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Alzoc

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Everything posted by Alzoc

  1. Alzoc
    The Leopard 2 will be phased out in 2035 (in the Bundeswehr) and the Leclerc in 2040, after that the overall number of those tanks in service will most likely go down. So after that, besides the MGCS, it will be either upgrading existing Leopard 2 or go for the EMBT (if it ever become a serious thing) but the Leo chassis is starting to show it's limits in term of weight. I don't know if the maximum load can be increased again, but this would drive the cost up to upgrade a design that start reaching it's limits. Basically if a western country want an up to date ground system it will be either the MGCS (probably: 3 man tank, unmanned turret and 130mm) or what the US and the Israeli are going for (upgraded gen 3 tank in combo with an UGV).
  2. Alzoc
    Possible ongoing military coup in Gabon The army (or at least a part of it) took control of the national radio and television calling for the creation of a "national restoration council". To note that there is a French military base just at the outskirt of the capital hosting about a thousand men. 80 American soldiers also arrived in the country last Thursday. Edit: Apparently it's already over, it seem that it was a very small group and according to the local authority most of them have already been arrested.
  3. Alzoc
    Massive leak of (rather) low confidentiality messages between EU diplomats: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/european-diplomats-cables-hacked.html Apparently, the hackers got in simply with pishing (which isn't surprising given that a lot of politicians aren't really aware of cybersecurity threats and how to deal with them). The US intelligence community had given repeated warnings that this network was particularly vulnerable and outdated. Fortunately the really sensitive stuff transit through more secure networks. The company which uncovered those leaks believe that Chinese services are behind it. Even if the extracted memo aren't really sensitive or their content all that surprising, they still give an interesting unfiltered insight on the position of EU diplomats on world events and threats. Some of the extracted messages: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/540-read-the-diplomatic-cables/27bc7c9cfe024869481d/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
  4. Alzoc
    Japan intend to acquire 42 F-35B, 105 F-35A and to modify at least one of their Izumo class LHD to operate the F-35B
  5. Alzoc
    True, especially since the investigation is already branching out toward Algeria (one of his brother, radicalized as well, has an arrest warrant on his name there), which mean that we'll have to work with the local authority. Nothing difficult but that takes times as well. So far, the reasons to think it was an opportunistic claim is that they waited for after the confirmation of his death and that they didn't gave him any "warrior" name (kunya) like they usually do. But those are only circumstantial evidences at best. He may had help before and/or after the attack, and that's on what the investigation is focusing right now.
  6. Alzoc
    Found and killed yesterday evening Investigation is still ongoing. ISIS claimed responsibility after the announcement of his death, but investigators think it's just an opportunist claim.
  7. Alzoc
    Of circular economy! France had promised to deliver 1400 assault rifles to the Central African forces. Since we are in the process of replacing the FAMAS some peoples expected said AR to be them (which would have been a terrible idea given how worn out they are and how costly they are to maintain). Finally those will be smuggled AKM which were seized by our navy back in 2016 in Yemen Chances are that some of those weapons will go straight back to the black market^^
  8. Alzoc
    Follow up on RhM wanting to buy shares of KNDS. With this operation, RhM could control up to 75% of KNDS says UBS bank. The French authority are apparently not opposed to the merge at the condition that a certain balance is being kept. To that end the head of the French procurement agency met his German peer to discuss the different options. 3 scenarii are apparently on the table: An Airbus like merge where there would be a parity between the shareholders regardless of the volume of activity they bring RhM selling some of it's activities to shrink down before the merge The French State buying KMW shares In all cases, KNDS shares are frozen until the end of 2020 as both party initially agreed.
  9. Alzoc
    I know^^ While the level of taxes in France is objectively extremely high it also serve to finance our extremely generous social system. You can't have the cake and eat it and if there is one thing every French is extremely attached to it's their Public services, to an even higher level than most other Europeans. I know that it's something completely alien to most Americans (just like the American system is completely alien for most Europeans).
  10. Alzoc
    The yellow vest are mostly an aggregation of people being discontent with one thing or another, there's no coherent whole, no political project. They're just venting out anger, the increased taxes on fuel was just what set things up. That's partly the reason why they have such a high support in the population in polls, everybody always have a reason to be unhappy with a government for something. Le Monde did a compilation of all the request they heard and it's all over the place going from the far left to the far right with some wishful thinking thrown into the mix (Yes it would be wonderful if we could offer a roof to every single homeless, doesn't mean that it's possible). Which isn't all that surprising given that during the last presidential election the far left and the far right got around 20% each, the conservative right 20% and Macron 24% They are just an aggregation of all the discontent, so they were dismissed as inconsequent by a lot of peoples (me included) and everybody was waiting for things to just calm down. What really surprised everybody was the size the movement took and the level of violence the protest reached. Right now they are slowly losing support and the number of protester is falling. No idea of how things will evolve, and I don't think that anybody would dare to try to predict it. They are just like a wild unpredictable animal, you see that it is angry but you don't know why or how to deal with it.
  11. Alzoc
    More like behaving like spoiled children. You can't at the same time ask for less tax and more public service, that's just plain stupid. I have no sympathy for those guys, and while I can understand that nobody would be happy about more taxes on fuel it doesn't gives them the right to use violence. Protesting is a fundamental right but it has to be done within the boundary of the law, using violence and going against the results of democratic elections stripped them of any legitimacy they might have had in my eyes (~100 000 protesters do not represent the People as a whole). Next elections, maybe some of them will actually bother to vote. They didn't bothered to last time, so while they can say that they aren't happy with the results it doesn't gives them the right to overturn them.
