Monthly Archives: January 2019

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 30, 2019)

Yup, it’s a Thursday entry again, but only because I spent yesterday’s lunch break working, last night finishing today’s scheduled post, and this morning attempting to resuscitate my laptop.

So, uh, anyone have favorite fictional AIs and computers? I think I’m going to need a new computer name in the near future.

Defense

Austal under investigation for bookkeeping? – More as it develops.
The Royal Navy’s frigate-building schedule – TLDR: the Type 23 frigates are getting retired in the mid-2020s. The Type 31e frigates will therefore have to be built, finished with sea trials, and ready to enter service in about four years after the contract is awarded. Seems unlikely.
“When Task & Purpose asked [Army spokesman] Esper why the Army needs artillery that can lob a shell up to 1,000 miles, Esper explained the U.S. military needs to outrange enemy guns – I want this guy to answer more questions. “We need 20-megaton bombs so we can out-explode enemy IEDs. We need more helicopters so we can out-cool enemy handheld fans.”
Two KC-46s delivered – Putting an end to a long, twisted, and lawsuit-fraught journey.
USNI News with a little roundup of the lasting damage following the Fat Leonard scandal – Imagine being known to history as Fat Leonard. I don’t know much about the original scandal, but I think he’s the sort of guy I’d keep on prison-retainer, as it were. If you end up with a war, a moderately corrupt but otherwise loyal scrounging expert is just the kind of port agent you want.
Video of an explosive Tu-22M3 crash – Possibly unsettling if you realize you’re watching several people die, so skip the click if that sounds bad to you. We briefly discussed the initial incident report on Discord, too.
Pirates of the Caribbean, 2019 edition – As it turns out, when you’re a Venezuelan fisherman who used to work for the now-nationalized fishing companies, kidnap and ransom of the Trinidad and Tobago-flagged fishermen right off your coast starts to look awfully tempting.
The Air Force is confident in New Space – As well they should be, in my estimation.
Hawkeye and Brutus, artillery-on-a-truck systems for the US Army – That’s a 105mm-on-an-HMMWV, and a 155mm-on-an-unspecified-medium-tactical-vehicle. For once, an Army system which isn’t overspecified.
The LCS mission packages are all terrible – Except for the variable depth sonar in the ASW package, but that’s a small bit of shine in a large pile of crap.
Is China preparing its population for war with Taiwan?

Guns

Parvusimperator presents an MP5 clone – Not wanting to be left out after the SHOT roundup. (Incorrect: he submitted this prior to that post.)
Big Army seeks squad fire control system for next-gen small arms – False assumption in headline: the Army will ever get its act together enough to buy next-gen small arms.

History in Pictures (Mostly)

The US Carrier fleet laid to in Ulithi lagoon – Photo from early 1945, features eleven aircraft carriers. In early 1943, there was one active, undamaged American aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
The cruiser Аврора, which fired the shot which signaled revolutionaries to storm the palace in St. Petersburg – I’ve been there in person, but that was before they repaired and repainted her a few years ago. Also, I didn’t get an overhead shot.
On ship rigs and performance to windward – Nothing I didn’t know already, but well-presented and easy-reading, with the added benefit of some diagrams to clarify some of the mechanics.

Technology

Undersea cable damage wipes out Tonga’s Internet – Infrastructure is always more fragile than you realize.
Like coffee? How about SPACE ROASTED COFFEE? – Or rather, coffee roasted by reentry heat. Except it isn’t heated directly by reentry heat, of course, just by a heat exchanger. Also, given launch costs and the amount of coffee it takes to make a cup, we’re looking at about $500 per cup.
GDPR used to attack the free press – Unintended consequences? In my vast and complicated system of regulation? Shock!

Grab Bag

We at the Soapbox are watching out for you, which is why we present this travel advisory – Yes, only just now has the State Department issued a Do Not Go advisory for Venezuela.
In Japan, you’re expected to throw a $10,000 party if you hit a hole in one in golf – So there’s insurance for it, and despite the fact that it would be easy to cheat, almost nobody does, because golf is a gentleman’s game, and gentlemen don’t cheat their insurance companies.

