Alzoc

The purpose of the 2A is made extremely clear in the supporting documentation to the Constitution (the Federalist Papers, etc).
 
Here's what Madison says in the famous Federalist No. 46:
 
"... Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it."
 
Pretty goddamn explicit, if you ask me.

This is not even remotely close to how gun law in the US works. Will explain when I get home.

Guess Erdogan wanted a good war against the Kurds to improve his standing but It might end up backfiring if the Turkish army show poor results like they did recently (not even mentioning the lives lost for the sake of his personal agenda).

That's a Merkava type concept. It too has its limits.
 
Designing a new turret, hence designing a whole new tank, with a human loader, is a terrible mistake.
 
IMO the best solution would be to have an unmanned turret AND the ammo inside the hull to minimize the damage to the tank if the turret is penetrated.
 
Okay Alzoc, go ahead.

For whatever reason Encylopedia Astronautica and wiki give the Ariane 1 a lower value for payload to LEO vs. GTO (1400 vs. 1850), which is highly odd. I can't think of any reason why that would be the case (GTO requires much more delta v than LEO).  Going by the payload fraction to GTO, I get 1850/207200 = .0089, vs. 6300/705000 = .0089 for Proton-M, and 14220/738960 = .0192 for Delta IV Heavy. I think this is explainable by Ariane 1 being an older rocket with somewhat less efficient engines (the Viking-2s on Ariane 1 have 248 sec. sea level isp vs. 285 on the RD-253 and 365 on the RS-68).
 
EA gives the LEO performance for Ariane 5 as 16000 kg, but to a 51.5 degree inclination orbit, which is going to cut into the performance a lot. Arianespace's site gives a payload to LEO of 20 tons, which gives a payload/mass fraction of .0257, which is better but still not great. Payload to GTO is 10000/777000, which gives a mass fraction of.0129. Also, Ariane 5 does a bit of the same thing STS does and uses a hydrolox first stage with solid boosters. All the Ariane variants look like they are optimized for launches to GTO/GEO, so their payload fraction to LEO is going to suffer a bit. This explains why Ariane 4 and 5 have lower payload fractions to LEO (as far as I can tell your Ariane 4 numbers are correct).
 
 
***
 
To build on my previous calcs;
 
STS gets hurt a bit in the payload/mass calcs since it reuses so much of what it lifts to orbit. A better comparison would be Shuttle C, which likewises uses hydrolox/solids, and has a payload/mass fraction of 77000/1966675 = .0391, which is comparable to Delta IV Heavy.
 
Atlas V 552 (actually any Atlas variant without "0" in the middle digit) has solids in the first stage, which, if my thesis is correct, will lower the payload fraction. Theoretically the best Atlas V config for payload/mass fraction would be the Atlas V 402. Performance data for it can be found in the archived Atlas V Handbook.
 
Adding components from page 25 of that doc, we get a gross mass of 331702 kg for Atlas V 402. Wiki says that 402 has a payload to LEO of 12500 kg, which gives a payload/mass fraction of .0377, which is better, but not by much compared to 552. Interesting.
 
 
 

I have compiled some data on the payload fraction (payload to LEO / Gross mass) of various rocket systems;
 

 
 
From this, several thing can be seen;
 
Solid rocket boosters utterly ruin your payload fraction. Despite having a significantly higher specific impulse than other engines (365 seconds for the RS-68 vs. 285 seconds for the RD-275), hydrogen-fueled launch systems only have a slightly better payload fraction than hypergolic systems, or are even significantly worse. Larger rockets generally have a larger payload fraction (Saturn I vs. Saturn V, Falcon 9 vs. Falcon Heavy). Titan II and Titan IV are not entirely comparable. STS is a stupid pile of trash. Kerolox first stage provide significantly better payload fractions in almost all cases, while avoiding the difficulties associated with liquid hydrogen. Hypergolics generally have inferior performance to both, but are significantly easier to handle, and the difference is not extreme.  
Data via wiki, except where noted (the gross weights for Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V 551 were horribly off, especially for the latter). Encylopedia Astronautica data mostly agreed, but that site is severely lacking in info on the Falcon family.
@Sturgeon@Collimatrix@T___A

