Monthly Archives: May 2020

Wednesday What We’re Reading (May 29, 2020)

Apologies for the delay on this week’s what we’re reading, and on the Rule the Waves Let’s Play. I had a death in the family recently, and although it wasn’t a very surprising one, it’s nevertheless occupied a lot of my time.

I should be back to regularly-scheduled posting going forward.

Coronavirus

Lyman Stone with an analysis of recent infections-and-trajectories data – He’s also all in on centralized quarantines, which are admittedly good infectious disease policy, but not the kind of policy I’d like American governments to get a taste for.

Defense

Japan is picking a new rifle and pistol – Parvusimperator submitted a link to the Japanese MOD website, but TFB has the translated version of that page, so here it is.
USMC to adopt NGSW – Is there an acronym for ‘plans to acquire’ or something? If so, I’ll edit this headline to include zero real words.
WW2 training film of the week: flak
That palletized-munition arsenal plane concept has already been successfully tested

Science and Technology

Improved algorithms are 43 times more important than faster processors – At least, for very difficult problems.
Are cities making animals smarter?
Raymond Chen, key member of the Windows 95 team, writes on all the ways you can make your MS-DOS program incompatible with Windows 95

Guns

STI is now Staccato – I too enjoy renaming widely-known brands for no discernible reason!

Race and Culture

Parvusimperator shares this on the Ahmaud Arbery case – I don’t quite buy the analysis, in that it assumes facts not in evidence and draws parallels which may be inappropriate with the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin dust-up. That’s a smaller story, though, behind…
Minneapolis burning

Grab Bag

Why would a Taiwanese not-a-consulate want a US state legislator to introduce a non-binding resolution in favor of Taiwanese membership in the WHO? – The story was posted in early April, but dates back to the early 2000s, and it sure is a wild ride.
Thanks to regulations in LA, affordable housing costs more to build than luxury condos

Wednesday What We’re Reading (May 20, 2020)

Posted by Fishbreath

The ‘Rona

15% of Wuhan’s cats were infected, against a reported 0.1% of the population, and other spooky signals in the post-corona age – I’m not saying a big war is coming, but…
SlateStarCodex’s May Coronalinks has a bunch of good stuff
These guys are estimating R for COVID-19 in real time – I’m a little foggy on the exact math they’re using, but it seems plausible enough. Also, most of the US is currently at R < 1, which is good news. Also also, they’re correctly using R vice R0.

Defense

Submarine countermeasures: a roundup – One of the best parts of the experience in arcade-ish submarine game Cold Waters is learning how to make knuckles, drop noisemakers, and launch decoys in such a way as to trick a torpedo into going the wrong way.
North Korean small arms: a roundup – Aren’t all their arms pretty small, on account of the malnutrition?
F-117s find a second life as low-observable aggressors

Science and Technology

Commercial space has saved money? Quelle surprise! – Also within: the best yet of the ‘Sci-Fi or SpaceX?’ bar bet photos.

History

The Yasser missile, as carried by Iran’s Tomcats – It’s a Hawk SAM with a 750lb cluster bomb attached to the front.
Five prohibited maneuvers in the Tomcat – If I had the DCS Tomcat, I would be trying all five of these right now.

Guns

Yet another 3D-printed AR lower – Deterrence Dispensed is doing great work. I also saw a guy working on a 3D-printed receiver that uses a U-bolt to reinforce the buffer tube attachment point.
Gun Twitter pic: the strangest rifle/carbine/pistol-with-stock I’ve ever seen – It’s a side-folding rimfire? revolver, which I have not yet been able to ID.
Want a Han Solo blaster, but don’t want to ruin a C96? – Here’s a .22 version based on an AR which you can build for under a grand.

Grab Bag

Want a 2019 Z06 Corvette at a steep discount? – Hertz is selling off their stock of special-edition 100th-Anniversary-of-Hertz in anticipation of a possible bankruptcy.
The Cannonball Run record has been broken seven times in five weeks – Turns out, ‘nobody on the road’ is a great precondition for ‘drive across the country as fast as possible’.
Justice Department likely to bring antitrust suits against Google – In what would be nearly as big a case as Ma Bell’s breakup.
Electronic Arts hires former Stasi agent to police speech in online games – I can certainly argue with the goal, but if you take the goal as a given, it’s hard to think of a better candidate for the job.

