Happy Thanksgiving! If you aren’t an American, you can overeat and nap tomorrow anyway. We’re very egalitarian that way.

Books

• I’m going to be spending my time on When Tigers Ruled the Sky and Empires of the Sea this Thanksgiving.

Defense

• India thankful for US sale of MK-45 naval guns – Special Black Friday deal: 13 guns, along with ammunition and supporting equipment, for $1 billion.
• Marines thankful for 1940s innovations in minesweeping – They’re bringing back a Crab-style anti-mine flail, except that it’s on the front of a robot instead of a tank.
• Israelis thankful for good electronic warfare – Video seems to show Syrian SAMs flying directly into the dirt during some Israeli raids.
• Aerial mercenaries thankful for private aerial refueling companies – In this case, though, the USAF is likely to be the most thankful. Existing private aerial refueling company Omega Air bought a boom-equipped tanker.
• USAF thankful for the long and storied career of the conventional AGM-86C – The nuclear AGM-86B soldiers on.
• Tinpot dictators thankful for new Turkish entrant into the attack helicopter market – Roughly Apache-class in takeoff weight and power. Roughly Ka-52-class in weird radar placement.
• Indian soldiers thankful for new rifle-class helmet armor applique
• Germans thankful for 40 years of the Leo 2 – Also, they’re going with Trophy as their active protection system.
• American arms inspectors thankful for New START – They had a gander at Russia’s new Avangard hypersonic boost-glide jobber.
• Think tanks grateful for the opportunity to weigh in on logistics and great power competition – Short version: you never have enough trucks.

History

• British and Argentinian carrier crews thankful for mild winds on a May, 1982 afternoon – If Veinticinco de Mayo had a little more wind to turn into, she could have launched a Skyhawk attack on the Royal Navy’s task force approaching the Falklands.

Science and Technology

• 80s cyberpunk buffs thankful for Tesla’s Cybertruck – This is a story about why it has bolsters on the side of its bed.
• Potential anonymous hackers potentially thankful for the FBI’s misattribution of the Sony hack to North Korea? – I’m stretching the established headline form a bit here, but give me a break. This isn’t easy.
• What We’re Reading author thankful for updates to old stories – Do you remember QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten, the hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency missing from his company, and his alleged death in a part of India where buying fake documents is a popular cottage industry?

Sport

• Rams and Chargers not thankful for one another – The marriage of two teams in one stadium is a rocky one.
• Small Texan high schools grateful for six-man football

Guns

• Virginia gun rights advocates thankful for sanctuary counties – And, because elections have consequences, more onerous regulations are in the pipeline.
• Gun rights advocates everywhere thankful for a former Brady Campaign president joining their team – Dan Gross switches sides.

Grab Bag

• California DMV thankful for easy access to tasty driver personal information – Which they sell, and which they made $50 million on last year. Other DMVs do it, too.
• Pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong thankful for council elections – They now hold a 17-to-1 advantage in districts controlled, up from 0-18.
• German jewel thieves thankful for lax museum security – They took the Green Vault in Dresden for items valued at a billion dollars.