pikachu

http://www.wtsp.com/news/national/article/309930/81/Laser-beams-to-protect-US-Navy-from-drones What the heck is wrong with you? That was a serious question.

Well, yes. That's why I asked how. I'm not questioning the idea that there is a way to warn drones. I'm wondering how it's done in practice. I suppose firing warning shots might work, but you risk actually shooting down the drones if firing too close or having the drone miss the shots if not close enough, so I'm assuming there must be a more "peaceful" way of doing this. The idea that the drone might be able to pick up direct comm in the form of radio chatter is interesting, though. I wonder if this is doable in practice. AIUI the actual drone operator is actually "deaf"? In which case it's the intel analyst or the equivalent who would be receiving the warnings?

http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/10/22/japan-to-shoot-down-foreign-drones/ Wait, how can you issue warnings to a drone? I'm asking this seriously because I figure there must be an accepted method of doing this.

MiloMorai, BP, and Ivanhoe .... as referenced on Eric Palmer's defense blog, this recent analysis of the DDG-1000's tumblehome hull design, as posted on the Phisical Psience web site, raises further issues above and beyond the possibility of an always-wet deck: US NAVY - DDG 1000 - Zumwalt Class Destroyer, Tumblehome Hull The study uses the Chris Cavas video as one piece of reference material in supporting its conclusions. In spite of these criticisms of its basic design, it is apparent from all the pictures I've seen of the Zumwalt under construction that Bath Iron Works has used an exceptional level of craftsmanship in building this ship. The author of this article is clearly a defeatist! The government could never screw up such a critical, multi-year, multi-billion dollar program, especially with public eyes so focused on it. I don't have time to rebut his points, as I have to go sign up for Obamacare. Be back in 20-30 minutes. On a more serious note, I wonder if the LCS-2 hull form (not the full trimaran hull) could have been adopted to solve the stability issues. As I understand it, Independence has a normal hull which is then folded back upon itself to form a diamond shape at the bow, then continuing to form angled sides along the hull. This automatically takes care of the biggest weakness of the tumblehome hull (submerging the bow in the water), and AFAIK the litany of complaints besetting Independence (of which there are many) has not included submerging the helo deck during tight turns. That may be because the ship has an elevated platform for the deck, or maybe it's thanks to the trimaran hull design. In any case, it seems that a scaled-up, single-hulled Independence might actually satisfy many of the original requirements that drove designers to adopt the tumblehome hull without actually having to resort to using a tumblehome hull.

Actually, the thickness is the same all the way down, The interior wall is sloped too. It's not like in a Russian tank where the top of the turret front is thinner than the bottom. The side cross-section looks like a rounded parallelogram.

In the PLA, flamethrowers are deployed to Engineers Battalions for use in all sorts of non-combat work. This usually means stuff like clearing vegetation for construction. However, because PLA Engineers (like the US Army Corps of Engineers) are often deployed to aid in civilian work, occasionally pest control ends up on the list of stuff to do. Taking care of giant wasps is one use for the flamethrowers, but PETA probably won't like the other common use for it: Clearing burrows. There's currently a Central Asian rodent outbreak affecting China's Xinjiang province. Some say this is caused by the draining of the Aral Sea during Soviet times, but whatever the case marmots are eating the grasslands bare. Their population is extremely hard to control because the use of poison must be limited (and many colonies have figured out not to eat food left by strangers), so the surefire way nowadays for a village to get rid of unwanted guests is to call the local garrison and have them send a flamethrower unit. Apparently this works quite well.

Actually, Carius mentioned that this tactic was mostly used against static AT emplacements, not other tanks. IIRC in the chapter where he talked about angling the tank, he was busy playing whackamole against Soviet AT crews that kept burrowing through a dirt wall of some sort overnight so that in the morning he'd have to hunt down their new holes and snipe them. In the same battle when the Soviet tanks charged the Tigers stopped caring about angles and just looked for good hull down positions.

Otto Carius mentioned using this tactic in Tigers in the Mud. He also said it worked well against Soviet AP.

Back in 2001 I went to an interdisciplinary presentation by my Uni's Applied Fluid Mechanics lab where a USAF Major told us they were researching parachute behavior to develop ways to achieve 40t drops. Did this research ever bear fruit at all? Back then they said they'd passed 32t in testing. EDIT: Wait, it could also have been US Army. My memory's fuzzy on the details.

I wonder if the US Army is taking notes. I've always wondered about how the implementation of TUSK and other urban combat mods to Western tanks have focused on providing more protection for the TC (and/or loader) when he's out of his hatch, instead of increasing his ability to operate while buttoned-up. All that pile of gear on the top will get caught up in terrain as well and won't address the issue of it being very lethal for him to show ANY body part outside the tank in the first place. Was urban combat in Iraq and Afghanistan so much different from what we're seeing in Syria? On the other hand, given the thoroughness of the damage to optics in that example, it does beg the question of what CAN be done to increase ability to operate buttoned-up. Maybe something like the Japanese and German solution of adding small cams all over the tank can be done? I imagine an unholy number of webcam-sized apertures would be much more difficult to hit than relatively large periscopes, especially if there are multiple redundant units. The tank with a thousand eyes?

T-90 autoloader holds 22 rounds, just like Sprut and T-72. I don't know however if, after autoloader is depleted, crew tops up autoloader or if the other rounds are fed directly to the gun. oh...... I remember read s'where that the combat ready munition in soviet only 6 (2 missle and 4 HE/HEAT) so I got it wrong or it is the loading during peace time ? I think whoever told you this got it confused. In the T-72 and T-90, there are 22 ready rounds in the carousel and 5-6 spare rounds inside the turret fighting compartment. The rest of the spare rounds (IIRC 16) are stored all over the place in the hull. All the charges are kept in special cavities in the fuel tanks while the warheads are stored with clamps on the walls. After all 22 rounds are expended, the crew must reload the autoloader. It is theoretically possible to reload the gun manually, but there are protruding bits everywhere that make this extremely difficult. The simplest way is to simply reload the autoloader and let it work as intended. In reloading the autoloader, the spare rounds inside the fighting compartment are used first because they're the most accessible and crew understandably don't like sitting on ammo. This is probably where your acquaintance got the idea of "6 ready rounds". The T-80 and earlier T-64 use a completely different autoloader arrangement. As a result, they can fit 28 rounds inside their autoloaders.

To be precise, a "naked" 99A1. The ERA is not yet attached. This must be an old picture. They've stopped building that variant of the tank since 2012.

As cold-blooded as this may sound, any battlefield situation that would necessitate a Thunderbolt to expend all of its basic ammo loadout would probably kill it long before it could actually expend said ammo.

Man, this is how WOWSh should play out (and yes, I'm including the girls):

Meet IJN Fast Battleship Kongou: