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The War in Ukraine

I believe that based on some other stuff they have done to drop 105 and 155mm shells they they remove some of the safety components and simply make it a direct impact fuse - which is a fairly expensive waste of the round and fuse.

Not to mention dangerous as all fuck.
Paging @AmmoTech90

A tank HEAT shell dropped from above seems to be significant overkill, I’m not sure as to the WHY of the approach on this.
Just looked up the safety function in the M830 which seems elaborate:

Despite the fact that the M830A1 cumulative fragmentation warhead is made without any frills in the form of ready-made submunitions, the system for its detonation is organized in a very original way. And first of all, this concerns the detonator located at the bottom of the charge. It is located inside a kind of movable rotor with a traction load - a structure that simultaneously ensures that the projectile does not explode prematurely and generates the electrical energy necessary to trigger the detonator when it hits a target.

At the moment of firing, when the projectile accelerates in the barrel bore, the rotor moves backward under the influence of acceleration. Like a magnet and a coil, it, due to its movement, produces an electric current according to the principle of electromagnetic induction and charges a capacitor. After leaving the barrel, the projectile naturally begins to lose speed - the traction weight moves forward and puts the detonator in the firing position. Therefore, detonation of ammunition is possible only at a safe distance from the tank.
My knowledge about this are flash tube pins extracted by the centripetal forces of a spinning round and/or mechanical set back safeties. How to circumvent an electric fuze that operates on set back I know next to nothing about. We need a tanker or master gunner for that (or a Ukrainian in shorts and sandals)

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Specialist, huh? With safety sandals.

I know that needs must, but it is frankly terrifying watching them chisel away at HE rounds…
I guess Canada and NATO don’t supply boots.
Instead of specialist, how about Acme Technician.
Specialist, huh? With safety sandals.

I know that needs must, but it is frankly terrifying watching them chisel away at HE rounds…
 

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The sabot removal is fairly innocuous. Sandles, steel toed boots, poh-ta-toh, pot-a-toe. Does it meet ALARA risk levels, no. Do you have a very good chance of surviving it, yes.

As far as functioning, I would remove the electronic fuze altogether and replace it with something more fit for purpose.
Maybe a small tail fuze from a bomb. Maybe an inertia mechanism that arms when a pin is pulled on release and it is held safe while accelerating (falling). On deceleration it fires.
Use a small board that can process an input from an accelerometer and closes a relay when the signal drops.

So.many possibilities.
 
It’s behind a paywall and it’s a lengthy read, but this is an excellent article by Canada’s last true foreign correspondent. It’s about the elite of the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) and how they have been balls-to-the-wall since 2014 and earlier. Well worth the read.

 
Apparently you aren’t very stealthy on the ground…


Akhtubinsk is more than 600km behind the front lines - it's on the east bank of the Volga river.

I can't disagree with the comment in the tweet - hardened aircraft shelters seem like an excellent investment. Even the best fighters are completely vulnerable while they are on the ground.
 
I can't disagree with the comment in the tweet - hardened aircraft shelters seem like an excellent investment. Even the best fighters are completely vulnerable while they are on the ground.
Russia probably didn’t seriously consider that Ukraine could or would hit its forces 600km (this Su-57) or even 1800km (Voronezh-M early-warning radar) deep into Russian territory, so it thought hardened shelters for aircraft would be unnecessary…
 
Or just as likely, the money for the shelters went into a yacht…

Reminds me of a Russian joke about corruption and failing to provide the basics...

The Soviet Union is dead and things have begun to lighten up a bit. An old couple live in an apartment in Moscow and she sends her husband down to buy some meat for supper. After waiting in line for more than three hours, he gets to the counter and the shopkeeper says 'sorry, we are out of meat'.

For the first time in his life, the man has enough confidence to complain. He shouts at the shopkeeper 'I served in the Red Army and fought in Afghanistan, and then I served in the Russian Army and fought in Cechnya. After all these years, I still have to deal with this shit?'

A man in a leather jacket storms up and grabs the old man by his shoulders. Dragging him out of the shop, he takes him aside and calmly says 'Look old man, you know you shouldn't talk like that. Just think, a few years ago you would have been shot for saying those things.' The old man nods and the leather jacket man sends him home.

He walks back into his apartment, and his wife seeing him empty-handed says 'Run out of meat again have they?' He says: 'It's worse than that, not only have they run out of meat, they have also run out of bullets.'
 
I believe that based on some other stuff they have done to drop 105 and 155mm shells they they remove some of the safety components and simply make it a direct impact fuse - which is a fairly expensive waste of the round and fuse.

Not to mention dangerous as all fuck.
Paging @AmmoTech90

A tank HEAT shell dropped from above seems to be significant overkill, I’m not sure as to the WHY of the approach on this.
Use what you've got?
 
More WW1 tactics: Air to Air with a shotgun from an open cockpit propellor driven 2 seat trainer against a $100k Russian ISR drone (5:30)

 
It’s behind a paywall and it’s a lengthy read, but this is an excellent article by Canada’s last true foreign correspondent. It’s about the elite of the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) and how they have been balls-to-the-wall since 2014 and earlier. Well worth the read.