  12. Alzoc
    At least the protester will have achieved giving plenty of meme material to the whole world ^^ (that's one thing right?)
  13. Alzoc
    Fresh supply of tea always close to hand!
  14. Alzoc
    You can see the right vehicle launching a grenade toward the protester around 1:00
  15. Alzoc
    That would be underestimating the tendency of the far left and far right to encourage those kind of violent protest to try to get some political credit from it. The extremes can't articulate even slightly complex ideas. They always resort to a nebulous "them" against "us" fuelling the fire while trying to control its' general direction.
  16. Alzoc
    Oh they finally had to take out the VBRG? Well I guess that we'll soon hear the opposition leash out on the government for setting up "tanks" toward the protesters.
  17. Alzoc
    I guess so. You probably have a chance that it'll happen at some point since the NRC isn't as stubborn than our safety authority. I mean we still have very low activity waste category and they just don't want to delete it. In practice it means that anything that went into a controlled area will be disposed as waste as long as it has as much a 1 Bq/g (and you'll always manage to detect something) in it (the upper limit being 100 Bq/g where it's considered as low activity waste). In turn it mean that a shit-ton of valuable materials that could be recycled goes into the nuclear waste circuit with all the afferent cost and paperwork. Not even mentioning the fact that it makes the nuclear industry look like it produce a lot of radioactive waste and send the message to the population that it's actually dangerous from the first becquerel!
  18. Alzoc
    True but if you can have an APS that will work on a broader spectrum of threat, it can allow you to forgo additional roof protection (at the expense of redundancy and resilience though).
  19. Alzoc
    BONUS ammo used to destroy a column of ISIS "armored" vehicles It was the first operational use of the BONUS round in the French army (and AFAIK the first operational use with any army), apparently everything worked just as advertised: On December 3rd a column of ISIS vehicle is detected [in Irak], TF Wagram receive the order to cut their path. After a first barrage the column go around the area and relaunch their offensive, order is then given to destroy the column. The CAESAR fire 4 bonus rounds neutralizing 8 armored vehicles. Confirming again that having an APS capable of intercepting fast moving top attack ammunition will be an absolute necessity on any future AFV.
  20. Alzoc
    A bit of necro here but to pick up on the "why nuclear power is bad at load following" they aren't particularly bad at it and naval reactor demonstrate that just fine as @Collimatrix pointed out (although they have a bit of an advantage because of their small size and hence low thermal inertia). The main reason is that it's not cost efficient and that it put some stress on the equipment , and since equipment qualified for use in nuclear environment tend to be on the expensive side you avoid it if you can. Whenever possible you want your NPP to run on base load. Another reason is that it's a non-trivial thing, it require a fine monitoring, understanding and control over the neutron flux and power level in the core (understand you need to be capable to map/simulate what's happening in the core in 3D and in real time). Since we have 75% of our electricity generated by NPP here our plants needed to be able to do load following to a greater extent than in most other country and EDF have extensive experience with it. But it require secondary control rods for fine tuning and a lot of calculation before hand to define different mode of operation. And if I trust this document, apparently you guys also have legal limitations with load following on top of the technical aspects: Long version on the subject: Technical and Economic aspects of load following with Nuclear Power Plants
  21. Alzoc
    Here's a document (2002) from technicatome (designer of the reactor) from the INIS database https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/048/33048066.pdf If I translate the block relevant to the Barracuda program it gives something like that: So all in all the reason given to stick to LoE is that it's cheaper in our case and that apparently they hope to achieve a 10 year period between each refueling even with LoE.
  22. Alzoc
    Yes, AFAIK the reactor is still a K15 (slightly enlarged but still the same reactor). So the fuel is probably still around the same enrichment. Original K15: Barracuda's reactor as well as it's ground based test reactor (RES): I did heard hearsay from old timers that at some point we experimented with metallic fuel (don't know the enrichment though) and that they dropped it rather quickly. On paper it was nice to have the ability to vastly change the power output even faster, especially for a sub, but the stuff was deemed a bit too delicate to be put into the hands of sailors.
  23. Alzoc
    First Barracuda (Le Suffren) is starting to look complete, and should be put in water around summer 2019: Next to it we can see sections of the second ship of the class (Duguay-Trouin) waiting to be assembled:
  24. Alzoc
    Soyuz is back for manned flight
  25. Alzoc
    Rheinmetal tried to buy shares off KNDS yesterday which would de-facto give them control of KMW and of the whole MGCS program. KMW rejected the offer on the basis that when they merged with Nexter, both party agreed not to attempt any other merge with a third party during a certain lapse of time. Beside the obvious political implications (while KMW and Nexter were of roughly equivalent sizes, Rheinmetal is huge compared to both of them), it would probably be a good idea for the consolidation of European defence industry in the long term. Basically it would mean: leave the AFV and their ammunitions to the German (Rheinmetal-KMW-Nexter), the Planes to the French (Dassault-Thales-MBDA-Airbus) while the navy have yet to be consolidated between the French, Italians and the Spanish.
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