The main problem with the low tier french tanks is that they are using vintage ammunition and are facing upgraded versions of the Pz II, Pz III etc.
So the opposition have armor upgrades added after the battle of France to counter said low tier french, and on top of it has access to more advanced ammunition that were introduced late in the war
 
While the bad penetration makes sense (never had the time to develop better ammo or upgun our tanks), their armor (which should be their selling point) appear obsolete because they have to face ammunition that didn't even existed at this time.

According to the CeramTec, one of the largest manufacturers of industrial and ballistic ceramics, boron carbide is not used in combat vehicles, only in body armor. However silicium carbide is supposedly used in some AFVs including the Puma IFV.
 

 

Houthis launch missile at the royal palace in Riyadh.
https://imp-navigator.livejournal.com/687832.html
...
They would be better used to hit military bases closer to Yemen and killing KSA officials or something similar.

And the one that really did it for me.

WT can into scat jokes!
 
H39 Cambronne BR 1.3 premium tank
 

So if you are wondering, cambronne is polite/fancy word for shit.
The legend want that Pierre Cambronne, who was a general in the napoleonic imperial army, told the British to go fuck themselves (Merde!) when they asked him to surrender at Waterloo.
It then passed down into popular culture as the "word of Cambronne"
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Cambronne#The_hundred_days_and_Waterloo

As a collector of French arms, and being semi fluent in Froganese due to my 70+% Froganoid heratige, I say.."quelle creten feces mangeant".

Gotta love the administrator spouting BS on the front page of the comments:
 
Smin1080p Administrator 8 hours ago   Danomaly, The "Revalorisé" didn't actually exist. No tank was ever called that and its made up. If you mean the M-51 Israeli Super Sherman, then sure
 
There are several modification under the term revalorisé (renewed/upgraded):
 
The M4A4 T, witch ditch the Chrysler multibank engine for either a continental or a wright R 975.
It also add episcopes on the commander hatch
 
 
The M4A1 FL10
 
 
M4A4 canon de 75 V° 1000
 
 
M4A1E8 canon de 105mm L51
 
 
They were all designed Sherman Revalorisé, just like the AMX 10 RCR is an AMX 10 RC(Revalorisé), or the VAB revalorisé, or the Au F1 revalorisé, etc
 
Revalorisé is quite a common term in the French army and it just designate an upgraded version of an equipement (even if they are several modifications under the designation), generally an end of life upgrade before removing it from service.
And AFAIK while the M51 was the correct designation in the IDF, the Super Sherman thing wasn't official (Zuk could confirm/infirm that)

VBC 90 : VAB based 90mm gun used by the Gendarmerie Mobile for inner security
(Admitted it's a rather obscure one, but still went into service)

 
VAB MEPHISTO (x4 HOT missiles in 360° turret: 12 missiles total)
 

 

The UAE ordered ERA packages from the German manufacturer Dynamit Nobel Defence, which also provides ERA for the Puma. This Leclerc seems to be fitted with such ERA.

As you can see at 1:15, the DND ERA also covers the rear of the turret.
 
 
 

Obviously, the only sensible thing to do is to ruthlessly weed out those with an IQ below one SD above the mean, and mark them forever as members of an underclass only suitable for menial tasks and never responsible for any of the important decisions.
 
That way, your society will reap the benefits of the sort of peculiar ignorance and shortsightedness that only afflicts very smart people, and not ever have to suffer the burden of such horridly banal things like experience, intuition, or pragmatism.

Heli-AWACS:
http://www.janes.com/article/67041/uk-orders-crowsnest-helicopter-radar-systems

This is what Colli means by "rocket-assisted, gun fired projectile" by the way: 
 
 
 
 

I have been thinking about this a bit.  Here are my thoughts:

For the NATO 120mm, GLATGMs of any sort don't seem to make much sense if they use pure rocket propulsion.  They are very space inefficient because the 120mm cartridge case is strongly bottlenecked:


 
All of the volume inside the ammunition rack occupying the difference between the case diameter and the gun caliber is wasted when using GLATGMs.  This isn't so bad with the 125mm and 105mm guns, because they are not as strongly bottlenecked as the 120mm.  Really, the 120mm NATO smoothbore was designed to do one thing and do it really well, and that is fire the meanest APFSDS rounds on the battlefield so it can kill Soviet frying pan tanks dead.  It's a bit less efficient at everything else, but killing Ivan's endless sea of tanks was understandably prioritized.
 
Wasting volume is an important consideration because volume costs mass.  Every cubic centimeter inside a tank has to be protected by some amount of armor, and armor costs weight.  So wasting any of that space is an inefficiency that adds up surprisingly quickly.

So this gun-launched guided projectile is an improvement over GLATGMs, efficiency-wise because none of the volume of the projectile is wasted by being a rocket motor.  The projectile can, in principle, extend from the maximum overall length of the projectile to nearly the rear inside wall of the case head like M829A3 with all the necessary propellant packed around it.  The only problem is that all the electronics and fin actuators and whatnot in the guided projectile need to be hardened to withstand acceleration inside the gun tube, which is quite a bit higher than the gentler acceleration of a rocket motor.
 
But that still leaves the question of why you would want this in the ammo rack instead of another round of HEAT-MP or APFSDS.  In my opinion, indirect fires are best left to dedicated artillery.  And if the MBTs are out on the prowl without artillery or air support, someone has some explaining to do.
 
The place where I see this sort of round being very useful is on one of those light-medium "expeditionary tanks" that are periodically popular, or even on something like a Centauro.  Those sorts of vehicles are supposed to be light enough that they can be easily deployed internationally to sudden crises in lighter transport aircraft than proper MBTs require.  In that sort of situation, it seems a lot more likely that the expeditionary force won't have proper artillery support, since SPGs have become just as big and almost as heavy as MBTs and will likely be left at home.

If you don't mind the music and like aeronavale stuff there is rather nice channel with video made by pilots on the CDG
 
 
 

First 50 MMP missiles along with 20 firing post delivered to the French army
 

 
http://www.opex360.com/2017/11/30/les-50-premiers-missiles-moyenne-portee-ont-ete-livres/
 
The MMP is bound to replace the Milan, HOT, Javelin and a part of the ERYX with the planned delivery of 400 firing post and 1750 missiles by 2025.
 
http://www.mbda-systems.com/?action=force-download-attachment&attachment_id=14294

If you don't mind the music and like aeronavale stuff there is rather nice channel with video made by pilots on the CDG
 
 
 

Wanted the opinion of the forum about guided ammunition for MBTs
 
http://preprod.nexter-group.fr/images/stories/filiales/MUN/char/40055_POLYNEGE_VF.pdf
 
In this case it's a French technology demonstrator (early 2000 I don't have an exact date), but IRC the US have a similar round in development (Plus the M982 Excalibur round that is already in service for artillery).
 
The advantage I see:
 
-Perform the same job than a top attack ATGM while being most likely cheaper (The flight control, electronics and warheads are by all mean the same but it doesn't need a booster)
-Added versatility for MBT (Just send the data from the BMS to the FCS, load the round and fire)
-Slightly faster than an ATGM (600-700 m/s vs 150-300 m/s for an ATGM), so maybe some APS might have a harder time intercepting it (not sure about that though)
 
Cons would be:
 
-The diameter or the warhead is limited by the gun (but the same apply for gun launched ATGM)
-Contrary to an ATGM those rounds have to follow a ballistic arc so in some terrain configuration they might not be able to hit the target.
 
Personnaly I think that the added range and versatility for MBTs is worth it (8km ; fire and forget ; NLOS capability could be a big deal if you have no artillery support available), but perhaps others will see it as a gadget.

I personally think we should sort everyone into districts using a magical hat that reads their psycho-pass.