The pic above is not terribly impressive – a bolt action WWII era rifle (no idea what that thing is), a disassembled AR-15, possibly a short-barreled rifle – but the main item of interest is an MG-42, a very nasty piece of ordnance – an 8mm machine gun with a very high rate of fire.<\/p>\n
State and federal police arrested Charles Ethan Fields and Levi Austin Frakes after executing a warrant Monday for alleged assault, robbery and theft of government property, according to the complaint shared with Military.com by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Washington.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Fields and Frakes entered Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Sunday evening through the main gate and made their way to a facility used by Charlie Company, 75th Ranger Regiment. Dressed in Ranger fitness training attire and wearing masks, the pair allegedly stole military gear after bludgeoning a soldier with a hammer and fleeing the scene.<\/p>\n
As the soldier was questioning the pair, ordering them to remove their masks, one of them attacked him, striking him in the head and torso with a hammer. The soldier fought off the attacker, taking the hammer, but “surrendered” as the other assailant was brandishing a knife, according to court records.<\/p>\n
The pair allegedly stole $14,000 worth of gear, but dropped much of it at the scene when fleeing. Law enforcement discovered blood on their rucksacks and boots, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
The Army Criminal Investigation Division requested a search warrant after discovering the rucksacks filled with the equipment that they left behind, as well as the hat that bore Fields’ last name. During the search of one of the homes, the CID seized 35 weapons, including rifles, pistols, short-barreled rifles, an MG32 machine gun and suppressors — some of which appeared to have been produced using a 3D printer — along with night vision equipment, body armor, flashbang grenades, smoke canisters and blasting caps.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, leaving your ID-tagged cap…not sure we are dealing with the brightest candles on the menorah.<\/p>\n
Notably, the two claim they had been stealing from JBLM and reselling equipment for two years.<\/p>\n
The Military.com article is a bit hysterically written (as the following paragraph shows) but is interesting. H\/t to Jeff LPH on this one.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon has entirely abandoned addressing far-right extremism in the military community under the Trump administration. While there is no evidence service members or veterans are more likely to be radicalized, experts have said they are force multipliers to extremist organizations given their inherent credibility and tactical knowledge.\u00a0Military.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nFrom the author’s bio: “He has an extensive background in covering senior military leadership conduct, the Pentagon’s recruiting struggles and extremist organizations.” one suspects he is proving the adage that when all one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Law enforcement conducting raids on houses belonging to two vets accused of a violent break-in … Nazi goodies and weapons found in raid<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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