Category Archives: All

On the BMP

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Let’s talk about the BMP, specifically the BMP-1 and BMP-2. The BMP-1 was pretty revolutionary when it first appeared, and was extremely influential. Interestingly, the design requirements go back to the early 1960s, when Soviet Doctrine came to embrace tactical nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. This led to a desire for a vehicle that would be highly mobile and allow infantry to fight from inside in order to minimize exposure to the expected hostile battlefield environment. By 1967, Soviet interest in heavy use of tactical nuclear and chemical weapons had waned, but the design requirements were set (go figure).

The BMP-1 used the powertrain from the PT-76, came with amphibious capability, and provided NBC protection for the crew of three plus the eight dismountable infantry inside. The infantry were provided with NBC-sealed firing ports for their Kalashnikov assault rifles and machine guns, and had roof hatches to operate weapons with a backblast, like RPGs. These ports were arranged four per side and two aft. The turret of the BMP-1 had a 73mm smoothbore gun that fired the same projectiles as the standard infantry recoilless rifle, a coaxial machine gun, and a rail for Malyutka ATGMs. The turret distributed some platoon/company level support weapons down to the carrier vehicle. This turret was a one-man affair, as Soviet doctrine of the time had the commander dismount with the rest of the infantry in the back to lead them.

The BMP-1 had a number of notable shortcomings. The lack of armor is one, and the small size meant that any hit would strike important, flammable things. The commander-outside-the-turret arrangement made fire control difficult, and forced the gunner to work as an ersatz vehicle commander when the squad dismounted. Wartime experience in the 1973 Yom Kippur war was decidedly mixed. The Egyptians were satisfied with their BMP-1s, which were used to support missile-equipped antitank infantry teams. The Syrians used their BMP-1s in head-on attacks that left them to be smashed by Israeli antitank guns.

The effectiveness and widespread use of antitank missiles in the Yom Kippur War was also a problem, since even the most rudimentary missiles outranged the 73mm gun on the BMP-1. A quick response to suppress an antitank missile team (and screw up their command-guidance concentration) would also be hindered by the separation of commander and gunner. Hence, the BMP-2 received a two-man turret with a 30mm gun that had a much more reasonable trajectory.

Fishbreath Picks: AAF Week 6

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Week 5 results

Orlando beat Birmingham 31-14. I picked Orlando -3.5.

San Diego beat Salt Lake 27-25. I picked Salt Lake +6.

Atlanta beat Memphis 23-30. I picked Atlanta -1.5.

San Antonio beat Arizona 29-25. I picked San Antonio +2.5.

My first perfect week erases my deficit and brings me back to .500: 8-8.

Week 6 picks

Memphis at Salt Lake (Memphis +8.5)

Salt Lake and Memphis are both bad teams. I don’t see either one winning by more than a touchdown.

Arizona at Orlando (Arizona +9)

Orlando may be the team to beat, but I think 9 points is too big a spread. Arizona hasn’t been winning games lately, but they’ve been scoring points.

San Antonio at Atlanta (San Antonio +1.5)

Atlanta’s on a roll, but I don’t believe they’re the real deal yet.

Birmingham at San Diego (Birmingham +6)

Nothing I’ve seen in the past few weeks of Birmingham and San Diego football suggests that San Diego ought to be a six-point favorite over Birmingham. In this battle of my rooting interests, I will take Birmingham.

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Mar. 13, 2019)

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I just realized last weekend’s post was dated March 27th, because I changed the month but forgot to change the day. Rest assured that, if we were to guess at news from the future, we would try a little harder than two or three weeks out.

Apologies for the lateness of the post. It’s Mrs. Breath’s birthday today1.

Defense

(Mad) Science and Technology

History

Guns

Grab Bag

  1. Pretty sure she’d object to being Mrs. Fishbreath, so we’ll just say it’s a very tightly coupled name and surname. ↩

Overanalyzing John Wick’s TTI Combat Master 2011

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The trailer for John Wick Chapter 3 dropped some weeks ago. You can bet I’m super excited. With the trailer out, we see Keanu Reeves with some cool new hardware. And the NDAs on said hardware got lifted. John Wick has a snazzy new sidearm: a collaboration between STI and TTI to make a cool, tricked out 2011. Since I love John Wick, custom1 guns, and 2011s, I thought I’d take a crack at it.

