|
Thanks for the big swedepost, Stroh. I really enjoyed it. (Especially Drakens I funkin' *love* Drakens.) I've heard a bit about the Archer because Canada is evaluating them. They seem like good equipment.
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 18:09 |
|
|
Soapbox derby Draken:
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:38
|
|
|
priznat posted:They gotta cram the words "Carl Gustav" in there too someplace. With Swedish naming conventions, it would probably be called something Like "Bofors JBS 56 m/62 Carl Gustaf" then. JBS would be "Juke-Box System" - or rear end for "Automatiskt SkivvändarSystem" if they wanted to Swedify it. Sergeants and above would call it the Jonas Bertil Sigurd Femma-Sexa because they love spelling out acronyms in the military phonetic alphabet. Everyone else would simply call it "Kalle", Swedish nickname for people named Carl. Or something completely random - the official army ski had the non-descriptive official name of "Ski Fm/27" (Fm for försvarsmakten, 27 for year of adoption), but everyone called it "White Lightning". They were pretty popular thanks to their good combination of performance and reliability in almost any type of snow. They still make them today, more than 80 years later, and haven barely changed the design at all. Being a wooden ski, you need to apply tar to the bottoms to avoid them absorbing water and becoming sticky. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:42
|
|
|
Stroh M.D. posted:With Swedish naming conventions, it would probably be called something Like "Bofors JBS 56 m/62 Carl Gustaf" then. JBS would be "Juke-Box System" - or rear end for "Automatiskt SkivvändarSystem" if they wanted to Swedify it. Sergeants and above would call it the Jonas Bertil Sigurd Femma-Sexa because they love spelling out acronyms in the military phonetic alphabet. Everyone else would simply call it "Kalle", Swedish nickname for people named Carl.  As someone who has ripped up his knee while skiing, those bindings make me shudder with terror. Please tell me those are old school skis from the 30s or something in a museum and that they aren't still manufacturing skis without quick-release bindings.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:49
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Please tell me those are old school skis from the 30s or something in a museum and that they aren't still manufacturing skis without quick-release bindings. So, I take it you've never seen Telemark bindings?
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:54
|
|
|
Everyone knows to safeguard the ski hills the Swedish military is exclusively on snowboards 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:56
|
|
|
Akion posted:So, I take it you've never seen Telemark bindings? Yeeeeaaah. . .. I have, but the bindings there look more like "strap your feet to skis with leather straps" a la 30s "break your leg in five pieces" ski designs than modern telemark bindings that I've seen. Then again, it's not the most up-close picture of the bindings so I could very well be missing something entirely.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 20:57
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Yeeeeaaah. . .. I have, but the bindings there look more like "strap your feet to skis with leather straps" a la 30s "break your leg in five pieces" ski designs than modern telemark bindings that I've seen. It looks like they attach similar to Telemark. Toe of your boot goes into the front, and the strap goes around the back and holds it in place.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 21:12
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:
No, that's actually what they look like if you buy them today. Like I said, the design was so popular that it has barely changed at all since the 30s. I got the pic from an army surplus store - costs about $50, freight not included. You can get either unused skis that have been sitting in some warehouse somewhere or used skis, in which case you don't have to tar them yourself. The NATO 120 ski bindings are essentially identical, they look like this:  You strap them like this, with some modification:  This isn't that different from high-tech telemark bindings that look like this:  The skis are cross country skis which means that you won't go down that many steep slopes, so the lack of a quick release is usually no greater hazard. Stroh M.D. fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Feb 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 21:20
|
|
|
I guess at the Boneyard of abandoned planes at the Pima Air and Space Museum, they are putting some bad-rear end paint jobs on the abandoned planes? They look pretty tight.       We should get some still-flying planes painted up like this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 21:31
|
|
|
the winningest wing commander ever:     legends aren't born, they're made Suicide Watch fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Mar 1, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 21:59
|
|
|
Suicide Watch posted:the winningest wing commander ever:  
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 22:53
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:
No no. They're quite good. They twist off the boot with a certain lateral load - that's what the spring is there for. You get very good control of the ski, with broad skis like these they basically turn into a kind of snowshoe hybrid, awesome for heavy winter. You can even get a reasonable glide on them, if they're prepped well - we used to tar them down before the height of summer and leave them in an unventilated loft in a barn where the intense heat during the day would make the tar nice and runny and soak in real good. We've actually switched to fiberglass skis in Norway now, so no more "NATO two-by-fours" for us. Way lighter, but there's something about wooden skis and tar... 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 23:05
