Xlucine

The parker space probe to the sun has launched. Example report, with launch video:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45160722

WTF is going on with the eyebrows on the lady behind him

WTF is going on with the eyebrows on the lady behind him

WTF is going on with the eyebrows on the lady behind him

In other news our MoD managed to fuck up Navy rearming and repairing/modernisation plans. A lot of ships repair and modernization take way too fucking long. Article about our biggest ship:

https://vz.ru/society/2018/7/27/934366.html
Vzglyad also did pretty good article on rest of ships, will post translation some time later.

Really? It's the gai-gene.
 
@Collimatrix

Ideologically acceptable diorama complete. 
 







All photos

I see it as contributing to their demise at the hands of the weirdo with the mustache. Spend a thousand years pushing a group of people into mercantile commerce, banking and medicine such that you massively increase the fitness of greater intelligence, and you'll end up with some very wealthy people. A shunned underclass who is also able to generate enough wealth to live comfortably, in fields that the typical worker doesn't understand very well, is a very easy target for a mob when times are hard - I'm not trying to suggest that the jews deserved their persecution, of course, merely that the conditions they were put under make that kind of sentiment easier to drum up. Intelligence adds the most fitness when other people aren't dicks, it's like trying to beat a shit-throwing monkey at chess - you might be the chess grandmaster, but achieving victory in that situation doesn't look anything like a normal game of chess.
 
This means that if we can get the international community to stop anyone changing the rules of the game like that, then we should be able to sustain the conditions that make intelligence useful

He lost one of the rolling elements from the bearings

He lost one of the rolling elements from the bearings

Just like the ross rifle, but with a lot more propellant and a confined space
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44861558
 
 

UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced the new, national Combat Air Strategy and unveiled a concept model of a brand-new, next-generation fighter jet at Farnborough International Air Show.
Probably related but yet unconfirmed by any officials is the cooperation with SAAB.


I always thought Gavins are boxier

Front wheel drive race car designed by Walter J Christie.  
 

If I were a tanker, I'd be most worried about throwing a track. They're meant to adjust the tension as they kneel, but losing a track as you back out of a firing position would be rather terminal
 
 
I'm picturing a Big Hydraulic Turny Thing™ between the end of the bar and the hull, probably with a dog clutch or similar to lock it in position when you're driving. Dunno what has been used previously, but that looks like a elegant solution to me
 
 
They already do, any gas is going to do thermodynamic things as the temperature changes
 
 
 
FTFY

DefenseNews.com claims that the UK MoD's Contract Bulletin suggest the value could be up to £700 million.
 
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2016/01/16/uk-surges-ahead-with-challenger-2-upgrade/
 
A news article by Shephard Media from 2016 (now behind paywall) suggested a projected contract value of £643 million. Rheinmetall lists a value of "greater than £0.5 billion" in its online accessible presentation for investors about potential future contracts. £240 million is by far the lowest value I have ever seen for the CLEP.

Using Morocco’s 2012 notification for 200 x M1A1 (http://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/mas/morocco_12-28_0.pdf) with all equipment listed included as a basis, it equates to $USD5.075 million per tank (£3.4m in 2102 £). I don’t see either an Abrams-turret, or complete Abrams as a CR2 upgrade/replacement as necessarily “more expensive” than 200 x Leopard 2A7V.

Best possible suspension system: hydropneumatic suspension coupled to a hydraulic transmission and hydraulic turret drive. The interior of the tank is a maze of high-pressure lines, and a leak anywhere stops the entire thing from working. Perfecting a system such as this could keep a large team of engineers safely away from the eastern front gainfully employed for years.

Kneeling is not unique to hydropneumatic suspensions, but it is easier to implement.  I recall vaguely that there was a program to make a torsion bar suspension for an APC that could crouch, mainly so it could fit inside transport aircraft more easily.  There was also the crouching suspension proposed for the German E-series bullshit programs to keep engineers off the Ostfront tank destroyers at the end of WWII.  So it's quite possible to make a kneeling torsion bar suspension, but it usually requires some sort of chain winch or other robust mechanical connection to the suspension elements, whereas a kneeling hydropneumatic suspension requires hydraulic connections to the suspension elements, which is much easier.  Also, not all hydropneumatic suspensions kneel.  In fact, I think the majority of them do not.
 
All the comparisons I have seen between hydropneumatic suspension and torsion bars have depended entirely on which system the author was advocating for.
 
In theory torsion bars are cheaper and simpler.  It's just a big rod of steel that twists as the swing arms articulate, right?  Wrong.  To get competitive suspension performance for a modern MBT, the torsion bar has to be made of a high grade of very refined steel.  Processes like VIM/VAR and electroslag refining remove the last small amounts of tramp elements, and drastically improve the fatigue properties of the steel.  But these secondary refining processes are expensive.  Ideally, the torsion bar is pre-stressed too.  Torsion bars are springs, and a big portion of the lifespan of a spring is a function of keeping the surface blemish-free.  The outer surface of a torsion bar is the most stressed part, and any sort of flaws there will quickly propagate and cause a crack and eventually a failure.  So the torsion bar needs to be kept scratch-free and corrosion-free, which adds more weight and bulk, and special handling considerations of spares.  There's a lot that goes into making a good torsion bar.

Hydropneumatic has a lot of big advantages on paper.  All tank suspensions are springs, and their weight is going to be some sort of function of the energy density of the springing medium used to support the swing arms.  A torsion bar uses energy stored in a twisted piece of steel, while hydropneumatic uses the energy stored in temporarily compressed air, translated by hydraulic liquid.  Well, this one is a no-brainer!  Air is way lighter than steel!

