1/? Heretical tank design ideas.

Steel’s time has come and gone. We should be looking at composite over titanium for both armor and hull structures.

Kerosene / diesels time has come. Tank flammability needs to go down. Batteries, JP-7, other fuels that don’t burn at STP, … 2/ Ammunition is too flammable. The cases that burn off are too easy to externally ignite. Options should include traditional cases, lighter cases with internal fireproofing coating, hard to ignite propellant with ElectroThermal Chemical ignition / energy boost.

Ok. Spinning up some analysis after going through all the available reports on the Iranian attack against Israel today.

There are slightly conflicting reports on numbers of weapons used, but around 110-120 ballistic missiles preceded by around 50 cruise missiles and 140 drones. It appears that all of the cruise missiles and drones were shot down. It seems like local US and Saudi and Jordanian air defenses (and possibly jets) plus Israeli jets did the shooting down.

@DuitsmanMS B/ When KN-08 first paraded in 2012 the state of missile OSINT was somewhat more primitive. We didn’t have easily available recent satellite imagery, NK photo availability was poor, and experts were more widely dispersed. @DuitsmanMS C/ The earliest size analysis of KN-08 ICBM missiles went straight to “what’s the engine(s)?” This was the era of size estimation still using the large transporter tires, just for reference.

1/ Short thread on what we think North Korea launched today. We think it’s going to turn out to be this chonky boi, the Hwasong-17 ICBM. 2/ Hwasong-17 was first seen on military parade (shown here) then at an arms show, where we learned our guess that it was designated HS-16 was incorrect.

So… with additional evidence available now it looks a lot like Ukraine hit the Russian amphibious ships unloading armor and weapons in occupied port of Berdyansk with a Tochka or Tochka-U short range ballistic missile. One ship burning badly probably lost.

https://twitter.com/aldin_ww/status/1506868981612822529

Geolocation of their offloading with the fire

https://twitter.com/elintnews/status/1506867112542937094

1/ Update from Ukrainian nuclear agency on damage to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from earlier attacks. Two points of concern. snriu.gov.ua/en/news/update…

#Zaporizhzhia 2/ First, they are confirming damage to the external “reactor compartment” building of the Unit 1 reactor. No information or claim about internal damage, which presumably means none found.

Civilian cargo ship leaving Odessa port now. Another cargo ship scooting out of Odessa. Still no signs of attacks on Odessa from available webcams and other reports.

@QuinnyPig Reinterating my story from Hurricane Sandy.

Was consulting at a small internet service company when Sandy hit. First projected landfall was right into DC / Northern Virginia. Projected eyewall track over all the us-east-1 datacenters I think. Our stuff was all there. 1/ @QuinnyPig 2/ So we quickly stand up configuration management server in AWS Oregon. Ok. Can rebuild site from private Github + CM; just need DNS switch. Done.

Had horrible feeling, called GitHub. “Are you by any chance in us-east-1?”
“Yes.”
“Only us-east-1?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”

Friday was Danger Day. 11 years ago at this time, I was leading an extremely uncomfortable outage assessment WebEx session, moreso because I didn’t technically consult there anymore and there had been some hands waved.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Side… Around 1am was when the Oracle guy watched the last disk scan for Oracle ASM headers on the LUNs on the Hitachi come back negative and indicated they couldn’t help under the circumstances.

Then the poor T-mobile DBA said “We’re fucked.”

@fab_hinz Ok, I get 620 meters from there to center of explosions warehouse. Popping some formulas... @fab_hinz If we call that 2-3 PSI there (concrete block perimeter wall partly collapsed) ... 3 PSI would give:
0.62 = y^0.33 x 1.0
y^0.33 = 0.62
y = .238 kilotons, about 240 tons TNT equivalent

Project Covidville

This is a new project I’m starting in order to help bring home the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on America. The premise is simple: the fastest growing US city today is the City of #Covidville , populated by our recently dead.
1/ Each day, we’ll look at how #Covidville grows and the cities that it passes. We’ll use CDC total US Coronavirus deaths statisics ( cdc.gov/coronavirus/20… ) and estimated 2019 US Cities population rankings in Wikipedia ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U… )
2/

Meta-commentary about the Russian bounties on US troops thing.

I’m assuming it’s real, fooling the national security reporter ms at NTY and Washington Post simultaneously is possible but really difficult. DOD and Intelligence sources not widely rebutting the claims now. 2/ It’s not surprising that it would be kept secret for a time. Intelligence and the military and leadership would want to verify as strongly as possible. The consequences of a half baked response to a mistaken report is immense.

Presumably it was by now adequately confirmed.

@nktpnd @NuclearAnthro @wslafoy @mgerrydoyle 😳🙄😂 ok. I’ll do an explainer in a bit now that I’m home and have food @nktpnd @NuclearAnthro @wslafoy @mgerrydoyle Ok. Short Thread: What's the "Flat Earth" approximation in missile trajectories, and why I'd use and mention it.

Brief explainer thread on the Chinese DF-17 Hypersonic Glide Vehicles and why they matter.

These puppies.
@nktpnd @ArmsControlWonk @divert_thruster @DuitsyWasHere etc
1/ If you follow North Korea a lot, you saw these only a month or two ago. 2/

1/ Related meta-followup to my 50-something tweet thread analyzing & interpreting the Israeli reveal on Iran's historical nuclear weapons program

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Prompted by @ArmsControlWonk and @aaronstein1 comments on the Armscontrolwonk podcast armscontrolwonk.com/archive/120512… 2/ I know Jeffrey in real life, so this is all in good cooperative friendship. But part of the conversations on the podcast got into some criticism of my taking the lid off the Iranian designs technology details some and explaining how it works.

I am slow motioning the Netanyahu presentation on Iran's prior bomb program (pre-2003), taking screen captures if technical items of note. Up to implosion system so far (which on first impression aligns with prior leaks and technical analysis thereof). Work in progress. 1/ Ok. Having finished with capturing screenshots, brief policy points:
A) None of Netanyahu's framing or fact claims exceed the conservative assumptions I and other NP people used to assess value of JCPOA.
B) Tech not worse either. Just better details, sources.

Prelim North Korean "Mr Peanut" Arm, Fuze, Firing wiring connections diagram. Descriptions in morning. @srianjalidevi75 @ArmsControlWonk References: Front and Back views of the AFF cannister.