The TTI Combat Master 2011 is built on a 2011 platform. It’s single action only and appears to have a government-length barrel (i.e. a 5″ barrel). The barrel is an “island” barrel, with a large milled rib on top, and a corresponding area milled out of the slide. This rib contains the front sight. Since the front sight doesn’t move, it’s easier to track through recoil. It also means there’s less slide mass, which means less reciprocating weight, which reduces felt recoil. The slide has also been “tri-topped”, which means it has a trapezoidal top cross section instead of the usual round one. This reduces weight and looks cool. There are also aggressive looking front and rear slide cocking serrations, plus some slide windows to show off the barrel finish, reduce weight, and look cool.2

The grip is a standard plastic model from STI with Taran Tactical’s excellent stippling applied all around. I would also expect it to have a tuned trigger. There’s also TTI’s 2011 magwell at the bottom for faster reloads.

One more thing to note is that, according to Taran himself, the TTI Combat Master is designed to shoot 9mm Major. Or, 9x19mm rounds where the muzzle velocity times bullet weight in grains divided by 1000 is greater than 165.

Let’s talk about caliber first. I like 9x19mm. 9mm Major is hot stuff. Really hot stuff. Hotter than most +P+ loads. In fact, it’s really hard to find commercial 9mm rounds from large manufacturers that make Major power factor. And it’s a really niche thing. Most of the people interested in 9mm Major shoot in USPSA Open Division, which is the only division where you can permissibly use rounds with a caliber of at least 0.354 inches (9mm) in diameter to make Major. And we open guys like shooting 9mm Major to get those power factor points and get gas to work the compensators and barrel ports you see in open guns. Gas is good. Those guns are based around lots of gas. Mr. Wick’s latest gun has no compensator and no barrel ports. In limited division, where iron sighted guns play, major power factor rounds must be at least 0.40 inches (10mm) in diameter. And, of course, from a “tactical” standpoint, pistol rounds that make major power factor don’t really perform any better than ones that don’t as far as defeating bad guys. Pistol rounds suck at that. Major power factor ones still do. You can pass the FBI standards with well-made 9mm rounds, and nobody sees much benefit to going hotter in the people-stopping department. At least, to the best of modern ballistics science.

I look forward to a fun movie explanation of why he’s rocking the major power factor ammo, of course.

Honestly, the biggest thing that confuses me here is the plastic grip. I know, that’s STI’s marketing campaign, some nonsense about “transmitting less recoil” or somesuch. I don’t know why it would “transmit” less recoil. Maybe it’s that notion of “polymer flex” that comes up sometimes when talking about recoil characteristics of polymer-framed handguns. I have no idea to what extent “polymer flex” is a thing, and frankly, I don’t care. I do know that competitive shooters love weight low in the gun. Like in the grip. Steel grips are super popular on 2011s that people modify/have built for them. SVI, Phoenix Trinity, and CK seem to have no trouble selling steel grips despite the added cost. Since I follow the top USPSA Open Division guys, I can say that the top 10 shooters at 2018 Open Nationals all had steel grips. And that’s in a division with compensators. From a shootability standpoint, steel grips are better, full stop.

Now, there are reasons you could argue to go with a polymer grip, like that it’s less annoying to carry (because it’s lighter) or because some people like them. But I’m betting this is STI marketing. At least it has a nice stipple job.

My one other big gripe is with the lack of red dot support. At this price point, it really should give you the option for a slide-mounted dot. Most other 2011s in this price bracket have such an option available, and dots are better. Some rules (e.g. Limited) don’t allow them, but it really ought to be something the end user can request. For 3-gun. Or for fighting one’s way through an army of angry assassins from the Continental.

It is a small thing, but the lack of even minor customization options is lame. No options for different trigger shoes? Seriously? This isn’t a 1980s Colt. Again, in this price bracket, lots of other places will let you pick trigger shoe length/color for no extra charge.

