This month on the Crossbox Podcast, in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only one Warhammer 40K game we’re talking about. In other news, Jay recommends two things with the initials ‘KSG’, and John savages a childhood hero.
Further reading
How to win, FREMMs, and influence people
Lightning Squalls: John likes the F-35A
I promised a King Sejong the Great article, but I must be misremembering. Sorry.
War has broken out in the Confederacy of Allied Worlds, and it falls to the brave men and women of the Naval Arm to defend their country against the Exile fleet. Over the gas giant Argo, they are losing. With few resources and little time to spare, they must find—and bring to battle—an Exile armored cruiser which has terrorized the spacelanes for too long.
We Sail Off To War, a military science fiction novella by your second-most-prolific Soapbox contributor (me!) is available for preorder now, and will be released on June 11th. Visit Many Words Main for more information.
Yes, I’m finally getting around to replying to some of Fishbreath’s stuff. You’re probably wondering what attack helicopter we in Borgundy like. The Boeing AH-64E Apache Guardian, with the Longbow fire control radar setup. Duh. Best in-class. Next question.
Why do we like the AH-64E? Mostly on account of being the baddest tank killing thing with rotary wings, and that’s due to the phenomenal Hellfire missiles. It’s got the fancy millimeter-wave fire control setup so that it just has to poke the radar over a hill, or have a fellow helicopter do so, and it can literally rain hellfire on its enemies. Way cool.
This is hardly fair though. The AH-64E has gotten a lot of development money, and the alternatives have stagnated. And the single-seat Ka-50 is basically stillborn.1 The Ka-52, which hasn’t done well at exports, is a two-seater. Well, life and procurement games are hardly fair. But this is shaping up to be a dreadfully short piece, and simply adding tactics will make it boring, so let’s make it interesting (and also add tactics).
What helicopter would we choose if it was 1990? The Ka-50 has just entered production, and the Soviet union hasn’t collapsed yet. We’d still go with the Apache (then, it was the AH-64A, and it was made by McDonnell Douglas, who hadn’t been bought buy Boeing yet). A good chunk of that is political; we’re firmly in the West’s camp. But that’s the cop-out reason. Straight up, the AH-64A/Hellfire combo is still best at what we want it to do: kill tanks. Being semi-active laser homing, the Hellfire can be fired somewhat indirectly, as long as there’s some laser emitter to illuminate the target, the helicopter needn’t be exposed. Hellfire missiles can also be salvoed faster, since the laser only needs to be on target for guidance, not at launch. A ground launch option is available. Oh, and the tandem-HEAT warhead on the Hellfire is really big. So it’s probably going to kill what it hits.
Now we get to the tactics. What are attack helicopters for? Well, we see them as a much more successful manifestation of the ‘tank destroyer’ concept. Helicopters can move much faster than ground vehicles, so they’re perfect for rapidly moving to provide support or counterattack a breakthrough. I don’t have a cute metaphor for this, other than maybe to call them ‘plumbers’.2 They’re to kill tanks first, other vehicles second. So, the powerful, accurate Hellfire missile that can be fired rapidly is just what we need.
I should probably take a moment to point out that deep strikes with attack helicopters are a bad idea. They don’t fare well when lots of things can shoot them, as evidenced by losing one to a flak trap in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They’re not very good at dealing with SAMs, so they need to use terrain to avoid them. Since they fly low, they’re also vulnerable to AAA fire. Again, it’s about speed and using cover and concealment effectively. They’re not well suited to forcing the SAM to dodge, since they’re not very fast.
That aside, we’ve mostly been talking about missiles, not about helicopters themselves. Let’s look more at the Apache and the two-man layout. A two-man crew is perhaps the most intuitive solution. There are two things that need doing: weapons employment and flying the helicopter. Since flying the helicopter is *hard*, and semi-active laser homing weapons like the Hellfire still require quite a bit of operator input for target discrimination and selection, we might naturally choose to have a crew of two, like the engineers at Hughes/McDonnell Douglas did. Or those at Bell, or those at EuroCopter, or those at Mil.
I generally like a crew of two in combat aircraft. In the fighter realm, the statistics show that for comparable types, the two-seat fighters tend to do better, since they have two pairs of eyes available. This is even more helpful for the attack helicopter, since spotting ground targets is notoriously difficult. Also, two sets of eyes to spot return fire is very helpful, since it’s easy for the gunner to get ‘tunnel vision’ when prosecuting targets. The pilot can maintain overwatch for tracers or missile launches, or keep the helicopter moving. These tactics of attack on the move have been heavily used by Soviet pilots in Afghanistan after Stinger missiles were introduced to the conflict, by American pilots in Vietnam, and more recently by Russian pilots in the Syrian intervention. Movement is good. Movement is life.