Wednesday What We’re Reading (May 13, 2020)

Posted by Fishbreath

Coronavirus

Seroprevalence studies in France and Spain indicate about 5% Wuflu penetration – Which is… not great, and neatly scotches my pet theory about vastly greater prevalence than we realized. (If the result holds up, anyway.) Estimates of about 20% in New York still strike me as a bit high, given that Madrid, the epicenter of the outbreak in Spain, only hit 11%. I guess we’ll see.

Venezuelan Coup Attempt

The Drive breaks it down

Defense

On Boeing’s loyal wingman drone – A marvelously cool idea. Can Boeing pull it off? That remains to be seen—they don’t exactly have the best track record lately.
US Navy needed target drones to mimic supersonic missiles… so they bought real supersonic missiles from Russia – “Hey, it turns out this is actually pretty hard. Where’s the cheapest place to get some premade ones?” Or, as an alternate snide remark, this Mitchell and Webb sketch.
Yuma Proving Grounds still working on ERCA – 70 kilometers of social distancing.
The Navy got its first two Superbug Block IIIs
Syria’s MiG-29s are in rough shape – It seems to be the fate of a lot of Russian export hardware: they’ll sell it to you, sure, but the maintenance costs over time’ll kill you. Granted, Syria’s MiGs are probably the hardest-worked set since Vietnam.
Iran, in a move signifying growing belligerence in the Gulf region, sinks an Iranian auxiliary with a missile – Sparking a discussion in the internal Soapbox chat about missiles, warhead sizes, and destructive effects.
Raytheon researches ramjet round – XM1155 plays nice with ERCA, but also with other artillery platforms. It’s a fancy guided round, too, although I’m not entirely sure I’m on board with that. In a big shooting war, how important are precision munitions vice munitions you can turn out a few million of in a month?
The next frontier in the hider-vs-seeker battle: unwanted RF emissions – Having done some work at… work with radio systems, I can attest that a lot of radio systems leak.
Russia’s finally going to get a Project 955A into service – Some of the Project 955s are already prowling the seas, but the 955As have taken a lot longer.

Guns

USPSA matches look like they’ll be starting back up in June, so you can expect some content relating to practical shooting as we get deeper into summer.
Ahmaud Arbery: good shoot or bad shoot? – I think the opinion among your correspondents is ‘bad shoot’, at least with the information we have at hand. The way I see it: leaving aside all the surrounding circumstances, I don’t think a three-on-one fistfight the easy way rises to the standard required for lethal force.
The 3D printed armaments crowd answers the ‘BuT tAnKs’ people… – … with initial work on a 3D-printed disposable anti-tank launcher. I love this country.
Innovative Arms has a waiting list for Welrod pistol clones – Instead of the quick-wearing rubber baffles from the original, it has a more modern, long-lasting setup in the innards. Innovative Arms estimates a price in the $1200-$1400 range. A bit much for something as simple as the Welrod, but then, pretty cheap for a custom-CNC low-volume replica of an oldtimey curiosity.

Science and Technology

Microwave power beaming experiments to be carried out on the next X-37 launch – Parvusimperator: “Now we can make bad burritos lukewarm FROM SPACE!” My only quibble is that if a microwave made a bad burrito uniformly lukewarm, that would be great. It seems, however, that your choice is ‘warm and cold at intervals’, or ‘nuclear’.
The guys at Epic Games, in between making a subpar store with admittedly excellent freebies, have also made a superb tech demo for Unreal Engine 5
HTTPS everywhere will slowly kill the Old Web – Not just sites that don’t have HTTPS in the first place, but HTTPS sites that aren’t updated. The author says that’s bad. I’m inclined to agree, and honestly, I’m not entirely sold on HTTPS everywhere in the first place. Useful if you’re concerned about being spied upon, not as useful if you aren’t, and aren’t doing anything that involves sending data to the Internet. Bit of a big windmill to have a tilt at, though.

Grab Bag

USS Nevada found – By ‘Florida-based archaeology firm SEARCH Inc.’, among others, which sounds like it could be the subject of a series of modern archaeological adventure novels. Someone needs to take up the Clive Cussler mantle, and I’m fresh out of time, so consider this idea a freebie.

