watch_your_fire

18 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

And video link is dead. Have a link to social media post?

Guess it broke youtube TOS. Here's the vid

Russian(?) soldiers use thermal blankets to obscure their IR signature and sneak up on a Ukrainian(?) solider in the night. Sorry for the music and crap resolution, I ripped this from social media.

What is the square to the right of the gun? Some kind of radar?

On 5/3/2023 at 11:27 AM, LoooSeR said:

Southern part of Shikotan island - bunch of IS-3s and IS-2.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

Are these from 1945? IS-3 production started in may and the Soviets landed in the Kuril islands in August, so the timeline makes sense. I'd guess that the cost of taking them back to western europe was greater than it was worth so they left them there after the Japanese surrender.

On 1/26/2023 at 12:52 PM, LoooSeR said:

Looks like they mounted a 1PN-96MT-02 sight with thermal imager instead, pic in red box shows photo from Army 2019 expo of that sight control panel.

Isn't that sight pretty decent?

On 1/21/2023 at 9:26 AM, Pardus said:

So what do you guys think is the real reason Germany is hesitating to allow Leopard 2s in Ukraine?

 

1) Fear of the Russians acquiring German tech?

2) Fear of the Russians escalating things toward nuclear warfare?

3) Fear of outward image based on ghosts of the past "German tanks once again rolling across the eastern plains"? 

4) Fear of lost future sales if pictures of destroyed Leopard 2s start emerging? Or wether it will perform well enough?

5) Backstage financial agreement with Russia (i.e. money talks)

6) Germany actually wanting the war to drag on, as it might benefit their weapons industry? (again money talks)

 

7). Bundestag politics are such that even if Germany wants to do something militarily, it can be a multi year process before anything happens.

Seriously, they have been trying to retire their Tornadoes for 10 years with no progress.

I think they want to send Leopards but the typical German obsession with rule following means that they can only do it "the right way", whatever that means.

6 hours ago, Alzoc said:

2 (3) parts ammo for the rifled 120 mm of the Challenger 2 will be hard to procure (I don't know if the UK are even still producing them).

I think India is still producing rifled 120mm ammo for Arjun, with some.... colourful product names

6 hours ago, Alzoc said:

14 Challenger 2 is in itself a token amount. But it send a political signal toward Germany asking them to authorize Leopard 2 transfer and sales.

Definitely why the Brits are sending them, yeah.

9 hours ago, Lord_James said:

Going from autoloader tanks to human loader must be pretty jarring for the army. I pity the maintenance and logistics personnel who also have to manage all the new equipment. 

loading is a pretty easy job to train, especially since Ukraine already has those Slovenian M-55S tanks in service. Logistics and maintenance will be pretty hard, and it probably won't be easy to learn the peculiarities of the Challenger's fire control system.

It's the only modern MBT I can think of that doesn't have independently stabilized optics for the thermal sight, instead relying on gun stabilization to keep the picture level.

1 hour ago, Pardus said:

 

 

 

They call this the "military industrial complex" mate

Size comparison between the Merkava and Abrams (and their crews). Definitely shows how tall the Merkava is, the Abrams is by no means small.

Unconventional urban camo for some PUMA IFVs. Knowing German procurement I'm sure the taxpayer paid thousands for those pallets. Still, not a bad job.

A very unique Sabre, this is a CAC Avon Sabre built in Australia that was apparently loaned to the RAF at some point to test the Firestreak (at this point under the 'Blue Jay' designation) missile.

The firestreak, like many early heat seeking missiles, was absolutely massive weighing in at 300lbs.

Old vid of an AMX-30 going for a swim

1 hour ago, speziale said:

The problems come from this pheomenon in the case of the 60-105-50 array:

Can I get a summary of what these graphs show?

2 hours ago, speziale said:

According to my understanding ME efficiency shows the armor efficiency when we keep the plate' thickness constant, and TE efficiency shows the armor efficiency when we keep the late' mass constant.

I think you've got that backwards

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-ria-state-agency-reports-fuel-tank-fire-kerch-bridge-crimea-2022-10-08/

5 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

Mohajer-6 that was found in Black sea during those recent-ish strikes on Odessa, was armed with Ghaem-1 TV guided bombs. Hardpoints indicate that up to 4 bombs were carried on that UAV.

