A figure which stunned me:
Mi-26, the successor to the Mi-6 was involved in the deadliest helicopter crash, after being shot down during the second chechen campaign. It was carrying 142 passengers, 127 of which died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Khankala_Mi-26_crash
>the helicopter crash-landed in a minefield that made up part of the federal military headquarters' perimeter defenses. Some of the survivors, attempting to abandon the wrecked Mi-26, are reported to have been killed by 'friendly' anti-personnel mine explosions
Not to dismiss either the "shot down", or loss of life - but that does illustrate why very large passenger helicopters are a bad idea. Too many lives at stake, and a helicopter is generally a far more fragile basket than a fixed-wing aircraft.
Flight 17 was shot down with a Buk missile. Wikipedia says 150 lbs. warhead.
Flight 655 was shot down with 2 SM-2MR missiles. Wikipedia is mum about warhead weight...but the missiles themselves would be over 3,000 lbs. (combined).
Vs. the helicopter was shot down with a 24 lbs. missile, with a 2.6 lbs. warhead.
One extremely clear lesson from WWII was that hitting a fixed-wing aircraft was very different from shooting it down. Size mattered. Once the combatants realized that, they replaced their start-of-war "you might get a hit in just the right spot" pea shooters with the heaviest AA weapons that they could use.
I'm saying that helicopters are more fragile, period. It doesn't matter whether you are testing that via consequences of weapons damage. Or counting the number of failure-critial moving parts. Or digging through flight-safety statistics. Or computer modeling the effects of the sudden loss of the outer 1/4 of one [wing|rotor blade]. Or getting quotes on life insurance for a career pilot. Or asking a savvy fortune teller.
> So you're saying that fixed wing airliners are better than helicopter airliners because shooting them down requires larger missiles?
Yes, it not only increases the barrier to entry for attackers but airlines can install some defenses against MANPADS since they're easier to counteract than more advanced missiles. Some Israeli companies have developed and certified flare based anti-MANPADS systems like Flight Guard and laser based ones like C-MUSIC, though I don't think airlines have widely deployed them yet.
Once they're at cruising altitude, man portable AA can't bring them down.
These shoot downs are such uncommon events that it makes no sense to judge passenger aircraft by them. You may as well say that helicopters are better because, not using runways, they avoid a repeat Tenerife scenario.
Any consideration like this is completely washed out by practical/economic considerations; how much money can you make operating an airline with either kind of aircraft, and what kind of capabilities do they provide? This is why fixed wing aircraft are almost always better, except when the particular capabilities of helicopters invoke their use.
I think what they're saying is that you can't easily target a fixed-wing aircraft flying miles above ground with hand-held equipment like you would a helicopter
My grandfather flew in WWII and had many stories of both his planes and those in his group making it back with what mechanics would have thought was catastrophic damage.
Shooting down any aircraft with a rocket is likely to take anything down. Planes can handle damage much better from what I understand.
Anti-aircraft weapons have gotten better. In WWII the Axis didn't have proximity fuses so the shells would explode at a predetermined range and throw shrapnel.
Now anti-aircraft weapons explode at a very specific distance and create a rapidly expanding ring of metal which slices the aircraft in two.
And they are actively guided onto their targets. Even bullets are aimed by radar and a computer plotting a solution involving the trajectories of the target, your own aircraft, and the bullets themselves.
For sure. I wasn't raising 80 year old flights as a direct analog to today's weapons, I'm just pointing out a direct example I have of planes landing safely after some really serious damage. Helicopters aren't nearly as likely to make it back with similar levels of damage.
Survivorship bias is related to how you respond to the data though, in this case reinforcing the wrong parts of the plane based on where you saw holes in planes that returned.
I do believe it is still true that planes can take more damage and still land safely compared to helicopters.
I can't find any good data to support it now though, maybe someone going by here will have a good link to data that shows real world data either way.
An anecdote, but in 1983 an Israeli F-15 famously landed successfully with one of its wings almost completely sheared off after a midair collision during training exercises.
