Delta-Wye posted:

this is the future that artillerists want

The Voice of Labor posted:

sorry to move the discussion towards handheld artillery, but choice of cartridge seems to largely follow the pattern of "this one is too big, this one is too small, let's make one halfway between the two", so what were the other two rounds on either side of the goldilocks 30 calibre?

mlmp08 posted:

Now show me that gun being fielded on land by any nation that would consider it a good idea to add to their land forces.

Polikarpov posted:

The 2A44 gun mounted on the 2S7 Malka is 1 caliber longer than the 8"/55 gun those gunfighter projectiles were fired from

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

A country literally did invest in teaching me, and pays for ideas - about this subject - now. I’m not a travelling salesman, going from town to town in search of tutoring the town’s boys in gunnery.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

Maybe we could figure out a way to airdrop bridges out of C-130s?

The Voice of Labor posted:

sorry to move the discussion towards handheld artillery, but choice of cartridge seems to largely follow the pattern of "this one is too big, this one is too small, let's make one halfway between the two", so what were the other two rounds on either side of the goldilocks 30 calibre?

mawarannahr posted:

post the last time you crossed a wet gap successfully

HouseofSuren posted:

Nato isn't learning anything, they are losing. There is no education being taking place at the moment.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well, this is a good example of the heart of the problem.

A universal calibre was selected so it, and the weapon that really cemented the choice, the M109, could be produced and stockpiled en masse. This was supposed to be easier than maintaining multiple calibres and guns.

Now, 155mm is barely produced in meaningful quantities, the costs are astronomical, and the M109 is out of production.

So what is the rationale behind any of this?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Yes but 203mm howitzer shells are short and fat and 203mm guns, like naval guns, are huge and require something like a fixed platform or railway gun on land.

KomradeX posted:

With how Nazi inspired NATO militaries are I'm shocked they haven't done a tracked "railway" gun

Sancho Banana posted:

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1766530147694366894?t=jU4wkGski5-2or4HM8bxhw&s=19

Last year's offensive, and ever increasing Azerbaijani aggression, is most likely predicated on the idea that Russia is too tied up with Ukraine to intervene, giving Baku (and NATO) some extra confidence. To what degree can they keep pushing until Moscow makes a response (unless it just won't)?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well, the major changes in small arms came from changes in propellants, really.

.45-70, .577/450 Martini–Henry etc. were all black powder cartridges, and so had low muzzle velocity. To maintain killing power, energy, they had a substantial mass. The other thing, this is true for everything that follows - is mechanical/metallurgical.

There were limits to rifling that could be made, the strength of a rifle's chamber, the forces a rifle bolt could tolerate, and particularly a lever action. This is why people using antique firearms these days need to be careful - a lot more energy can be fit into a cartridge than there used to be, so you could very easily have one of the old softer iron rifles blow up in your hands if you used a new, maxed out factory loading for what's notionally the same calibre. So, yes black powder had limits, but they could also only use so much powder before a rifle became too dangerous to use, and they designed bullets around what the rifles of the time could bear.

Early rifle magazines were also tubular, so with bullets' points in the base of the next one in the magazine, being too pointed - while ballistically superior,, was also too dangerous.

The impetus for change was the French Lebel Model 1886 and German Gewehr 1888, which by using smokeless powder, had potentially made all other rifles obsolete overnight. Higher velocities became possible, allowing for a smaller projectile with a flatter trajectory to delivery the same energy. Because smokeless powder was new, and not in production everywhere, but at the same time the obvious improvements in performance were clear, there were transitional black powder cartridges, .30-30 and .303 British, which came about as their respective countries made efforts to design strong enough bolt action rifles to fire smokeless ammunition, and for the powder to be made, which was a significant national undertaking. When smokeless powder was finally available in quantity, .303 British was adapted for it, and dedicated high velocity small calibre rifle rounds entered service, elsewhere, the .30-06 for example.

These rifles set the standard for the world wars - but - .303 in particular had been designed in the 1890s for much lower muzzle velocities than were ultimately possible with smokeless propellants, so the shape of the bullet had limitations. The same was true for many of these bullets. There were all sorts of changes in projectile design over time that showed better things were possible, Spitzer tips, rimless cases and boat tails primarily, and they enhanced the calibres they were applied to, but a dedicated cartridge designed from the onset with those in mind would be more efficient.