|
|
|
Sjurygg posted:Way lighter, but there's something about wooden skis and tar... I can imagine. I've never used wooden skis myself, I think with commercial skis in the US those stopped being made in the 70s or so. Speaking of tar on wooden skis - 10 years back or so when Finn Mosins started really getting into the US in numbers people were trying to figure out what the hell that coating on them was. It darkened up the wood a bit and obviously sealed the grain, but it wasn't like the cosmo-soaked wood that you see from other countries and it certainly wasn't a shellac or even an oil treatment like BLO. This really confused the gently caress out of some collectors for a while. Long story short, eventually someone figured out that the Finns had some oddball mixture of tree pitch and tar that they used to waterproof gently caress near everything back then. One of the more notable uses was skis, but apparently they were also slathering it all over their Mosin stocks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2012 23:10
|
|
|
Sjurygg posted:No no. They're quite good. They twist off the boot with a certain lateral load - that's what the spring is there for. You get very good control of the ski, with broad skis like these they basically turn into a kind of snowshoe hybrid, awesome for heavy winter. You can even get a reasonable glide on them, if they're prepped well - we used to tar them down before the height of summer and leave them in an unventilated loft in a barn where the intense heat during the day would make the tar nice and runny and soak in real good. We've actually switched to fiberglass skis in Norway now, so no more "NATO two-by-fours" for us. Way lighter, but there's something about wooden skis and tar... One thing I had learnt when working in the orthopaedic field is that the primary effect of changing ski binding technology is to change the location of the eventual injury. With bindings like the ones shown here, it's mostly ankle injuries and the occasional broken tibia. With hard-shell boots, you're looking at fractured femurs instead. Of course, part of this is also the shift towards higher speed as downhill ski technology advanced, giving more available energy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2012 01:03
|
|
|
Stroh M.D. posted:The GIRAFFE allows early target acquisition and the BOLIDE is capable of doing Mach 2 in a range of 8 km up to 50 000 feet - you probably won't see that many supersonic targets downed, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility. Where are you getting 50,000 feet engagement altitudes of the Bolide? Wikipedia (not always reliable on these matters, I know) puts it at 5,000 meters, and if something can only go 8 km over land, how would it go 15 km straight up? Sentinels do far better for linking in general surveillance, friendly protect, and cueing than TDARs and can be set up reasonably far behind the forward line of troops and still be useful. Plus, they can be used for the slew to cue function on Avengers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2012 01:28
|
|
|
mlmp08 posted:Where are you getting 50,000 feet engagement altitudes of the Bolide? Wikipedia (not always reliable on these matters, I know) puts it at 5,000 meters, and if something can only go 8 km over land, how would it go 15 km straight up? Oh, my bad actually. I ran it through a converter (airplane altitudes are usually measured in feet so I preferred it that way) and it somehow fudged the numbers - the correct value is about 16 000 feet. I don't have an intuitive reference point for how many feet make a meter so I thought little of it and assumed that maybe they were referring to interception of aircraft flying more or less straight overhead or something - which they probably are with that 5000 meter value anyway. Double checked that value, and it looks like official SAAB numbers. You're probably right about the Sentinel, I'm just more familiar with the TDAR in combination with Stinger teams. My point should still stand though - thanks to the GIRAFFE crosslink and the new BOLIDE missile, you should be able to set up a more or less automatic MANPAD SAM network with the RBS 70, something you shouldn't be able to do with the Stinger, which people are more familiar with and which I therefore used as a reference point. You could probably do it with the Avengers and their slew to cue, but like I said, they can't really be classified as MANPADs anymore. I'm sure there are other comparable MANPADs out there with similar abilities, but the RBS 70 is the only one I know of as of yet. EDIT: Heh, just realized how weird all of those capitalized acronyms look in written text in the second paragraph. It feels like I'm screaming every second line, when I'm really just trying to follow naming conventions. Stroh M.D. fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Feb 28, 2012 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2012 02:42
|
|
|
Yeah. You can set up that remote working with the avenger somewhat, though you can still only remote out the personnel far enough to not get killed when a bomb/missile hits the Avenger, not so far out as to have it not require life support and crew rotations.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2012 02:47
|
|
|
gohuskies posted:
These look amazing. I'd love to see that done to some boneyard fighters and helos.
|
|
#
?
Feb 29, 2012 21:28
|
|
|
What was Sweden's plan to kick Soviet invaders out of the country? It seems like they were going to bleed the Russian badly as they retreated further north, but how were the Swedes going to regain the ground they'd given up?
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 00:40
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:What was Sweden's plan to kick Soviet invaders out of the country? It seems like they were going to bleed the Russian badly as they retreated further north, but how were the Swedes going to regain the ground they'd given up? grover fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Mar 1, 2012 |
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 00:50
|
|
|
grover posted:Offensive capability is just a waste of money when your entire military is designed 100% around deterring aggression. If the USSR did invade, Sweden would have been completely steamrolled. I'm sure the Swedes wouldn't go it alone against the Soviets. The US wouldn't stand by while the Russians created a Meatball Gap or learned the secrets of cheap, yet stylish furniture!
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 00:56
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:What was Sweden's plan to kick Soviet invaders out of the country? It seems like they were going to bleed the Russian badly as they retreated further north, but how were the Swedes going to regain the ground they'd given up? There is really nothing of value up in the north of Sweden, other than grumpy people with lots of guns. The northernmost part of Sweden where the soviets would arrive first is kind of like the Swedish equivalent of Texas. Everyone up here owns a rifle or two for hunting. I think the best hope we had of defeating Soviet invaders would be to turn the occupied part into a Vietnam scenario with less horrifying tropical diseases and more frostbites. Back in the day we had mandatory conscription so everyone had training knew how to use military equipment. The plan was to use Jägar(rangers kind of) infantry to harass the occupying forces and let the locals be guerrillas and resist occupation in what way they could. The Soviets would be stuck in a cold hellhole of little importance, where everyone is trying to kill them all while they are fighting bigger and more important wars in Europe. They would probably leave by themselves sooner or later. Thats what the old guys at work tell us youngster who never lived the cold war. They are full of poo poo sometimes, but thats what I'm told atleast. grover posted:Offensive capability is just a waste of money when your entire military is designed 100% around deterring aggression. If the USSR did invade, Sweden would have been completely steamrolled. If the soviets focused all their military might on us alone, god yes but hopefully most of their military assets would have been tied up in europe fighting NATO. I think that that we would only see second rate equipment and soliders, the best would probably be off fighting something important.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 01:15
|
|
|
Noshtane posted:I think the best hope we had of defeating Soviet invaders would be to turn the occupied part into a Vietnam scenario with less horrifying tropical diseases and more frostbites. It'd be pretty ironic if the Russians invaded some place and they were turned back by cold weather.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:01
|
|
Craptacular posted:It'd be pretty ironic if the Russians invaded some place and they were turned back by cold weather. Well, isn't that almost what happened when they invaded Finland?
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:04
|
|
|
Smiling Jack posted:Well, isn't that almost what happened when they invaded Finland? It's basically what happened to their northern thrust across the middle of the country. That was a pretty unmitigated disaster that ended in people freezing to death and cannibalism.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:07
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:It's basically what happened to their northern thrust across the middle of the country. That was a pretty unmitigated disaster that ended in people freezing to death and cannibalism. Yup. By the way, the @RealTimeWWII twitter feed includes some pretty fascinating anecdotes from the Winter War right now. Oxford Comma posted:I'm sure the Swedes wouldn't go it alone against the Soviets. The US wouldn't stand by while the Russians created a Meatball Gap or learned the secrets of cheap, yet stylish furniture! In all seriousness, NATO probably would not have stood idly by while the USSR invaded a neutral European country. Neville Chamberlain and umbrellas and all that. There's still the question of why in the hell the Soviets would invade Sweden in the first place - is there anything of strategic value there besides iron ore, which the Soviets had in abundance anyway? But still, history shows that armed neutrality is the only sort of neutrality that lasts, so I don't blame the Swedes for arming up (especially in such awesome fashion). Thank you for all the information about the S-Tank. That's fascinating and I had never heard of it before.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:15
|
|
|
Myoclonic Jerk posted:
Basically lines of communication from Russia to Norway. Norway was a NATO member and their ports and airfields were kind of a big deal, as you could lock down a lot of the northern Russian ports from them, plus being able to poo poo all over anything coming out of the Baltic. Basically all of reasons why the Germans went to Norway in WW2, except in WW2 the Swedes were willing to let them use their railroads without the necessity of an invasion.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:20
|
|
|
Also the Russians sure like their buffer space.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 04:51