Rule the Waves 2: To January, 1933

Posted by Fishbreath

At the end of the last update, I asked four questions. Here they are again, with (the answers):

Big guns or high speed for the next battleship? (Majority favors big guns.)
Rebuild or scrap Marengo? (Approximately a tie, so I’ll break it: scrap her.)
Destroyer-cruiser mix, or destroyers? (Destroyers win by a country mile.)
Montcalms to light carriers? (Approximately a tie, so I’ll scrap one and carrier-ize the other.)

January 1931

Time to get some ship designs… designed.

In honor of the dear, departed Marengo, I name this new class of ships Marengo. 16″ guns, AA directors, level 4 torpedo protection, and a seaplane hangar and catapult. Still only 27 knots against our ~30-knot carrier fleet, but she’s not so much slower that she’ll be entirely left behind.

Montcalm goes to the scrappers, while her counterpart Bruix becomes a 29-knot, 24-plane light carrier.

Our new destroyers will be called the Epee class. Because we haven’t figured out dual-purpose main guns or dual turret mounts on destroyers yet, they’re still notably inferior to their Austrian counterparts, but nevertheless a good followon to our existing Glaives. They are a bit spendy, though—two at once, for the moment.

April 1931

Catastrophe! Tensions are low, and Parliament votes to reduce naval spending. I think we’ll still be able to fit Marengo in, but it might scupper our plans for a fleet exercise this summer.

May 1931

Ah, what timing, after we just designed a new class.

Honestly, though, I’m not inclined to redesign it until we have dual-purpose guns and twin mounts for destroyers.

French scientists also work out +1 quality 14″ guns. Regunning Ocean, Suffren, and Courbet will make them much better ships at very little cost—4 months at 718 funds per month, plus a litle extra for Ocean and Suffren to retrofit better fire control.

July 1931

Blueprints for an Austrian cruiser suggest that our sole remaining cruiser is still superior.

In fleet tactics, we’ve figured out reliable voice radio, which will further reduce the likelihood of signaling errors during battle. We also develop improved arrestor wires, and buy a slightly longer-legged torpedo bomber from Dewoitine.

September 1931

The Navy League mobilizes against a new government attempting to cut naval spending, at the cost of very mildly increased tensions with Germany.

January 1932

Bruix finishes her rebuild and ten new submarines are launched this month, freeing up the budget for rebuilds of Ocean and Suffren to use the most advanced 14″ guns and fire control available. (Suffren packs on some more AA, too.) In addition, there’s money for another pair of Epee-class destroyers.

August 1932

With money in the bank and no wars on the horizon, it’s time for a quick exercise.

Fleet Exercise 1932

The goal: see how well our heavily-armored and AA-gunned battleships can do against determined air attack. Ocean, Suffren, and Marseilles (the latter as a control) face off against Bearn, Bruix, and Arromanches, each side with small supporting forces.

It’s a nice day, and over the course of the first hour, recon planes take off and head for the horizon.

Answering a reader question, they are in fact biplanes.

Something I didn’t realize when I bought the Gloster Goblin license was that it’s relatively short-legged compared to our torpedo bombers. (The yellow circle against the purple one.)

Also of note in the preceding image: the enemy force has been spotted. The course and composition in the scouting report look good, so I’m going to gamble a bit on the whole report being high-quality and throw a Sunday punch at it.

That’s… 53 planes. Not our whole force (we can’t launch every plane without leaving some below deck and spotting them after the first wave launches), but not bad for 1932. They’ll be on target at around 2 p.m., against 12:55 right now.

Or sooner, maybe.

At 1:06, the screening light cruisers come across enemy light forces, then turn tail and run toward the carriers.

By 1:23, a number of planes are already in the air. (They’re going piecemeal, since I didn’t hit the ‘coordinate strike’ button, but I think that’s okay given that they aren’t facing any CAP. Also, we haven’t developed coordinated multi-carrier strikes yet anyway.)

At 1:36, a formation of 8 torpedo bombers and 9 dive bombers approach enemy ships. Four minutes later, I get the first results in the combat log.

A few dive bomber hits on a destroyer, but withering AA fire from the dual-purpose guns on the battleships seem to blunt the torpedo strike pretty effectively.

