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Sentinel-Safeguard Profile picture
Sentinel-Safeguard
@LIM49Spartan
Sep 4 • 8 tweets • 6 min read
I guess I should start an AGM-86 ALCM thread; since I dropped the ill-fated AGM-109 variants.

ALCM as we know it began with something completely different -- the SCAD (Subsonic Cruise Armed Decoy) program which began in 1969 or so to replace the earlier QUAIL decoy.

SCAD A would have been for the B-52, while SCAD-B would be for the B-1A.

Both would have had the option of a nuclear warhead.Image
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Image Somewhere along the way, SCAD became the AGM-86 SCAD, and then the ALCM. At this point (December 1974 and the ZAGM-86A) there was an option for a drop tank for extended range.

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Sep 4 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Once upon a time, @heatloss1986 there was a plan for the USAF to buy the Tomahawk. Image @heatloss1986 Naturally, the AGM-109 would have been launched from tons of platforms ranging from KC-10s... Image
Jan 7 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I've had some time to think about the Chinese "filled with water" claims; and I think I know what happened.

Every modern ICBM has what's called the "Post-Boost Vehicle"; which aims and releases the warheads following ICBM burnout.

Picture is of an American PBV.

1/ Image Virtually all PBVs use some form of liquid hypergolic propellants -- there are only a few exceptions, such as the USN's Trident PBVs which use a series of solid propellant gas generators to avoid hypergolics on a submarine. (They also have much less delta V)

/2
Mar 4, 2023 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
US Casualty Care in WW2, a thread.

"The Surgical Management of the Wounded in the Mediterranean Theater at the Time of the Fall of Rome"

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Has a nice diagram showing US casualty care circa the summer of 1944.

But how did all this work?

/1 Image books.google.nl/books?id=lFIEA…

LIFE Magazine in their 29 January 1945 issue followed one specific casualty from his wounding to arriving in the US.

/2
Mar 2, 2023 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
I've seen the following casualty rates tossed out:

150K UA v. 220K RU = 1.46x (RU journos connected to RU .mil)
100K UA v. 180K RU = 1.8x
100K UA v. 200K RU = 2.0x (US/NATO estimates)

The spread between RU and NATO cas estimate ratios isn't that great; the avg is 1.77x

/1 Prior Ratios are:

1991 Gulf War: 100 to 114x (unclear)
2003 OIF: 20x (unclear)
1956 Suez : 10.34x
1967 Six Days: 3.7x
1993 Mogadishu: 3.42x
1945 Okinawa: 2.44x
1979 Soviet-Afghan War: 2.19x
1973 Yom Kippur War: 1.5x
1942/43 Stalingrad: 1.29x
1945 Iwo Jima: 1.25x

/2
Feb 28, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
@TrentTelenko, Shoigou may have inadvertently revealed🇷🇺casualty ratios back in Sep '22 when commenting on🇺🇦casualties.

armenpress.am/eng/news/10930…

That comes out 55.4% KIA, 44.6% WIA - and that's for the first portion of the war when conditions were more favorable to Russia.

/1 @TrentTelenko Socialist scientificism (for lack of a better term) required incredibly precise figures when stating things in the USSR. So when it came to analyzing 🇺🇦 casualty estimates; Shoigou's speechwriters used 🇷🇺 ratios to get those numbers. Oops.

/2 END
Oct 8, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A while back I saw a comment by someone (can't remember who, sorry) that the most common 🇷🇺 tank AP round was 3BM42 'Mango' APFSDS -- which is a pretty "old" round that entered service in...1986.

/1 I just realized now that the use of MANGO may be due to the Frankensteined status of the 🇷🇺 tank fleet -- you have a lot of older tanks from the 1980s still in service; albeit lightly modernized.

/2
Oct 8, 2022 • 21 tweets • 9 min read
@TrentTelenko, I am seeing some rumors that a boat was passing under the Kerch Strait bridge just before it exploded. 🤔If true, it means JAVAMAN rides again.

For those of you who don't know, JAVAMAN was part of the overall US effort to develop robot drones in WW2.

/1 @TrentTelenko The USN had it's own WW2 drone program, which was

PT Boats: 30 kts with 17 tons of TNT
Destroyer Escorts: 17 kts with 1,200 tons of TNT
Cargo Ship (AK): 13 kts with 8,000 tons of explosives

/2
Sep 30, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
@TrentTelenko @azeem You know, on second thought...now that I've had time to think about this, @TrentTelenko is correct. I've been basing my assumptions on "classic" World War II studies for aerial spraying or artillery shell delivery (ref 1946 FM3-5 / FM3-6); which are wildly inefficient.

/1 @TrentTelenko @azeem During WW2, they did a lot of studies on how best to deliver CW; and found that aerial spraying from high altitude (12,000+ ft or so) didn't work as well as from low altitude (200~ ft or so).

/2
Sep 9, 2022 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
This is an elaboration from an earlier tweet thread by me:

()

Now that I've had time to sit down and type things out on a real keyboard; I think the reasons for the Russian Collapse we're seeing go back several months.

/1 I think that since around May or so of this year, the majority of RU ground forces along the front have been skeletons -- i.e. only 50 or so men in a 700 man BTG; whether from pre-war corruption, or combat losses with no replacements.

/2
Jul 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
@TrentTelenko , COD still has her WW2 era IFF destruction system installed! Image From talking with a museum guy, these were known as "DARTER switches"
May 14, 2022 • 86 tweets • 27 min read
In my previous thread; I talked about how "firepower oriented" RU design philosophies were, in relation to other priorities. After some thought, I feel that a little more information is necessary. We'll start off with this declassified CIA summary from 1980.

/1 Image In the post-WW2 era, well into the 70s; a lot of military thought centered around the classic "WW3" scenario -- where there would either be the outright use of tactical nukes from day one, or days of increasingly high intensity conventional war ending with strategic release.

/2 Image
May 1, 2022 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Let's discuss this captured BMD-4 walkthru posted on Ukraine Weapons Tracker:



1/ As previously noted by UWT; it's previously unseen footage; the snow indicates it was videotaped perhaps in February or March.

2/
Apr 16, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
A thread on Russian Navy firefighting capabilities.

A friend of mine pointed out an article (in Russian) from November 2018 that had been getting some attention recently.

/1 Apparently Soviet ships designed before 1980 did not have a fully centralized fire alarm system. The Project 1164 (Slava) Cruisers, of which Moskva was one, fell into this period; having been designed in the early 1970s.

/2
Apr 14, 2022 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
A thread on corruption in the Russian Navy.

There's a strong possibility that the Moskva's Anti-aircraft systems may have been severely degraded before the war.

A nameless anon on 4chan posted the text of a news article that piqued my interest and prompted this thread.

1/ Back in 2012, Captain of the First Rank (equivalent to NATO OF-5 Captain) Igor Supranovich (Игорь Супранович) was the Deputy Head of the Department of the Ministry of Defense for ensuring State Defense Orders.

He had contract authority over the following systems:

/2