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The Old Hack

Discussion of Military, real or fictional

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

I was the last tracking radar mechanic to work on a Nike-Hercules site as the duty mechanic.  Nike Herc lasted until the mid 80s, Nike Ajax was phased out in the early 60s for US forces.

The Nike Ajax was early enough that it likely still had vacuum tube electronics. The Nike Hercules seems that even if initially designed for vacuum tube technology, it would have been upgraded to solid state (transistors). Early transistors were not robust. They used a 'cat's whisker' connection to the active zone on the transistor. But they would have been a significant weight and power reduction.

Having a monopoly in SAMs did not last long.

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On 3/2/2023 at 9:21 AM, mlooney said:

The radar cross section of most modern western military aircraft is about the size of a large hawk, never mind a stealth aircraft.  There was an incident during the testing phase of Nike-Ajax where a vulture was mistaken for the drone target they were supposed to be firing on and was blown out of the sky.  They only found out about them firing on the wrong thing when they got a call from the range controller wondering what they were firing on as there was a problem with the drone and it had not been launched yet.

 

On 3/2/2023 at 8:26 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Birds is why size matters, although a flock will still throw you off. Most birds fly pretty low, hence 20,000 feet. You could probably do 10,000.

Radar warning of stuff to avoid, if you are in a plane, you probably don't want to ignore the birds.

 

Recent adjustments to NORAD radars

It appears that they are looking at slower objects, using height as a threat factor. You are right that the RCS 'size' is damn small, better than what I recall from back in the day.

 

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The Nike Ajax was early enough that it likely still had vacuum tube electronics. The Nike Hercules seems that even if initially designed for vacuum tube technology, it would have been upgraded to solid state (transistors). Early transistors were not robust. They used a 'cat's whisker' connection to the active zone on the transistor. But they would have been a significant weight and power reduction.

Having a monopoly in SAMs did not last long.

Nike Herc was 80-95% vacuum tube.

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You may have seen this photo claiming it was a Leopard 2 captured by Russian forces after it got stuck in the mud.
Problems with this

  1. Leopard 2 haven't been sent to Ukraine yet
  2. This is a 4 year old photo from a German training ground

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJ0F-H7Y1jLuVfXGhOlis

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3 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Nike Herc was 80-95% vacuum tube.

I lived near one of the last remaining vacuum tube plants in the US in the early 70s. Their primary customer was the Titan missile program. CRTs were a long time holdout as well. High frequency components were another niche, eroding if not vanished. I think microwave ovens still use magnetrons, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Oddly, lighting has an old tech holdout not being overwhelmed, yet. Oven bulbs. The LED electronics is heat sensitive. Seems like this, too, will be overcome, eventually. (My info is a few years old, it may have already happened.)

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

You may have seen this photo claiming it was a Leopard 2 captured by Russian forces after it got stuck in the mud.
Problems with this

  1. Leopard 2 haven't been sent to Ukraine yet
  2. This is a 4 year old photo from a German training ground

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJ0F-H7Y1jLuVfXGhOlis

Well, they definitely got one thing right: it's stuck in the mud.

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I don't want to say that Russia is scrapping the bottom of the barrel, but this is a chassis from the 70's mixed with a naval turret from 45.

z8wnauspljla1.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&a

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I suspect that at this point they are just trying to find "reserve" AFV that run and then try to make them relevant to the modern battle field.  The turret on the MTLB is a naval AA turret, but it's not known if this is for anti-drone use or just general MORE DAKKA for infantry support.

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8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

This is embarrassing. Didn't they used to have one of the best militaries? I guess it's good enough for shooting up civilians.

As the joke goes, Russia used to have the second best military in the world. Now they just have the second best military in Ukraine.

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When you invade a land with a population determined to keep you out, things do not always go your way. They could have learned this from their experiences in WW II, from their invasion of Afghanistan, and from the US's fiasco in Vietnam. One lesson is clear from the latter two; spin on the home front does not change the facts on the battlefield.

They should also know that callous disregard for civilians just pisses off the population and makes them more determined, but no one ever seems to get that.

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On 3/5/2023 at 2:35 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

They should also know that callous disregard for civilians just pisses off the population and makes them more determined, but no one ever seems to get that.

Especially militaristic states and dictators tend to forget that. They think of the general populace as helpless sheep that will knuckle under after a few demonstrations of force. But in most cases this kind of behavior merely causes the resistance to grow ever more embittered and hardened.

Police state terror can sometimes work, but it requires a population that is either mostly complacent or indifferent. It is much simpler to attack and terrorize a minority of the population, especially if/once it has been demonized and isolated from the rest. That way you can get lots of informers and stool pigeons to happily do your work for you. But once the vast majority of the population has been alienated, the equation shifts. Then you literally require an army to keep the population pacified, one that has been trained for the task and is constantly on guard. And any and all informers are suddenly taking their lives into their hands, for if they get found out, they are very likely to have some sort of fatal accident happen to them. This reduces their enthusiasm a great deal.

Militarily conquering a nation is the easy part. Keeping it subdued is much harder and can consume many years. Once you have angered a population so much and it has grown embittered, you may be looking at constant guerilla warfare against you for a very long time. Even if Putin somehow successfully occupied Ukraine at this point, he would be up against a population that utterly despises all things Russian, with massive numbers of weaponry still loose in the general population and a sizeable remnant of battle hardened veterans. And the force he has down there at the moment isn't even big enough to lock down on this sort of guerilla opposition. This war was a profound mistake on his part and at this point it has failed on every level. Ukraine will break Putin if it hasn't already done so.

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7 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Militarily conquering a nation is the easy part. Keeping it subdued is much harder and can consume many years.

I have said this very thing when the US invaded Iraq. It applies even more so to Afghanistan.

 

9 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Even if Putin somehow successfully occupied Ukraine at this point, he would be up against a population that utterly despises all things Russian, with massive numbers of weaponry still loose in the general population and a sizeable remnant of battle hardened veterans.

Yeah, even if Russia somehow wins, they loose.

 

13 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

This war was a profound mistake on his part and at this point it has failed on every level.

I think he knows that, even if he won't say so.

 

14 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Ukraine will break Putin if it hasn't already done so.

In some sense it has. I believe he was initially popular for some valid reasons, years ago. Now, he has nothing left but peoples' fear of him. Well, I suppose there's also a MRGA base, too. Would they have ironic blue hats?

I read his Wiki bio recently, and was surprised how phony he is. He was a KGB operative. Well, yes, but apparently not a very good one. In East Germany, he botched destroying records when the Wall fell.  He has a technical masters degree. His thesis was plagiarized from a Western textbook. He was a functionary in the Mayors office in Moscow, and was conveniently bumped up several step to his position, an odd rise to power filling a political vacuum. I was left scratching my head, "Why is he even there?" I thought there was more basis to his presence. No credentials, no track record, just a lot of blowhard rhetoric, photo ops, and posturing. Why does this sound familiar?

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I hate auto correct.  Fortunately I don't do much on a device that uses it.  On the other hand I more or less live by the red underline.  The difference is that I can ignore the underline and send the message as I typed it. 

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15 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

On phone texts, I type slowly enough that I can let the autotext do the typing for me in most cases, and I can ignore it in other cases.

Yeah, there is a difference between "predictive keyboards" and one that changes what you type. One is useful, the other is from the devil.

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Yeah, there is a difference between "predictive keyboards" and one that changes what you type. One is useful, the other is from the devil.

Yes, but after WW III, no one complained . . .

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