of people will be happy to mock them.

Read more about China’s lady doorkickers. There’s a video in there too, which might make more sense if you speak Chinese.

They’re like…an Asian shield maiden unit.

Don’t forget the Kolt Kit Bag Drawing

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Check it out on Facebook. Preorder Dalton Fury’s new fiction novel,  Black Site (which rumor has it will be advanced reviewed by the Mad Duo, who have already talked to the author).  “A truly unprecedented opportunity…1200 bucks worth of top-quality stuff. In the bag a Suunto Core All Black Military watch, pair of Salomon XA Pro 3D Mid Assault Boots, and an Arc’teryx Combat Jacket from Uber Group. Fourteen custom tees, two hats, and sticker pack from Black Palm Syndicate. Plus a Surefire Pen Glass Breaker, a set of custom Hibben throwing knives, and much more. Pre-order Black Site from Amazon or Barnes & Noble and post the date of order and vendor on our Facebook page to enter. Good luck!”

Note that if you already entered, you can double the number of times your name goes into the hat. Per the author, if you can talk a friend into pre-ordering Black Site and posting to the giveaway page by 1300EST today, you’ll have a chance of winning AND you’ll double yours. Hopefully you have friends who can read.

You’re rapidly running out of time, boys and girls!

Tactical Facepalm

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Doesn’t matter how good you are. How smooth, how well rehearsed, how fast your mag changes are or how far you can throw the frag. Your mental acuity under stress can be awesome, your ability to analyze a emergent threat within the context of any particular operating environment or condition. You can ninja your way through the chokepoints assaulting the Grand Bazaar like it’s cool, and nothing comes near you. You can clear Interchange by yourself with one revolver, two pocket knives and bottle of moisturizing lotion.

Doesn’t matter how good you are. Sometimes you bollock it up. Sometimes some jackass kills Soap and ruins the game for you. Sometimes you need…the tactical facepalm.


Brit kit: the Squadron Smock

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

We checked that spare magazines were ready to pull out. Pick them up the wrong way and you waste a precious second or two turning them around. Put them in your belt kit with the curve the right way up, and they’re ready to slap into place. A lot of people put a tab of masking tape on the mag to make it easier to pull out. When my mags were empty, I’d throw them down the front of my smock for refilling later. We could use the rounds from the belts of the Minimi…” Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero

McNab and his kit, from the book.

Once upon a time, smocks were at the top of the list when it came to trading swag with the Brits. Scoring one was a Big Deal. I remember in Saudi and Kuwait back in ’90 and ’91, scoring a desert para smock was the height of triumph, and and anything rumored to be an “SAS smock” was beyond price. Looking back now, most of the alleged SAS smocks came from Paras, and most of the “Para smocks” came from infantry units (or that’s what it seems like, anyway).

Anyway, this new First Spear smock mentioned over on Soldier Systems is going to be a hit. Unfortunately now I’m going to have to buy one…the chances of trading for one is slim to none. Eventually I want one of the original Denison smocks, but that may just be a pipe dream.

You know what’s sad? There are thousands of young American troops now who have no idea why us older guys really wanted one of these. Next up? I’m gonna need a Cold War era Barbour jacket, but we’ll concentrate on the smock first.

WW II era Denison Smock

Sniper from HM Scots Guards, the Falklands

The Squadron Smock from First Spear (via Soldier Systems)

Grunts: God Loves the Infantry…

Monday, November 21st, 2011

…but surely even He has to shake his head at them once in a while, right? We’re not sure who took the original photo. We got it from the Mad Duo at Breach-Bang-Clear. At least two of their crew of “minions” are or were grunts, so presumably they empathize with that particularly profane and irreverent sort of humor..since Tactical Fanboy is a big fan of Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin, we kinda get it too.

Patriotic Boobs: Knockers for the Troops

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Reprinted with permission of Breach-Bang-Clear and the Mad Duo

Here’s something you don’t see every day (more’s the pity). There is a Facebook page with attendant website called Knockers for the Troops. We’ll post the link later because otherwise you won’t read our article, and we’re putting a lot of effort into this to risk being ignored.

It’s affiliated with the cartoon Power Point Ranger and, lest you think it’s just a large collection of boobs – and make no mistake it’s a large, superb collection of boobs – they sponsor a lot of military charity support by virtue of ad space and pimping pro-military organizations to their (not surprisingly substantial) we traffic.

Warning: this article will be discussing breasts. It will undoubtedly seem flippant but will hopefully not venture across the LOD into lewd. If you are easily offended or are a sissy crybaby that is going to complain we use the word boob and *gasp* show a picture of cleavage, feel free to stop reading now.

What we found interesting, other than the various wonderful sizes, shapes and colors of the subject matter, was the strong split in opinions from females. We figured there’d be a lot of catty responses, though nothing KftT posts is worse than PG13. There are forums of military spouses decrying it as soft porn and video responses complaining there aren’t similar website for female military personnel. The surprising thing is the number of women, including spouses and girlfriends, who do support the effort. Many of them are not only gracious enough to share their cleavage, they do battle with the naysayers openly and volubly, without concealing their faces and names. That’s pretty kewl.

