|
Captain Log posted:Is there any good reason for countries like Germany abandoning nuclear power? Oh is it just people overreacting? I thought cleanly done nuclear power was better for the environment than many things. But I know dick all about any of this stuff. Nuclear's a scary word! Scary words are evil! That means nuclear power is evil! That's pretty much it - just unjustified panic.
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2020 02:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 09:16 |
|
|
Wingnut Ninja posted:Are there any examples of "guided" artillery projectiles in practical use today? That's a serious question since I'm not very knowledgeable about modern artillery, but it seems like if you put a 1000nm guidance capability on a shell you're like 70% of the way to a cruise missile and about 99% of a JDAM, and those things aren't exactly cheap enough to use for massed bombardment. That was the whole issue with the AGS on the USS Zumwalt, they designed it to exclusively use these completely bonkers wunderwaffen projectiles that were so expensive they never bought any. So now the gun is just dead weight and wasted space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1156_Precision_Guidance_Kit
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2020 03:26
|
|
|
Kaiser Schnitzel posted:It's partly a trick of perspective and distance, but this photo really shows how fuckin huge B-52s are. I've said this before, but the USAF Museum really hammers this home - you walk from a hangar that easily fits about a dozen WWII bombers and a lot of fighters to one where the B-52's bulk stands alone. The B-36 is less prominent because they have a bunch of other planes stacked against it, so you can't see the whole thing.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2020 02:10
|
|
|
The ASM tubes were a treaty dodge. The Montreux Convention allows Turkey to ban naval vessels over a certain size from transiting out of the Black Sea. The treaty exempts capital ships, but aircraft carriers are not capital ships under the convention. So the Soviets fitted the heavy anti-ship battery to make their carriers into capital ships and have free transit. China and India don't need to go into the Black Sea, so they have no use for the dodge.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2020 06:25
|
|
|
Rob Rockley posted:So previous F-19 discussion made me wonder - clearly the public knew about the existence and true nature of the stealth aircraft programs in the US by 1985, even if nobody knew the details of what the aircraft actually looked like and were capable of. How did people learn about the program, what did the general public think about it in the 80s before the F-117 got revealed, and did the Soviets know anything useful and consider stealth technology as a credible threat? The mid-90s articles I read in the mid-90s (as a lot of the stuff got looser classification) talked about this. The basic methods for stealth were known, so the stealth project was an open secret when the proper materials started being ordered by Lockheed. There were just too many people in the supply chain to keep it a secret even without leaks from Skunk Works personnel. Combine that with "UFO" sightings that didn't show up on radar in the middle of the country, and the cat was out of the bag. As I understand it, the big obstacle was that B-2 (or F-19) style designs were really hard to computer model, while the angular F-117 type was an extremely poor flyer without extensive computer support. Given that the Soviets were lagging pretty hard in computers by the mid 1980s, that probably killed any chance of them producing their own designs.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2020 06:10
|
|
|
In WWII, it was simple omnidirectional radio broadcast. A lot of boats were lost bcause Britain had managed to squeeze intercept gear down to something you could fit on a DD, and standard practice was to radio in a contact report so more boats could vector in on a convoy. This wouldn't allow decryptio n or triangulation, but you would get a warning of the nearby sub and a bearing.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2020 09:05
|
|
|
My only gripe about the Battleship movie is the audio mixing was horrible. Most of the soundtrack wasn't particularly suited for the scenes, and I struggled to hear the dialogue in places.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2021 05:05
|
|
|
Is the -15EX supposed to have the sensor integration that's such a big _35 selling point?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2021 04:10
|
|
|
The problem with that is that there's no One Big Foundry you can take out. The Ruhr Valley alone contains hundreds of mines and smelters. Bombing focused on things like ball-bearing production because that was centralized to a pretty significant degree, making it a critical target that was at least theoretically possible to knock out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2021 04:37
|
|
|
BIG HEADLINE posted:The only thing I wonder about with regards to the Aussie sub deal is that the 688i are getting rather close to retirement. If I'm not mistaken I think the the last original 688s are going to start getting decommed at the end of this year. All of the first-flight 688s are delisted and schedlued for scrapping. There are a couple of Flight II boats that are scheduled for decomissioning, but the rest of the Flight II and most Flight III boats are still active.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2021 21:14