Fishbreath Plays: Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun

Posted by Fishbreath

The clunkily-named Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun is, at its core, a turn-based tactical wargame set on the battlefields of Asia during the Sengoku period, developed by Byzantine Games and published by Slitherine.

That sells it short, though.

The Sengoku period is a fascinating time in Japanese history, familiar to anyone who’s played a Total War game with ‘Shogun’ in the title. Competing daimyo fought for the title of shogun, de facto ruler of Japan. Usefully, at least for wargame designers, it was a century or so of near-constant war.

Sengoku Jidai has a number of expansions which extend it well beyond Japan in the 16th century, to China and Korea in the same era, all the way back to Japan in the 12th and 13th centuries. With the exception of gunpowder, warfare in those eras was broadly similar, so I won’t make too much of the differences. (Also, my interest in the era mainly runs toward the Sengoku period, and that’s what I’ve played extensively, so I’ll stick with talking about it.)

Gameplay

I can’t find a solid source to confirm or deny that the battlefield rules in Sengoku Jidai are based on a tabletop wargaming system, but it feels like they could be. They’re clean and simple.

Movement is on a square grid. Combat is pretty mathy, but comes down to Points of Advantage which affect the result, and which are gained or lost based on many of your typical wargame conditions. (Think spears against horses, rough terrain and disorder, morale, and so on.) Turning units is hard, as is shifting them long distances; they’re fairly slow, and 45-degree turns are about as much as you can manage without running out of action points. Units outside of their generals’ command range are even less mobile, an unusual but sensible design choice. Rather than stack up more combat modifiers, generals simply yield a more flexible, better-coordinated force. Works for me.

When units get into melee combat, they usually stay there for a few turns, wearing each other down and slowly inflicting losses until someone breaks. Once units get into close combat, you lose control over them, and even if your unit routs its opponent, you may not get control back—units automatically pursue routers, and may charge enemies in their paths.

There are good tutorials, both in the sense of tutorial missions and in the sense of tutorial popups explaining events as they happen, and between those and the elegance of the rules, it’s easy to get to grips with the system and start with the generalship.

Finally, for the cost of entry, you get a random map generator, a random battle generator, some historical scenarios, and some dynamic campaigns (simple ones, but enough to contextualize battles). Even the base game gets you the Sengoku Jidai campaigns and the Imjin War, I believe. If you enjoy the gunpowder- and artillery-heavy armies of the latter, I’d recommend picking up the Mandate of Heaven DLC, too, which buys you expanded Chinese factions and four more dynamic campaigns.

Presentation

I don’t have a lot to say here. The sounds are competent but uninspired, though the music is pleasantly atmospheric. The unit graphics are little groups of men and horses, more in the vein of counters than anything else. The landscapes are quite pretty, to the extent that they can be given the square grid they have to fit, and have a whiff of Japanese landscape painting about them in color palette and design.

One notable trouble spot is the lack of anti-aliasing, which is a bother for a game featuring spearmen aplenty. Another is that units don’t shrink as you batter them. A 1500-man unit of yari ashigaru looks the same at full strength as it does after losing 600 men, the only difference being a more tattered flag. As far as I’m aware, there’s no game mechanic which requires easy knowledge of a unit’s original size, so I count this as a flaw.

Verisimilitude

If you’ve read any of my previous wargame reviews, you’ll probably remember that verisimilitude is just about my favorite word in this kind of article. The point of a wargame is not to simulate every arrow and every man down to the smallest wound. The point of a wargame is to evoke a sense of place.

So, what is evocative about Sengoku Jidai’s gameplay? What puts me in the mindset of a field commander in 16th-century Asia?

First: deployment is crucial. On the scale of a battlefield, infantry is slow. Even cavalry takes a while to get where you want it. If you deploy your main body poorly, you can easily lose a battle you should have won. If you deploy your main body well, taking advantage of the terrain and the strengths of your units, you can win battles you might otherwise have lost.

Second: loss of control is rapid. Once the lines crash together, the outcome is largely out of your hands, except insofar as you contribute to key points with flanking maneuvers. As the general in command of an army, your responsibility is to deploy your forces well and, on the approach, meet weak points in the enemy’s deployment with strength. That seems accurate to me.

