XBradTC

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Russian AO 2.5RT submunitions used for cooking by a Syrian   <a href="https://t.co/bEKd1kZ9is">https://t.co/bEKd1kZ9is</a> <a href="https://t.co/kW1HucZBkC">pic.twitter.com/kW1HucZBkC</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/bm21_grad">@bm21_grad</a></p>&mdash; Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) <a href="https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/747173898299543553">June 26, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Back when the services had a sense of humor.

You’ve probably seen some pretty cool pics of the converted DC-10 fire tanker. Well, now Boeing has converted a 747.

Mountain flying from Global SuperTanker on Vimeo.

Actually, it’s not the first time a 747 has been converted. Years ago, Evergreen Aviation converted a 747-200 as a tanker, but it’s been out of service for several years now.

The ultra large tanker role is a niche, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool for fighting wildfires, particularly near population areas.

You’re probably aware by now that the US Air Force and Navy both use the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) to suppress enemy air defense radars during combat.

The missile detects the emissions of the enemy radar, and steers itself toward it. A proximity fuse detonates the warhead just above the transmitting antenna, and sends out of shower of tungsten shrapnel to shred it and put it out of action.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that our potential enemies field similar missiles. These, as a class, are generally known as ARMs, Anti-Radiation Missiles.

We tend to think of US air superiority as being based on bad ass fighters like the F-22 and F-15 being controlled by the mighty E-3 Sentry AWACS. Which, sure. But we only have 33 AWACS. And so the Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Army, all operate a fairly large number of ground based radars, some for the fighter control mission, and many simply for the military equivalent of routine air traffic control. For instance, the USAF has about 60 AN/TPS-75 radars to support operations worldwide.

Not surprisingly, the USAF would rather not have enemy ARMs hitting their TPS-75s, both because they need the radars, and because there are people in the shelters operating them that they would prefer not get blown up.

We’re all used to seeing the pencil thin beam of a radar sweeping around a circular scope. And for the most part, the antenna array is designed to do just that, direct as much of the R/F energy into the smallest possible beam. Unfortunately, no system is perfect. Some R/F energy is actually emitted all around the compass. This “spillage” of R/F energy is generally referred to as the sidelobe (the main beam being the main lobe).

ARMs don’t actually track the radar via the main lobe. Instead, they detect the side lobes and home in on that.

Obviously, sidelobe suppression techniques become important to the radar designer. Antenna design, active cancellation (similar to noise cancelling headphone technology) and deception techniques all can come into play.

One deception technique to use a decoy.

For the TPS-75, there is a dedicated and associate decoy system, the TLQ-32. The Tickle 32 is actually a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment.  It isn’t enough that the decoy simply transmit on the same frequencies as the radar. It has to actually mimic the genuine sidelobes of the radar, and the transmission characteristics of the main beam (such as pulse width and pulse repetition frequency) in real time. And so, up to three Tickle 32s can be connected to the TPS-75 via fiber optic cable and placed in such a manner as to draw any ARMs away from the genuine radar. The fiber optic cable allows the main radar signal processor to send a  message to each decoy what the next radar pulse will look like (modern radars tend to shift these things around a bit to avoid jamming).

As to the post title? Apparently, the location where the operators place the TLQ-32s, where they hope the enemy missiles will harmlessly impact, is known in the trade as the ARM pit.

As a general matter, I’m usually annoyed when foreigners comment on domestic American politics, as they tend to lack a proper frame of reference. Not to mention, they don’t get a vote. And so, as a matter of consistency, I’m somewhat reticent to address last night’s historic vote in the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.

Whether such a withdrawal will be beneficial to England in the long term remains to be seen. There will be unintended consequences, either for good or ill, that we simply cannot foresee at this time. In the short term, uncertainty will almost certainly have some negative impact on the UK economy, and possibly that of the remaining EU nations.

What I have seen this morning is the usual collection of “elite” leftists proclaiming that those voting to leave the EU are nationalistic xenophobes who are racist racists.

Well, when you put it that way…

Why is it that so much of the left spends all its time lauding the wonders of foreign cultures, and demeaning their own?

The modern left is certain that colonialism, in particular that of the British Empire, is the Original Sin which may never be extirpated.

The funny thing is, however, at one point or another, virtually every inch of the globe has been colonized at one point or another, by one culture or another.

And if you take a look around the world today at the third world, you can very roughly divide it into those nations that were colonized by the British, the Spanish, or the French. Those places where the Spanish or French flag flew tend to be economic disasters, and rife with corruption and weak rule of law.

In contrast, those areas where the British once held sway (such as, say, the United States) tend to be rather more successful.