The calibres and weapons that fired them were all designed at a time when rifle fire was the dominant weapon in land battles, significantly more than artillery, and more so than muscle powered machine guns like the gatling and mitrailleuse. That's for a bunch of reasons we can circle back to if you like, but the gist is rifles were the most important weapon, so they, and their bullets, had to achieve very long ranges. Other factors like weight and handling were often irrelevant, and so were the number of rounds carried by a soldier. First because compared to the bullets they replaced, soldiers could already carry many more - and the soldiers who had carried Martini-Henrys themselves carried many more bullets than Napoleonic soldiers. Nobody anticipated that smaller bullets would be worthwhile just for the sake of carrying as many as possible.

Also, for a variety of reasons, carbines were not particularly effective or deemed worthwhile. Contemporary rifles that were designed to use smaller cartridges like 6.5x50mmSR Arisaka and 6.5×52mm Carcano were noticeably worse than the .30 rifles. Again, a lot of that has to do with the propellants at the time, the limitations of projectile design, and even things like the kind of rifling that was possible, but the gist is, a smaller calibre lightweight rifle was actively detrimental - demonstrably so - for everyone at the time.

Alright, so two world wars happen.

In this time, other weapons overtake the infantry rifle section dramatically. Machine guns, field guns, howitzers, mortars, rifle grenades, hand grenades, eventually sub machine guns and light machine guns. The infantry is still taking ground, they still need weapons, but their rifles are no longer deciding battles. Infantry also spend a lot of their time riding around in vehicles towards the end of the period, where a giant wood and iron rifle is a liability.

So, engineers in the UK, Germany, the US and USSR are looking at the advancements in the theory and practice of infantry combat as well as firearms design and ballistics, and work out that they can make intermediate cartridges, fired from smaller and handier weapons, that are still effective. There are more attempts at this than I can count, and it was approached from all sorts of directions, .30 Carbine is obviously very different than 7.92×33mm Kurz, .280 British, and 7.62x39, but they're trying to do the same thing arguably.

7.62 NATO is a compromise because it allows the same performance as .30-06, more or less, in a more compact package that feeds better from automatic weapons, and is a step up from .303 British. It's also more manageable than rimmed or rimless 8mm Mauser, for a bunch of reasons related to automatic weapons, idk what specifically.

blah blah blah, time passes, and 5.56 is essentially the same basic design scaled down, for a variety of reasons because the theory and practice of small arms use further changes, a lot of this has to do with improvements to material technology allowing lighter automatic weapons that can still handle significant energy, as much as anything, because prior to that pistol cartridges had to be used, submachine guns.

and then 5.56 goes through 50 years of changes until US troops feel insecure being out ranged in Afghanistan, more or less. The Mk 12 SPR is an attempt to remedy that, and of course full length M16s were basically fine, but this was primarily an issue of soldier insecurity, and the size of the M4 was too tempting to give up, so attempts to get better performance out of a carbine sized package led to experiments with 6.8 and 6.5mm, which is how we got to the new service rifle, more or less.

quote:

Russia may revise relations with Armenia because of Yerevan’s position — Lavrov

"The Armenian leadership has decided to rely on non-regional countries that are courting Yerevan, that promise to help Yerevan in all its troubles, if only Armenia breaks off relations with Russia and those integration structures that have been created in our common region," he noted.

"The West does not hide this fact. This is the main goal of the West in relations with the countries of Central Asia, and with Armenia, and with other states of the post-Soviet space," he added.

However, the Armenian leadership has still not officially confirmed its final decision, the minister stated. Instead, according to him, politicians in Yerevan are only discussing whether it is worth suspending participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or even leaving the CSTO altogether, while they are still interested in the Eurasian Economic Union, since Armenia benefits from it one way or the other.

"This is not a very attractive picture. We would like our Armenian colleagues, our Armenian partners to decide for themselves how they want to continue to live and how they want to implement on a mutual basis those agreements that bind us in the most different integration structures," Lavrov concluded.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well Armenia, like Serbia, has a liberal Europhile in charge, so they've actually worked to cut ties with Russia.

Best of luck to them.

Sancho Banana posted:

Speaking of which:

https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1766427418229711059?t=S0xrI-s0Pw6unfvbVCnJXQ&s=19

Sancho Banana posted:

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1766530147694366894?t=jU4wkGski5-2or4HM8bxhw&s=19

Last year's offensive, and ever increasing Azerbaijani aggression, is most likely predicated on the idea that Russia is too tied up with Ukraine to intervene, giving Baku (and NATO) some extra confidence. To what degree can they keep pushing until Moscow makes a response (unless it just won't)?