Overall, it’s a really nice gun, but it’s kinda overpriced for what it is: a pistol with zero options. If its set up the way you want, go for it. Rock on with your bad self. Otherwise, you can do better for just shy of four grand.

  1. Actual, properly custom guns. If you can’t specify every detail down to the screws of your gun, it’s not really custom. You just have some marketing-speak for “fancy”. ↩
  2. There are other ways to reduce slide weight and make it look cool. Consult your custom smith for details. If you can’t specify your own slide cuts, you aren’t at a custom shop. You’ve been had by the marketing guys. ↩

Fishbreath Picks: AAF Week 5

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Week 4 results

Memphis beat San Diego, and my pick was Memphis+6.

Orlando beat Salt Lake 20-11; my pick was Salt Lake+4.

San Antonio beat Birmingham 12-11; my pick was Birmingham-7. That makes Orlando the last undefeated team.

In perhaps the most surprising result of the week, and the one that makes me look the worst, Atlanta beat Arizona 14-11. (Remember that I switched my pick to Arizona-13.5.)

Another 1-3 week puts me at .333: 4-8.

Week 5 picks

Orlando at Birmingham (Orlando -3.5)

The Apollos are still the best in the league, and Birmingham has been struggling with quarterback play lately. Weather in Birmingham is expected to be bad on Saturday, which will likely dampen the Apollos’ offensive firepower, but I still think they’ll be able to carry it by more than 3.5.

Salt Lake at San Diego (Salt Lake +6)

Quarterbacks are even harder to come by in this league than in the NFL, and San Diego lost their starter last week.

Memphis at Atlanta (Atlanta -1.5)

I’m happy with Atlanta-1.5 in this one—Memphis got their win last week because San Diego’s starting QB went out.

San Antonio at Arizona (San Antonio +2.5)

Riding high, San Antonio seems well positioned to beat a recently-struggling Arizona.

Retro Procurement: Carrier On Wayward Son

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Back in the early 90s, Brazil was looking to get a carrier. And supposedly, they were offered one of the Forrestals but turned it down in favor of the smaller, cheaper Foch. Well, we’ll take that deal, Uncle Sam. So, let’s go buy a Forrestal or two and wholeheartedly embrace naval aviation, power projection, and all those good things. This will let us develop some serious force projection capability, and provide lessons for future posts procurement projects.

The carriers themselves are early fleet carrier designs, but are still quite useful. There’s not any upgrades we’d want to apply; the biggest issue is one of placement of the portside elevator, which isn’t easily fixable. The issue was corrected on the later Kitty Hawk class, and if Uncle Sam is willing to sell us some of those instead, we’d oblige. Otherwise, the Forrestals will do. They have Sea Sparrows and Phalanxes and that is all the close-in defense that they need.

Carriers are useless without an air wing, so what would we put in our new flattops? The Forrestals are big enough to carry just about anything we might want that is carrier-capable, unlike the earlier Midways. We’ll start our air wing off in the Danger Zone: two fighter squadrons of Grumman Tomcats, each with twelve of the big planes. The latest model is the F-14D, with glass cockpit, APG-71 radar, and most importantly, GE F110-400 engines instead of the awful TF30s.

Next, we’ll take two light attack squadrons, each with 12 A-7E Corsair IIs. This offsets the cost of the Tomcats mentioned earlier, especially since the US Navy had mostly replaced their A-7s with Hornets by this point. While we could also use Hornets here, the greater range of the Corsair IIs makes them our preferred choice. Our attack aircraft load continues with a “Medium Attack” squadron of 10 A-6E Intruders, plus four KA-6D Intruder tankers. The Intruder is a great attack aircraft, capable of hauling a large bombload over a good distance. Having a tanker variant is also useful for long-range strikes so as to be less dependent on land-based tankers. While I could relax the desired tankers, the US Navy’s retirement of the A-6 Intruder fleet in the 90s means that I’d go for both at the ‘used aircraft’ discount. Intruders would be also useful operating from land bases.

For antisubmarine operations, we’ll add a squadron of 10 S-3B Vikings and another of six SH-60Fs. Pretty typical.