Weird, TV guided munitions aren't really common on drones. I know the Qaem missiles have a laser guided version, I wonder why the TV version was chosen by Russia.

Also, you mentioned that this was found in the black sea, who recovered it?

On 9/30/2022 at 2:35 PM, speziale said:

So, the final conclusion for the B-tech Leopard 2A4:

 

 

Is this supposed to be LOS thickness or KE equivalency?

23 hours ago, barbaria said:

Add a zero that

In this context "Russian" refers to "Russian servicemen".

If you add Wagner and DNR+LPR troops then yeah definitely over 30k dead on the Russian side, that's a given.

Honestly I expect the fighting to slow down a lot during the winter, and the 300k new soldiers will only show up next spring/summer. It takes a lot of time to train them and get equipment ready after all.

1 hour ago, Lord_James said:

The introduction of jet engines replaced props, which let aircraft fly higher and faster at the same time, and the cycle starts anew with the advancement of jet engines. Once missiles finally became reliable enough to use exclusively, the weaponry category probably takes a more leading role in the equation.

Things were sort of following that "go higher fly faster" mantra until the 70s, when it became clear that turbofans could offer much greater longevity and serviceability than turbojets, and at the same time transistors had all of a sudden gotten cheap and efficient, replacing vacuum tubes.

Transistors offered the potential for aircraft to become far more autonomous, as well as significantly improving the accuracy of radars (and reducing their size... without which fox-3s wouldn't be possible).

All of this contributed to the extension of air combat beyond the visual range, largely accomplished with long range radar guided missiles, and that's why stealth is such a hot commodity, for the few nations with industrial bases strong enough to produce stealth aircraft. To date only the US , China and Russia have done so.

2 hours ago, Lord_James said:

and I suspect that fuel consumption is going to become rather important with all the environmentalist policies being thrown around. 

I sort of doubt that, I think aircraft will be burning fossil fuels long after the last gas car has been retired. Even the lightest battery has nowhere near the energy per weight as good old aviation fuel, and weight is the primary concern with any aircraft.

Nuclear aircraft may become feasible, though they would need to be absolutely massive, and would be naturally suited to long sorties. Nuclear powered aircraft could in theory remain airborne for years at a time, so I'm positive when they do show up they'll be crewless.

I'm sort of imagining a giant flying drone with onboard nuclear reactors, perhaps functioning as a 24/7 AWACS over a combat area, maybe providing high resolution footage of ground targets as well.

1 hour ago, Lord_James said:

Bustle seems about right: compare where it lines up to the tank’s sprocket. And muzzle reference can be removed? 

Very true. If it is the Yagatan, they've certainly changed it quite a bit, at least superficially. The back of the engine deck is extended, and storage seems to be added everywhere. I wonder why they would remove the muzzle reference, considering it was a nice advantage as far as fire control was concerned.

To be honest, I think it looks pretty cool. What sort of 120mm AP could Ukraine have access to?

1 hour ago, LoooSeR said:

Claimed to be Yatagan

Cool if true, but I'm not sure. Bustle should reach further back, and it should have a muzzle reference, no?

2 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

Sprut-SDM with some sort of APS (not sure soft or hard kill), for Army 2022

Sideskirts seem kind of silly, but if they can stop 14.5s it will help a lot.

5 hours ago, W. Murderface said:

Google thought this was relevant to my interests. Fair enough.

 

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2022/08/04/drawings-of-a-russian-copy-of-the-b-2-spirit-bomber-surfaced/

Hopefully this works better than the current solution of strapping dumb bombs from the 50s on the Pak Fa

6 hours ago, Zach9889 said:

While it is silly to use Wart chunder as a reference, it's not to farfetched to state that the ZTZ-96/99 series are protected over a smaller frontal arc than their Western and Russian counterparts, based on geometry.

Smaller arc than Russian tanks for sure considering the lack of side ERA on the hull, but not much different than western tanks, better in the sense that at least the turret sides have ERA.

The LFP is somewhat problematic but it's still statistically unlikely to be hit so not a big deal.

Also I really like how the Chinese (finally) fixed the old cleavage weakspot that the original ZTZ99 inhereted from the T-72 (and goes all the way back to the T-64). You can tell if you look at a ZTZ99A without ERA that it doesn't have as much of a weakened zone for the drivers periscope.

I think they might have reclined the drivers position like in a Chieftain to do this but I'm not sure.