Would it make sense to add the 'height' factor? An airplane reaches and does most of its course at 3km, while a helicopter at a much lower heights and thus well within the firing range of far more weapons.
Well, it should be noted that the helicopter in question was designed to be used by an organization that couldn't care less about loss of life, as we have again seen in recent years. So I guess this aspect of human life wasn't a big concern to the designers, the military can always get new human resources from Siberia or whatever poor part of the country.
Yes, NATO countries have hollowed out their military-industrial complexes. Everyone is aware now that was a mistake but it will take time to rebuild the industrial capacity necessary to fight wars of attrition. And of course it's cheaper to manufacture artillery shells in Russia since the country has lower wages and is now running a partially mobilized command economy. But once you normalize for quality of the shells, the difference isn't quite as bad as it first looks.
> The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US.
Rheinmetall intends to increase their annual production to 750k by 2025 and the US is aiming for 1 million annually by 2025. That's still much less than Russia and that's before considering they have access to the significant reserves and the factories in North Korea.
> Since August, Pyongyang has shipped about 6,700 containers to Russia, which could accommodate more than 3 million rounds of artillery shells or more than 500,000 rounds for multiple rocket launchers, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.
NATO war doctrine doesn't use nearly as much artillery as Soviet (Russian)- preferring air superiority and bombs/missiles instead. While it isn't clear this is really better (and I hope we never find out), it does mean that having less production ability may not be an issue. Which is why the US Air force is the largest air force in the world, followed by US army, then US navy at 4, and US Marines at 7.
Where the problem is, is Ukraine is trained on the Soviet war doctrine but are getting backing from NATO - but without all the airplanes NATO would use (and it isn't clear if they could train pilots/crew fast enough if given, but they haven't been given much) they need something to fight with.
That's the point, no? Ukraine isn't NATO. Ukraine can't do NATO doctrine. So Ukraine also can't win against Russia if they're this behind on artillery supply. This is an issue for Ukraine. It's not for NATO. But we aren't talking about NATO, we're talking about Ukraine's ability to fight back.
[I get most of my information from Ukraine: The Latest] It seems to be that when Ukraine has even the below-necessary arms (be that artillery or air support or smarter, longer range weapons), Russia is unable to make significant gains.
Whether this is due to the impotence/utter incompetence of the Russian military or the inherent advantages of defensive fighting, I'm not sure Ukraine _can lose_ this war as long as NATO continues to the supply them with the tools.
You cannot seriously think that you need 1:1 parity missile-to-shell in that paradigm. The overall result from the conflict is that the soviet doctrine underperfomed, with especially abysmal results for the IADS part of it.
Ukraine is doing well using mostly the soviet doctrine so long as they are 1:5 ratio of artillery with Russia, when they are worse than they they start to lose ground, when more they gain ground.
> You cannot seriously think that you need 1:1 parity missile-to-shell in that paradigm.
this argument would work if we could produce missiles in 1:1 parity with shells. However, for any reasonable ratio (say 1 missile for 10 shells) the situations with missiles is even worse! British government has ordered more NLAWs, and they will take 2 years to deliver.
> soviet doctrine underperfomed
That's exactly the scary part - Russian military is a mess, and even in these conditions our military industrial complex is barely holding it together. Mind you we spend 10x what Russia spends. NLAW costs more than a Tesla, takes longer to produce than a Tesla, and uses 90's technology. There is huge graft in the military complex!
Now what will happen if there is a conflict with an opponent that is competent, and is able to outproduce Russia 5 to 1? It will end in massive humiliation.
You can turn the frontline to dust with artillery, but actually advancing when anything from a guy on a push bike to a modern tank is disabled by a quad-copter with an anti-tank explosive cable tied to it makes taking territory difficult.
Hence why Russia has advanced very little since the initial invasion, even with the number of men they are willing to send to their death.
Ukraine has a problem taking their territory back as well, but for different reasons. They don't want to/can't send so many to their death, and have to rely on a large coalition of allies giving them weapons -- who have their own things to worry about domestically, so half-arse or delay support.
