@man_integrated As far as truck drivers go, the graduate degree & Silicon Valley tech head crowds have less than zero understanding of the work load.
It isn't just getting a commercial license for driving & driving.
Loads require different trailers & load plans the driver has to execute 1/
@man_integrated ...per thick federal, state, and company rule books.
Often the driver also has to be an all terrain fork lift operator as well in support of delivering to construction sites.
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@man_integrated Truckers carrying HAZMAT loads require additional training for signage, documentation, reporting and routing.
This is all long attention span theater through eye wateringly small text.
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@man_integrated Then there are the requirements to haul oversized loads.
Again, lots of eye wateringly small DoT text, signage, documentation, reporting, routing, and warning drivers ahead and behind the load. 4/
@man_integrated Then there is the risk. Truckers get in accidents, guaranteed.
It is a function of the amount of time they are diving and the road conditions.
A very small risk times a large enough number of times equals a certainty in a trucking career. 5/
@man_integrated Add to that long hours, truck stop food and no exercise, and you are going to get a stressed and morbidly obese individual in less than a decade.
400 Houthi aerial drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles were fired at/near USN ships since Oct 2023
120 SM-2 & 80 SM-6 missiles, 160 five-inch main guns rounds, plus a combined 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow and SM-3 missiles engaged them.
Drone War Cost Trades 🧵 1/
Tyler Rogoway has reported the following missile costs:
SM-2 Block IIIC - $2,530,000 per missile.
SM-6 - $4,270,000 per missile.
Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) RIM-162 Block II - $1,490,000 per missile.
SM-3 -$12,510,000 for the Block IB, and $28,700,000 for the Block IIA 2/
So:
120 SM-2 * $2.53 million = $303.6 million
80 SM-6 * $4.27 million = $341.6 million
12 ESSM (guess) = $17.88 million
6 SM-3 IB (guess) * $12.51 million = $75 million
2 SM-3 IIA (guess) * $28.7 million = $57.4 million
The fire and forget millimeter wave (MMW) radar guidance AGM-114L "Hellfire Longbow" being referred in the War Zone post as "a new anti-drone armament" for the LCS actually ceased production in 2005 and reaches end of life in 2025.
One of the reasons the AGM-114L was dropped from the US Army M-Shorad is the US Army didn't want to pay money to recertify the AGM-114L inventory...
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...with the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) equipped with dual-mode Semi-Active Laser (SAL) and millimeter wave (MMW) radar seeker just entering production.
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The process was invented by a Russian, Via wikipedia:
"The Russian chemist Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was the first to polymerize butadiene in 1910....
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...In 1926 he invented a process for manufacturing butadiene from ethanol, and in 1928, developed a method for producing polybutadiene using sodium as a catalyst.
The government of the Soviet Union strove to use polybutadiene as an alternative to natural rubber ...
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