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Platystemon posted:I expect it was intentionally made non‐functional with an explosive charge, perhaps to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Why didn't they blast the middle of the barrel? Or does the damage that picture shows already suffice to make it unusable? Does the barrel wall get thicker towards the back? Sorry about the stupid questions 
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May 29, 2016 16:05
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atomicthumbs posted:Today we remember my grandpa Jim who was an airborne gunnery instructor in the Pacific, became a horticulturalist, and lived to a ripe old age, and his brother Earl who drowned because they forgot to fill his airplane with fuel before he left the carrier Man that's kinda hosed up.
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May 30, 2016 16:53
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atomicthumbs posted:He managed to secure a spot in the veteran's cemetery in Tennessee right next to his brother. He never got over his loss. My gramps randomly lucked into a Luftwaffe POG job in southern Germany and spent the war impressing girls with his uniform and everyone else he knew died in Russia. That's gotta give you a heightened appreciation of the random and classic nature of existence.
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Jun 1, 2016 19:13
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I was wondering if AAMs can be fired while the plane is inverted and found this video of a Raptor launching from the internal bay while inverted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM5pCgy2jiY It kinda looks like the plane is not only going inverted but also sort of "dropping away" from the missile. Does the missile normally have to be able to "fall off" the rail in order to safely launch or can you just ignite the motor and it fucks off? In this video of an F-35 firing an AIM-120 to a noodly guitar solo it falls quite a bit before the motor ignites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVkqrkA8KnU&t=106s
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Jun 5, 2016 16:09
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Being (mildly?) reckless in something that expensive has got to be quite the thrill.
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Jun 8, 2016 09:05
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Nebakenezzer posted:atomic powered Ratte* Just imagine the design ideas you could've sold to Hitler if nuclear power had been available.
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Jun 15, 2016 23:58
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Is it unusual that the Eurofighter is apparently about as good as the Superbug, or is that about right? It's a bit newer IIRC.
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Jun 19, 2016 14:46
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That Works posted:I remember being a bit scared about it myself. Especially since one of the news feeds one day was some big building in Moscow on fire after protests / some military response. I remember thinking "oh gently caress" . It's a nice bit of understatement that the thing that ended with tanks firing at the parliament is called a "constitutional crisis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis#Storming_of_the_White_House e: was Yeltsin being accurately portrayed in the media at the time? I wasn't that old back then but I don't recall getting the impression that he might actually kinda be the baddie. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 20:01
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Antti posted:Especially when it comes to Donald "Kill all terrorists' families" Trump's foreign policy. Assuming that Trump reads polls, or really anything at all, ascribes a lot more professionalism to him and his campaign than they've really given us any reason to believe they have.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:11
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Remember the Russian counterpart? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEaw6ktxg-8 It beautifully translates the narcissistic sullen rage of a spree killer's manifesto video into the national scale. It creeped me right the gently caress out when it came out.
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Jul 13, 2016 12:16
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Naramyth posted:Turns out having total air superiority for the majority of time airplanes existed really changes procurement priorities. Is NATO thought to have had air superiority during the cold war? The Soviets had a shitload of planes. e: the German army apparently has 32 MLRS left. That doesn't seem like a lot. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 18:27
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I read a funny story somewhere about the air defense woes of the Bundeswehr where they, due to the retirement of Gepard, had to notionally shanghai the Romanian Gepard battalion for some war game because otherwise they would've had bupkis. Last operator of Gepard apparently: 
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Jul 14, 2016 13:47
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You're gonna get off that flight in one hell of a mind state unless you also have like a couple Spongebob episodes queued up.
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Jul 15, 2016 15:43
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Vahakyla posted:So, I'd imagine this thread is the best to answer a question like this, now that Turkey tried the whole thing. Lots of weighted dice rolls take place - do your conscripts get bogged down in the crowd and talked into surrendering, do you manage to capture enough media outlets / manage to put out enough confusing propaganda to keep people inside so your guys don't get bogged down, do you have troops that are unlikely to be talked into surrendering because of their ethnic or class background (conscripted country bumpkins vs. urban bourgeoisie or something) and what do you blow that particular load on, how many officers are your political appointees vs. someone else's, how many officers have your social background (technocrat, commie, islamist, liberal) vs. that of the government. Did you manage to make a good plan, do you have people who can properly execute it before the other side marshals their forces. Did you identify the crucial targets and weak points. Are you lucky. Do you manage to stun the opposition with fait accompli, decapitation, whatever - prez getting shot as step one in the coup etc. How much can you achieve with means that the other side can't counter - air strikes or whatever. Did you put enough of your pieces in place? Did you try to put too many pieces into place and gave someone time to squeal? Do you get enough momentum going that your guys don't jump ship? A putschist general has got to be 95% adrenalin by weight when giving the order to fuckin do it.
