Richard Mark Fitzpatrick

US Marine Recon I Magpul Founder I Artist I Mediocre Helicopter Pilot

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

I lost all the original Magpul Ronin Project website information many years ago. So I asked Grok Bot if he could put a Ronin archive website together, using information that was still out there.

Minutes later...

https://t.co/l2HRgWjt3G

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

The future is finally starting to look like the future. Blade Runner Spinner (1982), Tesla Cybercab (2026)

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

I got the @richfitz X handle! This just drops one letter from the previous handle, but it now matches my former user name at IBM, Rational Software and Magpul (I like the synergy)

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@sfliberty Any guesses where George Soros got his BSc in Economics (1951) and an MSc in Philosophy (1954) at..?

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@DocStrangelove2 Back in the 70's this is how a certain group in Ireland did small arms training unnoticed.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@DocStrangelove2 The Soviets even armed their Space Station...
https://t.co/j2PasCqNtn

[Movielore @Movielore22]

The Secret Orbiting Machine Gun of the Cold War.

In 1974, the Soviet Union launched Salyut 3, officially a civilian research station. In reality, it was the first operational module of the highly classified Almaz military program.

Paranoid that American astronauts might attempt to board and hijack their orbiting outposts, Soviet engineers secretly mounted a modified 23mm R-23M aircraft autocannon on the exterior of the station, creating the world’s first armed spacecraft.

Firing a gun in the vacuum of space presented massive engineering challenges. Because the cannon was fixed directly to the hull, the entire station had to be rotated to aim at a target. The brutal recoil could easily tear the outpost apart or spin it dangerously out of orbit. To counteract the violent kickback, engineers synchronized the cannon’s firing with the station’s thrusters, igniting them at the exact millisecond the gun discharged to keep Salyut 3 stable.

As the station reached the end of its operational life in January 1975, ground control decided to test their orbital artillery. Once the cosmonauts had safely returned to Earth, they locked onto a designated target and fired a burst of shells. The test was a complete success.

Shortly afterward, Salyut 3 was deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere, taking the physical evidence of the world’s only known space cannon with it.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@johncap1981 I don't remember that exchange specifically, but I was the one who scanned through our social media and often reached out to talent when we saw it. I don't know if you are right about the leap though, Apache pilot is not an experience I would have skipped.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

We only made two non-firing prototypes and published just one technote on the PDR concept back in 2006.

Yet two decades later I still see it talked about. I really wish we could have got it into production somehow.
https://t.co/00zGxdJ8th

[丨꧰丨丨丨丨 @the4t7]

https://t.co/gw493HpCal

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@jk_rowling J.K Rowling's comebacks are like watching a bunch of thugs trying to beat up an old man, only to find out he is a kung fu master.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@MilHistNow Many of the camera shots used in the Hells Angles aerial sequences, were reused with great effect by George Lucas (who was a fan of the film) in Star Wars, almost 50 years later.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@MavrocksGirl I just hope this will not be used as leverage to push a political narrative.

One of the great things about the original Rockford Files is that it reflected James Garner's own rational political view point, without bending reality or being preachy.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@TheOnlyDSC I went to SOI (School of Infantry) in Southern California in 1988. At 21 years old, it was Heaven on Earth.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

Saying goodbye to my 1964 Elva Porsche. Up for auction in a few days at Monterey. I got it almost a decade ago with the intent to do some vintage racing, but the restoration to get it back to '64 racing specs took so long, I moved on. Rather than it just sit in my garage I thought it needed a good home with someone who will race it again.

https://t.co/GWzf7aQV5r

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

Hitler’s socialism wasn’t just an internal economic policy – it was the cause of the war.

Socialism was at the origin of the war. Not as a coincidence. As a necessity. The socialist economic model generates contradictions it cannot resolve internally – the calculation problem, the misallocation, the stagnation, the mounting failure. War is the exit. It provides the external enemy that explains the internal failure. It justifies the total mobilization the system always wanted. It consumes the surplus population the economy cannot employ. It redirects the resentment outward.

Does this remind you of anything?

The evidence is not subtle. The NSDAP program of 1920 reads like a standard socialist manifesto. The economic reality confirmed it – price controls, industrial planning, state allocation of raw materials, entrepreneurs reduced to government functionaries. Private property in name only. Mises called it Zwangswirtschaft – coercive economy. Hayek dedicated a chapter of The Road to Serfdom to the socialist roots of Nazism. Both writing from observation, not retrospect.

After 1945 the Soviet victors imposed their version and attached the capitalist label to every rival. Western textbooks followed. The lie became the curriculum.

The real divide has never been left versus right. It is collective control versus individual freedom. Once you place National Socialism correctly within the family of collectivisms, the political spectrum becomes legible – and the war becomes explicable.

When the system fails — and it always fails — it needs an enemy. The bigger the failure, the bigger the enemy required.

Imagine being Poland. Squeezed between two socialist systems, both searching for their enemy.

We were it.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

Ironically I was standing next to Elon right about the time he closed that very round and saved Tesla.

I had no idea who he was. It was getting late on Christmas Eve 2008 and I was shopping for a last minute Christmas present for my wife in Boulder, Colorado, where I lived.

I stopped into an almost empty store and was going to ask the staff for gift ideas, but they were busy talking amongst themselves about three people who were standing next to me. In turn, they were all laughing at being recognized.

It was over a decade later that I realized that the guys standing there were Elon Musk and his brother Kimble (who also lived in Boulder) and they had just threaded the needle to save Tesla.

Funny thing was, I almost asked them for any gift ideas as the staff were inattentive to me. I always wondered since what they would have recommended.

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

Christmas Eve 2008. Tesla closed a funding round in the final hour, days from bankruptcy.

Elon Musk put in all his money & assets, borrowed from friends just to pay rent. If it missed, payroll would have bounced two days after Christmas.

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@Bellagiotime Photos capture the beauty of the Spitfire easily. Capturing the sheer power of the plane is much harder, but this clip does it quite well, even giving the presenter a mild heart attack!
https://t.co/ZfjRJwQjk5

[Francisco Cunha - ✈️ Aviation et al @OnDisasters]

🎂Happy birthday to the Spitfire, which turns 90 today! Remembering the famous low pass by legend Ray Hannah which led presenter (and former racer) Alain De Cadenet to - justifiably - drop some curse words 😅

[Richard Mark Fitzpatrick @richfitz]

@SawyerMerritt I have a Model Y Performance.
What's behind me, does not matter.