Author: news

November 2025 – Redlands, CA — TNVC, America’s premier night-vision authority for two decades, is continuing its Black Friday momentum with ongoing deals on select Ready-to-Ship, TNVC-Built Night Vision Systems, available now while supplies last. These units are built, inspected, and on the shelf, allowing customers to skip the typical lead times and get straight into the night with battle-proven reliability and TNVC craftsmanship. No gimmicks. No codes. Just significant, immediate savings on fully-assembled premium systems. Available Now – Pre-Built TNVC Systems Customers can simply select their preferred unit from the drop-down menu on the product page. Current offerings include:…

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers are investigating the illegal killing of four bull elk in Las Animas County. The bulls were discovered on four separate ranch properties near the Stonewall and Picketwire areas. The incidents occurred on September 13, 26, and 27, and officers believe they may be connected based on the timing and locations. Officers report that each bull was found in a different condition. One was shot and left intact. One survived long enough for officers to locate it, although it had to be put down due to the injury. Another bull had only the backstraps removed. The…

Milipol 25 – Heathcoat Graphene+ Heathcoat is a fabric producer in the UK. Their Graphene+ is manufactured by an additive process which impregnates a Graphene grid to the back of the fabric. This facilitates the dissipation of heat over 50% faster than fabric which is not treated. As you can imagine, there is interest in adding this process for clothing worn by air and ground crews as Graphese is inherently FR and the process adds no additional vulnerability to flame. Seen here is MTP printed fabric with a weight of 180g. The process only adds another 40 g per square…

Walther Arms announced this week the formal, multi-year pause of production for its legendary PPK, PPK/S and PP legacy handgun lines. It marks the end of an era for some of the most iconic firearms in history as the iconic pistols now begin a multi-year modernization journey. “This is not the end of the PPK story,” said Tyler Weigel, vice president of sales of Walther Arms. “It’s the beginning of a new chapter. Our goal is to honor the heritage of these iconic firearms by bringing them into the future without compromising what made them classics.” For nearly a century,…

Milipol 25 – MP-SEC & Ghost Robotics Ghost Robotics has a tight relationship with MP-SEC in France. Not only does MP-SEC represent the Vision 60 Quadraped Unmanned Ground System and accessories, they also work with clients to outfit the Vision 60 to fill their requirements. Often referred to colloquially as a “Robot Dog” the Vision 60 is well known to SSD readers for its ability to integrate a wide variety of lethal and sensor packages. For example, seen above is Ghost Robotics’ new Manipulator Arm. Extendable up to 1 meter, the arm offers seamless integration with 6 Degrees of Freedom.…

Though the AK and her variants may be the most prolifically used rifle in the world, in some (alright, many) aspects it can be a bit long in the tooth. In the early aughts the lower prices of the AK made for a cheap and fun project gun to tinker with in the garage or workshop — and you could do so on a tight budget.  This article hearkens back to that time, and though the base models may have increased in cost, the modifications haven’t.  For this article, I used a vanilla homebuild pieced together from a Romanian “G”…

San Antonio, TX – Sons of Liberty Gun Works (SOLGW) is proud to announce it has been awarded a contract by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) for the Combat Assault Rifle (CAR) program. Following a rigorous competitive evaluation, a select-fire variant of the SOLGW MK1 rifle with an 11.5-inch barrel was chosen to equip America’s most elite warfighters. SOCOM’s evaluation demanded the highest standards of small arms performance, including extensive trials for durability, precision, reliability, and environmental resilience. The SOLGW rifle endured extreme conditions—heat, cold, dust, mud, and salt exposure—while maintaining consistent function and accuracy. The MK1 selected by SOCOM…

BRYAN, Texas — U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command hosted xTechOverwatch for Unmanned Systems Oct. 27-29, 2025, at the Bush Combat Development Center – Innovation Proving Ground in Bryan, Texas, which provided industry partners and academia the ability to compete for opportunities to continue development integrated within the Army. This invitation-only competition showcased cutting-edge autonomous unmanned system technologies from 40 selected industry teams, evaluated alongside private capital partners, as they integrate their solutions with the Army’s most lethal squads. Twenty teams were chosen to continue development with the Army. These teams will work directly with Transformation in Contact formations from…

Advanced Software Enables Coordinated, Autonomous Execution of Complex Maritime Operations During Real-World Ocean Trial BURLINGTON, Mass., Nov. 18, 2025 — Scientific Systems, a defense software prime with expertise in maritime and multi-domain operations, announced today that its distributed AI-powered OPTIMUS autonomy software successfully executed a recent on-water test of multiple unmanned surface vessels (USVs) performing end-to-end cooperative mission activities. The weeklong maritime test demonstrates that Scientific Systems’ scalable autonomy software is ready now to support “intelligent affordable mass” — the deployment of swarms of autonomous low-cost platforms that use edge-based AI to dynamically coordinate, rapidly adapt, and dramatically increase survivability &…

Outside of a bow or firearm, many will tell you that a set of binoculars is the most essential piece of equipment in a hunter’s kit. I certainly fit in that group. Even if things are looking grim, when I lift binoculars to my face, I feel like I’m going to spot a giant or unlock a secret to success. My binoculars are my safety blanket. They keep me going. So, when the opportunity to test the Maven M.2 Monocular was presented to me, I was conflicted. On the one hand, I’ve always thought monoculars are a gimmick. If they…