AEW&C is super important, since that gives us radar higher up and allows us to separate the radar signature from the carrier location. For that, the only real option is the E-2C Hawkeye. We’ll take a half dozen of those. We’ll also want some electronic warfare support, so we’ll add four EA-6B Prowlers for electronic attack.

And that about covers our air wing, give or take a couple C-2 Greyhounds for resupply. But those as often as not are at a shore base.

Wednesday What We’re Reading (Mar. 6, 2019)

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In which I repeatedly type single quotation marks backtick-text-quote instead of quote-text-quote, thanks to a LaTeX project.

Defense

Photos of the Week: Bombers

Science and Technology

  • Chinese surveillance data found in a no-password, web-public database – Oops.
  • SpaceX’s successful Crew Dragon launch represents an American return to manned spaceflight – The big problem for SpaceX going forward is going to be finding new sources for revenue (like their Starlink Internet plan) if they want to keep on funding the BFR. As it stands, they’ve pretty much cornered the worldwide market on non-natsec launches. There’s only so much profit to squeeze out of that. Blue Origin has an edge on large rocket development in my book, because it’s a billionaire’s passion project.
  • University of California system cancels all its Elsevier journal subscriptions – Elsevier is a watchword in academia for ‘money-grubbing useless middlemen’, known for paywalling a bunch of journals so that universities have little choice but to maintain subscriptions for their own academics. Not that academia is without its flaws, but the least I can do is praise them for doing something so obviously right.
  • Another Intel speculative execution bug – This one lets you figure out memory mappings efficiently, which lets you do the Rowhammer attack from 2015 in Javascript in a browser.
  • The attention economy is saturated – That is, there’s too much entertainment for humans to consume all of it, so we’re into an age of prioritization. You’ve probably noticed this yourself. It also plays into the difficulty in getting off the ground as an independent creator of content—there’s more entertainment than ever before, but it’s still delivered through a small number of outlets. There are only so many screens at the local cinema, and only so many production houses which can afford to bribe their ways into your local theater. See also Amazon and books.

Money Matters

Special Report: Blacklisting and Politics in Publishing

Singal’s doing good work on that subject generally, although it’s amusing to note that he himself is an identitarian progressive, just a milder breed who hasn’t yet fully internalized that all revolutions eventually devour their children.

Re-evaluating leaders of the Civil War

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It’s still Tuesday, so we haven’t missed a day.

Having finished Foote’s Civil War magnum opus, I find my opinion of some Civil War figures changing. Let’s take a look at how. I’ve noted changes of opinion in an upward direction with a plus sign, of downward direction with a minus sign, and no change (where some commentary is required to justify the choice) with an o.

Lincoln: +

Honest Abe, even in his own day, has (had) about him a sort of mythic status. The epithet ‘The Great Emancipator’ came about during Lincoln’s life. That’s the sort of thing that can go to a man’s head.

And yet it never did for Lincoln. Foote portrays him as an extremely human figure, warm to his family, fond of bad jokes, and distressed by the human cost of the war. He comes across as a genuinely good man, and one entirely equal to the task thrust upon him, no matter what his critics at the time said.

He only gets one plus because I had a high opinion of him before.

Jeff Davis: —

Ol’ Jeff Davis was not equal to the task before him.

Leaving aside the moral component of the war and any discussion of its secondary and tertiary reasons, Davis was simply not a great man. You couldn’t ask for a better parable: Lincoln, humble in the face of the many and varied slings and arrows thrown his way, led the Union successfully; Davis, uptight and concerned for his personal honor, never forgot a slight and drove away a number of capable subordinates over the course of the war.

Two minuses, because I went from a neutral opinion of him to a very negative one.

Grant: o

Grant goes up in my estimation in some ways and down in others.

The downsides first: Grant didn’t have very many battles where he wowed me with his tactical prowess. Once forces were engaged, he strikes me as a fairly conventional commander, buoyed by an unflappable confidence, good subordinates, and a willingness to improvise.

