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Alzoc

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Everything posted by Alzoc

  1. Alzoc
    If I remember correctly it's just a 12,7 mm mounted directly on the gun assembly and is controlled by the gunner. Give a bit more range, and firepower than the coax 7,62 and the gunner sight allow to make full use of the range of the 12,7. The American then used the same solution for the TUSK kit of their M1: It cannot move independently (horizontally or vertically), it's just fixed to the gun. In essence it is an externally mounted coax, which has the advantage of not taking space inside the turret but then you to have get out to reload it.
  2. Alzoc
    Given that it already exist on Renault Sherpa, Mercedes Unimog and Tatra 815 chassis, I guess there would be no problem to mount it on an American built one. Just have to make sure that it won't break when the gun is fired (or after extensive use).
  3. Alzoc
    UK block the sale of 10 South-Korean F-50 trainer/fighter aircraft to the Argentinian air force
  4. Alzoc
    The class Rubis SSN Perle which recently suffered a fire during it's maintenance will be repaired. http://www.opex360.com/2020/10/22/gravement-endommage-par-un-incendie-le-sous-marin-nucleaire-dattaque-perle-va-etre-repare/ It was initially feared that the fire, which lasted for 14h, would have damaged the hull irrevocably, rendering the submarine unable to dive safely. Fortunately all the inboard equipment had been offloaded at this point so they weren't damaged. In practice the bow of the Perle will be cut-off and replaced by the one of the Saphir (of the same class) which was recently removed from active service. Once the two parts have been welded, all the cables, pipes and connections will have to be reconnected. The maintenance of the submarine will then resume from where it was before the fire. The reparation will last 6 month, mobilize 300 peoples and is expected to cost 120 millions € (among those 50 millions € paid by insurances) which is surprisingly little for an operation of this scale.
  5. Alzoc
    Start of the sea trials of the Alsace, first of the two French FREMM with increased air defence capabilities (increased radar range and MdCN cruise missiles replaced by 16 additional aster 30):
  6. Alzoc
    Granted there is no need at the moment, but I think that those 100 missiles represent about 1/5th of the stock which is significant given our general propension to have barely enough ammo in stock for limited engagement times. If I remember correctly the initial intervention in Libya, almost emptied our ammunition stock and it took two years to bring them back to pre war levels.
  7. Alzoc
    Spain wants to buy 100 second hand Mistral 3 from French stocks. http://www.opex360.com/2020/10/21/lespagne-veut-acquerir-100-missiles-anti-aeriens-mistral-3-doccasion-aupres-de-la-france For 47,8 millions euros those missiles, actually in use by the French army, will be renovated by MBDA and then transferred to Spain. It's becoming a habit lately to take from stocks of the army to sell to export customers who wants to receive their order immediately. Between the 12 rafales and possibly the first FDI for Greece as well as the Egyptian FREMM all of this makes unexpected holes in our lineup, and the army have then to wade through bureaucratic red tape to get the funds back in order to replace what has been sold. Ultimately it's a good thing since it generates good will with export customers, allow the army to regenerate their equipments at virtually no cost and increase the size of the series for our defense industry. But short terms it create a lot gaps in our capability while tensions are running high lately.
  8. Alzoc
    Successful test-fire of an MdCN cruise missile by the Suffren, which is a new capability for the navy:
  9. Alzoc
    Well there's the Rapidfire based on the 40 mm CTA but I think it lack guided ammunition (which I'm not sure are really useful against rather slow UAV), programmable ammunitions are available though. Though it's effective range is in my opinion too small (4 km) and it rely purely on optical targeting if on it's own (though it can take it's cue from a linked radar). Both of those make it rather useless against more dangerous aerial threats that can target it from further away, or move too fast to be detected soon enough if not linked to a radar. It is in essence a CIWS system not a full scale air defense system. At least that's how Thales and Nexter market it: A replacement for 25mm and 30mm CIWS with an improved range and efficiency while keeping a roughly similar footprint.
  10. Alzoc
    Scarabée ; AREG ; Fortress Mk2 and ARMIS The last being aimed at replacing GBC180 logi trucks around 2025:
  11. Alzoc
    Something that was on a CD in my parent's car. Used to listen to it every time we did a long trip and we cycled through all the CDs that were in the car. Kind of a nostalgia feel but I always liked the voice of this artist and only dived back into it recently.
  12. Alzoc
    Jaguar sand driving test:
  13. Alzoc
    I think that it's kinda what I meant? You don't need to understand how it work to make it (mostly) work, it just make it much harder to design it so that it can give predictable results within a set of constraints. You can achieve a certain percent of success by (kind of blind) trial and error and by feeding it enough data. You just don't know the reasons of why it sometimes works or fail. And when you're not sure that it will work all the time and you don't know the reasons for the eventual failures, you can't put fail-safes in place making it dubious to give the program the right to make life or death decisions.
  14. Alzoc
    In a way there is no theory needed, it's basically fitting a mathematical model to the data by finding which parameters are statistically the most relevant. Some of the parameters the machine sometimes comes up with don't make any sense for us from a logical or physical point of view. It just works in a set percents of the cases and fail completely otherwise. Afaik, that's mostly what our brain does as well when inferring as solution from contextual data: "In this situation, it is highly likely that the correct answer is ..." On the downside it means that the program can come up with answers that we don't expect or understand since there is no "logical" process involved. And there lie the core of the ethical problem: Since we don't know for sure what the program will come up with, we can't guarantee that we will deem the results, or even the reasons for it, ethical. The final question is: Is the judgment call from an human inherently superior or even fundamentally different from the one made by a NN AI? Right now, all I would say is that humans are capable of taking more parameters into account and especially abstract parameters that are obviously harder to translate into a numerical values. The computer, on the other hand, have the advantage of being able to work with a lot more data than what a human is capable of memorizing and will be statistically more often correct than the human at the risk of answering the wrong question.