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Basically lines of communication from Russia to Norway. Norway was a NATO member and their ports and airfields were kind of a big deal, as you could lock down a lot of the northern Russian ports from them, plus being able to poo poo all over anything coming out of the Baltic. Pretty true. Germany invaded Norway by way of an amphibious invasion though, not through Sweden, like the Soviets would have had to. They pushed Sweden to let them use the Swedish railways to transport wounded and soldiers on leave back to Germany after the occupation was in place. They were also allowed to transport one division from occupied Norway to their allies in Finland to assist in fighting off the Soviet invasion there. The latter is called the "midsummer crisis", although that name was intentionally revisionistic from the start. The Swedish government considered assisting Finland to be more important than neutrality. They also gave Finland considerable supplies, gave them a complete fighter wing on loan and turned a blind eye to recruitment of volunteers to fight for Finland in the winter war. In that spirit, allowing the transfer was no greater concession - it just had to look like one so the allies wouldn't consider Sweden as axis co-belligerent, like they did with Finland - the UK did declare war on Finland once the continuation war began, after all. In fact, it is perfectly possible that had Sweden been militarily prepared during the war, they might have joined Finland outright to fight the Soviets. This was a popular opinion in the military as well as the civilian population even with the weak military they had. Restraint won out in the end, but had Sweden been more capable, it could have tipped the scales.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 14:29
|
|
|
Stroh M.D. posted:Pretty true. Germany invaded Norway by way of an amphibious invasion though, not through Sweden, like the Soviets would have had to. This is true, I should have been more specific. Let's face it, though - the fact that the Germany -> Finland invasion routes naturally run over water rather than across land is pretty much the only reason they didn't just say "gently caress it" and run with their usual pattern of demanding full transit rights and then invading if they didn't get them. Fun fact about WW2 neutrality I learned about a year ago while we're tangentially on the subject: The red dye used for the particular shade of red found in Nazi flags, armbands, etc? Manufactured all through the war for the German government by Swiss chemical companies. Also, the Germans compelled the Swiss Red Cross to send medics, nurses, and a few doctors to the Eastern Front under the guise of a "humanitarian mission" but which in reality involved front line operations. THey were out by 42 or 43 or so, but Swiss personnel did die in combat in Russia.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 14:42
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Basically lines of communication from Russia to Norway. Norway was a NATO member and their ports and airfields were kind of a big deal, as you could lock down a lot of the northern Russian ports from them, plus being able to poo poo all over anything coming out of the Baltic. To add to this, it's been mentioned before, but the G-I-UK gap was a really big loving deal during the Cold War given all the convoys that would have to flow during any sort of shooting war in Western Europe, and you can kind of look at Norway (especially the northern portions) as an extension of that, especially given the concentration of Russian naval forces in the Kola Bay area that would have to come around the North Cape. I've talked about it before but the Marines (both US and Royal) were given the mission of coming ashore and securing northern Norway and thereby protecting NATO's northern flank.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 14:43
|
|
|
iyaayas01 posted:To add to this, it's been mentioned before, but the G-I-UK gap was a really big loving deal during the Cold War given all the convoys that would have to flow during any sort of shooting war in Western Europe, and you can kind of look at Norway (especially the northern portions) as an extension of that, especially given the concentration of Russian naval forces in the Kola Bay area that would have to come around the North Cape. I've talked about it before but the Marines (both US and Royal) were given the mission of coming ashore and securing northern Norway and thereby protecting NATO's northern flank. Plus ça change. . .
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 15:07
|
|
|
That was pretty much the Norwegian strategy. "Oh god the Russians are coming we have to hold on until Allies get here!"   Fun fact: they only recently started dismantling the main line of fortifications in the North. The last parts were completed in 1995 
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 15:11
|
|
|
iyaayas01 posted:To add to this, it's been mentioned before, but the G-I-UK gap was a really big loving deal during the Cold War given all the convoys that would have to flow during any sort of shooting war in Western Europe, Why wait for that when you're some Stavka planning boffin? Just fight with what you have.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 17:11
|
|
|
Koesj posted:Why wait for that when you're some Stavka planning boffin? Just fight with what you have. I think the convoys in this case would be NATO convoys from North America. I don't think the Pact was planning on doing a lot of shipping.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 17:46
|
|
|
Myoclonic Jerk posted:I think the convoys in this case would be NATO convoys from North America. I don't think the Pact was planning on doing a lot of shipping. No, but the Kola bay was the site of a huge concentration of soviet naval vessels, especially submarines. Being able to run ASW patrols out of Norway would have been a huge part of any kind of convoy security scheme.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 17:50
|
|
|
The Kola Peninsula is the home of the Northern Fleet, isn't it?
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 17:52
|
|
|
Myoclonic Jerk posted:I think the convoys in this case would be NATO convoys from North America. I don't think the Pact was planning on doing a lot of shipping. Yeah no poo poo but why wait for NATO to build up if your best forces are already garrisoned in the right places and numbers are already favoring you 2:1. That's what I was getting at. And yeah the Kola peninsula was home to the northern fleet. Koesj fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Mar 1, 2012 |
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 17:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 18:09 |
|
|
How well would the non-Russian members of the Soviet Union have fought against NATO forces? I'm getting the feeling a lot of Khazaks and Uzbeks wouldn't put up much of a fight.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2012 18:46
|
|