By 1:46, the first wave seems to have wrapped up, with the AA guns the clear victors. The total score is three bomb hits, two on a destroyer and one on what the log reported as a battlecruiser—perhaps Marseilles?

At 2:15, aircraft begin returning. I ready them for a second strike.

It, and indeed the wargame as a whole, are the definition of inconclusive. The strike comes across what seems to be a dispersed enemy force, focusing more on the seaplane tender (Commandant Teste) accompanying the battleship force than any of the heavy units.

The final tally after two large strikes is one torpedo hit and two bomb hits, spread across Marseilles and Commandant Teste. (The reported hits on a destroyer must have been fog of war.) Teste took heavy damage, Marseilles took light damage.

Very few of the torpedo bombers made accurate launches, and the dive bombers didn’t obtain a great measure of glory, either. In Rule the Waves, light and medium AA are much more important for causing inaccuracy in attacking aircraft, rather than actually destroying them. That seems to be borne out by today’s results, and suggests that a retreat in carrier building over the next few years might be wise.

September 1932

The traditional upheaval in an African colony results in a budget bump and a rise in tensions. Austria might be the next war.

October 1932

Joffre enters service. Her air wing is 26 each of fighters, torpedo bombers, and dive bombers.

Her completion, along with an increase in budget from the rising tensions with Austria, permit me to lay down a second Marengo-class battleship—the first time we’ve had two battleships under construction at the same time in almost two decades.

January 1933

Austria-Hungary has seized a colony, and not just any colony, Morocco. This cannot stand! That’s our northwest-African slice of the pie!

In less affronting news, we can now build destroyers with twin turrets.

Status: Image Dump Style

I’m a bit behind already this week, so it’s going to be light on analysis and heavy on information.

Finance and Diplomacy

Naval Comparison

The Fleet

Shipyards

Plans and Intentions

I think it’s obvious that we should go to war with Austria and take Morocco from them—it’s an affront that they have it in the first place.

Beyond that, it seems like the question is, should we go all-in on air power, or wait until the 1935 update (or later)? We have two brand-new battleships coming, one in early 1934 and one in mid-1935, Magenta and Marengo. As they leave the yards, should we replace them with Joffre-style fleet carriers? Or should we continue the battleship-building program into the late 1930s?

And, since that’s a fairly specific question, do you have any thoughts about our strategic direction? Anything I’m neglecting to consider? Anyone else I should be picking fights with? Feedback generally?

Big Iron: Gearing Up for Revolver Competition

Posted by Fishbreath

That’s right. It’s happening. This year, your correspondent is dedicating himself to the noble art of the wheelgun, embodied in the Revolver Division of the United States Practical Shooting Association.

In the spirit of previous posts, such as my CZ Limited and CZ Carry Optics shopping lists, I’m going to talk first about why I decided to embark upon this new task, and then about the gear I chose to carry me through it.

Why Revolver?

Because nobody writes ballads about semi-auto gunslingers¹. The history they carry with them means revolvers are inherently romantic.

On top of that, they’re fascinating bits of clockwork. Take a gander at an exploded parts diagram! All kinds of tiny parts working together in non-obvious ways to turn and align a cylinder, bring a hammer back, push a transfer bar up (maybe), and let the hammer drop, just at the right time. It’s a kind of mechanical beauty.

Next up, revolver competition is fertile ground for a young(ish) guy like me. I may not have the hundreds of thousands of rounds of experience that the leaders of the pack do, but I do have fast, non-arthritic hands and good movement speed by USPSA standards. I think I can work that to do better in revolver than I can in more traditional divisions.

Finally, my choice of USPSA divisions in the past has trended more and more toward speed, extra bullets in the pipe, and limited reloading. Revolver gives me a reason to slow down and work on accuracy, which will be handy for, say, Carry Optics, where I’ve previously wasted a lot of time on make-up shots.