Like all the best wargames, when I get into the groove, it doesn’t feel like a game, in spite of the tabletop feeling of the rules. I give it my recommendation.

Miscellaneous

It’s available on Steam, but doesn’t work with Steam Play/Proton/Wine on my Mint 19.1 system, and as far as I know, doesn’t have high-DPI support.

Best-in-Show, SHOT 2019

Posted by Fishbreath

Here, you’ll find our selections for most interesting things from SHOT 2019.

Parvusimperator’s Picks

Best Optic: Aimpoint Acro P-1

I like more options for my pistol optics, and Aimpoint has a great red dot sight track record. Seeing as there have been several revisions to the current sights targeted at the market, this late entry might still make a strong showing.

Best Pistol We’ve Been Wanting For Years: Glock 48

Seems a no-brainer to put ten rounds in something that’s Glock 19 sized, but thinner. For those who prefer carrying a slimmer pistol, are happy with (or legally restricted to) ten rounds, and want something to just work. Fortunately, Glock has finally delivered. I hope they put the time into getting this to work without issues.

Best Knife: Ka-Bar TDI Flipper Folder

Previous knives from the Ka-Bar/TDI partnership have been fixed blade. They’re generally well thought out and come in at a reasonable price. This one is also well thought out, also at a good price point. And it folds.

Best In Show: Walther Q5 Match SF

This had a soft launch before SHOT, but was there and was a star of range day. For more on this pistol, look at my write-up. This is also the product on this list that’s most likely to be purchased by me. I’m happy to see the best striker-fired handgun trigger get a cool steel frame for competition.

Fishbreath’s Picks

Best Glock In Disguise: Faxon Firearms FX-19

Building a polymer-framed striker-fired pistol is basically trivial nowadays. Start with a box of Glock parts and some calipers, and soon after, voila. Faxon Firearms gets bonus points for very aggressive styling and being known less as a gunmaker and more as a barrel manufacturer.

Best Video Game-Inspired Accessory: Radetec Glock Slide Shot Counter

Already known for round counters in smart grips, Radetec has gone further and made a smart slide which indicates whether there is a round in the chamber, how many are left in the magazine, and whether a magazine is inserted at all. Straight from the pages of your favorite dystopian fiction or the in-universe UI of your favorite sci-fi game.

Best Kel-Tec Vaporware: CP-33

Alternate heading: Most Innovative Magazine Design. The CP-33’s magazine is a double-double-stack design, which holds 33 rounds of .22LR out of the box, or 50 with an extended magazine. If only I could get one with a giggle switch.

Best MP5 Clone: Palmetto State Armory

It’s a true, roller-delayed MP5 clone, with nice Magpul furniture and a price tag HK would scoff at: $1100. I won’t be buying one, but it’s nice to see someone in America making a reasonably priced replica gun. I wonder if I could get them to do a Mauser C96 clone…

Best In Show: Franklin Armory’s Providence

A magazine-fed, manually-operated rifle where all you have to do is pull the trigger. By using a long pull and presumably a lot of leverage, the Providence trigger cycles the bolt and fires the next round all in one motion. A delightfully clever poke in the eye to jurisdictions with bad firearms law.

Extra: Hudson in Trouble

Posted by parvusimperator

Original (Jan 24, 1249)

From SHOT Show:

This is the space reserved for the Hudson booth. It’s curiously empty.

If we dig, we can see why:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7754152/cambridge-valley-machining-inc-v-hudson-mfg-llc/

Hudson’s parts supplier alleges that they have not been paid. Hudson alleges that the parts were not to spec. It’s ugly, and the court filing goes back to September. I suspect that the parts supplier is too small to take the hit, and Hudson lacks the cash flow/line of credit to simply get parts elsewhere.

Regrettably, setting up a manufacturing business in the United States is very hard.

Update (Jan 24, 1308) (Fishbreath)

As it turns out, the first $15/quarter of PACER access is free, so I went ahead and registered, installed the RECAP extension to upload anything I view to the Free Law Project, and scored Hudson’s counterclaim. Here you go.

Journalism-ing.