Though my impression is that shell production is still a "meh, I guess we probably should do something..." priority in the great majority of NATO countries.
Russia actually has a pretty strong tradition of pilot safety in the military. For example, the Ka-50 attack helicopter is one of very few such helicopters to be fitted with an ejection seat.
Pilots costs many years to train, the OC is commenting about the mobiks, the soldiers used for their meat not brains. There is evidence to support that Russia or better said the Putin regime still gives less almost zero value to human live.
What government that has an active military cares about the lives of their soldiers beyond their utility value? I don't see how the US is different in that regard.
Generally the US does a pretty good job training and keeping their grunt soldiers alive, and evacuating them if wounded. Russia really hasn't done well in these aspects if we look at the Ukraine war, or any earlier wars for that matter. Their tactics tend to prefer quantity over quality.
But yes, as pointed out I'm sure Russia places some more value on lives of skilled, well trained personnel than the average poorly trained grunt soldier, simply due to higher utility value.
It just amazes me that Russian soldiers are able to fight against one of the most Western-armed countries in Europe [0] using ... shovels [1] ... and zombie-like meat waves [2] ?
Does it amazes you that they gain less then 1 square kilometers even with their Chinese bikes and turtle tanks?
not sure why everyone shits on Russian shovels, the RuZZian special forces recorded themselves how they train to fight close combat with shovels, a shovel is a weapon. Anyway the real quote was something like "weapons and shovels" but the Ruscists could only read the last part. The Zeds also claim they fight NATO, I say to all the Zeds please attack a NATO country then you can claim you fight NATO - because now you fight just your little brother that gas some old Western weapons and better intel, the difference is that Ukraine is not Chechnya so is harder to invade them, the drunk bear found a big enough adversary to break it's mouth.
Why does this remind me of that time the USA got defeated by some guerillas in the Vietnamese jungle? They succeeded in plucking some feathers from the arrogant eagle's tail. Perhaps those guerillas had some help?
"what about USA/Israel"
I am not a supporter of USA military operations so I did not study them,
but if youget reminded how USA lost then it means you know Ruzzia has no chance to actually really win (NATO is already larger, many Ruzzian fascists are dead, Ruzzia is getting demilitarized ... )
I think no party to the war has a chance to really win. The biggest tragedy though is that whatever happens and regardless if anyone wins militarily, for many years (decades) after the war people living in Ukraine will not feel like they won anything. You can be sure of that
Chechnya is/was very much a part of Russia and was not contested territory. Yes, it was acquired through conquest, a long time ago. If you are going to bring that up, then USA should give California back to Mexico.
In the sense that Ukrainians then get to invade Kazakhstan around 2040 on behalf of Russia, and film Tik Tok videos about how nasty of fighters they are?
>Russia is fighting against the combined military intelligence apparatus of 40 countries
And is Russia's fault they are some assholes that only N Korea and Iran supports them, all their brothers slavic countries in Europe are supporting Ukraine, except the dictator in Belarus who is sitting and spectating.
Think about how much Netherlands is helping Ukraine, all because of MH17, some half competent non drunk Ruzzian diplomat would have done a better job in handeling this issue, probably they would have had to do something impossible for a Ruzzian , admit the truth that an incompetent drunk Ruzzian destroyed the airplane and send the guilty to be judged and punished.
So incompetent diplomacy, garbage external politics makes Ruzzia to have Zero supporters, this is an achivement and the credit goes to Putin and his gang.
You aren't seeing this from the perspective of the Russians at all.
In the 1990s Russia was weak and was promised by NATO that the military alliance would not encroach further east. This was a bold lie just like the Minsk agreements. There has always been a persistent effort by the West to subvert Russia and make it another colony of the US and UK intelligence apparatus. Everything you are seeing is a reaction to fighting against the pressure of 40+ western nations simulateneously trying to crush it and choke it to death.