UnPayWallified (new word) link

 
More WW1 tactics: Air to Air with a shotgun from an open cockpit propellor driven 2 seat trainer against a $100k Russian ISR drone (5:30)

They need this for anti-drone

Mk1_Defiant.jpg
 
So to those good wIth defense economics math, what percentage of US GDP is actually spent on directly related NATO military expenditure? We give countries like Luxemburg or Belgium heck for not meeting the 2% target but ALL of their defense spending contributes to NATO as they have no overseas troops or bases to support or a blue water navy that spends most of its time in the Pacific.

Would be interesting to split off the GDP percentage focussed on the Middle East and China and see if the US actually does meet the 2% target when it is evaluated on the same playing field as the Baltics etc.

A similar question was asked in another thread not long ago and a couple of the responses were:

Difficult to answer, however the question has been asked and discussed elsewhere. An excerpt from a 2018 piece.



. . .

Guesstimating the Real Cost to the U.S. of Its Forces for NATO

Unfortunately, there is no official U.S. or NATO source that does estimate the actual portion of total U.S. defense spending that should be allocated to NATO. Such U.S. estimates were made in the past as a result of legislative action in the Senate Armed Services Committee by Senator Nunn and Senator Warner. The requirement for such reporting has long since lapsed, however, and there are no official U.S. estimates of what the U.S. currently actually spends on NATO.

Outside guesstimates of the costs of deploying U.S. forces outside the U.S. have uncertain credibility, but their size does show that they are only likely to be a fraction of 70%. For example, one recent low-end estimate puts the incremental cost of every U.S. overseas base and deployment at roughly $150 billion a year. This total would be only 24% of the low $706.1 billion total that Figure A1 shows NATO reports for total U.S. defense spending in current dollars in 2018, and only 16% of the total of $706.1 billion it reports for all of NATO. And once again, it should be stressed that this guesstimate of the burden, however, includes all U.S. forces in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and in the rest of the world.

An admittedly rough estimate by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) has far more credibility.[1] It only attempts to estimate the cost of U.S. forces in Europe and estimates that, "direct US expenses on defense in Europe (in current dollars) are estimated to range between US $30.7bn in 2017 and US $36.0bn in 2018, or between 5.1% and 5.5% of the total US defense budget, as measured by the IISS ($602.78 billion). These numbers, it could be argued, put the total defense spending of European NATO allies – US $239.1bn – in something of a different light." The $36.0 billion figure for 2018 would be only 5.1% of the $706.1 billion total reported by NATO – making the 70% some 64.9% higher.

As the IISS points out, however, simply costing the U.S. forces in Europe does not include the cost of any forces in the U.S. that are effectively dedicated – or earmarked or assigned to reinforcing NATO in a credible emergency or warfighting case. If one somewhat arbitrarily assumes that the total cost would be some three times higher than the cost of U.S. forces actually in Europe, a round number of $100 billion might be as good a guess as any. This would still, however, be a maximum of 14.1% of the U.S. total of $706.1 billion in current dollars that NATO reports for the U.S. in 2018. It would also be only 25% of the revised $ 407.3 billion total cost for NATO in 2018 – which would include $285.7 billion for NATO Europe and $21.6 billion for Canada.



So, possibly between 5% and 15% of the US defence budget. Of course, it could be much higher if troops were directly involved in a shooting war.

That is a very relevant question in this debate.

This particular chart is an older one from 2018 which shows the US share of European defence.




I've looked at the US 2023 budget overview which is not helpful as it only mentions the $4 billion European Defence Initiative and the 10,000 folks that are in USEUCOM (considerably less money and people than committed to the Middle East through CENTCOM)

Obviously the next logical question is what, if any, share of the remaining US defence budget could be considered "indirect" expenses with respect to the undeployed US forces which remain in CONUS and elsewhere. Also there is the issue of US expenditures in direct support of Ukraine (some $60 billion as compared to EU's contribution of $77 billion - Europe's military aid roughly equals the US's). Ukraine Support Tracker

I think that one can safely say that the US has a lot more irons in the fire than just Europe and has for some time now played an economy of force role there. European spending on "defence of Europe" greatly exceeds that of the US. What the US brings to the table is a large reserve force in the US that can potentially be brought into the European theatre. And it's fair to give that a value but it is unfair to suggest that the US is doing more than the Europeans for the "defence of Europe" just because it has the largest defence budget in the world by far.

And just so that my detractors won't be disappointed I'll reiterate my view that Canada's role in Europe should be a) a small forward full-time contingent; b) at least a brigade level of prepositioned equipment; and c) a large reserve of full and part-time trained personnel on fly-over taskings drawn from at least 11 equipped brigades (3 heavy, 1 light, 2 mech, 2 arty, 1 combat, and 2 sustainment). The personnel for that are within our current manpower allocations; the equipment on the other hand ...

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They need this for anti-drone

Mk1_Defiant.jpg
And I’m sure it’ll be as successful as it was in its intended purpose.

The small stuff isn’t going to be hit unless you put thousands of rounds in the area, and the large stuff flies too high.
 
And I’m sure it’ll be as successful as it was in its intended purpose.

The small stuff isn’t going to be hit unless you put thousands of rounds in the area, and the large stuff flies too high.
Beats using a shotgun and certainly adequate for Shahed drones and unlikely to be targeted with a R37

At the very least they should rip the back seat out the trainer and put a ring mounted LMG on it.

The Defiant found it's niche as a nightfighter defending the UK. When you look at the pace of aircraft development in the interwar period, it's quite crazy and every country had their dog, once the bullets started to fly.
 
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