Walther Q5 Match SF

Posted by parvusimperator

Not quite a “New at SHOT Show” piece, since it came out just before, but cool nonetheless. Walther has introduced a new PPQ derivative. They’ve taken their excellent Q5 Match and put it on top of a brand new steel frame. It’s aimed squarely at the competition market, combining the PPQ’s fantastic trigger¹ with a lot more weight to soak up recoil. This gun is intended to compete with pistols like the Tanfoglio Stock II and CZ Shadow 2, now that IPSC changed the trigger pull weight rules. Let’s take a look.

Let’s talk through the features. It’s got the same slide as the regular Q5. So it’s got slide cuts to look cool, catch your eye in the display case, and keep the slide weight down so they can still use the same recoil assembly as the regular PPQ. It also has a really excellent optics mounting plate setup that’s very sturdy. It’s great at keeping the optic of your choice securely mounted. Factory sights are fiber optic front and black rear, in case you want to compete in a non-optics division.

That steel frame is the kicker, upping the empty weight to 41.6 oz. from the 21.9 oz. of the standard Q5 Match. Weight fights recoil. For competition, weight is good. The most popular pistols for Production are steel-framed CZ 75 derivatives. Even in Open, where compensators and porting are allowed, all of the top ten shooters in Open Nationals (and a whole lot more besides) have opted for a steel grip to add weight.

The stock trigger is about 5.6 lbs. or so. At least according to Walther. It’s smooth and nice though, so you’ll think it’s lighter. And if you actually wanted lighter, it’s a simple matter to swap two springs to get the pull weight down around 3 lbs. Contact Springco if you’d like a set.

A factory magwell is available for the Q5 Match SF as well, should you want one and be permitted one in your competition of choice.

Walter’s PPQ magazines are well-designed as well. For those of you interested in loading up, here’s a recipe that should get you 23 rounds. Start with the Walther mag body. Order the Grams spring and follower kit for a P320. Shave the tab off the follower that engages the P320’s slide stop, and it’ll fit wonderfully in your PPQ mag body. Add at TTI baseplate and you’re ready to shred.

As for the price, MSRP is a little high, but not unforgivably so at $1,399.99. A bit pricey, but it is a niche market that they’re going for. It’s roughly what you’d pay for a Shadow 2 with all of the Cajun Gun Works goodies.

And yes, I want one.

Fishbreath and I agree it’s the best striker-fired trigger on the market. ↩

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 23, 2019)

Posted by Fishbreath

Every time I think one of these is going to be short…

Notably, SHOT 2019 is this week, also known as Firearms Industry Christmas. There’s a little less on the table than usual that piques our interest here, so next week we’ll either do a pair of best-of articles, or reserve a section in What We’re Reading for it.

Press-Stopping Post-Publication Update

The US just recognized the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly as the interim president of Venezuela itself – “In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant. The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law,” President Trump said in the statement.