You're too focused on the little things and you aren't seeing the big picture. In the grand scheme of sovereign state operations a few thousand dead is utterly insignificant. I don't think I need to remind you of the number of casualties in all recent wars started by all sides of the conflicts in the past twenty years.
There is no evidence NATO pro missed Ruzzia that they will not expand/
And why would the fallen USSR would have to barggen for that promise?
You Riussians have the mental inability to understand the Eastern Europe , why did your brothers slavs enter NATO, why is Seriba wanting in EU and not CSI, why Ukraine wanted in EU and Puttler started the conflict to stop them.
We explained this many time but it is impossible for Ruzzian to understand, I think is projection , you can't understand that we do not want your lands or resources, we the East entered NATO to ensure our children will not be killed not he front lines when Ruzzians will invade, opr be deported to Siberia again and replaced with Ruzzian colonists.
Compare Ukraine, Eastern Europe and Ruzzia, only Ruzzia was involved in many conflicts.
Not sure if repetition can help you guys, but let me try
"we do not give a shit about your land, resources or internal politics. We want to be safe so we entered NATO, the invasion in Ukraine is the proof that everyone except Ukraine was the smart ones to enter NATO, and Ukraine shows us that it was zetarded to trust Ruzzia"
Only Putin and his gangs of oligarchs are at fault you are a poor country with no perspective for a future, if you have followed Poland example and reform and bring democracy and stop getting involved in conflicts you would be an economic power and a trusty partner.
In the same clip, USSR's minister of defense says the same when journalists ask about it: don't know anything about it. Other people from USSR's top leadership have said the same and I've never seen anyone of equal weight dispute them.
The hoax doesn't even make sense, because not even American presidents can promise what their successors will do or will not do. It's up to the electorate to decide who will be the next president and what policies they will pursue. Gorbachev briefly touches upon this too by mentioning sovereignty.
While it's generally true that presidents can't promise what their successors will do, there might be rare exceptions or situations where a president could influence future actions through long-term policies or agreements.
Your statement implies that presidents have complete control over their policies. In reality, the implementation of policies often involves complex interactions with Congress, the judiciary, and other factors. It also suggests that the electorate has full control over who becomes president and what policies they pursue. This overlooks factors like the Electoral College system, party nominations, and the influence of various interest groups on policy-making. There's a slight tension between saying presidents can't promise future actions and then stating it's up to the electorate to decide future policies. This could imply that the electorate has more power to determine future actions than sitting presidents do.
Your question touches on the balance between governmental continuity and the potential for change that comes with each new administration. This is indeed a challenge in democratic systems.
While presidents have significant power, they are constrained by various factors like constitutional limits, legislative processes, judicial oversight, international agreements, bureaucratic inertia
Undoing everything is often not practical or desirable. Some policies become deeply entrenched and difficult to reverse. Rapid, wholesale changes can lead to instability, which is generally unpopular. Many policies have broad bipartisan support.
Drastic reversals of popular policies can lead to political backlash. Some policies and decisions have long-lasting effects that are difficult to reverse quickly. The system of checks and balances in many democracies is designed to prevent rapid, extreme changes. You're right that this potential for change can create challenges for long-term governance. However, it's also what allows democracies to adapt and respond to changing circumstances and voter preferences. The key is finding a balance between stability and the flexibility to implement new policies.
Public opinion is a big deal in democratic countries, which makes them very much averse to loss of soldiers lives. Much less so in a dictatorship like Russia. They are losing more in a month than the US lost in years or decades in active campaigns.
That is the point, if you sacrifice the soldiers lives you should do it for something valuable, even using pro-Rus maps Russia is gaining at best something less then 1 square kilometer a day and has 1000+ dead or wooded, I am sorry for you disillusions with USA but in civilized countries nobody would think that 1 soldiers live is worth 5000 square netters of field. Sure probably they are sacrificed not for that land but for buying time for Putin, maybe Trump or other miracle move will save him. So from Putin's POV 1000 soldiers for 1 more day on the throne is a price he can pay, in a democracy this would have ended a long time ago.