Maybe, just maybe, there is something to that British culture, with its long history of individual rights, due process, and representative government.

The obvious elephant in the room is immigration.  Anyone opposed to open borders is immediately branded a racist. And as we all know, the greatest villainy possible today is racism.

But for many average Englishmen, the unchecked flow of third world people into their country has led to quality of life issues, and increased competition for jobs, suppressed wages, and importantly, increased crime. When the average Englishman sees an immigrant come to the shores of Albion, and immediately demand social benefits (that is, the dole) and demand that the Englishman adapt to his culture, and not he to England’s, is it any wonder that resentment is fueled?

But the Englishman’s vote isn’t so much a protest against “the bloody wogs” as it is a protest against those in the political establishment who told him he was wrong, and indeed, immoral, for so much as raising the question as to whether importing tens of thousands of angry young men was a good idea.

The 1^st Guards Tank Army was formed in the Soviet Union, during the Second World War, in 1943. It was disbanded in 1999, but re-established in 2015. As more details about this reborn heavy military unit come to light, worries increase about the threat it may specifically pose to the Baltic region.

This past May, the military-focused news outlet Zvezda, established by the Russian Ministry of Defense, reported that the 1st Guards Tank Army is to include the famous Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya Divisions. The article did not mince words, openly declaring: “The new Army is able to neutralize the threat from the Baltic countries [sic].” And the headline was no less remarkable, alluding to the Tank Army’s offensive orientation: “New Russian Divisions Are the Hammer That Will Break Any Defense” (Zvezda, May 11).

via www.jamestown.org

Russia is trying very hard to intimidate the Baltic states to ease away from the NATO alliance, and embrace closer ties with Russia.

As noted in the article, the current thinking is there is little chance Russia will invade the Baltics. But there was little chance Russia would seize Crimea and invade eastern Ukraine, either.

Of course, the Baltics are NATO nations, so that changes things somewhat. On the other hand, the perfidy of European nations can't be discounted. Does Germany really want to go to war for Latvia?

The US and partner nations have spent the last couple of years rotating a series of forces into the Baltic nations, but the possibility for a Russian miscalculation, or low level types of hybrid operations is quite real.

In the early 1950s, the Royal Navy faced a not altogether new problem. The Soviet Navy was fielding the fast light cruisers of the Sverdlov class. Those cruisers had the potential to be very effective commerce raiders in the North Sea and the Barents. The traditional Royal Navy solution would be to build a class of cruisers to counter them. But post-war financial strain meant that wasn’t really an option, and building a counter simply encouraged a naval arms race.

Instead, the RN decided, in keeping with the thinking that was common in the atomic age, to try a new approach.  Need to sink a Sverdlov?  Nuke it.

While today the thought of unleashing nuclear weapons for any reason is fraught with the risk of a world wide nuclear exchange that would destroy civilization as we know it, in those days, it was almost taken as a given that nuclear weapons use would be common, both at sea, and on the battlefield. The hydrogen bomb of megaton proportions wasn’t terribly common, and the ballistic missile was not yet fielded. 

To deliver a nuclear weapon against the Soviet cruisers, the RN needed a fast, long range attack jet that could operate from its existing fleet carriers. A low level, high speed attack run would end with a “long toss” attack, where the jet pulled up into an Immelman, releasing its nuclear bomb at about the 45 degree point.  At the top of the half loop, the jet would roll upright, dive back to the deck, now headed away from the target, and escape the blast. The bomb, in the meantime, would travel in an arc to the cruiser, and detonate somewhere in the vicinity, close enough to at least put the ship out of the fight, if not outright sinking it.

Several companies in Britain proposed plans to fulfill the requirement, and eventually Blackburn, a traditional supplier of attack aircraft to the Royal Navy, won the competition, and designed and produced the Blackburn Buccaneer.

The Buccaneer would enter service with the Royal Navy in the early 1960s. Eventually, the idea of using nuclear weapons at sea was supplanted (though the Bucs retained a nuclear strike role for use in Western Europe) and the Bucs instead focused on using conventional weapons, anti-ship guided missiles, and a land attack role.

Primarily for financial reasons, the Royal Navy phased its large fleet carriers out of service during the 1970s. At the same time, the Royal Air Force  was facing a problem. Its plan to field the TSR.2 was cancelled on cost grounds. The replacement for the TSR.2, the F-111K, was similarly cancelled.  And the replacement for the F-111K, the Panavia Tornado, was many years from service. Somewhat reluctantly, beginning in the late 1960s, the RAF accepted surplus Bucaneers from the RN, strictly as an interim aircraft. In the event, the Buccaneer would provide yeoman service to the RAF from 1968 to 1993, including combat in Desert Storm.