Hovering is not a good idea from a long-term survivability perspective. In addition to dedicated anti-aircraft assets, most modern IFVs and some modern MBTs have targeting systems capable of nailing attack helicopters if they hover for a while. Fishbreath and I can also testify that even an old-school T-55 can bag you if you sit pretty and hover for a while. If you’re gonna hover, you have to pop up from some kind of cover, engage, and drop back down (and relocate). Again, that second crewmember allows for a rapid transition to movement to avoid incoming fire, and he can keep his eyes up while the gunner is engaging targets. Or just be looking around and planning where to pop up from next. He can route plan while the gunner hunts targets.
One nifty feature of the Apache in particular is that the pilot has his own independent thermal viewer to let him see at night or in foul weather. The pilot’s thermal camera is slaved to his helmet. Night fighting and operations in harsh weather conditions are also better with the split workload, and the Apache has the vision tech to facilitate this. The Ka-50N might have rectified this a bit, but that was just a prototype, and we don’t know how well it would have done at night.
So there you have it. While you could operate an attack helicopter with a single man crew and appropriate automation, they’re better with a two-man crew. More combat effective. None of this precludes operating attack helicopters in groups; more helicopters are better. And yes, you’ll pay a bit more for the American-made Apache, and you’ll pay more for two crew. But you get more. This is the helicopter that armies want. This is the helicopter foreign designers wish they made. This is the most effective attack helicopter available. The choice is clear.
Geronimo would approve.
1.) Don’t worry, Fishbreath. I’ll be sure to say something pithy at its funeral. And then drink a bunch of good vodka and gloat.
2.) Because they stop leaks, get it? A trifle Nixonian though.
Parvusimperator is fond of a certain sort of infantry fighting vehicle: it should be big, heavy, share parts commonality with his tank, and transport a whole platoon of infantry. It may come as a surprise to you that this is not the only sort of IFV1.
The Hoplon, parvusimperator’s design, fits certain scenarios very well: your Golan Heights, your Fallujah, perhaps your Fulda Gap. Those sorts of scenarios are important, but in exchange for its superb performance there, the Hoplon gives up some other capabilities that other IFVs offer, and other IFVs can be nearly as good as the Hoplon in the Hoplon’s preferred field of play.
I’ve always been a BMP-3 fanboy, so we’ll talk about the Hoplon and Namer relative to the BMP-3. We’ll kick things off with the biggest difference…
Mobility
Otherwise known as the dreaded M word. The BMP-3 is the obvious winner here. Its advantages stem from its weight: fully kitted out, it tips the scales at less than 20 tonnes.
This means that it need not bother with complicated, failure-prone fording mechanisms. It can simply swim its way across a river. That’s right: it’s fully amphibious, which is an important quality for an infantry-carrying vehicle. Mechanizing infantry usually improves their speed of tactical movement while reducing their ability to cross or occupy rough terrain. An amphibious IFV actually adds some terrain-crossing ability: infantry can’t really cross or occupy a river on their own. More generally, a lighter IFV leads to enhanced tactical mobility overall: lower ground pressure means lighter vehicles can move across a wider variety of terrain, in which another vehicle might bog down2.
Enough about tactical mobility, though. There’s another kind of mobility where the heavy IFV concept falls down: the capital-M sort, Strategic Mobility. How many Namers or Hoplons can you fit into your C-130? Zero. How many BMP-3s? One! How many Namers or Hoplons can you fit into your C-5? One! How many BMP-3s can you fit into your comparable An-124? … six.
Now, airlift is not the be-all, end-all of strategic mobility, but, being the hardest part, it’s a good place to start. Certainly, airlift is the way you want to move your stuff when it absolutely, positively has to be there tomorrow. Being able to fit your IFVs into your smaller air transports, freeing up your big transports to move tanks, is a significant win for putting a mechanized force somewhere fast. You can get by with rail and road transport if you’re a purely continental power, but I would suggest that the world is too complicated a place for anyone to call themselves a truly, exclusively continental power.
A lighter vehicle is also somewhat easier to transport by rail: it doesn’t call for specialized rolling stock, whereas your standard flatbed rail car would be hard-pressed to stand up to a Namer-sized vehicle. Road transit is also easier, because of reduced road wear, and again, a lesser need for overspecialized vehicles.
Ship-based transport is a wash, but you can put just about anything on a boat. Hoplon or Namer don’t get any points for being easily transportable that way.
Armament
We should start by talking about what an IFV needs to do. Infantry are versatile, able to do almost anything on the battlefield; their vehicles ought to be too. This is why most IFVs have an autocannon armament. The autocannon can engage fellow light vehicles, enemy infantry, aircraft, and to some degree, dug-in positions. You’ll note, however, that tanks are not on the list. Although infantry armed with proper missiles represent a serious threat to tanks, IFVs, generally, do not: they don’t hide as well as infantry, and unlike infantry, they can’t spread out for protection against deadly point fire. IFVs equipped to defeat tanks are therefore so equipped for purely defensive purposes: anti-tank missilery is not a headline capability on an IFV. Ideally, your IFV won’t be in evidence when the tanks come a-knocking; that’s why you have infantry antitank teams.
On to the BMP-3, then. It does indeed have an autocannon: the 30×165 2A72, a variant of the 2A42 you might know from past Ka-50 posts. The 30×165 cartridge, while a little lighter than the NATO-standard 30×173, is nevertheless quite punchy, by IFV standards; the BMP-3 carries 500 rounds split between high-explosive and armor-piercing types. Little needs to be said about the autocannon. It’s an autocannon. Every ex-Soviet state and Russian arms buyer in the world uses this one. It works as advertised.
Next, though, the BMP-3 goes a little bit off-script. Mounted coaxially with the autocannon is a 100mm rifled medium-velocity gun. “But why?” you ask. “That’s way too small to shoot at a tank, and the autocannon is good enough, right?” Not altogether! You may recall the infantry tank from the Second World War: a bad idea, but one based on a germ of truth. Infantry don’t have a good way to deal with a really stout dug-in position. Launchers can help, but tend to be short-ranged and inaccurate. Mortars are nice, but they’re an area weapon. What the infantryman really needs is a good-sized, say, 100mm HE-chucker, able to keep up with him as far as terrain crossing, and able to bear rapidly on any intractable enemy defensive position. So, stick one on the IFV. The BMP-3’s 100mm gun is an infantry support gun, which is important tactically, but also logistically: it doesn’t have much in the way of anti-tank use, so what ammunition it carries is all for, y’know, supporting the infantry.
Which isn’t to say it has zero anti-armor use. It carries eight gun-launched missiles; although they won’t do much against a modern tank, they provide an extra-long-range punch against lighter enemy vehicles.
Three 7.62mm machine guns—one coaxial in the turret, and two bow guns, each with 2000 rounds of ammunition—round out the weapons fit.
What it comes down to is that the BMP’s armament is hyper-focused on its role as an infantry fighting vehicle. It doesn’t faff about with anti-tank weapons it should never have reason to use, if deployed correctly. It simply gets on with the business of employing every piece of hardware it possesses to defeat the sorts of enemies the infantry it carries is most likely to be facing.
Protection
We come now to a category where the BMP falls down a little compared to its HIFV competition, but really, of course it does. They’re literally tanks, with the tanky bits taken out and seats put in. It isn’t like I was somehow going to miss this one. I just don’t care, and here’s why you shouldn’t, either: doctrine. I gave three scenarios where the Hoplon-Namer school of IFV design excels: the Golan Heights, the Fulda Gap, and Fallujah. Let’s look at each one.
The Golan Heights, as parvusimperator mentioned, is probably one of the most featureless regions on the planet which is nevertheless worth fighting over. It’s flat, and there’s nowhere to hide. If the enemy can see you, the enemy can peg you with a missile. Now, if you’re advancing in proper combined-arms fashion, with your tanks and IFVs working in concert, what happens? They shoot at your IFV and it shrugs off the hit, or they shoot at your IFV and it dies, but either way, they aren’t shooting your tanks. The tanks are your true breakthrough weapon: IFVs are just there to deliver your infantry to hold the ground you’ve just captured with your tanks, and to provide some extra punch when they get there. Losing a few doesn’t matter; tanks are the bigger, juicier target, and a combined-arms advance against an ATGM-equipped position should rightly see most of the missiles headed for the tanks anyway.
The Fulda Gap presents different challenges. You (presuming you’re a Western power) are on defense. You’ll be facing tanks and IFVs pouring through the West German forests, but you have the edge: you get to dig in, which nullifies a lot of the survivability edge. Missiles mounted on the IFV are less of an advantage in this scenario, because your men can simply dismount and use their own ATGMs.
In Fallujah, the Hoplon’s edge is slightly more pronounced: it can eat an RPG shot from the front, and that helps when you’re turning a corner or going down a long street. That said, you’ve taken your armored fighting vehicle into an urban area. That is not a low-risk proposition. You’ll want a TUSK-style kit however heavy your IFV is: if Big Army and the United States Marines found that the Abrams needed specific upgrade kit to be safe and effective in cities, your IFV is going to need the same3. The single most important upgrade out of your TUSK kit is slat armor, which is lightweight compared to real armor, and will do a number on that most common urban threat, the RPG.
Beyond that, an autocannon and coaxial machine gun alone are insufficient armament for city fighting. Much better to have a 100mm HE-thrower, so you can bring down the front of a building in response to an RPG shot, and some independent machine guns, so you can hose down multiple targets at once.
Ergonomics
We come to the BMP’s weakest point: its ergonomics. Tank-based IFVs and APCs have cavernous internal spaces and proper rear exits. For some reason, the BMP-3 puts the engine where that rear exit ought to go, robbing the troops inside of both convenience and survivability4. Getting out of a BMP involves at least a little bit of climbing.
In this picture, you can see the troop compartment: once you go over the engine (the raised section beneath the opened top doors), you drop into the troop compartment, which is behind the turret. (The turret’s fighting positions are enclosed by the two white pillars.) Three seats are placed with their backs to the engine compartment, and two are placed on either side of the turret base. Two more jumpseats can be folded down between the three seats in front of the engine, but five is a good capacity estimate for troops carrying any real amount of gear.
To get in or out, you have to do one of two things: open the top doors and jump up onto the engine, or leave the top doors closed, and crawl out the back. Neither one is as fast as a traditional rear door, and the safest way—crawling—is much slower. If you’re willing to further handicap your exit speed, you can probably stash some gear on one of the crawlways, which might be handy if you’re carrying an ATGM team, say.
Really, though, the BMP’s design follows its ergonomics. It’s almost purely an infantry support vehicle, which can incidentally carry five infantrymen. I don’t know what the prevailing Russian doctrine is, but the BMP is not a good battle taxi. Its job, as far as carrying infantry goes, is to get them close to the battlefield, not reliably serve to move them around thereupon. Once the infantry has disembarked, preferably somewhere out of direct enemy fire, they can advance with the BMP in support. It can serve in the battle taxi role—it’s quick, has decent terrain-crossing ability, and can fit an admittedly small number of infantry—but that is not its natural home.
Luchtbourgish Advantages
The BMP requires some doctrinal modifications relative to your HIFV or HAPC: namely, in situations where it is likely to encounter tanks, it must be used in close concert with tanks, and in combat generally, the infantry should be disembarked earlier and fight their way to their stopping point, with the BMP providing fire support. Urban survivability requires specific urban survivability upgrades5.
These modifications may not be for you. I don’t think they’re for parvusimperator or Borgundy. Survivability in a limited area of operations is too important for his purposes. Luchtburg, however, is a different story.
The mobility of lighter IFVs, and the BMP particularly, meets a Luchtbourgish need. The country is mountainous, swampy, and filled with rivers. An IFV which can swim has a huge mobility edge over one which doesn’t: it can easily penetrate the Luchtbourgish interior where a heavier vehicle or a tank might get bogged down.
The armament fit is perfect, too: busting up a cartel camp in the jungle is tricky with infantry or lighter vehicles, because the drug lords have moderately heavy weapons; an IFV which can take hits from machine guns and grenades while dealing out heavy punishment in return is ideal for Luchtburg’s aggressive enforcement of anti-cartel laws.
Finally, air mobility is of critical importance. Luchtburg is an expeditionary power with global interests. The BMP-3 is easy to ship rapidly, which lets Luchtbourgish forces enter the fight faster, which helps protect Luchtbourgish interests worldwide.
I’ve mentioned before that I really love Glocks. They shoot well, they’re reasonably priced, and they’re unbelievably reliable. They also have a wonderful aftermarket, which I haven’t really made much use of. Time to change that, and make a practicalish open-class gun. The end result is going to check the box for just about every feature that would get you kicked into the Open division sandbox at a match, but it will still be a concealable handgun.
Side note, credit where it’s due: This build was inspired by a similar one by a man that I know as ‘Roland,’ who is a special forces type and has a professional stake in such a weapon. So it’s been vetted as a concept by someone far more experienced than I. Roland, if I ever find you in a bar, first round is on me.
Anyway, let’s look at our base gun. The Glock 19. Why the Glock 19? Well, partially because I have one sitting around that I don’t carry much since I had a red dot put on my Glock 17. Micro red dots on pistols are super awesome. You should get one.1 Anyway, the Glock 19 has a lot of wonderful characteristics that made it my first handgun purchase. It’s small enough to conceal easily, but big enough to be easy to shoot and manipulate. As we’ll soon see, it happens to have some other characteristics that will make it good for this build, but chief among them is that I happen to have one handy. And its small size will mean that once we’re done with it we’ll still have something concealable.
I could have used a Glock 34 for this build, but that’s not a very good choice for what we’re going for with this build. The Glock 34 is about the size of a government-model 1911, so it’s already a big handgun. Not too big to conceal, but making it bigger still will make finding holsters difficult. Since holsters are important, we’ll be using a slide-mounted red dot sight, like I have on my Glock 17. Red dots mean the sight radius advantage of the Glock 34 is lost, and the Glock 19 actually shoots better than the Glock 17 and 34 since the smaller, lighter slide returns to battery faster. We’ll keep irons on the Glock 34 for matches we might want to shoot with iron sights, and get modding on my old Glock 19.
Okay, so first mod is slide milling for a Trijicon RMR. And suppresor-height iron sights, because I do like backups. The choice of sight and mount is going to continue to influence our modding decisions. 9mm is not a superhot cartridge, but it will still recoil, and that muzzle flip plus the slide mount location will cause us to briefly lose view of the red dot, simply because of angles and the reciprocation. Now, we could simply wait for it to come back down with a proper grip, which works great on my other red dot pistols. But this is an Open-Class practical gun. Unlimited modding! Surely we can do better.
Next step is to work on muzzle rise, since that’s going to cause that loss of dot picture. We’ll do this by adding a compensator on a threaded barrel. KKM has a nice unit that fits on a threaded barrel. And it’s not really wider than the sides of the slide, so it’ll still fit in holsters. And hey, it brings the frame length of the Glock 19 about up to that of a Glock 34. Bam. Checks all our boxes, keeps the muzzle level given reasonable 9mm rounds.2 We can even order it with a drop-in threaded barrel, because screw the whole fitting process.