Defense

A lesson in snook-cocking from the acknowledged experts in WW2’s RAF
Singapore to buy a small number of F-35s – Don’t forget they have that flat-topped ‘Joint Multi-Mission Ship’ coming, too. I predict the heyday of the F-35B is going to be a lot like the heyday of the Harrier, where suddenly every second-rate power who can put a flat deck on a ship has an aircraft carrier.
Here’s that Joint Multi-Mission Ship for you – You would have to make the elevator bigger, maybe by extending it over the deck edge, but other than that, I bet you could get an F-35B off that.
How do we keep the F-35 reliable for 50 years? – I was under the impression we would a) buy spare parts and b) perform regular maintenance. If an F-35 airframe is going to last 50 years, though, I expect there to be much handwringing in Congress and the Pentagon about the price of rewinging such old airframes.
War on the Rocks: should we bring back homing pigeons for EW reasons? – The war in which homing pigeons were most successfully used as a means of battlefield communication was the Great War. Notably, the Great War featured largely static lines. Pigeons don’t work very well when both your headquarters and your line troops are highly mobile.
George Washington’s maritime world – I’m taking recommendations for a long, in-depth look at the Wars of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Sound off if you have any.
Ford-class weapons elevators finally under testing
Big Army considering a 6.8mm round – This story came up first on Discord, where you’ll often see items which end up here, or source material for articles in progress. For instance, parvusimperator just linked a report on stealth Blackhawks and told me not to include it here, so let that be an encouragement to stop by sometime.
The modern helicopter carrier: an overhead photo
Some renderings of the Austal/Independence LCS frigate variant for FFG(X) – Much as I like the trimaran design, it seems like a bad choice for FFG(X). It’s an expensive hull to start with, unlike the Legend-type cutters, and it doesn’t really have a true warship’s heritage, unlike the F100. In flaws I hadn’t considered, its width makes it annoying to berth, and its hull shape means it doesn’t nest bow-to-bow very well. (Thanks to CDR Salamander’s commenters for that.)
Also, cost savings on the FFG(X)! – On the one hand, cost savings are great. On the other hand, it’s still $800 million per hull.
On the Tu-22M3 and the renewed Backfire threat – Includes juicy, juicy numbers on cruise missiles, speeds, and ranges. The most sobering part is that with missile ranges of 600 to 1200 miles, it gets very hard to intercept the bombers before they launch.
The J-20 joins the carrier-based F-35 variants in lacking an internal cannon – I still reflexively want to shout “But Vietnam!” Parvusimperator thinks it’ll be fine.
The Coasties can’t stop most of the cocaine coming into the US – Sounds like it’s time to start issuing letters of marque again. The Soapbox, now brought to you from the Pacific Ocean! On second thought, we’d have to move to Occupied Californistan, and our PMC license probably wouldn’t be good enough for concealed carry, so maybe not.

Guns and Shooting

The ARX-100 wins a contract! – Known to the Soapbox as the Beluga, Beretta’s AR competitor hasn’t seen much success before now, but will soon be the standard infantry rifle of Romania.
A SHOT preview: the Franklin Armory Providence – The Providence is a manual-action carbine, where the trigger operates the bolt prior to dropping the hammer. Very clever, and handy both in Europe and in the worst parts of the US, where manual actions are generally still unrestricted.
Semi-auto MP5alike SBR build
The Volokh Conspiracy reports on Second Amendment cases in 2018
Aimpoint’s new fully-enclosed pistol dot – I weep for those for whom an RMR is not sufficiently durable.

American Sport

Baseball is broken – In which The Ringer says a strike would help baseball players by reforming the arcane and oft-abused service time rules. More parvusimperator’s field, even though I proposed the story for inclusion.
Tony Romo is finally going to a Super Bowl – Fragility is not a major impediment for sports commentators, except for that one time Pirates color guy Bob Walk fell out of his chair.
College pass interference rules are better – Probably so. See also overtime rules.

Grab Bag

Is there a gang of serial killers murdering young men across the US? – I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, and the article gets Pittsburgh geography all wrong, but it’s still an interesting read.
Forbes: China is losing the trade war
DeLorean Motor Company: the new one – A company in Texas owns all the DeLorean IP, including blueprints and drawings, and eventually plans to make modern replica DeLoreans with modern engines.

Resurrected Weapons: RAH-66A Commanche

Posted by parvusimperator

Last week, we took a look at the Army’s ex-scout helicopter, the Kiowa Warrior. Now, let’s take a look at its planned successor. The RAH-66A Commanche was designed to be the high-tech, stealthy, late-Cold War scout helicopter of the Army’s dreams.
Continue reading →

Shorter 3-Gun Rifles?

Posted by parvusimperator

The “traditional” multigun rifle has an 18″ barrel and a rifle gas system, to create a soft-shooting rifle with plenty of velocity for longer range shots. Is this really necessary?

If we’re looking at matches, a large number will be organized under 3 Gun Nation rules or United Multi-gun League rules. Both of these tend to favor bay matches, with lots of shortish (100 yards and in) shooting. Often, this will be offhand position (i.e. standing, unsupported).

As always, there’s a tradeoff here. Lighter weight will swing faster. Heavier will be more stable, but it will also fatigue you more. Also, where the weight is matters. Weight out at the end of a longer ‘lever arm’ (like a long barrel) will be more fatiguing than weight on a short lever arm.

