Gunsgunsguns

 Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

Brandon Herrara goes through some of the firearms of the current conflict. Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainians are using some odd and presumably obsolete weapons; this should be expected from a small military being steamrolled. BUT: there are Russians equipped with 19th-century-designed Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifles. They are equipped with modern rifles set up for optics, but they don’t seem to actually *have* optics. If I was a Russian soldier, I’d be a little ticked off to be sent into battle with an incomplete firearm; I’d be a *lot* ticked off to be sent into battle with a bolt action rifle. Ukrainian soldiers on the whole seem better equipped than the Russians.

 

And Forgotten Weapons comments on a prior video…

 Posted by at 4:02 pm

Auto mechanics and convoys

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

Some videos of interest. First: Ukrainian auto mechanics are busy at work converting captured heavy machine guns from Russian armored vehicles into hand-held weapons to turn back onto the Russians:

Second, a video showing trashed Russian vehicles. *Lots* of trashed Russian vehicles. Turns out lining up your vehicles on roads is sometimes a terminally bad idea. And a lot of armored vehicles in a town, destroyed or abandoned.

 

And a tank battle in an urban environment without infantry support. The tank you see here is close enough to the cameraman that he could’ve just *walked* up to it and poured napalm onto it. If he’d had *any* sort of rocket propelled grenade or LAW he could have shot from the hip and bullseye’d that tank and turned it into a pyre. One wonders if the video cut off when it did because he reached for his handy anti-tank weapon for an *easy* kill.

I know a lot of people think that Putin is playing some 4D chess thing here, leading the Ukrainians into a false sense of hope. Well, maybe…  but if so, he’s taking his sweet time on springing the trap and in the mean time he’s squandering a hell of a lot of Russian lives with *stupid* tactics.  One would think that if these sort of videos were widely disseminated among the Russian populace, they’d be pissed off enough to actually do something. It would surprise me exactly none at all if the Russian military has lost more soldiers in the last two weeks in Ukraine than the United States military lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last twenty years.

 Posted by at 3:38 pm

“They are just goofs”

 Hmm..., humor, news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 142022
 

An interesting video, purporting to show combat from the point of view of someone embedded with Ukrainian forces. It may or may not be wise to have so little respect for your enemy, but it *is* funny. The Ukrainians seem to have some interesting weapons. Is it too much to ask that the US government hand out such things to Americans?

 Posted by at 12:51 am

A-10 vs convoy

 aircraft, Crazy, Hmm..., politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 112022
 

A simulation of what *could* have happened had an A-10 gone up against that kilometers-long Russian convoy in Ukraine. Note: The Russians would have had to have been particularly accommodating for this to happen… stay bunched up on the road, don’t shoot back, no air cover. Still, it’s interesting the sheer volume of destruction that could have been unleashed.

 Posted by at 8:49 am

Clear footage of a Hind getting shot down

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, rockets, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 052022
 

Most videos showing helicopters, either Ukrainian or Russian, getting shot down are from such a long distance that you can’t really see anything. but the video below is reasonably clear; the Hind takes a Stinger (or perhaps a Javelin) straight to the engines and promptly plummets from the sky. A bad few seconds for the crew. Of course, the possibility always exists that this is yet another computer simulation, but it certainly looks realistic.

 Posted by at 7:32 am

December, January, February APR rewards

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 052022
 

Yeesh, I am *terrible* at advertising. Just realized I missed reporting on *several* months worth of rewards packages for APR patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers.

December 2021 rewards:

Document: “B-52G Advanced Configuration Mockup inspection,” Boeing presentation on the design of the then-new B-52G configuration

Document: “Performance Potential Hydrogen Fueled, Airbreathing Cruise Aircraft, Final report, Volume I, Summary” 1966 Convair report on hydrogen fueled hypersonic jetliners

Document: “Integral Launch and Reentry Logistics System” late-60’s Space Division of North American Rockwell presentation on very early Space Shuttle-type systems

Art: Large format McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cutaway

CAD Diagram: Convair MA-1 pod for B-58

January 2022 rewards:

Document: “The Configuration of the European Spaceplane Hermes,” 1990 conference paper on the unbuilt French spaceplane

Document: “Space Rescue Charts,” 1965 USAF presentation charts describing space “life rafts” and shelters

Document: Two nuclear-powered car brochures… Ford “Gyron” and Ford “Seattle-ite XXI”

Diagram: “AGM28 Hound Dog Missile,” North American Aviation informational graphic

CAD Diagram: Boeing MX-1965 missile

February 2022 Rewards:

Diagram: Boeing 720-022 model diagram, United Airlines configuration

Document: Aerojet Ordnance Company brochure, describes aircraft ammo

Document: “The Nova (Liquid) Vehicle a Preliminary Project Development Plan,” October 1961 NASA-MSFC report on facilities planning for the “Saturn C-8” configuration of the Nova vehicle

Document: “Ground Handling Equipment and Procedures for a X-15 Research Aircraft Project 1226,” 1955 North American Aviation report on the early B-36-launched design for the X-15

CAD Diagram: F-111 Escape capsule

 

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 Posted by at 1:20 am

“And it exploded”

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 022022
 

Based on the timing, seems like they were about 1.7 miles from the second detonation. That kind of light from that far away probably indicates a pretty sporty explosion… thermobaric bomb of great magnitude, or a hit on an ammo dump. One person suggests the first explosion was nuclear; I would *guess* that the yellow-orange nature of the flash would argue almost immediately for a chemical explosion. A nuclear one – at least one measured in the kiloton range and beyond – should be white, perhaps blue-tinged, like a welding arc. If you see *that* kind of flash light up the sky… well, go perpendicular to the wind, then turn into the wind and get out of the fallout zone.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 11:42 pm

Javelins

 awesomeness, news, rockets, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 012022
 

An interesting video about the Javelin anti-tank missile currently being used, apparently with some success, to relieve Russia of some of their excess armor:

The Javelin is, unlike an RPG, a guided and fairly long-range missile. It has a two stage motor, with an initial fast-acting booster that tosses the missile out of the launcher without sending a blast into the face of the guy who pulled the trigger. This has the result of making every launch look, for a split second, like a failed launch; the thing just sorta lobs out of the tube, starts to fall to the ground… then ignites the motor and launches itself into the sky.

Here’s a video from before the invasion that describes the missile in some depth:

 

Apparently they’re fun to dance with:

 Posted by at 7:30 pm
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