By default, from now on Russia just retains the (formerly) Ukrainian lands it controls and integrates them in Russia. There's no deadline to that process, even if Russia stops gaining any land at all while still having to lose some number of people on the front line, basically indefinitely.
I can see that assertion in the Western media that Ukraine has an option to "not agree" to unfavorable terms, such as the ones voiced by Putin. The underlying assumption is that Putin has to disengage eventually, so the Ukraine can just wait it out. But unless some miracle saves the day for Ukraine, Russia is not getting out of these lands at all. After all, Russia is busy paving roads and issuing Russian citizenship in these areas.
I tend to agree with you. If what Putin has done so far doesn't cause a massive internal revolt, then selling what they've gained by now as a victory shouldn't be too hard either.
Attitudes (and apathy) of the Russian population is the most astonishing thing about this whole conflict, and something that should be remembered when dealing with the country in the future, even after Putin.
Russian people begin to realize that 1991 and the following decade was very unfair to their nation and (the current) country, and the amount of humiliation and loss during that period dwarfs the losses of Russo-Ukrainian war so far.
I don't say that fighting this war in the current state was a good decision, far from it. It is also kind of throwing out good money after the bad. Still, I don't see Russians parting with whatever paltry gains they just had in exchange for a lot of their spilled blood.
>Russian people begin to realize that 1991 and the following decade was very unfair to their nation and (the current) country
Post communism was hard for everyone else too, but we (Eastern Europe) do not invent conspiracies about Israel and CIA to explain the corruption and incompetence of our leaders. For our case the politicians could blame the previous guys but in a dictatorship it is hard to blame the previous guys since it means blaming yourself so dictators have no choice then blame soem external force like Israel, CIA,LGBTQ, Satan.
The only country in Eastern Europe in Russia-comparable situation is Hungary, and the humiliation in question is when it had lands with Hungarian people in them taken away from it in Treaty of Trianon. And as you can see it's the least happy camper right now.
That and, outside the EU, another troublemaker that is Serbia.
Russians do not see the existing borders and existing ex-Sovier political layout as fair or in any way beneficial to them.
>Russians do not see the existing borders and existing ex-Sovier political layout as fair or in any way beneficial to them.
And you agree with this Rusky? They do not like that other nations are not longer part of their empire ? Or that the countries East of Berlin are not under their evil influence ?
If yes, then I am sorry for you, maybe the next generation can find peace in the fact that empires and colonialism are history and could focus on their own country, they have resources they only need competent leaders and a better mentality.
Ukraines were dumb to not enter in NATO in EU with Poland, they were too pro Ruzzians now the stupidy costs them, look at Poland and look at Ukraine economy.
Russians do not think that fellow Russians stuck on the other side of a newly drawn state borders are "other nations".
Just as Hungarians do not consider Hungarians from Uzhgorod an other nation; ditto Serbs do not consider Serbs from Respublika Srpska another different nation.
Russians actually care very little about what all of the remaining Eastern Europeans are up to. They aren't of much interest. Why do you need Warsaw if you can fly to Paris non-stop.
Ah, I see . But they had some voting when USSR exploded and they signed some treaties about respecting borders. They changed their minds it seems and laws would not stop a Ruzzian.
Ruzzians are stuck in the past, we no longer start wars to grab lands where some people that speak same language as us live. Not all people that spek Russian are Zeds and want to be part of Ruzzia.
The hypocricy is strong with Zeds since they are doing the opposite in Moldova, they promote a Zetarded idea that Moldova is a different language, that Moldovans are a different nation and that they need to keep their independence and borders (until Putin can invade).
As you can see Romania, Poland or Hungary are not even considering invading Ukraine to grab lands or people, we are living in a different age , we can help our nationals in Ukraine without killing.
But i bet you are aware that the Russian speaking Ukrainians are not the reason Putin grabbed Crimea or the other lands, it is all geo politics and inteligent Zeds admit it.
"Some voting" is not good enough. "Signing some treaties" is also not good enough.
The only way people are going to respect some arrangement is if they believe it's good for them. Russians now believe "some voting" they had forced on them was catastrophic and "some treaties" are fundamentally unfair to them.
The geopolitics of Crimea are questionable. Black Sea Fleet turned out to be glass cannon of questionable utility. It's mostly about popular wishes and not about pragmatics. Before 2014, Putin was swimming in cash yet his approval ratings were Bidenesque.
I bet that Ruscist that controls all your media is the cause Ruzzians blame everyone else then a Putin and Ruzzian oligarchs for the hell in Ruzzia, replace the leadership , fight corruption and I guarantee that people will change, they will become more civilized and more optimists, I seen it in Romania. In regime like in Ruzzia where you can't blame the leader you are brainwashed to find others to blame.
> The only way people are going to respect some arrangement is if they believe it's good for them. Russians now believe "some voting" they had forced on them was catastrophic and "some treaties" are fundamentally unfair to them.
That is deeply delusional. The Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe were held together only by force. 50 years of Russian domination only led to severe economic stagnation, lack of freedom and prosperity. Half a century of lost progress. Russia does not have an unfairly lost empire. Europeans are not your slaves. You can't even run your own country properly, yet you somehow believe that the Americans should hand you on a silver platter an empire to run. How does that make any sense?
Nothing is going to get better before you get rid of this imperialist delusion.
Even USSR as it existed after WWII was not of your own making, but an unfortunate side-effect of massive American military aid provided under the lend-lease agreement, which allowed to roll over European nations after Nazis had been defeated, and keep them hostage for half a century.
Germans managed to snap out of their delusions. 30 years after Nazis brought them to a similar total collapse, Germans did not have a Gestapo officer as their president, did not decorate official events with swastikas, did not reurgitate Nazi propaganda, did not complain how the entire world as wronged them, did not demand the US to cut ties with the UK and France, and did not wage genocidal wars against neighbors in an attempt to reach the 1942 extent of Germany. Instead, 30 years later, they had become the cornerstone of pan-European cooperation towards peace, liberty and prosperity.
If anything, the mistake made in 1990s was not making Russians face the consequences of their actions to the same extent Germans were forced to and thus Russians have not internalized that the 1990s were the result of their own actions. Are you not old enough to remember the depth of Soviet mismanagement and the ножки Буша that saved the country from starvation? But KGB and CPSU leaders were not hanged, apprachiks were not banned from public life, nuclear weapons were not taken away and the country was not demilitarized, Russian imperialism and Soviet ideology were not rooted out in favor of universal humanist values.
Ironically, it looks like those who do not learn from history are indeed doomed to repeat it. Putin has put the country on the path of reliving the 1990s, this time with much less international sympathy. Do they grow chicken in North Korea?
Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans. Last time I've checked, the only Eastern Europeans living in Crimea were Russians, with some Crimean Tatars and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Ditto for the "new territories" including the Donbass.
Actually, same for Kiev (add some Jewish minority in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk). So you do not have anything to do with it.
The rest of advise is unwanted. It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Dude, read Ruzzian media. Kremlin always threatens us, those idiots are expert linguists, historians and they want us to do whatever they want. Not sure why they hate we entered NATO to defend ourselves if they do not plan to attack, the nukes still work so there is no chance Eastern Europe invades Ruzzia to liberate your from Putin, you are stuck with him.
> Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans.
That's not what actions say. Constant economic, political and social sabotage since the end of USSR, combined with hostile rhetorics from popular slogans like "The masters will be back!" to official demands to kick Eastern Europe out of NATO, leave little doubt. There is nothing people in Eastern Europe wouldn't like more than the luxury to focus on domestic issues and pretend that Russia doesn't exist at all, but Russian actions force us to divert considerable amount of resources towards ensuring that you stay where you are. Russia is the only reason why we need to have an army at all. Were Russia a normal country like Germany or Spain, we could disband the army tomorrow.
> It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Total delusion. Russian economy is already a dead man walking. The financial blockade keeps getting worse, and even the people from your central bank are saying: "Потому что [если] не будет нормальных расчетов за продукцию по внешнеэкономической деятельности, для нашей и экспортно, и импортно зависимой страны это просто все, это погибель". You can't run a modern country on Dogecoin or "import substitutions" hammered together by some Vanyas, that much is clear to everyone. This won't end in any other way than the previous time.
Likewise, Crimea is already lost. Every air defense system you set up there gets blown up by Ukrainians using weapons that cost a tiny fraction of their target. Without air defense, the remaining forces are sitting ducks. Russian ground forces will eventually either get destroyed, or pull out like they did from Kherson to save what's left. This is purely a matter of time. The navy has already abandoned Crimea.
Not to mention Eastern Ukraine. 10 000 Russians die every month just to keep the frontline where it is, and twice as many get wounded or crippled for life. It will only get worse as Soviet era stocks deplete and get replaced with older and older junk with every passing month while Ukraine keeps getting better and better new production as western arms factories gear up. At the start of the war, European factories were producing large caliber artillery ammo in batches of tens of thousands. This year they will produce over a million units, up to three million next year, going as far as it needs to go.
I wonder when will you finally wake up to the reality that Putin blundered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sell oil and gas while it still has any value, and use that flow of money to bring Russia to European level of prosperity. Gazprom is now in the red while Germany has produced 2/3 of all electricity this year from renewables. The window of opportunity is closing. Every Kinzhal blown up by Patriots somewhere in the skies over Ukraine costs as much as a modern schoolhouse, but instead of engaging in international trade and investing in schools that produce value for decades to come, you only get a loud bang. Putin is destroying your opportunity for a better life. Why do you choose to accept that?
> Russians don't care and don't think in such terms.
That's a lie and you know it. Variations of it like "We can show it again!" (that is, rape our way to Berlin) are in very widespread use among the Russian public and represent exactly the way most Russians think. Revanchism is the cornerstone of Putin's Russia, and that is also clearly present in your constant complaining how Russia has been humiliated and unfairly treated, and how it is entitled to anything more than it currently has, while the truth is that western nations spent a lot of money to relieve the humanitarian disaster that came from your own long-term mismanagement that you now try to pin on the Americans. You are - without any shame - biting the hand that fed you.
It is not free for Putin to keep this land, drones will fly and kill his men , destroy his refineries, infrastructure etc. Gazprom has giant loses for the first time, Putin also needs to protect himself from the oligarchs that he screwed over with his imperialistic dreams. Ruzzia's economy is not doing well, if you notice in all the demands for peace Putin includes "please, please remove the sanctions". From what I see onlyne Zeds fray to God that Trump will save their SMO from failure, hopefully there are still soem repuplicans with brains around to prevent any truly zetarded decision.
Looks a fascinating piece of equipment out of Sci-Fi Anime...
Noticed something interesting from the first flight: "...A first flight on 27 June 1967 ended prematurely due to oscillations caused by control problems; one set of main wheels contacted the ground hard bursting a tyre and bending a wheel hub..."
The cause of the oscillations proved to be a harmonic amplification of vibrations in the cockpit floor feeding back into the control column when a roll demand was input into the cyclic stick
How would they go about diagnosing such a complex interaction in the Sixties?
The Mi-6 had some pretty horrible harmonics issues too, if you search on youtube there are videos of them attempting to start one that's at a museum, and several times they abort the startup because the whole helicopter is rocking backwards and forwards after starting the second engine.
Probably similar to now mechanically. They got the chinook and others up and going during the same time period. Although I guess the Chinook was quite a bit easier since its mass was distributed out toward the rotors instead of clustered between them.
Well obviously it's viable in the sense that it could fly. But aviation projects in the USSR were based more on the whims of Party leaders than on any sort of rational economic viability.
Current designs for eVTOL aircraft are very short ranged due to limited battery capacity. At most they'll be used by a few wealthy passengers for short hops within highly congested cities. And they won't be drones; it will be many years before the FAA even considers certifying drones for carrying paying passengers, especially in airspace where VFR aircraft operate ("see and avoid"). Human pilots will be in command.
What is wrong with a train for short trips? There is nothing wrong with 1825 ideas with some small modernization (electric trains are still 1800s technology - though these days I would add autonomy which is still 1990s technology in trains unlike most places where it is still science fiction)
The noise pollution that comes with trains is pretty ghastly too. Living next to a train track is just complete hell if you want to ever leave your windows open, cause every 30 minutes you won't be able to hear yourself think for about a minute. Road traffic is at least constant so you can sort of filter it out.
True, and the way it reverberates from surrounding buildings is so much worse than road noise. Source: live next to a 5 lane railway, plus bullet train, plus monorail).
Of course it's a staged publicly photo. That's nothing unusual. The "red stuff" is just regular turbine intake covers that are commonly used when certain aircraft are parked outside.
I can't say anything about the Mi-6, but its successor, the Mi-26, definitely isn't that loud. Definitely "huge transport aircraft" loud, but not "C-130 loud" (where, if you sit just behind the forward bulk head, kidney stone removal is an automatic benefit included with take-off)
You’ve had the opportunity to fly in both an Mi-26 and a C-130? I’d be curious to know more about your career, I can’t imagine there are many who have spent time in both.
Well, the C-130 has been pretty much everywhere pretty much forever -- not sure if anyone in the military in the last 5 decades or so has not been in and/or near them at some point?
My Mi-26 experience was as a staff tech (military, but as part of a humanitarian effort) airlifting medical trucks into a flood-struck area in India, like, 30 years ago or so, but as I understand it, they're still used pretty widely outside NATO, even today.
> Well, the C-130 has been pretty much everywhere pretty much forever -- not sure if anyone in the military in the last 5 decades or so has not been in and/or near them at some point?
Very true. I had the impression that the Mi-26 was considerably more niche, and that there wouldn't be a ton of overlap between operators of the C-130 and the Mi-26. However, I just checked the list of operators on wikipedia (not sure how accurate that is) and Algeria, Jordan, India, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela all field both. There also seems to be civilian operators of the Mi-26.
This is quite likely just a reflection of my biases in learning and taught history, but so much of what the Soviets worked on feels rooted in a sort of “that’ll show them!” inferiority complex.
I see similar things in North Korea and Russia too today where it’s almost like a lot of their efforts are based on a hypothetical checklist labelled “What Modern Nations Look Like”
I think whether or not there’s any truth to my perception, it’s why I find a lot of Soviet stuff to be so fascinating in a science fictiony kind of way.
It's not entirely untrue and some of the cases where it is are famous but much of the time there were entirely pragmatic considerations and/or consequences of other policy decisions. A few things that come to mind are the many constraints on manufacturing capability and industrial capacity, 'dual use' goals, the size of the country (vs. the quantity of developed infrastructure), etc.
My perception was that the Cold War was partly about exploiting this trait, forcing them into financial ruin by running races they couldn’t help but compete in.
A short and fun to read corrective is Kotkin's Armageddon Averted. The competition, inefficiency and the demands of its own power projections were a costly strain but nowhere close to leading to ruin or an irrecoverable state.
First woman in space too, and a very long list of other firsts some of which remain untouched by anyone else (eg landing in the surface of Venus and sending digital pictures back). Valentina Tereshkova went to space in 1963, at a time when women in the US had to ask their husband’s permission to open a bank account.
What you are describing is an attribute of command-based economies. The typical market-based feedback mechanisms are often non-existent, or dulled - is it economical, is there demand, etc. In USSR everything was produced by state-owned factories, where political leadership would pass down edicts poorly rooted in economic realities and wouldn’t pose questions such as “do we need to make a monster helicopter if 3 smaller helicopter are cheaper to manufacture and operate”.
In some ways today’s China is also guilty of the same kind of folly, hence high speed rail network that isn’t economical to operate so ideological justifications are needed. Or ghost cities. Etc.
Market capitalism has other downsides, such as externalized costs skewing economic calculations, but it’s a different conversation altogether.
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