Now, everyone is going to bring up the long-range component. However, our first point is that there really isn’t much in most 3GN/UML matches, especially if the match director doesn’t want to screw over the PCC folks. Second, you can shoot fine out to longer ranges. If you don’t believe me, go look at Loose Rounds taking an M4 Socom barrel out to 1,000 yards. And that’s without a low-power variable optic with some sort of BDC/MOA-dot/mildot reference for holds. As ever, if you know your dope, you can get your hits. Long barrels are not required for long range work. It will be a little harder with less velocity, but 3-Gun scoring is based on hits; there are no extra points earned for putting rounds in the proverbial X-ring.¹

Going with the shorter barrel optimizes for more of the common shots and handling. Most of the time in most matches governed by one of the competing rulesets will be spent shooting up close, and a shorter barrel makes that better.

How short should we go? Well, certainly 16″ is becoming increasingly popular; and that’s the minimum non-sbr length. 14.5 is shorter and lighter still, though that requires either Form 1 paperwork for an SBR or a pinned-and-welded compensator. Shorter than 14.5″ is almost certainly going to require being a registered SBR. Which may or may not be worth the trouble. That’s for the rifleman to decide.

14.5″ has some weight benefits, but it does require being happy with your choice of muzzle device. These days, I don’t think that’s a tremendous burden. There are lots of really effective muzzle devices out there. Picking one and just practicing with the damn rifle is a good idea. Doubly so if you’re an inveterate tinkerer like me.

Which the three gun targets don’t even have. ↩

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jan. 16, 2019)

Posted by Fishbreath

Now that parvusimperator is back with us, I can focus on this post more than usual. As usual, when I focus on something more than usual it doesn’t just get done. It gets overdone.

Categories arranged not in the usual defense-first fashion, but rather in the order they showed up in our weekly-news-stories channel on the company Hangouts Chat.

Американский футбол

The PAC-12 is terrible – Having married into a USC family, I find my heart warmed by this story.

Science

First we saw too few Milky Way satellite galaxies, now we see too many – An interesting case where refinements to the theory brought the estimated number of satellite galaxies down, while refinements to measuring tools brought the number of discovered satellite galaxies up. As always, a good read from Quanta. This story came from the daily news dump at Ambient Irony, a blog run by a Twitter acquaintance, which usually has some good stuff in the science/technology field.
Rocks: the next dark matter detector – When the next Einstein rolls around and upsets the luminiferous-ether-like consensus on dark matter, I’m going to be smiling very smugly from my little corner of the internet. (Or we’ll eventually catch a WIMP, and you’ll never hear from me again.)

Technology

Apple cutting iPhone production – Almost as though they’ve been coasting on their reputation as innovators for far too long, and it’s finally catching up to them.
The story about the spy microchip on server motherboards we reported on a while ago has fallen apart almost completely – Never let it be said we don’t own up to our mistakes.
A recent post by Cory Doctorow takes the heterodox position: it’s at least possible – Granted, saying that it’s a coordinated coverup takes believing that it’s one of the largest correct conspiracy theories in history. There’s a 40-minute talk from an expert on firmware attacks who believes it’s “at least possible”, which I haven’t seen yet but intend to listen to as I close out the work day.
System boundaries and the Linux kernel – Why kernel updates break closed-source drivers, why the closed-source driver people are in the wrong, and why it would be a bad idea to introduce stable APIs for drivers.

Defense

Merchant ships to missile slingers – I’m for it. Q-ships are much more effective when warships dispense with armor.
Will China go to war over Taiwan? – I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to test it. I’m curious how much of Taiwan’s electronics industry comes from its need to have a native defense industry.
The Navy looks to establish a polar port – Timely news, given the bit about Russian Arctic basing last week. Trivia: The Ticonderogii¹ were the last American ships with purpose-built deicing systems. Anything later and it’s men on deck with sledgehammers.
Are FONOPS effective? – ASEAN has its doubts.
Big Army prepares to fight sci-fi battles – In megacities and underground.
China’s Type 001A may be in service within months
Big Army should bring back Pathfinders – They would make a great accompaniment to the sci-fi battlefield.
On the evolution of the PLAAF – The defense section has been a bit China-heavy lately, but that’s the way the geopolitical cookie crumbles.
Speaking of China, keep your hands off Subic Bay – Maybe we need to set up a base there again?
The Navy Times got their hands on the Fort report on the Fitz collision – It’s bad. No, worse than that. Bad.
About 1/3 of the RAF is in the ‘sustainment fleet’ – Elsewhere, I found a quote from an RAF spokesman saying that the sustainment fleet is aircraft undergoing upgrades and long-term maintenance, as well as those in storage, so it isn’t like 30% of the RAF is being cannibalized to keep the other 70% flying. Honestly, compared to (for instance) Germany, 70% in the forward fleet isn’t bad at all.
Navy looking for a sixth-generation fighter to replace the Super Hornet – Not to be glib, but isn’t that the F-35C’s job?