For the opponents, we have the opinion you’d probably expect. If you’re worried about your significant other looking at PG rated cleavage shots on a good natured Facebook page, you have some relationship issues that are not going to be solved by pissing and moaning about it (especially if he’s deployed). If you’re going to whine that there isn’t a female-oriented counterpart site then create one. KftT was a private, “grass roots” bosom effort to begin with. No one is saying you can do the same thing.

In the end, we think the fuss is a little contrived and the support just to be expected. It’s easy to complain about something from here at home when you’re not subjected to the tyranny of the moment. If you’re freezing your ass off at COP Herrera watching guys from other places come in to get in a TIC so they can get their CABs and CIBs, looking at the pictures SOME GAVE ALL wall (which has quintupled in size over the last few months), you probably don’t give much of a shit that some overly sensitive dependent, officious marplot of a SNCO or an officer’s wife at the PX nail salon back in the states objects to you looking at cleavage on those few occasions the internet’s running good enough to upload a picture.

The rules give a pretty good idea of how tame these pages are:

·No nipples
·Nothing below the waist
·No ‘hand bras’
·No wet or see through T-shirts
·No pasties, real or computer generated
·No harassing ladies with creeper messages
·No celebs.
·No posting your e-mail
·No advertising your own page
·Must wear eyepro and safety belt at all times
·If you’re posting ex girlfriend pics you will be banned. First and ONLY warning

We give Knockers for the Troops a thumbs up, if only because the women there are doing something positive for the boys (and probably a handful of the girls). If you don’t like, it, don’t look at it. It isn’t much harder than changing the channel.

Besides,buxom boobaliciousness of this magnitude is just awesome. Get over it.

Join us over on Facebook to discuss…and remember, once we have enough people ask about it, we’ll tell you the tale of Naughty Nikki.

Insane Chinook Exfil

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

While I question the practicality of this particular method of exfiltration, sometimes the rule of cool just has to overtake all logic. More important than anything else, however, is that someone not only recorded this but had the good will to put it on YouTube.

Gen Allen Interviewed on Afghan Television

Monday, November 14th, 2011

General Allen (command of ISAF, and U.S. Forces Afghanistan/USFOR-A) was recently interviewed on TOLO Television News in Afghanistan, if you’re interested in watching it.

According to Afghan informational websites, Tolo TV (“Sunrise” or “Dawn” in Dari and Pashto) is the name of a television service broadcasted from Kabul, Afghanistan. The service broadcasts news and general entertainment programs. The owner is Saad Mohseni who became an Australian citizen, and has now returned to Kabul. Tolo was launched on October 2004, as the first commercial television station to operate in Afghanistan and is a leading private TV channel in Afghanistan (now broadcasting in 14 cities on free-to-air and throughout the region by satellite). It  was started in 2004 and produces and broadcasts “AfghanStar”, one of Afghanistan’s most popular television series (very similar to American Idol). The show has drawn criticism and threats of violence from religious conservatives and security has been increased around the show. (Recently one of the station’s female VJs, a woman named Shiama Reziaee, was murdered after receiving threats for her un-Islamic behavior. In November 2007, the channel received warnings from Muslim clerics and the Culture Ministry for broadcasting a concert of singer Shakira.)

You can watch TOLO TV and other Afghan stations streaming live from here.

Act of Valor: New Trailer Out

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

Looks like there’s a new trailer out for the Acts of Valor movie, which you may recall stars real, active duty Navy SEALs  in “fictitious accounts based on real world operational missions”. The first trailer looked bad ass. This one looks just as sweet, and we have to presume that barring OPSEC necessities the weapon handling and capabilities are about as realistic as they come. (If not, you have to assume it’s intentional, right?) This new trailer debuted during the Carrier Classic on Veteran’s Day.

This is the Act of Valor home page.  Check it out.

Loving that soundtrack.

Graffiti of War

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Tactical life ran a great (if too short) piece today on graffiti in the AOR. It’s a funny change from the gang graffiti or anti-American scrawls. The funniest one we’ve seen to date was in ’06. One of your eee-light team of tactical bloggers saw a bombed out Iraqi T-72 (God only knows how long it had been there) on the way toward the Ziggurat of Ur that read “Chuck Norris was here.” On a more serious note, you might also be interested in the Graffiti of War Project, it’s seriously cool…in fact, if you aren’t familiar with it, go there now (the picture below came from that site and that project). It’s a great cause and has incredible art from our boys and girls on the ground.

Read the full article here.

Veterans Day

Friday, November 11th, 2011

We here at TFB would like to give our sincerest, most heartfelt thanks to every individual who has served in the Military. From the very first militiamen to the warfighters of today, your sacrifices assure that we continue our way of life, freedom, and liberty. Again, thank you.

Gilboa Assault Pistol Rifle

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

The production model Gilboa APR (Assault Pistol Rifle, whatever that means) is out and about. Great new PDW or not…unsure, though the Israelis certainly have some good stuff. Anyway, the original article is over on BOLO Report. The picture below is courtesy of Doubletapper.