Are we done? Certainly not! We haven’t touched the frame and it’s guts yet. Frame mods will be rather less aggressive, since I’m perfectly happy with the existing grip shape and the Gen4 grip texturing. We will do something about that trigger though. But we must be careful. The pretravel on a Glock trigger is very important. The Glock striker is only partially cocked, and the pretravel is used to finish the job and disengage the internal safety plunger.3 We also don’t want to harm that awesome reset, since that’s something the existing Glock trigger does really well. So we’re going to install the SSVI Tyr trigger. This trigger uses mostly factory internals with a new trigger ‘shoe’, which is the bit your finger goes on. The shoe is designed to give you more leverage by altering the position of your finger in relation to the pivot point, namely the trigger pin. Altering this relationship lightens the apparent pull and helps smooth the pull without compromising the drop safety like an idiot.
That’ll do for trigger mods to start. There are other things we can do by messing with the connector, but I tend to see trigger mods as an iterative approach. I’ll have to trial the Tyr with the rest of the trigger parts stock before I start messing with more things. I might like to try some Ghost parts though. Stay tuned for more on Tweaking Your Glock Trigger.
We’re still not done. No sir. We need a magwell. But we’d also like to pretend that this pistol is sort of concealable, so we don’t want a giant funnel. But we still need a magwell, because magwells are cool. And there are a whole bunch of small magwells to get some of the benefits of a giant funnel without all the bulk. And, given that I have He-Man hands, a little extra grip length on the Glock 19 is always good. We should also note that the fact that our base gun is a Glock 19 narrows the field quite a bit. Most magwells are made for the Glock 17/34/35 frame size, since that’s what’s popular in competition circles. Our choice for not a ton of bulk but enough funneling to assist with a somewhat fumbled reload is the Freya, from Raven Concealment. It works fine with stock basepads, and adds some material at the back to help you index that magazine. It’s got a small funnel shape, and should also help push the hands higher. Perfect.
That’s it right? What could be left, since I’m not going to be doing some sort of grip mod? Well, in a nod to practical use cases, plus the originator of the concept, we’ll be adding a weapon mounted light.4 Our light of choice is the Surefire X300 Ultra, because I have one right here for night stand use. Why this light? Well, it’s Surefire, so it’s made in America, and it’s as tough as lights come. Surefire has excellent switchology on their lights, and there are no stupid fancy strobe modes, SOS modes, semaphore modes, or any of that useless crap we don’t need. It’s got a momentary on and a constant on and that’s all. Plus, it’s 500 lumens of power. 500 lumens is enough to cook things. It will set vampires on fire. More lumens is better lumens. In all seriousness, it will properly illuminate dark areas. Do not look into the beam. We’ll also add a DG-11 switch, which gives us an on/off button on an extension that puts it at the front of a grip. Instinctive activation, like a Crimson Trace grip. We can also configure the X300 Ultra to lock out the extra switch, in case we’re at the range and don’t feel like burning batteries.
There we go. Project Roland. I’m going to shamelessly steal the name Freya for this cool new gun. Freya is a blaster worthy of Han Solo, because this is a very uncivilized age.
1.) Even Fishbreath wants one. Alas, his pistol of choice, the PX4 Compact, isn’t readily amenable to milling because the frame mounted safety/decocker components are in the way. Poor Fishbreath.
2.) Reasonable, as in ‘reasonably manly’. No bunny-fart loads for this gun. Also, it’s an excuse to shoot more +P.
3.) This is the bit that makes it drop safe.
4.) It also adds weight under the barrel, which is awesome for stability and keeping that muzzle down.
Hi, I’m Bob Villa, and welcome to This Old Fighter. Today, we’ll be looking at a classic late cold war fighter that always impresses on the airshow circuit: the Sukhoi Su-27. NATO reporting name: Flanker.
The Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker is a very interesting fighter. It’s somewhat analogous to an F-15, but since the Soviet Air Force wasn’t big on midair refueling, they designed it to be very large so it could carry enormous quantities of fuel internally. It’s got some phenomenal aerobatic capabilities, but suffers from a general lack of payload for its size and some less than stellar reliability numbers. That said, it’s also cheap, and Russia is an infinitely more loyal and useful friend than America these days. Supposing one were to buy some Zhuravliki1, what would we get in them?
Let’s talk engines first. We’re looking for power in an afterburning turbofan. Best in production is the 142 kN AL-31F1S from Saturn Lyulka. Stretching things a little, the AL-31FM2, currently in testing, can put out 145 kN of thrust with afterburner. We’ll also want 3-D thrust vectoring here, with nozzles that can move in both pitch and yaw directions. Thrust vectoring requires some extra training however, as it can cause the aircraft to bleed energy too quickly. Still, it’s a nice extra edge pioneered on some Flanker models in the 90s.
Now, sensors. The Flanker doesn’t have AESA available just yet, we’re stuck with PESA. But, Rafale also has PESA, and Eurofighter still uses mechanically-scanned arrays. However, the Flanker has a really big nose radome for a large, powerful array. The best radar available is the N0035E Irbis-E, which is mechanically steerable to increase the maximum deflection angle of the beam. It’s got a 20 kW peak power, 5 kW average power, can track 30 targets at ranges of up to 400 km, and can engage 8 simultaneously. Way cool. Even the original Su-27s came with IRST and helmet mounted sights, so no special add-ons are needed here. One of the more interesting features of some late model Flanker prototypes, which we’ll put to use, is the N012 radar in the tail boom between the engines. This has a range of about 60 km for fighter sized targets, and is primarily designed to help warn of approaching rear threats. It’s also used to cue the defensive systems. There’s an improved version available, the Pharaon, which gets about 15 km more range for the “fighter size test target”. We’ll call for the Pharaon aft.
In terms of hardpoints, more is better. More specifically, we’ll go for the extra underwing hardpoints introduced in the 90s. The Russians wanted to facilitate the use of wingtip jamming pods like the Knirti SAP-518. But, those lose the wingtip rails, so Sukhoi added an extra pair of underwing hardpoints to take the short-range AAMs that would normally go on the wingtips. So, our Flankers will have a total of fourteen hardpoints: two wingtip, four under each wing, and four under the fuselage. Two of the underwing hardpoints will be plumbed to permit the installation of drop tanks, for an extra 4,000 L of fuel. We’ll get a pair of SAP-518s with each Flanker courtesy of Rosoboronexport. Why the Knirti pods? Well, since they’re also Russian, we can probably get a deal on the whole package. Plus, they’re some pretty powerful jamming pods, capable of jamming in the 5-18 GHz range. They’re modern, digital radio frequency memory jammers, so they’re better at emulating complex waveforms. Plus, with two pods widely spaced out (wingspan is 14.698 m), we can use crosseye jamming techniques to spoof incoming active-radar guided missiles. While we’re talking self-protection here, we’ll want to include a missile approach warning system (integrated with that snazzy Pharaon), the usual chaff and flare dispensers, and a Kedr2 towed decoy.
Now, let’s talk about aircraft structure. Our Flankers will have canards, to maximize agility. Also, because canards are cool. Some Flankers have opted against canards to reduce weight and radar signature. Our response is that it’s a Flanker. It has an elephantine radar signature and the addition of more control surfaces isn’t going to change that much. We will replace old soviet era hydraulic controls with shiny new quadruplex digital fly-by-wire controls. Since we have a digital flight control system, we can delete the dorsal airbrake to save a little weight, and get the same airbrake effect with differential deflection of the rudders.3 We’ll also reinforce the frame and the landing gear to deal with the increased weight. Our landing gear will be the dual nosewheel type, instead of the single nosewheel of the base model Su-27. Internally, we’re going to use all that space for 11,500 kg of internal fuel. And, of course, we’re going to opt for the midair refueling boom. How could we not?
In the cockpit, we’ll go with the center-stick version of the HOTAS control set. We will also use the conventional throttles; I’m not a big fan of pressure-based controls. The tactile feedback of actually being able to move the controls is nice. Avionicswise, we’re going non-Russian. More specifically, Franco-Israeli. The HUD comes from Israel: the Elbit Su 967, with it’s holographic displays. We’ll use a pair of Thales 12″x9″ (WxH) LCDs to display flight information. We’re not opting for touchscreens here. We prefer the traditional array of buttons around each displays. We don’t think touchscreens are robust enough yet, and prefer the tactile feedback and muscle memory that we can get with physical buttons. The Russian Zvezda zero-zero ejection seats are fine, and we won’t bother to replace them.
That’s it. One awesome Flanker. Since we also have an ego that’s almost as big as Russia, and we like to confuse defense analysts, rather than name this something sensible like Su-35MKB, we’ll insist that it be called Su-374. We might even recycle the old ad copy and call it the Su-37 Terminator.
1.) “Baby Cranes”. Because flankers are cute and adorable and above all small.
2.) Roughly analogous to an ALE-50.
3.) The Super Hornet uses a similar method.
4.) There’s already a Su-37, but that designation was applied to a pair of experimental demonstrator aircraft around the early 2000s. They did not go into production. This one will.
Last time, I said I would open this post with my precise optics choice. Here’s why I tried to put it off: my optic is an Aim Sports 4×32 ACOGalike. (ACOGalike is not the brand name; that’s just my description.) A quick note on Chinese-built optics: if it doesn’t have Primary Arms on it, you can’t trust it. If you roll a 12 or greater on a d20, it’s probably worth using; if you roll a 20 and 12 or greater on a second roll, then you might have a hidden gem. I hit about an 18 on mine: it doesn’t show the same issues as some other Chinese optics in my possession, but it’s inferior to parvusimperator’s proper ACOG in terms of optical clarity and low-light performance. So it goes. I can buy ten cheapo Chinese optics for the price of his one ACOG; at least one of mine is going to be usable.
