Clayton Bigsby

Windows look weird. Kinda looks TG2 Dark Star-ish from the front.

I read on Twitter the Su-25 punchout/SukaBlyat was in June, in Russia, training. Belgorod Oblast. Hit a power line. Hence the lollygagging. Also the orange parachute risers are apparently only used in the training environment. red= powerline blue= pond green= aircraft track. And marker is final location.

Also featured as a device to smuggle a Soviet defector in The Living Daylights.

As a former LM, i'd like to point out adding a boom to the back end of a cargo aircraft isn't trivial. Assuming it's a two-piece door like the C-17 and C-130 (ramp and cargo door), yeah theoretically you could add it to the cargo door, which opens up and into the upper fuselage; but obviously you'd have to have the fuel lines, necessary hydraulics/control wires etc. attached via flexible lines to the door, and still have enough clearance for the door to retract up against roof of the aft fuselage. I can't speak to the -130, but on the -17 that's not a whole lot of clearance up there, and the door is already used for ramp toe, cargo gate bar, roller tray and centerline seat stowages, along with other small items like the engine core hydraulic hand pump (if Mx actually put it away where it goes, and hasn't been lazy and left it strapped down on the cargo floor somewhere), engine covers, etc. And once the door is open, how far does the boom attachment protrusion stick down? You've now lost a bunch of vertical clearance for pallets, or vehicles driving up and over the ramp crest (which is why mil cargo aircraft have upward-bulged rear fuselages, so tall items like an 18-wheeler trailer or a Chinook helicopter or whatever have upwards room to clear when going across the ramp crest). The ramp, well on the -17 it's used as a loading and lifting surface (up to 40,000 lbs, and 4 pallet spots in Logistics bias, two in ADS), and there isn't much room to work with. The ramp is obviously intended to go down to the ground so if you somehow had a boom hanging off the bottom of it, it wouldn't be able to do that anymore, and even if it strictly went to horizontal for pallets only there still isn't a lot of clearance underneath, like 3 feet, plus you have the boom sticking out however far behind meaning a k-loader likely can't drive up to the back of the ramp for cargo transfer. Also you'd lose a point of ground egress as the ramp blowdown is somewhat negated now. Underneath the belly, between the mains yeah I suppose that's a possibility, it's just a low ground clearance (2-3 feet) as cargo planes typically sit low so they can be unloaded at truck bed height, unless you want to do a bunch of hydraulic jackscrew variable-height bullshit like a C-5 and then wonder why the fucker breaks all the time. The C-97 had a bomb-bay style cargo loading door at the aft fuselage, which looks like steep sketchy shit for loading vehicles, and for the KC-97s the boom pod and boom mount was a plug that went in, in lieu of those doors. Point of all this is I'd imagine the -390 is really similar to the -17 and -130, and I think the A400M is as well. Mil airlift moved away from the 4-5 door system of petal and bulkhead doors like in the -141, FRED, An-124 and Il-76 for a reason (and it's not like those would help in this situation), and other than manufacturer's concept art I don't think anyone has ever really put a boom on the back of a mil airlifter. It's not a casual undertaking, and I think once you've done that it's kind of a one-way street, hard to imagine it still being an effective airlifter anymore even if it's a secondary ability. Now that's all for the traditional boom grafted onto the aircraft approach. If you could have the whole tanker setup be a substantial palletized system, with the boom extending out through the cargo door/ramp opening and then down, and able to be entirely sucked back in to close those doors, that could work. But now you're depressurizing every time you give someone gas.

Hogue grips guy.

Good, fuck 'em.

Well, whatever, I'm sure the CCP will spin it as "The Great Leap Forward: Part Deux" or "The Next People's Cultural Revolution" or whichever iteration of Long March it is. But yeah maybe Pooh Bear is toast.

Awhile back you could do the PlaneTags thing and get a keychain from metal from shot down RuAF Su-34s or -35s, etc, but it was realllllll spendy. Still, what a cause.

Maybe not? https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukrainian-mig-29s-are-firing-agm-88-anti-radiation-missiles

So what’s shooting the HARMs? https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u-s-confirms-air-launched-anti-radiation-missiles-sent-to-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR1f7pWPQlNtsmgTt-4eZ9swzskGs1UB_cZ-2ps7XJImSQpQ0OoOa0_0jV8

Posted this in the Russo/Ukrainian shenaniganz thread awhile back

yeah he ragequit a long time ago

I seent it, I dug it.

It can happen to anybody. Scott Crossfield died flying into a thunderstorm.

Ever read "The Heart of Darkness"? The parallels are unreal. Joseph Conrad's novel about colonial Africa, late 1800s I think. I had to read it for classes a couple times, once in high school and twice in college. "For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere." Anyway that book inspired a couple follow-ons, the classic Apocalypse Now, the newer sci-fi movie Ad Astra, and a video game 10 years back or so called 'Spec-Ops: The Line'.

I thought this was an interesting read. The stuff about the fight at Hostomel (Antonov) airport particularly. https://thedebrief.org/know-no-mercy-the-russian-cops-who-tried-to-storm-kyiv-by-themselves/

What I don’t understand is when the FAA said ‘nah’, why they didn’t just go do it in Mexico, where anything goes. They were in Arizona already…just do it over there. Instead they directly challenged the FAA, after they’d made their ruling.

But I think expecting Icelandic industry to produce a stealth bomber, for example, is completely unrealistic.

You both miss my point completely. Russia over the past two months has presented Exhibit A of why that alliance exists and should continue to do so, and has likely completely upended the past 30 years' worth of arguments you're both sticking with. It's not all over yet, based on the last 30 years your points are not without merit and the follow through from Germany and others is obviously key. But look at how the world was reshaped post WWII, and how prosperous that has been for everyone, and then take a look at those who lived under the Soviet boot and see the deep scars there. Pretty sure I know how I'd like the world to be molded. Don't cede that, or you'll be back again.

Isolationism, "Europe's problem, no way that'll get to us"...haven't we as Americans learned that lesson twice? More? And those 'complicated alliances' have thus far kept us out of WWIII, through all the nastiness of the Cold War and beyond. Why is Russia pissed at the idea of the Swedes and Finns joining NATO? They lose their ability to threaten and bully their neighbor, and walk right in when they don't get their way. Alliances are not perfect, Germany's obscene 'elephant walk' of Eurofighters where they had to tow a good portion onto the runway to stage the photo because they were all NMC is emblematic of the problem...but that doesn't mean you don't adjust or fix those things, and not junk the whole thing altogether. And I'd say security is worth paying for, unless you like Novorossiya. And opposing that (a new Russian Empire) is a pretty fucking clear objective.

The new conservatism is forgetting the past century plus' worth of historical lessons, paid in blood (to the tune of about 200 million dead), all for immediate convenience. But yay America First!

Feel like this is a matter of time…

^ The Ukes are pretty much taking a cue from the Zombieland movies with the 'Zombie kill of the week'

It gets better - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-strikes-back-su-27s-bomb-occupied-snake-island-in-daring-raid?fbclid=IwAR3qm0iEQsLGb79URx810dkhziqTxn0T8lSOKt7XNyQJDztzBLy6zuZbdJY&utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc