How is it already the end of early June? April and May just sort of vanished, after March lasted eleven thousand years.

Coronavirus

• Local hospital says the Wuhan coronavirus is decreasing in virulence, and COVID patients are presenting with lower viral loads – Social distancing working? Virus mutating? Nobody knows.

Defense

• US Navy test-flies AARGM-ER – Leaving aside the HARM, one of the things that I miss on behalf of the US military aviation community is the Sidearm. It’s a hoot in DCS.
• Trouble brewing in Norway over AFV sensors – The Norwegian government is mad at Rheinmetall-Norway for not getting the sensors done, and gave the contract to Navantia (of Spain) instead. Rheinmetall-Norway says the spec wasn’t sufficient.
• Greece is buying Bradleys – Parvusimperator really working out my Google Translate-Fu.
• USAF buys some prototype ARRWs – Said ‘arrow’, no doubt. A good name for a hypersonic missile.
• Photos: Ford vs. Nimitz
• Bradley A4s delivered to the US Army – Snazzy.
• Europeans upset about having to defend themselves – Trollish headline? Maybe a bit.
• Are you a writer of a fictional bent? The USNI is running a fiction contest judged by a panel of luminaries – Winners will be published in Proceedings. Deadline September 30. I might have to cook something up.

Guns

• SilencerCo now shipping their Salvo shotgun silencer in an 8-inch configuration – It’s a modular thing. 8 segments is a popular configuration that was not previously available standalone.
• CZ is now listed on the Prague Stock Exchange – They aren’t publically traded yet, but this is a move in that direction.
• Measuring primer sensitivity with a Smith and Wesson strain screw – The data is from 2010, but nevertheless, it’s the first actual, quantifiable data on the sensitivity of commercially-available, non-milspec primers I’ve been able to find.

Science and Technology

• Starlink: a quick technical guide – The coolest bit is the animation of how launching a stick of 60 satellites can fill multiple orbital planes.
• Are foxes self-domesticating in our midst? – By ‘our midst’ the author means ‘the UK’, but it’s still a good read.

Grab Bag

• Missing live racing? Why not try the 3dbotmaker Youtube channel, where they race diecast cars with all the trappings of real racing broadcasts? – A rare The Drive article which is not from The War Zone.
• Lost Maxis SimRefinery prototype is now available for download – Or maybe it used to be? It’s one of those up-and-down-and-up-and-down kinds of things.
• Will the banks collapse under the weight of CLOs as they did under CDOs in the last crisis? – CDOs are financial instruments based on mortgages. CLOs are similar instruments based on corporate loans. On the one hand, this whole ‘risky assets bundled together are in aggregate less risky!’ assumption seems to rest on very shaky ground. On the other hand, I saw an argument that said that CLOs are not, in fact, a ticking time bomb, and I’m not qualified to evaluate technical arguments for correctness in the realm of finance.
• Employee of pollster fired for noting, correctly, that historical race riots have reduced Democratic vote share