|
|
|
That is earmarked for sale to Canada.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2021 16:59
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:I watched that video a long time ago and I believe he blamed an obstructed barrel, which he should have seen the signs of but didn't understand until the gun blew up. Obstructed Barrel was literally impossible. The previously fired round was found sticking out of the target.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2021 21:51
|
|
|
The round itself. He posted clips from the video he was filming, and the round was sticking out of the hydrant he was shooting at.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2021 06:32
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:RAF Spitfires downed four Egyptian aircraft on 22 MAR 1948. 22 May, not 22 March.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2021 12:14
|
|
|
If I promise "I won't shoot you unless you try to shoot me first" when I have a holsters pistol, it is much more credible than if I say the same thing while dual-wielding belt-fed machine guns. NFU is the nation-state equivalent of that.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2022 18:58
|
|
|
That tells Russia they can set a "No NATO here!" rule for any neighbors country. That is a very very bad precedent to set.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2022 18:07
|
|
|
zoux posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1503540514624204800 It is an aid to penetration of defenses. "Penetration aid" is a pretty obvious name for them. Then the mania for shortening kicks in, and it becomes penaids. The term is also like 60 years old, dating back to some of the earliest ICBM designs.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2022 02:33
|
|
|
mlmp08 posted:It was a whole thing in high school for kids to go on mission trips to the UK and sometimes Prague or something. These are the same sort of people that hand out Chick Tracts amd honestly think there are Americans who don't know who Jesus is. Because they cannot concieve a reason besides ignorance to not believe in their specifoc variation of the religion.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2022 16:04
|
|
|
M_Gargantua posted:
Fitting a lengthened Virginia hull with all-up D5 tubes was one of the proposals for the Ohio replacement, though they settled on the clean-sheet Columbia design instead.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2022 14:10
|
|
|
evil_bunnY posted:I mean yeah, after making seawolves building virginias turns out to be a known quantity. The issue with the [i]Improved Virginia program has more to do with "we aren't actually sure what requirements for the new boat are going to look like" and "we don't know what new technologies are going to be good and useful" than anything else. A simple iterative improvement on the existing design is easy enough - that's Block V, Block VI, and Block VII.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2022 16:03
|
|
|
Splode posted:
Kilograms are mass, not weight, fool. Like all forces, weight is measured in newtons.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2022 12:45
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:The point there is not 'could the USSR do it' so much as 'did the USSR ever intend to do it'. If their main motivation was in fact fighting off Barbarossa 2.0 from the West, that means they weren't ever planning to try rolling through the Fulda Gap whether they could technically achieve it or not. Rolling west through the Fulda Gap before Barbarossa 2.0 kicks off is one way tomfight it off. Always better to make sure the fight hapoens on the other guy's land.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2022 13:47
|
|
|
CainFortea posted:If you're talking about firing a broadside, they aren't. The guns were on gun carriages so they could be ran out after reloading. They weren't mounted to the frame, so there was no "shock" to transfer. Wooden ships of war absolutely took massive amounts of strain from their guns. It was fairly common for older ships to have their broadside reduced, sometimes drastically (some of the first-rate ships on duty at the time of the American Revolution had similar throw-weight to a 74) because the ship could no longer take the strain. Even more common was inexperienced navies trying to maximize firepower wind up with ships that would severely damage themselves with a full broadside.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
Chamale posted:War means war crimes, especially when an army is poorly disciplined and has terrible morale. I hope the fighting stops as soon as possible. This isn't poor discipline and morale. This is a deliberate, planned campaign of extermination. Among other evidence, we know this because the Russians did the same sort of things in Syria, because there's satellite photos of the bodies well before the Russians started getting kicked out, and because Putin's speeches brag about the planned campaign of extermination in barely coded terminology. Unfortunately, we don't have to look very far to see proof that there is no shortage of useful idiots to make excuses for Russia and try to minimize their crimes.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2022 09:27
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:Why is blockading Taiwan a declaration of war against the whole world? China has way more friends then Taiwan does. Enforcing a blockade with anti-ship missiles" means "firing on and destroying any ship that tries to visit the country in question". You start sinking merchant ships from neutrals, they won't be neutral very long. You start sinking warships making port calls, the countries that own them absolutely won't be neutral very long. Even "don't you loving dare trade with that guy or I'll kill you" tends to go over very, very poorly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2022 21:08
|
|
|
Crab Dad posted:Curious what the percentage of the population was considered Jewish/undesirable. They may not have suffered like other areas so their view is different. There's also the possible "5 years with the evil dial set to 15 vs 45 years with the evil dial moving between 6 and 12" factor.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2022 18:16
|
|
|
shame on an IGA posted:The B-52 is older today than the Colt single-action was when pearl harbor happened The B-52 is now older than Flyer I was when the first B-52H models rolled off the production line.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2022 19:49
|
|
|
The sensor package, flight profile, and warhead are the big things. A ship at sea is a different sort of radar challenge than a land target, so you have to optimize your sensors for that environment. Most warships have significantly greater ability to shoot down an inbound missile than any land target, because it is easier to concentrate weapons. So an ASM has to be capable of an attack profile that reduces vulnerability -either through sea-skimming, evasion packages, or sheer speed. You also need a pretty hefty range - land targets are small, but ships are far away. The warhead needed to crack a ship isn't necessarily different in kind, but you often want a significantly heavier warhead for anti-ship work. Something like a Hellfire with an 8 kilo warhead is good enough for most pinpoint land targets, but is effective only against the smallest ships. A shipkiller needs the same level of warhead you would use on a large building or reinforced bunker. All together, it is a pretty distinct package needed a specific-purpose missile.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2022 05:16
|
|
|
Reasonably often - about two or three conflicts per decade since the sixties have seen AShM launches. Which is kind of a lot given the sort of wars that have happened between WWII and today.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2022 05:28
|
|
|
Captain Log posted:How in the name of god is that even real? Radar is generally directional - it can only see what the radar unit is looking at. That's why the stereotypical radar antenna is spinning, because it is accepting non-continuous look on any given target in exchange for seeing in every direction. This is also why the radar of a fighter plane is always represented as a cone rather than a sphere centered on the plane - it can only see where it is pointed. Intermittent contact is fine for search sensors, but fire control is a different story. If you are guiding a missile into a target, or planning to, you can't accept losing track of it. So you have to slave the radar on target until the missiles hit, which robs you of the ability to target stuff coming from another direction. With older radars, you solve that problem by putting additional fire control radars into the system, but this costs money that the Slava-class designers elected not to spend. Modern radar systems use a number of technological black magic techniques to eliminate directionality completely, but the Moskva was not a modern design.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2022 09:54
|
|
|
Single half-lit cigarette butts have caused building-destroying fires by accident. A jar of jellied gasoline is potentially quite dangerous if you throw it in the right area.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2022 23:02
|
|
|
mlmp08 posted:What seems more interesting than specific rollouts of new big name systems of fighters etc is just how many new missiles are being purchased across platforms. To me, it really feels like the Powers That Be looked at the list of potential solutions to aging hardware and decided to push the entire list. Shotgunning projects is a pretty effective (if very expensive) way to ensure that something works.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 01:20
|
|
|
monkeytennis posted:Do they launch those missiles by shooting them out of the cannon? Yes! The late Soviet Union absolutely adored the gun-launched ATGM idea, which Russia naturally still uses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K112_Kobra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M119_Svir/Refleks The French, US, and Israelis have experimented with the idea at times as well, and China/Ukraine/India have systems derived from the Soviet ones.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2022 21:00
|
|
|
A.o.D. posted:I thought at some point they played around with the idea specifically on the Abrams? It was used for trials on the M60A2 "Starship" as well as the Sheridan, but the system was not well-liked. The conventional 105mm gun was preferred for all production M60 tanks and the first models of Abrams.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2022 23:30
|
|
|
Marshal Prolapse posted:What was the Gavin? I feel like it was some whack jobs idea about upgrading the M113, but I can’t recall. It was a popular reference, almost rivaling sea patrol and Groverhaus. "Gavin" is just a nickname that some whackjob decided was the name of the M113 APC. It got spread around a lot because of a combination of him trying to force it and everybody else roundly mocking him.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2022 23:37
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I guess for the odd historical reason that the "CC" was "battlecruiser", not "command cruiser". The only ships it was ever assigned to were the two Lexington-class battlecruisers that got turned into carriers. The doubled letter was supposed to be the "base" ship of the type, and the thinking of the time was that battlecruisers would completely displace the older cruiser types. Instead, that didn't happen and the "G" for "guided missile" became the subtype designation instead of a suffix the way it is on other classes.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2022 03:23
|
|
|
There's a couple of plausible explanations. One that I find particularly compelling is that there wasn't nearly as much demand on the international black market for Mosins, so they didn't get stolen. The other, related possibility is that the Russians didn't store their surplus AKs correctly, while the Soviets did properly preserve their Mosins.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2022 15:47
|
|
|
My understanding is that a combination of computer design and fly-by-wire systems allows the same benefits to be achieved with vastly smaller control surfaces, rendering a the swing-wing wholly obsolete.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2022 05:32
|
|
|
Athas posted:What is the threat model? I see two possibilities: The core concept is positive control - you don't want your nukes going off except at a time and place of your choosing. Doing so requires you to have encoding systems on the warhead, and this requires the plane to have the necessary hardware and software to talk to said encoding systems. The most obvious reason you want positive control is somebody else getting access to your warheads - stealing one from a depot, or a plane crashing with one on board and getting salvaged, etc. This is, however, not the only scenario of concern. At various times, nuclear weapons have been handed over to allies to use for deterrence or defensive tactical use. Encoding systems minimize the risk of doing so because you can keep the warhead locked unless it looks like you're going to use the things. However, the most important reason to have this kind of system is to prevent an accident. Nuclear weapons get shipped around fairly often, and it is not unheard of for them to actually wind up strapped to a plane (deliberately or on purpose). If one is attached to the plane and everything's hooked up (if, for example, you have a few planes on standby in case an ongoing military crisis escalates to chemical or biological warfare), that means that a pilot hitting the wrong switches might drop the thing accidentally, a system fault might drop the thing, or the plane might crash in a way that the bomb thinks it has been dropped and tries to detonate. If you have interlocks built in, this results in the bomb hitting the ground very hard and breaking up instead of nuking some random patch of ground. The earliest generation of US nuclear bombs were designed so that you had to physically open the bomb in flight and insert the fissile core as a means of preventing just such an accident.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2022 16:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 09:16 |
|
|
M_Gargantua posted:That part is incorrect, even on the oldest bombs you couldn't come anywhere near the fissile cores outside a laboratory without ruining them. The geometry tolerance's are too tight to modify anything explosive or further in, and the safety concerns would also make it a no-go. Closest you could get would be inserting the wires for the detonators. There may have at some point been manual inflight systems to adjust the content of tritium booster gasses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_4_nuclear_bomb quote:In addition to being easier to manufacture, the Mark 4 introduced the concept of in-flight insertion (IFI), a weapons safety concept which was used for a number of years. An IFI bomb has either manual or mechanical assembly, which keeps the nuclear core stored outside the bomb until close to the point that it may be dropped. Arming the Mark 4 required opening the casing's front hatch, removing the forward polar cap, two outer pentagonal lenses with their detonators, and two inner explosive blocks, and exposing the pit (the lenses and blocks weighed an aggregate 156 kilograms). The pit's aluminum pusher had a removable 12 centimeter diameter, 1 kilogram trap door, and its uranium tamper had a removable 12 centimeter diameter, 3 kilogram trap door. The weaponeer could then insert or remove the core with the use of a special vacuum tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon) quote:The pit, named after the hard core found in fruits such as peaches and apricots, is the core of an implosion nuclear weapon – the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2022 17:01
|
|