The List

Reader, you know me. I am cheap. Getting into a new division, however, is frequently not cheap. I did my best to keep the costs down, and I think I did a pretty good job in the final tally. Prices are all-up

Ruger Super GP100 .357: $1,138

When I first investigated revolvers for USPSA competition back in 2018, the only revolvers fit for USPSA rules (which favor 8 round cylinders and forbid barrel porting) were the Smith and Wesson 929, which I objected to on cost and everyone’s-shooting-it grounds, and the Ruger Redhawk, whose single-spring lockwork limited how much tuning you could do. My 2019 shopping list, written after Ruger’s release of the .357 Super GP100 but before the release of the 9mm Super GP100, settled on the former.

The first question this raises, which I don’t think I answered in preceding articles, is why Ruger, when Smith has all the aftermarket attention? For one, aesthetics. I don’t mean looks alone, though looks play into it, I also mean the hipster points. I don’t like shooting the same gun as everyone else. That’s boring. For the other, practicality. I had the chance to play with both a 929 and a Super GP100 at the local we-have-everything gun store. I liked the way the Ruger sat in my hand better, I could reach the cylinder release and the hammer spur more readily, and I thought the trigger on the Ruger was better out of the box. There are more Smith smiths out there, but on the other hand, I spent twenty minutes replacing springs on the Super GP100, and I have what I’d consider a match-ready trigger.

The second question is, why .38 over 9mm? Two of the three reasons are the same as above: aesthetics and practicality. 9mm is not a suitable cartridge for a revolver, stylistically. On practicality grounds, I have a ton of 9mm pistols already, with higher capacities and faster rates of fire than a 9mm revolver. I do not have very many powerful handguns, and none at the junction of powerful and easy to reload occupied by a .357 revolver cut for moon clips. Is that a common need? No, but there are guns for way less common uses in my safe, so there is at least an argument that it’s a practical choice.

The third reason is tinkering. Like parvusimperator, I see the reasoning behind buying a competition-ready gun and doing very little to it. It’s nice to have a gun that Just Works. Of course, that leaves me with nothing to do with my spare time². .38 leaves me room to experiment with reloading in more exciting ways than 9mm—shortening cases, wadcutters and semi-wadcutters, different crimps, and the like.

Oh, and the .357 Super GP100 is about $100 cheaper.

Anyway, this is not a full review of the gun. One of those is forthcoming at a later date, after I’ve had a few range sessions and at least one match to try it out.

SpeedBeez Kydex Holster: $73

My previous shopping list called for a Guga Ribas universal holster, but that preceded the availability of SpeedBeez’s Kydex option.

It’s thicker than any of my other plastic holsters, and there’s a way to place the gun in it so that it rests rather than clicking into place, making it appropriately speedy. It’s also cut low on the top, so that I only need a short pull up on the draw before the gun is free to come forward.

All in all, a good buy, and it saves me a bunch over the fancy custom holster, which I put toward some other items.

eBay Holster Hanger: $24 with coupon

The holster, of course, came with a belt clip, but when I was putting my gear together, the USPSA had not yet corrected the rulebook to note that revolver holsters are allowed to sit up to the length of an overlay (3 3/8 inches, I believe) from the inner belt, so the Kydex drop-offset piece it came with was too offset and also insufficiently dropped.

I found this one on eBay for $27.50. Between tax and a $5 coupon, I got it for $24.

It does the job admirably, although I’m not using it quite as specced. Because the mounting points on your average semi-auto holster are further toward the muzzle than they are on the holster called out above, I had to mount it in such a way that I can’t actually use the adjustable offset. That said, the mounting holes on the holster provide for what just so happens to be the perfect amount of offset, and there are other hole options on the holster body. I was able to get the holster set up perfectly for my taste, with the grip straight horizontal and the grip just protruding above the top of the belt, as required by USPSA rules.

SpeedBeez Moon Clip Rack: $160

The SpeedBeez moon clip rack is the most competition-focused piece of equipment I own. What possible other use is there for an 8-rack of moon clips?

It does its job well, and is more or less the standard for moon clip shooters. What more is there to say?

SpeedBeez Moon Clips: $130

While I was at SpeedBeez, I figured I’d order some moon clips. For a bit more than I was prepared to pay at TK Custom in my 2019 shopping list, I got two and a half times as many.

Of course, there are tradeoffs. These are 0.020″ clips, whereas both the stock Ruger option and TK Custom’s standard are 0.025″. A tiny difference, but enough of one to matter. I bought a half case of PPU .38 Special to start out my revolver career. Loaded into the three stock Ruger clips, they drop into the cylinder cleanly. Loaded into the SpeedBeez clips, they wobble just enough to bind, slowing down a good proportion of my reloads.