Sancho Banana posted:

Speaking of which:

https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1766427418229711059?t=S0xrI-s0Pw6unfvbVCnJXQ&s=19

KomradeX posted:

Ukraine failed, so they're going to go with a smaller more remote country this time?

Grilled Beef posted:

railways, like nuclear power or universal health care, are fundamentally incompatible with neoliberalism’s vision of property rights. so as a rule, despite all the manifest benefits to them, they are downplayed and excluded for ideological reasons, with those that are still in place being rooted in structures from the mid-20th century rather than seeing modern growth

Grilled Beef posted:

railways, like nuclear power or universal health care, are fundamentally incompatible with neoliberalism’s vision of property rights. so as a rule, despite all the manifest benefits to them, they are downplayed and excluded for ideological reasons, with those that are still in place being rooted in structures from the mid-20th century rather than seeing modern growth

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well, this is a good example of the heart of the problem.

A universal calibre was selected so it, and the weapon that really cemented the choice, the M109, could be produced and stockpiled en masse. This was supposed to be easier than maintaining multiple calibres and guns.

Now, 155mm is barely produced in meaningful quantities, the costs are astronomical, and the M109 is out of production.

So what is the rationale behind any of this?

Trabisnikof posted:

strongly disagree.

neoliberalism has no problem with eminent domain, especially when it is used to give land to private companies, like railroads.

the reason why i think neoliberalism cant build railroads* is that infrastructure is expensive and building new infrastructure isn't happening unless your industry is fossil fuel industry levels of profitable. neoliberal economics dictate that it is better to just spin-off and rebuy subsidiaries in boom and bust cycles rather than build something new


*actually America has build a lot of new railroads in the last few decades, just entirely to move fossil fuels around

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

So, engineers in the UK, Germany, the US and USSR are looking at the advancements in the theory and practice of infantry combat as well as firearms design and ballistics, and work out that they can make intermediate cartridges, fired from smaller and handier weapons, that are still effective. There are more attempts at this than I can count, and it was approached from all sorts of directions, .30 Carbine is obviously very different than 7.92×33mm Kurz, .280 British, and 7.62x39, but they're trying to do the same thing arguably.

7.62 NATO is a compromise because it allows the same performance as .30-06, more or less, in a more compact package that feeds better from automatic weapons, and is a step up from .303 British. It's also more manageable than rimmed or rimless 8mm Mauser, for a bunch of reasons related to automatic weapons, idk what specifically.

blah blah blah, time passes, and 5.56 is essentially the same basic design scaled down, for a variety of reasons because the theory and practice of small arms use further changes, a lot of this has to do with improvements to material technology allowing lighter automatic weapons that can still handle significant energy, as much as anything, because prior to that pistol cartridges had to be used, submachine guns.

and then 5.56 goes through 50 years of changes until US troops feel insecure being out ranged in Afghanistan, more or less. The Mk 12 SPR is an attempt to remedy that, and of course full length M16s were basically fine, but this was primarily an issue of soldier insecurity, and the size of the M4 was too tempting to give up, so attempts to get better performance out of a carbine sized package led to experiments with 6.8 and 6.5mm, which is how we got to the new service rifle, more or less.

mlmp08 posted:

Yeah, what’s the range on the 2S7 Malka? Is it 70km or is it more like 35-50km?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Well, this is a good example of the heart of the problem.

A universal calibre was selected so it, and the weapon that really cemented the choice, the M109, could be produced and stockpiled en masse. This was supposed to be easier than maintaining multiple calibres and guns.

Now, 155mm is barely produced in meaningful quantities, the costs are astronomical, and the M109 is out of production.

So what is the rationale behind any of this?

Polikarpov posted:

It's clear that the 203mm platform has more potential for long range fires than lesser calibers.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

Could you please go over the difference between a gun, howitzer, and gun-howitzer again?

Interestingly, Poland does still occasionally use the term gun-howitzer (armatohaubica, literally "cannonhowitzer"). Howitzer (haubica) is far more common, but apparently considered a shorthand for the proper term.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

Could you please go over the difference between a gun, howitzer, and gun-howitzer again?

Interestingly, Poland does still occasionally use the term gun-howitzer (armatohaubica). Howitzer (haubica) is far more common, but apparently considered a shorthand for the proper term.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted: