Beer

First time ever something beeing sold to any government costs less than expected?

This is Kätzchen K2. The second Auto-Union test vehicle used for comparison of suspension variants (K1 had Kniepkamp suspension). It has nothing to do with he final vehicle which was ordered from ČKD/BMM. The hull has zero common with Pz.38(t). I have never implied that leaf springs were a thing of the future. I have claimed interleaved wheels were absolutely not (I can't see how you still can't understand it even when next 80 years showed clearly the truth). And that is a big difference. Simple sturdy leaf suspension of 38(t)/(d) simply worked, it was cheap, reliable and easy to produce. Those are very important criteria for mass produced vehicles especially when you are in deep shit. There is no "most logical direction" in the E-series study. There are three completely different variants which never were built, tested against each other, evaluated or selected as final. No. The later overlapping versions added track twisting and their very low service life. They were not better. You claim that technology and threads changed... than you shall explain why most of the tanks 80 years later still use in principle the same suspension as Pz.III and KV-1 from 1930'. I have not claimed the Germans did 180° turn. I have only told you that by the decision from October 1944 they abandoned the interleaved wheels for light tracked vehicles. It's not my opinion. You take absolutely wrong historical lesson. Weapons are being developed and built to win wars. The heavy monsters lost the war. It was the light and highly mobile forces of the early campaigns which brought success to the Germans and it was again highly mobile forces which brought even greater success to the Red Army later in the war. A Schw.Abt. placed in any point is irrelevant when your enemy is able to do 150 km a day and simply bypasses you and catches you in a pocket where you run out of fuel, ammo and food sooner or later. You know that only the eatern front was around 2-3 thousand kilometers wide? Do you want to claim that you can place your few immobile heavy units to cover such front? Of course you can not, nobody can and history clearly showed that. Quantity matters. Believe it or not but you can be sure as hell that every single German field commander would tell you that they never had enough of their vehicles. In the end the Germans ended moving their armoured units by rail from place to place while the enemy was usually attacking elsewhere. They may have been able to achieve some local success but that was perfectly irrelevant for the course of war, just like that single Char-B tank which knocked out 15 or so German light tanks or the single KV-2 holding an entire German regiment for a day when the enemy's other forces were already hundred kilometers farther. The great irony is that none of the most spectacular German victories would be possible with their late war forces due to the lack of mobility and inability to cross rivers without heavy bridges. 10 cm of height is something like 1 ton of extra hull weight on a vehicle of Panther size. Man, you know nothing about the subject. No, it doesn't work like that and no it was not the case of Panther. You are arguing here in favor of Panther, yet you don't even know what was the purpose of the double torsion bars... It was double suspension travel, i.e. the torsion bars were twisting just like usual, they were only effectively longer to allow bigger travel. But if you insist feel free to build a torsion bar from a steel used for rails or for reinforcing concrete because that is what doesn't need any special alloying elements. What priorities and what price? They won the war and especially on western front with very low casualties. Of course. Not using interleaved wheels at all as everyone else to this very day. Can you explain why Leopard II or Abrams work without having interleaved wheels and with having basically Pz.III suspension? You believe wrong.

To be fair, none of the three vehicles had 50 mm gun. All producers promissed to have it "later". Škoda (T15) and ČKD (Pz.38(t) n.A.) wanted to use 47 mm A22 gun (prototypes had 37 mm A19). Maybe that was one of the reasons too because M.A.N. Promissed to use the KwK-39 L/60 in Daimler turret which was developed for the Sd.Kfz-234, there was just one issue that turret ring was larger than what could fit on the Luchs. There is also a point which shall be considered. Škoda and especially ČKD could have failed to meet some of the requirements on purpose. It is known that Surin did some mistakes in designs for Germans intentionally (overweight front Axle or some weakspots in armor protection on Hetzer for example), it was also common to try to be late with everything.

Yes, I read this article. I read also the book of Francev about Czechoslovak vehicles but neither source gives a definitive answer. Sure Luchs failed. That's the only thing we know for sure.

No. Only the very first prototype Kätzchen K1 had interleaved wheels. Read please again my post. Second prototype had Surin's suspension and the final vehicle which was never finihed was supposed to be this (yes, only wooden mockup but this is the final vehicle). Never ever was taken any final decision about anything related to E-series. In fact they were canceled before they even got to any final design. Still there were three suspension options and none of them was of Kniekamp style interleaved wheels á la Panther, Sd.Kfz-251 or Tiger. I have already once gave you this link. Please read it finally. The theory is nice but it was proven to be just a theory. People told you that million times alrerady - nobody else ever used that suspension for plenty of very good reasons. Pz.III suspesnion is used by tanks till today, more than 80 years after it was designed. Kniekamp's suspension was dead and burried by May 1945. In next nearly 80 years nobody used it again. Think about why. 1) It adds several tons of weight itself (and therefore also fuel consumption which is kinda bad when you don't have fuel). 2) it takes more space inside and makes the internal volume of the vehicle larger and therefore even heavier (and often also prevents having floor emergency hatch (Panther) 3) It needs twice more manhours, twice more material and therefore most likely costs about twice more than standard torsion bar suspension. 4) You know which steel absolutely needs all those chemical elements which Germany lacked? Spring steel. Think about how good idea is to have twice more springs on every fucking vehicle than what is needed. 5) It is terrible for mainteanance. 6) It likes to collect several hundreds of kilos of mud which adds more weight to the whole thing and tends to freeze in winter The zig-zag variant used on Königstiger was not better because it added fast track destruction by twisting (this would happen to most of considered E-series suspension too). Is-2 has lower ground pressure than Panther. IS-2 0,0785 MPa, Panther 0,09 MPa. The reason why Panther was faster in terrain was not interleaved wheels but the double torsion bars (which added another quantum of issues). Geez...

There is not enough known to me about what was the decisive factor. From a book I read the Kummersdorf comission allegedly recommended Pz.38(t) n.A. but Waffenamt selected Luchs. There could have been a lot of reasons for that (performance, lobbing, planning of supplier workload, Kniekamp's preference of his suspension design etc. etc.). We will likely never know. We only know that Luchs as a program failed. The only Škoda AFV design used by Germany was pre-war Pz.35(t). All those other Czechoslovak vehicles used by Heer or SS were designs of ČKD (BMM per Germans). Škoda was co-producer of ČKD vehicles but it was mainly occupied with various artilery. The only other Škoda design which made it to production during WW2 was the T21 medium tank. This tank was produced under a licence in Hungary as 40M Turán (with Hungarian armament) and the chassis was used for 43M Zríniy assault gun. Other Škoda WW2 AFV designs didn't make it past paper (WoT players know T25 tank but the only actually existing thing of it was the gun with the autoloader, the rest was only on paper). Based on various sources I read it was decided by the AFV comission on 4th October 1944 that all new light tracked vehicles will be built on 38 (d) chassis. 38 (d) was a modification of 38 (t) n.A. done by Alket and using Tatra air-cooled diesel engine instead of petrol ČKD/BMM ones (in fact two of five Pz.38(t) n.A. prototypes already had Tatra diesel). I don't think that it was because of Czech light tanks. It was IMHO because interleaved wheels where wrong idea especially from production and mainteanance point of view and also because of the ever planned optimization of the AFV production - to have high level of standardization and to use best the Czechoslovak factories which were largely unaffected by Allied strategic bombing (the first successful air raid on Škoda happened only in December 1944 and there were only two others following in April 1945, when it was irrelevant already, and ČKD/BMM was bombed (hard) only once at the end of March 1945). I think that it can be confirmed for example by the development of the never materialized successor of Sd.Kfz.251, the APC Kätzchen. The original design K1 by Auto-Union had Kniekamp's suspension. Later Auto-Union was ordered to test ČKD suspension as well (K2 prototype wa built). In the end the whole project was transefered to ČKD for redesign (and use of the diesel engine) but only a wooden mockup was built before the war ended. That happened despite the fact that in APC use the relative discomfort of the ČKD suspension was a signifficant drawback. For your information Surin's ČKD/BMM suspension was considered as one of three options also for the E-50 and 75. The final decision about which suspesnion would be used was never done.

Sorry but you shall educate yourself a little bit because Pz.38(t) n.A. is different vehicle than Pz.38(t) just like Luchs is not the same vehicle as usual Pz.II. The "Neue Art" Pz.38(t) is what later became the chassis for Jagdpanzer 38(t). Even the chassis is not completely same as of Pz.38(t) albeit it looks same. The "Neue Art" had much larger and twice stronger engine (from V-8-H aka ST vz.39 medium tank) than the original Pz.38(t) while having only some 1,7-1,8 t more. It reached up to 75 km/h during testing in Kummersdorf. The power to weight ratio was 21,1 Hp/t while Luchs had only 15,2 Hp/t. Unlike the original Pz.38(t) the "n.A." was fully welded. It was better armoured than Luchs while having slightly lesser weight (up to 50 mm on gun mantlet) and it had much stronger armament (37 mm A19 gun - again different gun than in the original Pz.38(t). It had even reasonably better ground pressure than Luchs with its Kniekamp suspension (0,06MPa for the "n.A." and 0,08 MPa for Luchs) and could climb much higher obstacle (1,08 m for "n.A." and 0,6 m for Luchs). Luchs had an advantage of having more comfortable torsion bar suspension, better ground clearance and more crew space in the turret (likely because of the tiny gun it had), that is true but in the end history tells that Luchs ended as a failure. After all the Germans decided in late 1944 that future light tracked vehicles shall be built on Pz.38(t) n.A. and preferably on its diesel derivate 38 (d) chassis abandoning Kniekamp's interleaved wheels.

Czech AF L-159 canopy (two seater but not sure which variant) in the field. The aircraft lost it mid-air today. The crew returned to Čáslav airbase unharmed. It's second such incident, the first one happened five years ago and it was caused by a human error (since L-159 is rather extremely reliable plane I guess it's same case again). Sadly there is so far no photo/video of the cabrio ride. Source of the photo: https://www.novinky.cz/krimi/clanek/letounu-l-159-pri-letu-odpadl-kryt-kabiny-vojaci-ho-hledaji-40355215#utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=sharebt&utm_campaign=web

Very rare original tankette MU-4 from Lešany museum which was by some miracle preserved and after the war used as a tractor in Škoda factory. Only one piece was built by Škoda as a late-competitor to ČKD tankette which became the standard Tč vz.33. Both vehicles were modification of Carden-Lloyed Mk.VI. The Škoda one was better but it was late for the competition. In 1933 it won a tender of Yugoslav army but the it never materialized in an order. Yugoslavia ordered Škoda tankettes of later types though (including gun-armed which could be considered a sort of light assault guns). Unfortunately when I was in lešany last time, this tankette was not on display. The vehicle was 2,2 tons heavy, had up to 10 mm thick armor, two men crew and two LMG vz.26 armament. Thanks to the 40 Hp engine the top speed was rather good 40 km/h. The most interesting thing is that the vehicle was fully welded which is very unusual for pre-war Czechoslovak AFVs which were usually rivetted.

One more aircraft - the failed fast bomber Aero A-42. There were only two pieces built and both were subjects of many changes through the development however in the end the plane was not ordered by the ministry of defence (well, it kinda was but the order was quickly canceled). The plane was partially a victim of a speedy development intended to win 1930 race around the so-called Little entente (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania) and Poland. In the end the plane was indeed fast and rather powerful for its time (in 1930 it shortly held an international record at 1000 km with 1000 kg payload at an average speed 252 km/h) however it had so many other issues it never materialized into a useful bomber. The particular problems were inefficient rudder, vibrations of the rudder at high speed, long take-off run or inconvenient internal space (the navigator/bomber had to remove his parashute to get to the bombing sights where he had moreover no means to communicate with the pilot). The opened dorsal gun station was unusitable for use in higher speeds. The biggest issue however was that the plane was unable of any flat turn, i.e. it was impossible to make corrections of the couse by rudder alone. The plane had fuselage made of steel tubes covered by textile. The wings were wooden with plywood and textile cover. There was an intention to replace the wings with metalic ones but that never happened due to the cancelation of the project. The engine was Italian Isotta-Fraschini Asso wtih max. power 900 Hp. The empty weight was sligtly under 3 tons, the MTOW was slightly over 4,7 tons. The maximum speed was 270 km/h, cruise speed 250 km/h, range 1200 km and the ceiling was 7000 meters. The climb rate was 50 minutes to 5000 meters. It looks funny today but in 1930 it wasn't bad for a bomber. The crew was made of three (pilot, navigator/bomber and dorsal/belly gunner). The armament was one forward firing synchronized 7,92 mm MG, one double 7,92 mm MG in the dorsal firing post and one single 7,92 MG in a belly firing post. Maximum bombload was 960 kg (16x50 + 16x20 kg internally and 2x200 kg externally). Fun fact. Germany formally protested against the development of this plane in 1930.

Another large strike on the oil smugling business, this time in Idlib where HTS-run oil and gas market near Bab al Hawa border crossing was targeted by VKS airstike.

It makes no sense to compare MiG-23 with MiG-25. Those are planes of different category used for different tasks. MiG-23 replaced MiG-21 and it was much better than MiG-21 in everything with the exception of the initial MiG-23S batch with RP-22 radar and armamament from MiG-21 (and the cost) and the Arabic "monkey" export model MiG-23MS which had the RP-21 radar and armament from MiG-21. Also the other comparisons are strange... GSh-23L has muzzle velocity 715 m/s and it's much more interesting feature is its operating principle since it is one of the only two operationally used Gast-principle guns (where recoil of one barrel operates the other and gives the gun rather extreme rate of fire with a low gun weight). AFAIK only Soviet GSh-23L and GSh-30-2 work on this principle of all serially produced guns ever (although the idea comes back to WW1 Germany). When you write about cannon the MiG-27K (used by USSR and India only) with 6-barrel 30 mm is the most interesting variant IMHO because while its GSh-6-30 gun has somewhat lesser muzzle energy than GAU-8/a it weights half, has higher rate of fire and since it is gas-operated it is more efficient in short bursts. On the other hand the MiG-27 clearly wasn't the right airframe for the gun... R-35-300 diagrams We had MiG-23 too (MF, ML, BN) and they were good although rather difficult to fly and maintain. They were also quite prone to bird strikes compared to other planes we had. We had a lot of accidents with them in early 90' but those were caused mainly by general lack of discipline and spares in the rather chaotic times after the fall of the iron courtain. Some points about ML from our ex-pilots - they mostly liked it - they said it was very difficult to fly straight and to land if automatic flight support systems failed but manageable - automatic landing approach up to several meters upon the runway - they trained to use in-flight parashute release to shorten the already short landing run - two seater had shifted center of gravity and the old, weak and problematic R-27 engine and was a bitch to fly in dogfight (most of our two-seaters were destroyed in dogfight training) - the radar was well liked, it had also look-down/shoot down capability - if I unerstood right they usually trained to attack the NATO planes from bellow and from the side using ground control for ideal approach (take it with a lot of salt from my side) Fun fact one. They trained to approach SR-71 flying routinely like a clock at some 15 km from Czechoslovak border. The Blackbird was tracked by common DDR-Czechoslovak air control and MiG-23 started from České Budějovice, climbed to 10000 meters, accelerated to M1,8 and climbed on a parabolic curve to have the approaching Blackbird close to 12 o'lock at some 5-6000 meters higher with the approach speed of around M4,8. At this point there was a a few seconds window where it was possible to lock the radar and fire R-23, it was always only an excercise and there was never any intention to actually shoot it down but allegedly at least once the Blackbird was shortly locked by a trigger-happy pilot. The probabiliy of successful interception like that was very low and it was all about perfect timing from the ground control (allegedly the probability of successful interception was around 30% when trained with Soviet MiG-25, i.e. lower with SR-71). They say they used both automatic guidance via LASUR datalink and human ground controler command. In this scenario the armament was one R-23R and one R-23T. Fun fact two, the first Czechoslovak pilot to fly solo MiG-23 (BN ground attack variant in 1977) was pplk. Šrámek (lieutenant colonel), a pilot who in 1953 piloting a MiG-15 shot down US F-84E of Korean-veteran G. A. Brown in a two-on-two encounter which started near Pilsen, Czechoslovakia but ended over Western Germany.