There are a number of ways this could be fixed (a slightly more aggressive chamfer on the cylinder, a slightly more aggressive crimp on the case, thicker/stiffer moon clips), but unfortunately, I’ll have to live with it until I can implement one of the other solutions.

Crimp seems like the easiest thing to manage, especially given the ease of recovering brass when it’s stuck to your discarded moon clips, and the fact that my more-aggressively-crimped dummy ammo drops right in. One of those Lee classic turret presses is pretty tempting, not gonna lie.

SpeedBeez Moon Clip Tester: $37

I had a bit of budget left over, so I got one of these to simplify moon clip checking. Nifty little gadget. Does its job.

Original Precision Moon Clip Tool: $76

There are some ridiculously spendy moon clip tools out there, but this one does both moon clip loading and unloading for the price of one of TK Custom’s fancy moon clip loaders by itself.

It doesn’t work quite as well as a really purpose-built tool would, I suppose, but it’s perfectly adequate for loading a bunch of clips while I watch a Youtube video or something on my workshop computer.

Ammo Can Moon Clip Box: $15 and some scrap wood

Readers, I confess that your correspondent is beginning to come down with cabin fever³. So, two weekends back, I ordered a surplus .50-cal ammo can from Midway, set about some scrap wood in my basement with circular saw and drill⁴, and put together a moon clip box.

It has sixteen pegs arranged in two squares, with a missing peg in the middle of each square so I can get my hand down and into the box. Each peg holds up to four clips, for an ammunition capacity of 512 rounds pre-loaded—enough for all but the most grueling of match days. Handy little piece of kit for the revolver competitor on the go, and when the rust developing on this box grows beyond the tolerable, I can pop the caddy into one of the newfangled plastic jobbers.

If I can’t be at a match, at least I can be making my match days better!

Total: $1,653

Not only did I get more gear than I called for in my 2019 shopping list, I came in under the $1,705 total therefrom.

Granted, $1,653 makes it my spendiest gun project to date. (The Limited/Carry Optics CZ P-09 cost about $250 more.) Plus, reloading gear to come…

Even so, though, revolver’s been one of my dream divisions for a long time, to the point that parvusimperator wrote down his guess when I was debating between the Glockblaster 2.0 and the revolver last summer, and on my final selection a month or two ago, opened the paper to reveal he was correct. I like revolvers. (Clearly.) I’m looking forward to the chance to shoot one in competition, when they finally start back up.

And when they do? Why, you can expect a full review of the Super GP100 with attached match report, and you can certainly expect some match videos. Until then.

At least, nobody I listen to. ↩
This is a joke. I have way too much to do and way too little spare time to do it in already. ↩
A little less, now that I can get out to driving ranges and golf courses, but man, would I really like to have shot a few matches already this year. ↩
I really need to get myself a drill press, or at least a plunge router. ↩

Wednesday What We’re Reading (May 6, 2020)

Posted by Fishbreath

I feel like we’re not closing in on WWRW #100 nearly as quickly as we used to be. Maybe it’s quarantine time dilation.

Coronavirus

This Week I Learned: what ‘gain-of-function research’ means in an infectious-diseases context – It means manipulating pathogens in labs to explore how they might be better at infecting humans. Oh, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing gain-of-function research. Oh, and the (US) National Institute for Allergy and Infections Diseases provided grants.
COVID and social consequences: a Twitter thread – I wade into the cesspool that is Twitter in the interests of fishing out something interesting from the oozing dreck so that you don’t have to!
On the same note as the item above, I once read something that mathed out the frequency of major wars on US soil, and found it was somewhat less than the average lifetime, or at least that the 95% confidence interval included less than the average lifetime. I didn’t have enough time today to run it down.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center researcher, on the verge of making significant coronavirus discoveries, murdered by associate – The researcher’s name? Bing Liu. The murderer? Hao Gu.
Pittsburgh reporting says it was a dispute over an ‘intimate partner’ – I don’t want to sound too conspiracy-minded, but… Mr. Liu was a Chinese national. Mr. Gu was a naturalized US citizen who works for Eaton, exactly the kind of place you’d want to have a spy. The police aren’t talking about the alleged relationship. Have I been too deep into the spy dramas, or is that all more than a little suspicious?

Reader Projects

Lurker Navaronegun, a.k.a. Patrick Mullen, is the designer behind upcoming Vietnam wargame A Hot Dry Season – Here’s a written interview, here’s a video intro, and if you have further questions, you can probably ping him in the Discord server. One-mile hexes, company-size units. I was going to try a prerelease version on Vassal with parvusimperator, but we might have missed the window for that. Oops.
If you have something big you’re working on, readers, let us know! If it’s of interest to us, we’ll plug it for you. We don’t get a ton of traffic, but hey, any press is good press.

Defense

FREMM WINNS – Back in 2018, I laid odds on the various FFG(X) contenders (albeit with a bit of sign confusion). I’ve always been fond of FREMM, but I didn’t think it had a chance.
Royal Navy working on a fix for the Type 45 powerplant problems – Integrated electric propulsion is super-cool in theory, but seems a little less trustworthy in practice. Which is odd, because we had turbo-electric ships in the early 20th century. I guess adding diesel generators is Hard™?
Photos of the P-8A’s top-secret radar pod – Along with some discussion of its known capabilities.
USSOC might be buying some Bronco IIs – No relation to Bronco I, beyond general shape and low-and-slow light-attack mentality.
US to pull F-35s and spy planes of various types from Britain over Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5G networks? – Good move, if true.
French buy a German rifle, Germans buy a French 20mm cannon – Dogs and cats hanging out!
American mercs involved in Bay of Pigs 2: This Time It’s Venezuela – No word on whether the US government had any involvement.
Another story where the contract life didn’t end well – Fun to think about, but man, for the risks, the pay’s pretty awful.

Games

This year’s Flare Path community Combat Mission game is a hoot – Try this (fictional movie synopsis) on for size, if I don’t turn it into a Nathaniel Cannon story over at Many Words Main first: “This year’s challenge conscripts Combat Mission: Fortress Italy and is inspired by the final fifteen minutes of classic Seventies war movie Colonel Croesus (aka The Montaretto Millionaires aka The Tiger Under the Mountain). We join the story on the night following the double-cross. The ragtag band of Allied treasure hunters, deserters, and lotus eaters led by Colonel ‘Croesus’ Cresswell (Robert Duvall) is poised for action outside the ‘abandoned’ Italian sub pen where Hauptmann Otto Steiner’s (Wolf Kahler) equally disreputable Kampfgruppe of chancers is busy loading the stolen bullion onto a waiting U-boat. Unless Croesus acts quickly, the Germans will escape with the loot!”

Science and Technology

Engineers around the world are different on the surface, but deep down we’re all the same
SpaceX test-fired a Raptor engine mounted to Starship SN4 the other day – Finally, they got the welds right, and this time it didn’t implode during fuel loading. Coming soon: a test flight up to about 500 feet.
Octopuses: not really that smart? – You may debate plurals in the comments, if you so desire.

Rule the Waves 2: To January, 1931

Posted by Fishbreath

Collating all the feedback as usual, I have four recommendations:

Rebuild an old battleship or two. I’m going to rebuild Marseilles, on the basis that our battlecruisers were always heavily armored and can be brought up to the speed of our new battle line much more readily. I may do one of the Redoubtables, or I may put them on the scrap heap. Devastation will probably go soon too.
Update our light forces some, as I’m able. A Glaive-alike won’t be too too spendy, and will help us move away from the obsolete Harpons.
Build to treaty limits for the next battleship. It’ll be expensive, but intentionally building a second-rate battleship is risky.
Build the next aircraft carrier bigger, to get a proper 1930-ish air wing of 70 to 80 planes.

And we’re off!

February 1929

We now have advanced gun directors for our ships, making them yet more accurate, and meaning we have to install them on yet more ships. I think I might pop them onto the Rouen-class battlecruisers first, since they’re now marked obsolete.

April 1929

Bearn enters service. Because we still, evidently, haven’t unlocked the secret to building our own dive bombers, I buy a license to build the British Gloster Goblin. Bearn‘s air wing is nine torpedo bombers, 18 dive bombers, and 19 fighters. Not bad. Maybe we’ll try another exercise this summer, or in summer 1930.