Anyway, same optical characteristics as a Real ACOG, which means limited eye relief. Originally, Kat had a polymer stock in the same vein as the stock AK stock, except lengthened a bit for parvusimperator’s monkey arms1. You can see the issue if you look at a picture of an AK stock: it slopes somewhat downward, and my cheek weld, for a relatively high-mounted scope with short eye, ends up being a beard weld, since you find yourself in front of the actual comb. This is not ideal.
The solution? A stock with a higher comb. There are varied and sundry options here. After looking at several options, I chose the Magpul Zhukov-S. “A Magpul?” you ask. “Fishbreath, aren’t you a massive cheapskate?” Yes, yes I am, but at the same time, I recognize quality when I see it. Let’s count the ways the Zhukov-S is a good choice.
Number one: the comb is straight back from the receiver. This fixes my chin weld issue: the comb is high enough that I can properly place my cheek against it, while being low enough that it doesn’t interfere with over-the-ear hearing protection.
Number two: it’s a side-folder. This is not of critical importance, but there’s something about folding stocks on AKs that just feels right.
Number three: the build quality is superb. The folding mechanism feels durable and has positive locking in the folded position; in the extended position, there is zero rattle. It may as well be a fixed stock.
Number four: the attachment mechanism. Magpul has solved probably the largest open problem in AK customization. This one requires some further explanation.
An AK stock is secured to the receiver by two screws: one through the tang poking out the back of the receiver, and one through an internal tang in the receiver a little bit further forward. These are not for precision alignment: they’re there for retention only. The stocks are precision-fit2 to wedge into the receiver, which prevents them from wiggling. This requires a good bit of force, and a good bit of fitting on initial installation.
Magpul decided this was a terrible idea. They came up with two innovations to make the whole process almost painless. The first is their so-called ‘wedge block’. Looking at the stock from the side, the forward bit which slides into the receiver is cut diagonally, longer at the top and shorter at the bottom. The wedge block is cut the opposite way; putting the wedge block against the forward bit of the stock makes a square. A bolt holds them together, and when you tighten the bolt, the wedge block slides downward. This pushes the stock upward, and eventually, the wedge block and the stock have wedged themselves against the receiver, securing themselves against it without having to be made the same size as the receiver.
The second innovation is a keyed nut: oval-shaped instead of circular, it fits into a cut beneath the tang screw hole in the stock. Magpul provides a machine screw to fit the nut, so when you tighten the machine screw, it ends up centered over the nut, which is positioned at a defined point in the stock, yielding correct side-to-side orientation. So, unlike most AK stocks, the Zhukov-S goes on painlessly. All you have to do is tighten a few screws to hold things in place; no mallet required, and the end result is just as solid.
Is it perfect? No, not quite. I’d love some storage, especially since my optic’s illumination is powered by watch batteries, not radioactivity or natural light, and as far as I can tell, my options are limited to duct taping things to the outside of the stock. Nor does it have the classic looks I usually go for: it’s a tacticool accessory through and through. Although it has sling swivel points, it doesn’t come with any of the push-button sling swivels they accept, and for the money, I feel like a swivel would have been a nice extra. Finally, it is a little bit on the expensive side; at about $100, it’s the most I’ve ever spent on a firearms accessory which is not an optic.
Don’t let those critiques take away from the product, though: it’s certainly worth the money.
1. This isn’t entirely fair. The stock is NATO length. I just don’t like ’em that long.
2. In AK Land, this means they’re cut a little large, and you bang ’em into place.
The biggest news first: the OpenTafl Engine Protocol is officially version 1.0. Future changes to the protocol will be backward-compatible, and will contain some way of alerting OpenTafl that you support a version greater than 1.0, but that’s not in the near term. The OpenTafl Notation Spec has changed in a few minor rules-string-related areas, particularly king strength; make sure you update your engines based on that. The Notation Spec is also finalized: changes will be backward-compatible for the foreseeable future.
With engine mode all set up, I spent some time hammering out bugs in the OpenTafl AI, and its external engine client functionality. The 2.4.x series has been almost entirely bugfixes since my last tafl post, so I have very little news on the recent-developments front. As always, you can read about the little changes in the latest README file, available as part of the OpenTafl download.
As I said in the last post, I’m taking a break to work on my schedule generator for Out of the Park Baseball, which should take me a week or two of coding time; after that, I hope to get the Lanterna-based UI working in a raw terminal context, so that it doesn’t depend on a system with a GUI. (The default will probably remain Lanterna’s Swing-based terminal emulator, but having a headless version will make running the tournament easier.)
Once I’ve finished that, it’s on to networking! Though it’ll be a huge pain, I’m looking forward to wrapping up that feature.
The keen reader may accuse me of cheating here, since the XM-25 is still, well, experimental. To that reader I would say that the US Army has placed an order for a lot of the damned things, which is close enough for government work. And this stupid “wondergun” is in dire need of killing. Let’s talk a little bit about the history, and then see why I think it should get taken out with the trash.
