ShamefurDispray

I know we already have a topic on the Arjun, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have another thread about how DRDO can't make anything.
 
I mean, the Arjun program started in 1974 (according to Wikipedia) and the thing got produced 30 years later, in 2004. Should we take a look at the list of tanks that got developed at around the same time period?
 
T-72
T-80
Type 88
Type 96
Type 74
OF-40
Merkava 1
Merkava 2
Merkava 3
Leopard 2
M1 Abrams
Challenger 1
M-84
K-1
Type 90
Leclerc
T-90
PT-91
Zulfiqar
C1 Ariete
Challenger 2
TR-85
T-84
...and many more
 
A keen I will have noticed that these are both second and third generation tanks, which is right, because the development of the Arjun took place during two generations of tanks. Of note is that the Israelis managed to make three Merkava variants in the time DRDO took to develop the Arjun. And if that wasn't enough, he Challenger 1 was developed, build, accepted for service, and taken out of service by the Brits in less time than it took DRDO to deliver the first batch of Arjuns. What the fuck.
 
Alright alright I'll stop the bashing! So lets take a look at the armour of the Arjun:
 
Okay now that we've taken a look at the armour of the Arjun, we can take a look at something of which the Indians pretend is armour.
First, the turret 'armour':

The first good thing to note about the turret armour is that the left front is decent. The second good thing about the turret armour is that it's so bad I can spend a whole post on burning it down.
 
The mantlet looks thick in this model, but it looks like it's not modeled right since it seems to be fused with the frontal armour itself. This is what the actual armour in the gun mantlet looks like:

It's fairly thin, like in the Leclerc, but even worse is that it does not cover the whole gap in the turret. Seriously DRDO, what the fuck? Of course there are pictures of a fully assembled model, but it seems that the completed mantlet is no more than a sheet metal box around the structure shown in the above photo. I mean, look at this:

You can see the weld lines and shit on top of the 'mantlet', there is no reason to believe this is a solid steel block.
 
These pictures bring me nicely to the next two points:
1. The turret side basically lacks any and all side armour
2. The gunner sight barely has any armour
 
The green blocks on the turret side in the first picture are actually storage boxes, not armour. The majority of the side is only a few cm thick steel plate. Lets just compare this to the Leopard 2A4 for a second:

(Thanks to @Militarysta for making this picture)
 
You can see that the turret side protection extends way, way further back on the Leopard 2A4 than it does on the Arjun. The Arjun only has to rotate the turret slightly to be completely vulnerable to even low caliber autocannons. And as you can imagine, that's not good.
You can also see that the armour block behind the gunner sight is around 660 mm LOS, the same spot in the Arjun is estimated to be around 300 mm thick. Don't worry about the lower part of the gun sight, that has no armour at all. The sight itself looks like this:

 
So the turret has negligible side protection, horrible frontal protection, and a shit mantlet.
 
But wait, there's more!
 
The turret roof is really thin. If you take a look at this picture you'd say that it has a decently thick roof:

 
See? That looks to be like a solid few cm thick. So why say the roof is really thin? Well, take a look at this as well:
 

That hatch/cupola is raised. So what looks to be a roof that's a few cm thick is just a raised cupola. Which means that the turret roof itself is horribly thin. And since the front third is sloped forward that means APFSDS can easily yaw into the crew compartment, and lets not speak about attacks from above because that'll end in tears for the Arjun.
 
Is there anything not shit about the Arjun turret?
 
...
 
No! Actually!
 
A sharp-eyed reader will already have noticed that the turret ammorack has absolutely no protection at all:

 
The inside of the turret itself is a horrible fucking mess, just look at it:

That's right, those cables are hanging from fucking string.
 
Since the gun is also in the turret, surely that must be a good part of the turret, right? Right!? I mean, they had until 2004 to select or make a good gun!
 
Aahahahahahahha, no. It's a rifled 120 mm. In 2004. Helloooooo India, welcome to Britain, 19-fucking-80s.
 
...well maybe they have very good ammunition!
 

No. That's about the same as DM23. Which was introduced in 1983. 1984 saw a medium-high L/D (20+ L/D) penetrator for the US, 1987 for Germany and 1986 for the Soviet Union. We got high L/D (30+ L/D) penetrators in the early 90s. India's still rocking that good-ol' 17 L/D trash.
 
 
 
Sooooo will the hull be any better?
 

No. Access hatch in the upper glacis.
 
On TS I was talking to @Collimatrix about how the driver's position most likely makes the upper glacis in front of him thinner, but that turned out not to be true, since...

...his position doesn't reach the fucking glacis in the first place.
 
Not only that, look at how fucking horsewank thin that glacis is. With how thin it is, it's most likely just solid steel instead of NERA, even though the Indians claim it uses NERA, and they have this to say about their NERA:
Literally fucking what
 
I could probably go on and on and on about the retardation that's called Arjun, but I won't. I have subjected myself to too much stupidity already since I had to go to fucking places like defenceforumindia which was completely fucking malarious. And if you don't know what that word means, it's a combination of malaria and hilarious since reading defenceforumindia is equal parts sickening and hilarious.
 
