#darpa

A couple of XM3 clones.

The XM3 was developed by DARPA in 2005 to solve some of the shortcomings of the M40A3 that was in service with the Marine Corp.

The XM3 is lighter, introduces a night vision dedicated rail and a muzzle device compatible with a suppressor. 52 rifles were made in this configuration and they had a short live in service, despite being well received by the end users, there was no support structure around the gun, there was no training or maintenance programs for a gun that sported a different reticule configuration than other rifles already in service, like the MK13.

DARPA document on how to use "Forest Fires as a Weapon". It's 170 pages long.

love your blog btw!

Considering it's the only operational spaceplane at the moment, I think it's awesome! It is the only space plane design of the late 1990s and early 2000s to have survived (albeit being transferred from NASA to DoD) to this day.

But as to what it is actually doing in orbit for the DoD, it's hard to tell since it's mission is highly classified. It was designed by NASA to repair satellites in orbit and some have speculated about it might spy on other nations' satellites (possibly sabotage them) or deliver weapons to orbit.

But it's hard to know for sure since it doesn't operate at the same orbit as other satellites nor has it been observed by amateur astronomers tracking it.

I haven't done much speculation on it since I don't have enough info. But if I had to, I'd say it is some kind of spy sat that doubles as a test platform for different kinds of equipment and tech. The space shuttle did similar things and had launched a sat for testing the effects on materials and tech in the 80s and 90s. But I also wondered if it was used to give the USAF experience with a spaceplane since there was a program to build a reusable SSTO spaceplane (which was later cancelled).