The upsides next: Grant was an excellent strategist, and very hard to discourage. In both the Vicksburg Campaign and the Overland Campaign, he parlayed repeated failure into ultimate success. On the Mississippi, he had the hardest of times getting below Vicksburg, kept trying, and eventually penned Pemberton in and stopped Johnston from getting there with reinforcements. North of Richmond, he correctly realized that his side had a natural supply line from the sea and a much larger army, and that Lee couldn’t abandon his capital. A few leftward sidles and a long siege later, and Grant had his victory.

Sherman: +++

Sherman is an interesting one, and the only man to get three pluses in this article.

Why? Because I think Sherman was probably the best Union commander of the war. He was an able battlefield leader, as he demonstrated under Grant, but he was also a superb strategist in his own right. The campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta features Sherman waltzing around Johnston, who found himself turned out of strong position after strong position. Sherman’s superpower was looking at a map, pondering for a bit, then deciding exactly where to march to make an enemy fortification useless.

Sherman gets three pluses instead of one or two because I’d previously thought of him as Grant’s shadow, when he might have been the better general in the final reckoning. I would have loved to see a Lee vs. Sherman campaign.

Lee: +

Lee had a superpower, too, in which he would say, out of nowhere, “I think those people will march to Location So-and-So,” and be one hundred percent spot-on correct, sometimes before the Union line officers even knew where they were going.

Lee has a bit of a mythical reputation already, but the fact that he was right so many times earns him a plus.

Beauregard: –

Beauregard was widely beloved and effective on the rare occasions he actually had some men to command, but spent so much of his time cooling his heels away from battle, planning insane long-shot schemes for Confederate victory, that I find his prominence in history is not commensurate to his prominence in fact.

Johnston (Joe): –

Given half a chance, Johnston would have retreated all the way to Tampa Bay.

Stuart (Jeb): –

Jeb Stuart loses a plus for abandoning Lee on the way to Gettysburg, and hence causing Gettysburg.

Lee might have lost some points for Gettysburg if he had his cavalry at hand, too.

Rosencrans: +

Rosencrans is my first pick against the spread, as it were. He was extremely slow to get moving, but I have a hard time arguing with his results. The Tullahoma Campaign, unlike many of the large-scale, multi-column plans in the war, went off pretty much without a hitch. Largely bloodless, it allowed for the capture of Chattanooga and enabled later victories on the road to Atlanta. Unlike Sherman’s campaign, Rosencrans conducted it against an enemy who had roughly equivalent forces, even if that enemy was Braxton Bragg.

Rosencrans did lose Chickamauga in rather embarrassing fashion, and bears a good deal of responsibility for it. Had he shown a bit more battlefield spine, he might have gone down in history as one of the Union’s best.

Burnside: +

Burnside knew the Army of the Potomac was a job above his competence, said so, and did his best not to lose the army after he was appointed over his own protests.

His plan for Fredericksburg was sound at heart, and in fact Burnside is in rarefied company as one of the few men to steal a march on Lee. He doesn’t get full marks for it, however, because ensuring you have adequate bridging material is part of your job as general.

Meade: ++

Meade was a workaday commander who was perfectly effective under Grant, and Grant had confidence enough in him to leave the Army of the Potomac under his control when Grant had other places to be.

He gets some extra credit for taking over the army in the midst of its pursuit of Lee toward Gettysburg, and reacting quickly enough to news of the developing battle to get his entire army on the field. Most generals looked bad facing Lee. Meade merely looked average.

Sheridan: –

Sheridan gets a lot of credit as one of the Union’s only reasonably competent cavalry commanders. I think he gets a bit too much. He never really faced a peer cavalry force and won, most of his great victories were won against weakened enemies. Against better opposition, his aggression might have gotten him into trouble.

J.B. Hood: +

Hood was an aggressive, competent commander hamstrung by the fact that his side was badly deficient in providing men and matériel. Had he been a Union general, I suspect he might have been one of Grant’s favorite corps commanders.

He wasn’t really cut out for command of an army, though, easily frustrated as he was; he needed a superior to draw rein now and then. After his well-planned first sortie from Atlanta met with failure due to bad luck and bad subordinates, he planned a bunch of less likely sorties. Later, on the road to Nashville, his attack against Franklin was an ill-considered disaster.

He’s the nega-Grant, in a sense—pretty good at tactics, not very good at all at strategy.