But of course it isn't that simple.  The pressure vessel that contains the air and the hydraulic fluid needs to be leak-proof, and it needs to be leak-proof for years under rough field conditions.  Once you make a hydraulic system that's that robust, you start to eat into the theoretical weight advantage vs. the torsion bar.  Also, the air is the springing medium.  Air changes density and pressure as the temperature changes.  That's not a deal-breaker, but the engineers need to at least think about that.
 
Hydropneumatic suspensions make it fairly easy to kneel the tank, but doing this requires some sort of system of hydraulic pumps to move fluid in and out of the suspension units.  This requires a substantial amount of power, and a bunch of additional beefy, high-pressure hydraulic lines.  These things are all fairly beefy and are another potential headache if the engineers responsible for them half-ass their job.

I think for new designs hydropneumatic will prove lighter.  Even if the hydro suspension units themselves aren't that much lighter, the knock-on effects of being able to lower the turret basket by a few inches will be much greater than the difference in the weight of the suspension units themselves.  Tanks are about half armor by weight, so it's generally more effective to make the armor package smaller than it is to make individual components lighter.  But there are other considerations.  Torsion bars take up space in the bottom of the hull, and hydro units take up space on the side of the hull.  Therefore, torsion bars allow the tank to have thicker side hull armor.  Take a look at the T-14 for an example of how extreme this can be made.
 
Hydropneumatic units can have a very high built in damping coefficient for essentially no additional weight, which is not the case with torsion bars, which require auxiliary snubbers and dampers.  However, high damping coefficients effectively increase rolling resistance when the tank is on rolling terrain, so there is some cost to efficiency here.  In theory it shouldn't be too hard to have some sort of variable-geometry orifice inside the hydraulic line that could adjust damping coefficient on the fly, but so far as I know nobody has tried this.

http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2018/close-air-support-fly-off-farce.html#.W0UPqGeXHZk.twitter
 
POGO might be a bit upset about the recent A-10/F-35 close air support flyoff.
 
(although seriously there need to be more situations that involve more involved air defenses beyond "angry warband belt dumping PKs into the air")

Waveshapers can't touch the liner, which this one does.

The blond one has followed (Boris Johnson). None of them were remainers, this is just arch-brexiteers throwing a tantrum because we aren't burning bridges fast enough

It's a very different design to the suspension on challenger:

 
It looks like they're integrated the cylinder with the swingarm, which is a clever thing to do.

The context I got for the image was that the DUKWs were being tested here in a possible ferry role for moving aircraft ashore in the absence of docks or ports.  Some more pics:
 

 

You seem to be under the impression that I'm claiming that ASCOD 2/42 is a British invention? I'm not. Nor am I denying Spanish, Austrian or any other foreign companies involvement.
My point is Ajax/Scout SV started off as a modified version of ASCOD 2/42, where the UK would hold IP rights over that specific platform.
 

As development went on the design had to deviate further from the standard ASCOD 2 to meet requirements.

The other major part of Ajax/Scout SV is the UK specific software package (GVA) and data-sharing integration which I imagine is why GD would base their Australia/US offers on it rather than a conventional ASCOD 2/42 like they have with Poland/Czech Rep.
 

Right, but they called it ASCOD SV: http://www.army-guide.com/eng/article/article.php?forumID=1566&printmode=1
Once again, not claiming that ASCOD 42 is exclusive to UK just that GD seemingly never made a non-Ajax related example until the MMBT.
I suspect that GD thought the Czechs would want a lighter IFV then when they found out otherwise it was too late to make a 42t. version so simply claimed the already built ASCOD 35 was a 42 but restricted by the rubber band tracks.
 


 

Not true.
The hulls were meant to be made and vehicles assembled in the UK at a Defence Support Group facility however when the Government sold the company GD were left without a UK manufacturing base. The Gov/MOD then told GD to build them in Spain to save money.
When this news broke the MOD blamed GD and EU competition laws claiming they had nothing to do with it (a story they still persist with). It was GD who came back with a new offer (as part of a larger maintenance contract) where all the Hulls and first 100 vehicles would be made in Spain but they would establish (largely at their own cost) a new plant in Wales to assemble the other 489 vehicles. They did this with the belief that it would secure them the MIV and MRV-P contracts.
 

http://www.cookdefencesystems.co.uk/images/pdf/SCOUT SV TR40 407 Double Pin.pdf
https://www.contracts.mod.uk/do-features-and-articles/ajax-boosting-uk-land-capabilities/

 

Sure but I still believe that later ASCODs are at least longer.
Supposed measurements for Pizarro/Ulan:


ASCOD 35:
"The IFV’s hull, in its basic variant, has the following dimensions: length - 6430 mm, width - 2990 mm, height - 1970 mm (without the turret), ground clearance - 512 mm."
https://www.defence24.com/ascod-vehicle-presented-in-kielce

Ajax:
"6.6m"
https://des.mod.uk/what-we-do/navy-procurement-support/ajax/?portfolioCats=119
ThinkDefence lists it as 7.62m (I assume this includes rear storage)
 
 

In the case of Ajax the engine can be uprated to 800kw.
It's also worth remembering that Australia just selected the Type-26 as their new frigate, so UK-AUS defence relations are quite high at the moment. Both have recently chosen Boxer, GD could play up interoperability between the two militaries.

The Kurds will blow one up, and then they will say
 
"Alas, poor Yoruk!"