The XM-25 is an outgrowth of the failed XM29 OICW. The OICW was an attempt to increase the lethality of the infantryman by combining a short-barreled1 5.56 carbine with a detachable box magazine fed 20mm airburst grenade launcher. Sort of a next-generation M4/M203 combo. Of course, there were many problems. The resulting weapon was bulky, expensive, and heavy. Loaded, it weighs 8.2 kg, or a trifle over 18 pounds, if you live in a country that’s put men on the moon. This is about as much as a BAR weighed, and is absolutely ridiculous for a non-support weapon. This is not a weapon that is going to allow you to assault alongside your M4-equipped squadmates. What’s even worse is that it didn’t work.
More specifically, 20mm airburst grenades weren’t meeting lethality requirements. Duh. They were tiny. There’s only so much explosive content you can pack in there. Not enough explosive, and the system was already stupidly overweight. In a burst of wisdom at the Pentagon, the XM29 program was cancelled. But the wisdom didn’t last and the two components were split into new weapons.
I’m going to take a brief moment to talk about the XM8, which still has its fanboys, despite looking like a fish. This was the 5.56 carbine portion of the XM29. But there were problems. Every other gunmaker cried foul at this becoming the new carbine of choice without a competition. And they were right, though they needn’t have worried. The XM8 was crap. Garbage. It was significantly heavier than the M4 that it was supposed to replace, fundamentally is no more lethal since it was still a 14.5″-barreled 5.56mm carbine, was compatible with exactly zero accessories currently in the US Army inventory because it somehow had no picatinny rails, and had a tendency to melt under sustained fire. Since it had no picatinny rails, it was wedded to a brand new optic that was supposed to be a magnified red dot with laser sight, which also had problems. The XM8 was also cancelled, much to the chagrin of HK fanbois and M4 haterz everywhere. Good riddance to a lousy gun.
The XM25 is the split off grenade launcher portion, now it’s own weapon. In an effort to increase lethality, the caliber was increased to 25mm. Spoiler alert: they still don’t have the sort of lethality they want. It’s got plenty of shock value, but that mostly comes from the fact that it’s a bang near your head. I am aware of exactly zero confirmed kills for the XM25 on deployment in Afghanistan. Ze-ro. None. Nada. Yeah, it’s a “game changer”.
But wait, it gets worse. The XM25 weighs 14 lbs. (6.4 kg), costs $35,000 a unit2, and fires rounds that cost $55 a piece. It still uses a detachable box magazine, but that magazine only holds five rounds. So a soldier’s individual load is tiny. Also, note that standard doctrine for IFVs with airburst autocannons is to fire a burst of three to five rounds to neutralize an enemy position. That’s basically a magload, and those rounds are bigger (and hold more HE, duh) than the rounds on the XM-25. We’ll never see great lethality out of this system, and it means taking a carbine (or two!) out of the squad.
We’re already back in the land of small professional armies rather than big conscript ones. Infantry are scarce, and taking the always-useful rifles out for a heavy system with a small combat load of carried rounds that is only sometimes useful is a bad idea. We need all the riflemen we can find. Even though our riflemen are much more effective man-for-man than their grandfathers in the Second World War thanks to optics, modern carbines, night vision equipment, and ceramic body armor, each man can only engage one point or area target at a time. We don’t need to cram more support weapons into an eight or nine man infantry squad, and we certainly shouldn’t issue such limited-persistence things as the XM-25 generally. It can’t replace the M4/M203 combo, since that still lets you bring a carbine to the close fight.
We also shouldn’t bother issuing them at higher levels (e.g. at the platoon level). At this level, we’re competing with proven weapon systems: mortars. In terms of support systems, a 60mm mortar is better in every possible way than the XM25. It’s significantly cheaper, can be broken into smaller loads and distributed so that light infantrymen can carry it and still have carbines for close-in fighting, and has larger, more effective rounds. It does require some training, but what weapon system doesn’t.3 Mortars work, and provide better range and true indirect-fire capability. What’s not to like?
On the other hand, that XM25 has also had consistent development problems, and it eats batteries. More logistics burden, hooray. It’s also seriously injured at least one tester in a nasty malfunction. This system is not ready for prime time. It needs to go. Somebody call the NKVD, see if we can get someone over here to give this thing a quick show-trial and a bullet in the back of the head.
So there you have it. Don’t bother with a new, expensive, heavy system that doesn’t work. Buy proven systems, like mortars, and save!
1.) About 9 inches long, which is pretty darn short.
2.) Supposedly this is after cost savings in production. Supposedly. It’s still too damn much.
3.) Yes, the XM25 also requires training. Duh.
In this episode, we debut a new segment, talk about our summer shooting sports plans, kick in virtual doors and shout, “Police! Freeze, scumbags!”, and bore our listeners to death with a piece called ‘logistical topics of interest’.
Happy Tax Day! Remember, your government is sufficiently bloated that Tax Freedom Day isn’t for another week.