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Jul 16, 2016 23:18
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Even by WW3 standards being the guy who gets tasked to attempt to drop a nuclear freefall bomb on Grozny or whatever because it's not like the air base or the ammo dump will still exist in 30 minutes and you might as well attempt to do something with the stuff has got to feel kinda dumb.
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Jul 18, 2016 19:06
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Wonder what percentage of the Russians' rationale is that Trump will probably get along better with VVP and what percentage is that his presidency is likely to damage the US's economy and its relationship with its allies.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:10
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Is the B-52 considered current in terms of its jamming capabilities? Would it be expected to be able to enter airspace defended by a decently capable air defense system, or would it stick to firing cruise missiles or something from outside it until the system is mostly down?
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Aug 1, 2016 16:25
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Godholio posted:First off, think about how many countries in the world actually have something that could be called "a decently capable air defense system" then think about what you're asking. I only have the vaguest of ideas on both of these tbh  I was sort of wondering where on the continuum from a Predator to a B2 they sit survivabilitywise nowadays, but I understand that it depends on what you attempt do with them and that getting into that is a bit dicey, so disregard, sorry.
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Aug 1, 2016 22:32
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Doctor Grape Ape posted:Backfire video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND0D3bw4r74 Is the target those warehouses? It kinda looks like they miss.
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Aug 17, 2016 04:45
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I think they borked Ukrainian dude's name. It looks like they put the last name first.
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Aug 22, 2016 21:27
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Schneider cup racers are sexy as gently caress  Check out this loving thing:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio-Pegna_Pc.7
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Aug 24, 2016 21:41
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Would it be accurate to say that the Chinese are approaching the whole rivalry with the West thing in a much more chill and predictable manner than the Russians? I know about the problems with the maritime borders, the naval buildup, the missiles vs. Taiwan and aircraft carriers etc., but it generally still seems a lot less volatile. Is the problem that it's more up close and personal with the whole Russian sphere of influence now contains NATO members, or are there qualities of the respective political systems and societies that this results from? I guess the Chinese don't have post-imperial phantom pain to get over? Again, assuming the difference exists and the impression isn't just an artifact of my media consumption habits.
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Aug 30, 2016 22:14
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Guess this is ever so slightly Cold War-related. Some Poles found a bizarre/depressing ant colony inside an abandoned nuke bunker.quote:The source of the ‘colony’ is a large colony nesting outdoors, on top of the bunker. Individuals that have fallen down through a ventilation pipe are not able to find their way back to the mother nest. In total darkness, they have constructed an earthen mound. Judging from the huge deposits of wood-ant corpses in the bunker, the ‘colony’ has survived for years. Through these years, the mortality has been more than compensated by new workers that fall down during the active season of the free-living colony outside, and at present the number of the bunker workers is counted in hundreds of thousands. quote:Flat parts of the earthen mound and the floor of the adjacent spaces (including the room with the mound, the neighbouring chamber and a part of the corridor) were carpeted with bodies of dead ants (Figs 6, 8). Locally the deposits were a few centimetres thick. The number of dead workers probably amounted to about two million. quote:During an inspection, we estimated the size of the bunker ‘population’ to be at least several hundred thousand workers, perhaps close to a million. That time, the earthen mound was partly dug up, paying attention to the possible presence of ant brood (larvae, pupae or empty cocoons) and queens. Nothing like these was found. quote:The masses of Formica polyctena workers trapped in the bunker had no choice. They were merely surviving and continuing their social tasks on the conditions set by the extreme environment. quote:The mites which occur there seem to be first of all ant-dependent detritivores feeding amongst ant cemeteries. The amount of another possible resource, the bat guano, is too scarce there to play any role as substrate for a detritivore fauna. quote:To conclude, the wood-ant ‘colony’ described here – although superficially looking like a functioning colony with workers teeming on the surface of the mound – is rather an example of survival of a large amount of workers trapped within a hostile environment in total darkness, with constantly low temperatures and no ample supply of food. The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. http://jhr.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=9096  
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Sep 5, 2016 |
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Sep 5, 2016 21:26
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Shooting Blanks posted:Surprisingly apt name/post combo here... Nothing surprising there, I fuckin love ants 
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Sep 6, 2016 20:26
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I love all the weird poo poo they did to the M60
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Sep 11, 2016 19:09
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Someone has to remove the remains from the wreck.