 

Trump just preparing to enter the oppression Olympics by picking up a disability. 
 
5D chess against SJWs  #MAGA

For the record, all this shit about the statues is the most disgusting type of grandstanding.
 
Imma explain this stuff straight up, because not everyone here is from the USA.
 
Charles Francis Adams Sr. made a speech entitled "Shall Cromwell Have a Statue?"  This speech is explicitly about whether Robert E. Lee ought to have a statue.  Also, within context, this speech clarifies the reason why there are statues of Confederate generals in the USA in the first place.
 
When the rebels called it quits in 1865 it was because it was clear that the Confederates could no longer win.  It was not because they could no longer fight.  The Confederacy could have very plausibly continued a low-level guerrilla campaign against Union forces for years and seriously run up the body count.  Look up Quantrill's Raiders to get an idea of how nasty this could have become.
 
But the Confederates did not choose to do this.  They chose to lay down arms instead, come what may.  They realized that they were beaten.
 
Thus, the prevailing sentiment in the Union immediately after the war was that there should be a reasonable attempt at reconciliation.  In the immediate aftermath of the war very few Confederates were charged with treason.  After that there were further overtures, especially under President William Mckinley at the turn of the century.  Confederate soldier's graves were given headstones, and that's about the time that statues of Lee started growing in various places.  In general, it was felt that the rebels were traitors in a technical sense, but who had acted without malice or greed.  Furthermore, the legality of secession and indeed the theoretical underpinnings of the constitution were largely unanswered questions at the time.  It hardly seemed magnanimous to hold the issue against the rebels after beating them and burning their homes to the ground.
 
And that is why the USA was fine with statues of Confederate generals springing up here and there.  Did nobody think it odd that there's a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, in Maryland, which was a Union state?  Of course they didn't think it odd.  They didn't think.  That statue was erected because, a mere generation after the war, the Confederates were seen as losers in a high stakes political controversy, but otherwise completely American and honorable.  Filthy modern iconoclasts made up their own bizarre interpretations of what the statue meant, and tore it down.  They got rid of a symbol of one of the greatest national efforts of re-unification, ostensibly in the name of tolerance.

Fucking philistines.

Memes
 

DEMOCRATS 2018
Losing fixed elections since 2016!

Holy shit, CNN just threatened to dox the guy who made the gif.
 
 
 

They are literally saying that minorities and the elderly are too incompetent to get voter ID

An editorial in Investor's Business Daily, citing three studies, asserts that it is likely that Trump was right about illegal votes costing him the popular vote.  The first study was by an online anti-voter-fraud website, the second was in a political science journal and the third was from a conservative/libertarian think tank.  I am curious if there are any reasonably rigorous studies that have come to the opposite conclusion.  I don't know, it's not something I've looked into.  My gut feeling is that Trump was right, or at least numerically not far off on that particular point, but guts are for digesting and holding in bacteria, not number-crunching.

They are literally saying that minorities and the elderly are too incompetent to get voter ID

With the guy being a union hack, life long democrat, and Bernie supporter, is it any surprise he was a lousy shot?

The Paris climate accord is like a car mechanic telling you there's something wrong with your car then telling you to give them $5000 which may or may not solve the problem.
 
Good thing that Trump is signing out of the deal which is essentially a great transfer from the American middle class to the upper class in third world countries just like how big of a failure foreign aid to developing countries is.

I'm supposed to care what one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare from the Federal and various state governments thinks about Climate Change?
 
Elon Musk is the guy who watched the Monorail episode of "The Simpsons", took notes on the Music Man-inspired con artist's schtick and said "That just might work!"

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/premier-kathleen-wynne-announces-ontario-will-boost-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour-by-2019
when you run the economy further down into the ground to buy votes for the next election 

In other words, the literally Hitler + ready to start a nuclear war with Russia caricature of him from election propaganda.

don't you mean (((persuaded))) him to off himself with 2 shots to the back of the head?

don't you mean (((persuaded))) him to off himself with 2 shots to the back of the head?

don't you mean (((persuaded))) him to off himself with 2 shots to the back of the head?

don't you mean (((persuaded))) him to off himself with 2 shots to the back of the head?

Germany, France and 21 other countries are set to dismantle the EU

My take on Trump's international/trade strategy is that he sees the US in a great bargaining position that it's simply not taking advantage of.
 
From his point of view, the US is essentially subsidizing the cost of defense of its allied nations and not getting anything in return.  If he can instill the idea that the US is owed some sort of compensation for this service he could conceivably fund the enormous infrastructure and reform projects he has in mind without increasing domestic taxes.
 
From a negotiation stance it's shrewd.  The US is primarily a goods consuming nation, not a goods producing one.  So it is possible, for instance, to raise tariffs on imported goods without risking retaliation.
 
It would be a radical shift, but one I think Trump has a decent chance of implementing.  Whether that's running a protection racket or simply re-negotiating bad deals depends on where you sit, I suppose.