The Акула/Typhoon-class boomers, in pictures

I came across this photo on Twitter… – …and thought it was worth a section unto itself. It’s really easy to miss how enormous they were. In the picture above, it’s next to a Grisha of some flavor. Here’s one next to an Udaloy, and the Udaloy only looks bigger because less of it is under the water.
Here’s a handy schematic of the pressure hulls, which helps clarify their arrangement inside the light hull.
Lastly, here are some interior shots of the crew spaces – This is a different set of photos from the one I usually see floating around, taken of TK-17 Архангелск shortly after her decommissioning, so everything is in much better shape than other sets I know of.

History

Why is the DOS path character backslash?
King Tut’s dagger came from meteor iron – They determined this with x-ray fluorescence, a technology we have some acquaintance with here at the office from a past customer.

American Politics

Why is all the shutdown talk focused on government workers missing paychecks, and not on the work that isn’t getting done? – The article suggests maybe because there isn’t much value to the work that’s getting done. I haven’t worked in government, and am unlikely to do so in my lifetime, so I leave that judgement to people closer to the matter.

Monroe Doctrine

The US has apparently declared Maduro an illegitimate president – Which is basically saying, “If you guys want to have a coup, we’re cool with it.”

This is definitely the accepted plural. ↩

OH-58D Kiowa Warrior

Posted by parvusimperator

Usually our procurement posts are all about buying shiny new stuff. And that’s fine. But sometimes you can get some “pre-owned” stuff for a great price, often from major powers who have decided they don’t want it for no good reason. Let’s take a look at one such item now: the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.

The OH-58D is a derivative of Bell’s venerable and popular 206 JetRanger. The -58D had a more powerful engine than earlier models, and added a Mast Mounted Sight. This globe-shaped module above the main rotor contained a thermal imager plus a laser rangefinder/designator, and allowed the Kiowa Warrior to observe the enemy while the fuselage is obscured by terrain. The OH-58D has two hardpoints that can take small rocket pods, Stinger missiles, or Hellfire missiles.

We should also take a brief moment to talk about the related trainer. The TH-67 is a Bell 206B-3 purchased for use as a primary trainer. It’s available with IFR-rated instruments if desired. It’s another great choice if we’re considering the OH-58, since we’d get some fleet parts commonality. Plus, it’s a common, reliable, and cheap civilian aircraft, and a trainer should be cheap and reliable to facilitate plenty of flying hours.

The Bell 206 family is very popular on the civilian market, and is still in production. As a result, getting spares shouldn’t be a problem. Current models (the model 206L-4) have a strengthened tailboom and improved gearboxes. Other options on offer from Bell include replacing the tail and tail rotor with those of the Bell Model 427, replacing the main rotor and gearbox with those from the Bell Model 407¹, and upgrading to a bigger Honeywell HTS900 engine with over 800 hp.

Once we get our hands on the Kiowa Warriors, we can also start considering options for sensor upgrades in the MMS, tinkering with the communications suite, and adding a blue force tracker. As is, the OH-58Ds were very successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Army² had wanted to replace them with the gold-plated and ill-fated RAH-66 Commanche and then the ARH-70, which also went way overbudget. Currently, the Army has no scout helicopters and is trying to fill the void with other things. Oh, and complain to Congress.

We’d like to take the perfectly good ones they’re trying to sell through the Excess Defense Article and Foreign Military Sale program.

The Bell 407 and 427 are themselves derivatives of the 206 by way of the twin-engine JetRanger development projects of the 80s. ↩
Who has never known what the words “good enough” mean when they can dream of “better.” ↩