Beer

11 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

   LNA shot down Polish Warmate.

I wouldn't take it as granted who actually shot it down. Some say it's used by UAE and in that case it would be used by LNA. Who knows at this moment... 

Pigeon shooting season continues.

Bundeswehr tested effects of an absolutely enormous VBIED on HESCO barriers and other fortifications and stuff. Definitely worth watching. 

Here is Norinco ST1 in Nigeria

An intoxicated soldier fired on an Air France Airbus in Congo (and hit)...

Ukrainean MiG-29 crash-landed. Any more information what exactly happened besides the obvious loss of the main gear in a field? 

I very much miss the days when one could develop something based on actual requirements and not only wagely formed wishlist.  

Sometimes I feel like the better tools for planing and anylisis are available the more chaotic the actual projects become. 

GNA captured fuckton of weapons from LNA west of Tripoli.

LNA lost a Mi-35 near Abu Ghrain. The crew was killed.

Looks like Turkish drones managed to destroy a cargo plane of LNA, possibly An-26 or 32.

Few photos from today's hiking in Orlické mountains, the most fortified zone of our border. Today it's bordering with Poland but till 1950 there was Germany on the other side. I was not specifically searching for fortifications objects today so it's just those I went around. 

The objects on the photos are these marked on the map.

First two are quite well preserved forward pillboxes vz.36B. These objects were the most simple and by far the cheapest part of the system. They were used for forward fire from LMG vz.26 or HMG vz.24 (rechambered Schwarzlose). Unlike the later much more advanced vz.37 these were usually not placed in lines and they were not intended to cover each other. They were used for direct fire into the valeys, to block roads and to support lines of vz.37 or heavy objects where needed. In this case the B subvariant means it had two firing posts and four men crew. The object could survive 75 mm artillery shell (in 1938) except direct hit into the firing posts and 81 mm mortar round. Thanks to its small size it could be easily masked. The firing posts were made of concrete and could be closed by 30 mm thick steel shutter. There were no MG carriages inside, just a wooden table to put the MG on. 

The other two are heavy infantry casemates N-S-43 and 44. They are heavily damaged by the Germans (the cupolas and steel firing posts were removed and takeen to the Atlantic wall). Today they are deserted and freely accessible to anyone. They were built in resistance class I which is a third from a scale of six. It meant the frontal wall was 2,25 meters thick with a stone and earth cover, the roof had 2 meters and the object shall survive 240 mm artillery shelling (if I am not mistaken Wehrmacht didn't have any bigger pieces in 1938 before it took them here in Czechoslovakia except maybe few from Austria). I wrote a lot about these objects before so just some short info and few photos.

N-S-44 had one 47 mm rapid-firing AT gun with coaxial HMG vz.37 (ZB53 and de facto BESA), one double HMG vz.37 and several LMGs vz.26 (plus grenade tubes for close defence). The crew was 22 men (with one officer). As any other heavy object it had its own water source. The earth work around the bunker was clearly never finished. Unfortunately it's in the forest and there's no way take a photo of the whole object. 

Maybe small particular detail here. This is a view to a moat preventing direct access to the main guns. You can see an exit hole for spent AT gun casings and a grenade tube to the left of it.

A concrete block which had the purpose to intiate the grenades used to defend the main entrance can be nicely seen here with the missing earth work. 

NS-43 is interesting by the fact that there is an original mortar firing post in the bottom floor. Normally it was covered with 40 mm thick balanced shutter (missing in the object now). The 9 cm mortar vz.38 was never installed in any object because the first five serial pieces were finished only in September 1938. The weapon was interesting in many ways. It had fixed elevation to 45° and there was a gas pressure regulation used for setting the range (300-4300 meters). The traverse was +/-22,5°. The round was 6,9 kg heavy with 1,25 kg explosives. Due to an unfinished eart work it's difficult to take the photo of the post from outside but you can find one copy here in this thread (object R-S-87). 

Social distancing vol.3, this time Orlické mountains, north-east Bohemia on the Polish border, view towards Krkonoše mountains (barely visible white snowy peaks).

Sometimes you find something you don't expect to be there - like this. The memorial is located directly at the border on the top of a mountain ridge and there is exactly nothing but forest now (the other names on the memorial are Franz-Joseph I. and Fryderyk Chopin). They say that there used to be a German tourist restaurant there but it was burned in 1945 (before 1950 the neigbouring state in this area was Germany). 

15 minutes ago, Sovngard said:

 

230 L / 100 km on roads and 146 L per hour when traveling cross country

So how come the numbers which Alzoc posted? 

Is Leclerc so thirsty? 

Another Bayraktar TB2 shot down in Lybia, this time with ordonance.

Sorry if repost, it's three years old. Anyway an incredible RPG shot from Yemen. Warning, the audio contains usual Houthi stuff...  

Nigeria received their first VT4 tanks (and other vehicles)

After one year the final report about the ridiculous incident from St-Dizier airbase was released. 

https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.charpentreau/24788-fighter-jet-crash-averted-by-defect-in-civil-ejection-incident?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

In short:

- a 64-year old passenger (employee in aviation industry) was taken to a flight in a Rafale-B

- nobody checked his preparations, so he had everything wrongly prepared and fixed - anti-G pants, helmet, straps... 

- he was very nervous already before the start (around 140 bmp for such an old guy)

- when the aircraft took off at 47° and 4G it was still ok but when the pilot leveled, a surprise negative 0,6G load caused the passenger to accidentally take the ejection handles and eject himself

- during the ejection he lost his helmet and the dinghy didn't work, fortunately it was not needed

- the passenger suffered minor injuries

- only due to a defect in the pilot's seat the pilot was able to continue flying and land the jet, normally both would be ejected

An attempt to shoot down USAF C-130 in Afghanistan by RPG caught on an IR camera of MQ-9!

Social distancing vol.2. Same area, just on the other bank of the Labe (Elbe) river roughly 10 km to the east. 

Su-30SM are land based. Besides the Su-30SM also some Su-27P are operated by the navy in Kaliningrad. The navy even has some MiG-31 on Kamchatka... 

7 minutes ago, heretic88 said:

After some digging in the subject, a little update to my last post here about hungarian T-72s. The small numbers of T-72M1 actually means only 5 tanks. 3 T-72M1 and 2 T-72M1K command variants, they all came from Czechslovakia, not Poland. 4 of these went back to Czech republic, 1 remains here, in unknown condition.

I think that all tanks which were bought by Excalibur were intended for sale to Iraq. 

So after the tank biathlon there is now a rallycross army event?

LNA shot down GNA L-39 from Misrata. According to GNA both pilots are well and back in Misrata. 

Have you noticed that in the videos from the latest fighting unlike in the past the Houthis don't burn the machinery they capture but use it? In the past videos Houthis operated exclusively as scattered light infantry but since months ago they seem to operate as a mechanized force with limited support of BMPs, tanks, technicals or captured MRAPs and Humwees. Often moving in convoys and seemingly not afraid of Saudi air force.