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Sep 12, 2016 00:22
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winnydpu posted:The military and government had some crazy and naive plans for atomic bombs in the early '50s. Using the bomb to blast open harbors and tunnel through mountains, MacArthur's proposed light bombing of China, etc. People seemed to look at atomic weapons as just another sort of explosive, part of the normal continuum of destructiveness. If the world did not have the two examples of Japan to drive home the point that nuclear weapons were fundamentally different, in a manner similar to chemical weapons, I wonder if first use would have been an mutual exchange during the cold war. Without MAD and under a more artisanal than industrial production rate they arguably aren't that different though. What happened to Hiroshima wasn't all that different to what happened to Tokyo, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it wasn't even cheaper all things considered. What makes the difference is that nukes let us store up a gigadeath or two and release it all at once to any place on the planet with a push of a button. Imagine a megaton of TNT worth of conventional-tipped ICBMs.
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Sep 12, 2016 17:48
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Setting that up in a way that is safe and doesn't keep the fighter from fightering sounds like a really cool design challenge. Also  quote:When the flight path is pointed above threatening terrain, the Auto-GCAS disengages and announces, "You got it!" "Try not to gently caress up again, big boy!" e: quote:Even test pilots met their match when flying this test point during the development effort. None of the program's pilots would go lower than a 100-ft. MDA. 
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 16:04
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I'm surprised again and again how low the numbers in service for many major weapons systems are even with large militaries. Definitely would have guessed that there were more B-52s active than that.
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Sep 20, 2016 14:49
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hepatizon posted:7 × 4 ft, apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37#Specifications What loving idiot signed off on a twodimensional cargo bay
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Sep 21, 2016 19:17
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The French have a thing for visually striking design:  Leduc 0.22 e: rehosted, album with all four pics is here: http://imgur.com/a/UzUnn aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 10:54
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The thing I posted apparently was the first use of a ramjet and was supposed to reach Mach 2, but they got the area rule wrong somehow and never managed to get above Mach 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leduc_0.22 I can't get over how mental the thing looks.   Second one is an earlier prototype. Can't stop laughing. Apparently humanity was a proper area ruling away from ending up with this instead of the Mirage III. e: the Nord 1500 Griffon is so funny. The cockpit and nose just sorta randomly sprout out the top. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 22:36
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Is there a particular strategic/doctrinal reason that the French went with one smaller carrier with catapults and nuclear propulsion and the Brits went with two bigger ones with ramps and conventional?
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Oct 14, 2016 15:54
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Thanks for the carrier stuff. I was trying to somehow derive those features from their respective geographical situations or overseas commitments but it makes sense that there'd be quite a bit of outside forces tugging into various other directions and paths of least political, institutional, and technological resistance eased into, so I guess I was overthinking it. Kinda cool to think about them displaying a few years and decades of their political and actual economies and cultures in a sort of encoded sort of way.
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 14, 2016 17:50
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Those Gerasimov slides are loving terrifying. Causes of terrorism: interference in states' internal affairs from outside, artificial introduction of alien ideology, mentality, and spiritual values.
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Oct 16, 2016 12:48
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Cat Mattress posted:If you want better pictures of it, unencumbered by headlines, look here. Holy gently caress that thing is hideous
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Oct 20, 2016 17:49
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About how long do we have until someone fields an autonomous killbot, and who is it going to be? Quadcopter with hand grenade, something with a software model of a cat brain that sneaks around and kamikazes onto stuff, orca-sized thing that hunts submarines, fuckin Ogre, anything. 20 years?
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Oct 24, 2016 18:35
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Wonder if they let him have that radio.
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Oct 25, 2016 13:22
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Friar Zucchini posted:Guessing that doesn't mean forward-operating-bases role? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System
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Oct 29, 2016 17:54
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OSCE apparently had to stop using drones in Donbas in the face of jamming: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/28/international-monitor-quietly-drops-drone-surveillance-of-ukraine-war/ Also from that article, the Russians are apparently forbidding the OSCE from using binoculars quote:In a key OSCE mission near the Russian-Ukrainian border, patrols have for several months asked permission to use a rather primitive tool: binoculars. But Russia has categorically refused those requests. In June, frustrated by the lack of cooperation, Britain’s ambassador to the OSCE, Sian MacLeod, took to Twitter to accuse Moscow of preventing the mission from doing its job. “What’s to hide?” she tweeted.
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Nov 1, 2016 14:39
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