Fishbreath Picks: AAF Week 4

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Week 3 results

Well, not covering myself in glory.

Arizona lost 23-15, so my Arizona-4 pick was no good. I was right on some of the commentary (Salt Lake is better than their record indicates), but wrong on the particulars. Importantly, Arizona lost their starting QB to injury.

Orlando-14.5 beat Memphis 21-17. 4 is notably less than 14.5, but how was I to know that Memphis would finally bench Hackenberg?

Birmingham-6 won over Atlanta 28-12, my only correct pick of the week.

San Diego beat San Antonio+2 by 20. My rooting interests did well for themselves, but alas, I did not trust to homerism enough when making my picks.

Going 1-3 this week puts my overall record at a not-great 3-5.

Week 4 picks

San Diego at Memphis (Memphis+6)

I’ve been burned by picking favorites so far, and Memphis in particular is no longer the Christian Hackenberg show, so I think they’ll keep it close.

Orlando at Salt Lake (Salt Lake+4)

Picking against the Stallions also burned me, so I’ll give them the chance to un-burn me or to finish the job. Their starting quarterback is healthy again, which gives them a good shot at keeping it close with the class-of-the-league Apollos.

San Antonio at Birmingham (Birmingham-7)

Birmingham’s defense is proving to be the AAF’s best, and San Antonio had a rough week last week. At home, I expect another Iron Curtain shutdown. (Clearly, they picked the name Iron for just that joke.)

Atlanta at Arizona (Arizona-13.5)

Picking Atlanta, even spotting them 13.5 points, is bold, but given that Arizona is starting a backup quarterback, I think it’s maybe possible that Atlanta covers. … and, shortly after I completed the draft of this post yesterday, Mr. Wolford put in an appearance at Wednesday practice, so I’m going to take that excuse to switch my pick.

New Life for an Old Police Magnum

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When we last looked at my old 870, it had been through a ringer, and I changed a few things. I got a cool magpul stock and a magazine tube extension. Class notes gave me a few more things I wanted to change.

First: the sights, which entailed a new barrel with (bonus) fresh parkerizing. Basically, I wanted some sort of rear sight. I found myself dissatisfied with a bead (and no sight rib for the bead to sit on). I settled on a barrel set up for rifle sights that came from the factory with XS Express-style rifle sights. Perfect! These sights were originally designed for quick acquisition at close ranges while threatened by dangerous game on the African Savannah, and I can’t think of something more appropriate to what I want this shotgun to do. Plus, being barrel-mounted, they require exactly no gunsmithing of the receiver. Now I have a rear reference to avoid making elevation errors at range.

I could have gone with ghost ring sights, but those end up needing gunsmithing (to drill and tap the receiver), and I didn’t feel like doing that. A red dot would also have been a good choice, but that would have cost much more, and I didn’t feel like spending the money here. It would also probably have needed a gunsmithing trip.

Sights sorted, I next wanted to deal with the problem of illumination. I’m a firm believer of defensive weapons needing a light to identify targets. There are a bunch of ways to do this, and I settled on the most turnkey: the Surefire DSF-870 forend. It replaces the factory forend, and has a light and controls for said light built right in. Controls include momentary and constant on buttons, as well as a lockout switch so your batteries don’t run down in the safe. This solution isn’t the lightest or the cheapest, but it stands up to recoil pretty well and tends not to smash hands up.

So that’s that. And my shotgun is more or less done, aside from a likely future trip for some cerakote to refinish the receiver. Let’s take a brief moment to talk about something that isn’t on the gun: ammo saddles. There’s no cuff on the stock for ammo either.

For my purpose, I question the need for ammo on the gun. I’m not a law enforcement officer. I currently have a capacity of 6+1 shells. I really can’t see myself needing more than that in a defensive encounter. Shotgun shells are pretty good at making people stop doing whatever it is that they’re doing. Given that, plus the size of recorded home defensive encounters, plus the complete lack of relevant1 encounters where people run the shotgun dry has led me to skip the bother, cost, and weight of playing around with sidesaddles.

  1. For law-abiding civilians who are non-LEO. ↩