October 1929

Having asked for a new fighter a few months back to match our new torpedo bombers, I pick a new one which can match our torpedo bombers and dive bombers for range.

December 1929

In the last two months, I traded a bit of prestige for a bit of budget, and a bit of tension for a bit of prestige. Worthwhile, in the end, although we are also tweaking Britain slightly.

We make an important advance in fleet tactics: in large battles, aircraft carriers will operate in their own force, meaning that a) I can control them directly even if they’re out of sight of the battleship force’s flagship, and b) they’ll start well out of the way of the enemy, generally.

March 1930

A colonial crisis with Great Britain leads to increased tensions, but also massively increased budget.

I use it on Joffre, a new aircraft carrier.

She’s not the fastest of carriers, but with a 78-plane air wing, she is quite a capable one.

We’ll lay down the first ship in five months.

May 1930

Or perhaps a bit later than that. A new liberal government takes over, slashing naval budgets. (Happily, not slashing naval budgets too much.)

June 1930

I can just fit the rebuilds of Rouen and Nancy (to use advanced director fire control) in before Courbet and Marseille leave the yards, which I elect to do.

That way, it’ll be October, and I’ll be able to reserve some money the use of which we can discuss prior to the next update.

August 1930

Since we have a pile of money sitting around, I upgrade some of our strategically-important airbases to 60-plane capacity. That group includes the one at Dunkerque, which is well-sited for wars with potential North Sea foes Britain and Germany, and the ones framing Italy and Austria-Hungary in the Mediterranean.

December 1930

If you scratch the politicians’ backs, they’ll scratch yours.

Some of the money goes toward equipping some new squadrons on our new airbases. I’m reserving the rest until next month.

January 1931

Another uneventful update passes.

Plans and Intentions

Tensions are highest with Britain and Austria-Hungary, at 4 and 5 (of 12 before war), respectively.

Budget

Our annual budget, 358,300 funds, is on par with Germany’s and only 20,000 less than Britain’s—our wars have been successful, between reparations and worthwhile colonies, at enhancing our monetary capacity to wage further wars.

We spend 8,863 funds per month on ship maintenance, 4,639 on aircraft maintenance (the French naval air service is the largest in the world), and 5,653 on other items, leaving a budget of 10,703 funds per month for construction.

Shipbuilding

At the moment, we’re building ten submarines and our new fleet carrier Joffre.

Ship Planning

We didn’t get a new battleship laid down this update, instead electing to rebuild three ships (Marseilles and the two Rouen-class battlecruisers) and lay down Joffre.

Obviously, that would be a good thing to remedy over the next two years. So, what manner of battleship will we be building? A 30-knot ship with 14″ guns, or a 27-knot ship with 16″ guns? (At present, our battle line is good for 25 knots, or 26 knots if we leave Requin behind.) That’ll account for around 4,000 funds per month.

Of our obsolete battleships, Marengo is the only one left. We could rebuild her to 26-knot speed, given 14 months at 2,300 funds per month, or we could scrap her. Scrap her or rebuild her? Note we have eight other battleships to Germany’s nine (although Germany also has eight battlecruisers to our zero, and we’re far superior to Germany in naval aviation).

Whatever we do with Marengo, we’ll have ten months or so at the end of the update during which to build some new ships. A thoroughly modern light cruiser, with triple turrets, anti-air armament, and room for a scout plane will cost us around 1,850 funds per month, while a modern destroyer with 5″ guns, anti-air armament, and a huge pile of torpedo tubes will cost us around 450 funds per month. So, after Marengo‘s rebuild (or in place of it), we could build five new destroyers at once, or one new destroyer and one new light cruiser. How should we update our light forces: more destroyers, or a destroyer-cruiser mix?

Finally, we have two 27-knot heavy cruisers on hand which date back to 1919 and 1920. They’re too slow to play heavy cruiser in the modern era. We could scrap them, or we could convert them to light carriers. In the latter case, they’d be able to carry 24 aircraft a pop, and we could bump their speed to 29 knots, for a 12-month/2,180-funds rebuild—effectively, two light carriers for the price of one purpose-built new hull. What should we do with the Montcalms?