  15. Alzoc
    That's something that machine learning might actually solve quite soon. The trend on it is relatively recent (it only really picked up around 2016) but right now everybody is trying to apply it to every domain imaginable and trying to see where it works. It does works really well on image recognition so I actually see an autonomous AI gunner being a thing before an autonomous driver which, as you said, would need to interpret more complex situation than what boils down to: Enemy military target in sights? ->Authorization to shoot? -> Shoot . There is of course the ethical issue of letting a program "pull the triger" which while it is less often the case could still happen with an AI driver. As @Beer said there are problem when there is no "correct" solution that a program could take. That said, there is no reasons to think that the program couldn't take more contextual informationd in account than just what the camera on the vehicle view. Like for example weather forecast or comparing the position of the vehicle to a map and see if there is a water body near. The main problem in my opinion would rather be to update the contextual data as the battlefield conditions changes and feed those changes to the program in a timely and secure manner, rather than collecting them and letting the program take the decision to cross or not to cross that body of water.
  16. Alzoc
    Wreck of the German cruiser Karlsruhe sunk on April 9, 1940 during the invasion of Norway have been found
  17. Alzoc
    You mean all the scenes with the sisters in the Gendarme series?
  18. Alzoc
    I want old ads back
  19. Alzoc
    Talking about new design, a senate report came out last month on the successor of the CdG (PANG) following the design study that took place last year. The launch of the program was supposed to be the 8th of July but it was pushed back owing to the recent change of government. Thus the report is not the final version of the design but more of a summary of what has been confirmed so far. Full report Press summary In short: About 70 000t and 280-300 m lenght compared to the 42 000t and 261m of the CdG: CATOBAR configuration with two US bought EMALS hoping that the US will have worked out all the kinks by the time we start building it Nuclear propulsion Cost of 6 billions € for the first unit with an expected economy of scale of 30 to 40% for the second unit if there is one this time 10% less crew than the CdG (which is crewed by around 1800) with space for up to 2000 person Sea trials of the PANG expected to start from 2036 to be ready for the retirement of the CdG in 2038 The existing dry docks for maintenance most likely won't be big enough for a ship that size and will have to be modified
  20. Alzoc
    S-35 and B1-bis during the light parade today (start at 51:35)
  21. Alzoc
    Sale of 3 E-2D Hawkeye to France to replace the 3 E-2C operated by our navy has been approved for 2 billions $ https://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/france-e-2d-advanced-hawkeye-aircraft-spares-and-support-equipment Contract include the planes, spare parts and training on the new systems compared to the C version. Military planning law on our side state the order should be placed this year.
  22. Alzoc
    Sweden intend to develop a new aircraft: That would made yet another European aircraft project competing with the other two (FCAS and Tempest) Possibly they'll use the technological block used in the development of the Tempest (since Sweden is nominally part of the UK-Italian project) to develop a sort of next gen Gripen (in the cheap but still capable sense). Full statement here (New ships, more planes kept in service, increased conscription, cyber defence, etc) : https://www.government.se/speeches/2020/06/defence-minister-peter-hultqvists-speech-at-uk-nato-heads-of-missions-forum-monday-15-june-2020/
  23. Alzoc
    http://www.opex360.com/2020/06/16/un-officier-et-deux-soldats-indiens-tues-lors-dune-confrontation-violente-avec-larmee-chinoise/ This site gives the following timeline: -5th may: 250 Chinese soldier cross the frontier and a stick fight occur with Indian soldiers (according to India) -16 June: China accuse India to have violated the frontier and conducted "illegal" operations and provoked an attack on Chinese soldiers -According to India a fight occurs (stick and stones this time) making victims on both sides. One officer (a colonel according to Indian Today) and two soldiers -Update by the Indian government a few hour later saying that the casualties reached 20 on their side (among those 17 following their injuries)
  24. Alzoc
    Fire in the French SSN Perle during maintenance Fire started in the morning and was only contained late this evening, no injuries and apparently no risk of contamination of any kind (weapons, battery and nuclear fuel were removed from the boat for the duration of the maintenance). Intervention of the firemen was difficult given the high temperature and the cramped environment, even more so than normal in a sub (Rubis class are the smallest SSN in the world at only 2670 t submerged for 74 m of length) Though given how long the fire went on damage are likely to be extensive and possibly structural. The ship may not be salvageable which would severely impact the navy and more importantly our nuclear dissuasion (SSN are used to escort SSBN out of their base before they go off the grid), 6 attack subs being the bare minimum to maintain all missions at all time: One in major maintenance One in normal maintenance One in training and qualification cycle One to escort the SSBN on duty to it's patrol site One to escort the carrier group (or another strike force when the carrier is in maintenance) One gathering intel somewhere The Perle was the most recent ship of the Rubis class and this was supposed to be it's last major maintenance and upgrade before being replaced by the Casabianca (last of the Suffren class) in 2030.
  25. Alzoc
    Rumors that Egypt is sending 18 M1A2 and Mi 24 toward the Lybian border. http://www.opex360.com/2020/06/08/des-chars-egyptiens-reperes-a-la-frontiere-libyenne/ Possibly as show of force to freeze the lines as they are in case of a partition of Lybia.
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