Few more shots from the autumn trips with a new phone. The so-called Mácha lake and the countyside of the Česká tabule vulcanic hills in the northern Bohemia. Bezděz castle can be seen on the very right, Ralsko vulcanic mountain with another (small) castle ruin on the top is on the very left. In between there is Ještěd mountain barely visible on the horizont. The land of castles. The view is taken from the ruins of a small Oltářík castle towards the magnifficent Házmburk castle (the two towers on the right) and on the left there is another castle ruin called Košťálov. The low hill in the very middle of the screen is Říp - a mythical hill of our history, according to an ancient legend the Slavic tribe led by an elder Čech (Czech) kept travelling until they stopped at the hill, the elder climbed on the top and decided to settle around it. Somewhere under the mist behind Říp you could find Prague. The very same day and a view from my absolute favourite place - the cliffs of Lipská mountain.

Does the LEP contain the new turret?

Stoltenberg feels jealous

From this article about recent CSG export to Indonesia it looks like DITA SPG is being developed for Indonesian tender. https://www.armadninoviny.cz/uspechy-ceskeho-obranneho-prumyslu-v-indonesii.html It is possible that the final vehicle will have longer barrel which isn't available at the moment.

This isn't purelly anti-air, because Vera-NG can track land and sea targets too but I don't know where else to put it. According to this article about recent CSG export to Indonesia it is written that Indonesia very recently put into operation two Vera-NG passive surveyllance systems. https://www.armadninoviny.cz/uspechy-ceskeho-obranneho-prumyslu-v-indonesii.html Location of the systems. The eastern one is allegedly able to cover the whole South China sea. The map is from the article.

Another missile strike against oil smugling sites around Tahrin. Allegedly SRBM from Kuweires airbase were used.

An interesting article about the initial phase of T-54 development. Perhaps the most peculiar part is at the very end. When the war in Europe was over the work on the new tank was halted for some seven months in order to... reverse engineer US heavy duty truck Mack NR. http://www.tankarchives.ca/2020/12/herald-of-revolution.html

Grad-P is normal thing produced in USSR since 1960' for various guerilla or special forces. It was used in Vietnam war and nearly every other war which followed. There was a video from Syria where they fired it remotely even from a room inside a building (I think it was in Aleppo battle).

Why is the platform placed under angle? Is that a weird way to achieve negative gun elevation for close fire? If so the system can cover only one side of the wessel, right?

So does the US Army buy mirrored T-72B3 as the title image suggests?

I don't need anything detailed. I'm just curious to see for example if there are five oil circuits or one common for all engines.

Would you have some schematics of the oil, water and fuel circuit of the A57 to see how many of each pumps are involved and how is the distribution and collection done?

Houthi loitering munition shot down by Saudi F-15. Onboard FLIR footage.