Jul 212022
 

China’s Nuclear Powered Super Long-Range Torpedo Concept Fits Concerning Pattern

Article concerns a theoretical weapon the Chinese have written a paper about. A torpedo that can be launched from a normal tube, equipped with a reactor of rather inefficient performance but adequate to drive it across the ocean to San Francisco at 30 knots. There it would drop the reactor which would supposedly safely deactivate and sink into the sand; the torpedo would then guide itself to the target under conventional power.

On the one hand: archives are filled with design studies that went nowhere. One the other hand, it would be unwise to assume that the Chinese *aren’t* developing this. And given their recent history of aggression and technical incompetence, I’d fully expect a large fraction of the reactors to melt down en route, some to deactivate then reactivate, some of the torpedoes to wander off and blow up Easter Island or Fiji, or just bob around in the ocean until rammed by a fishing vessel or a deafened whale. Still, it’s interesting to note that the Commies are threatening San Francisco. Gotta wonder how the commies of San Fran and Berkeley would react to the sudden appearance of a radioactive tsunami a few meters high washing into town. I imagine the radiation wards will be filled with plaintive cries of “Trump’s fault!” and “white privilege!”

 Posted by at 7:15 pm
Jul 022022
 

Long ago I took a cruise to Alaska. it was a reasonably classy affair; at the very least, no drunken brawls at 5AM that required the Coast Guard to show up and escort the ship. I guess that trip just wasn’t as culturally enriched as it could have been.

 

Seems to me incidents like could actually be useful: if you’re in international waters and people start acting like uncivilized savages… the Coast Guard shows up, takes said passengers, and promptly deports them to Liberia or London or some such third world hellhole. They’ll doubtless be happier there, and we’ll doubtless be happier here.

 Posted by at 10:12 pm
May 032022
 

The US Air Force has itself a new toy… a 2,000-pound GBU-31/B Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb modified specifically to be a ship killer. In a video just released, one of these bombs, droppable by an F-35, whacked a cargo vessel and basically snapped it in half like a Twix. Whether it would do that to a proper armored combat vessel is less certain, though it’s pretty clear it wouldn’t do the ship any favors. The “Quicksink” bomb uses a combination of GPS and a nose-mounted radar seeker to control tail fins in order to put itself directly on target.

If you look closely (it helps to put the video on 0.25 playback speed) it looks like the bomb doesn’t actually hit the ship, but instead hits right next to it, going off kinda underneath the vessel. This creates a shock wave that pushed the middle of the vessel up, and creates a bubble under the vessel that doesn’t support it when it bends back down, thus Twixifying the ship. When the mist clears the vessel is already largely below the waves. Before the strike you can see what looks like a pretty healthy discharge of water near the rear of the ship, perhaps indicating that a bilge pump is working overtime to keep a leaky old vessel afloat. Possibly not the most representative demonstration of use against a modern military vessel, but for sinking crappy freighters, perhaps just the thing. European governments could make do with bombs like this in the Med and the Channel to deal with their ongoing seaborne invasions.

 Posted by at 12:24 pm
Apr 172022
 

Seems legit. Notes: it’s shown in daytime, so it survived a number of hours after the late-night attack. The seas *seem* calm, belying the “sank in a storm” story. The hull *seems* to show a vertical split; the forward part of the superstructure is obscured by smoke, but it seems kinda trashed. The bow may be gone. if so… The Front Fell Off.

 Posted by at 8:43 pm
Apr 172022
 

I was asked about a poorly-documented idea for an aircraft to be carried in and launched from a Polaris missile tube in a submarine. The aircraft was dubbed “Dipper,” and from the extremely lean description I have seems to have been dreamed up by drunks. But while I have no further data, it *seems* irritatingly familiar. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

 Posted by at 6:20 pm
Apr 142022
 

Two weird things. First this headline…

The Russian military says the damaged Moskva missile cruiser sank while being towed to a port

… is exactly the same text as the complete article:

The Russian military says the damaged Moskva missile cruiser sank while being towed to a port.

So… there ya go, I suppose.

Second: more than a day later and not a single verified image of the thing. How can *nobody* have taken photos pf video of it? Surely there were at least a few commercial satellites passing roughly int he area that took a look. No doubt more than a few recon planes were in the area. The Russians must have had ships in the area, taking pictures to prove it was still on the surface; and doubtless Ukrainians with drones or navalized farm tractors video’ed it to prove that it wasn’t doing so great. But so far as I’ve seen… squadoo. A number or mis-attributed photos and videos of other ships, one craptacular “night vision” video showing… *something.*

 

 Posted by at 8:57 pm
Apr 132022
 

Whoopsie:

Russian Navy Confirms Severe Damage to Black Sea Cruiser Moskva, Crew Abandoned Ship

The Moskva was (*was*) the most important Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea, until it’s ammunition caught fire. Stories differ about *why* it caught fire… the Ukrainians claim to have struck the ship with missiles, the Russians claim… well, not much.

A day or so ago, the Moskva was going to be a giant threat to the Ukrainians. Now it’s apparently a burning hulk.

A week ago:

Russia’s Most Powerful Warship In The Black Sea Is Operating In A Pattern

Yeah, maybe operating in a predictable pattern isn’t the best idea, especially when you’re in range of people you have pissed off.

 Posted by at 11:44 pm
Apr 132022
 

The large format rocket & submarine scans I mentioned HERE are starting to come in. The first ~60 scans clock in at a total of about 1 gigabyte… the remaining forty – scanned, but not yet sent to me – total something like 23 gigabytes. Giant full-color blueprints. Woo.

For a limited time, if you would like copies of these scans, the whole batch is $175. If interested, send me an email:

 Posted by at 6:52 pm
Apr 072022
 

I just dropped off at the print shop a little over one hundred large format prints for scanning. I usually do this in small handfuls, so this is a new approach. It’s also an expensive approach. In that pile of prints are just over 50 diagrams of early-ish rockets/space launch vehicles, all from the same source; the other fifty-ish are something new: submarines. American subs from the early days to a few decades ago; some are commercial diagrams, but most are official blueprints depicting a wide range of submarines.

Following receipt of the scans, there will follow a long process of going through them and trying to figure out what to do with them all. Some will go into the monthly rewards catalog; some will perhaps go into the “Drawings and documents” catalog, and some, like the subs, will go into a brand-new catalog. A lot of them will *not* be distributed that way, since they are commercial items. Almost all will require a lot of cleanup, a heart-breakingly time consuming process sometimes. A lot of expense and effort, right when I’m broke and busy. So, always on the lookout for a way to make a nickel, here’s what I can do: if the idea of 50 rocket diagrams and 50 submarine diagrams (some of them will be *very* large) sounds interesting to you, I will make them available as a sight-unseen lot for $175 for anyone who responds via the email address below. I don’t know for sure how long the scanning process will take; probably more than a week. At the end of that time I will have a massive block of data uploaded to Dropbox: I’m handwaving a guess of around ten gigabytes. So if you’re interested in the diagrams, or you just want to help a feller out with this rather niche activity (preserving aerospace and now submarine history), send me an email, and when the scans are available I will send out PayPal requests.

A *few* of the submarine diagrams may be deleted prior to being sent out. The ones with the rather interesting “distribute these further and the FBI will come and say howdy” notifications. I’ve seen one such; it was not included in this batch. I didn’t see that on any in this batch, but I will look closer when I can see them digitally.

 Posted by at 5:41 pm