Guns and Ammo Thread

[Honkey_Kong]

I've dressed up as a woman.
It doesn't mean I have tits. (Wish I did.)

https://www.politifact.com/article/2...-obama-muslim/

The funny thing about the whole Obama being Muslim thing is that it was started by Hillary Clinton. (Not sure she has tits either.)

She wasn't that bad when she was young.

[Beetlegeuse]

I censored this headline (and the article) because I do not approve of the use of the pejorative. The magazine that comes in the box with the gun from the factory is by definition is of the standard capacity, regardless of how many rounds it holds. To call it anything else is disingenuous or mendacious or both but in any case deliberately prejudicial. Even magazines of greater capacity than the standard mags -- like a 100-round drum magazine -- should not be referred to with said pejorative because to do so is effectively ceding control of the language to the hoplophobes. And in an ideological debate, the party that controls the language is the guaranteed winner.

At least the author gets it right in the article's final paragraph.

Why You Have a Constitutional Right to a **** Capacity Magazine

Even as the very scenario that demonstrates the need for ****-capacity magazines unfolded in St. Louis, the Colorado Supreme Court endorsed the view that you don’t need one.

With no police or security within sight, Mark and Patricia McCloskey stood with their backs to their house wielding a small pistol and an AR-15. The “peaceful protest” featured a screaming scrum of hundreds smashing down the gate to a privately-owned neighborhood as they poured onto the privately-owned street just a few feet from the McCloskey residence. Considering the many buildings the mobs in recent weeks have burned, the victims they have assaulted, and the neighborhoods they have destroyed, the McCloskeys determined to remain physically safe, if terrorized. The mob screamed at and taunted the McCloskeys. But it dared not assault the armed homeowners.

Less than 1,000 miles to the west, at almost the precise moment, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a Colorado law banning the very magazine Mr. McCloskey used to load the weapon with which he defended his home from the mob. Seldom has history presented such a dramatic split screen.

Even as the very scenario that demonstrates the need for ****-capacity magazines unfolded in St. Louis, the Colorado Supreme Court endorsed the view that, “the fifteen-round limit was not only based on a valid, reasonable, safety concern, but is reasonable and does not impose on the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or defense of home or property.”

Earlier that month, only a few short miles from the Colorado Supreme Court, shopkeepers watched helplessly as vandals and looters rampaged through their downtown area. How do mobs honor the memory of George Floyd by looting $25,000 in merchandise from a small business? George who? No such high-minded principle guides these mobs.

We’ve been told we don’t need “weapons of war,” to protect ourselves because the police will do that job. Let’s be honest: against such forces the police can’t even protect themselves. Not since the post-Civil War reconstruction era have mobs conquered not one, but two police installations in major metropolitan areas. We don’t have to hypothesize about a potential breakdown in civil order. We have one. When the mobs have the political winds at their backs, the police are easily overwhelmed.

What might the mob have done to the McCloskeys had they not produced a credible firearm deterrent? The McCloskeys reported seeing at least one handgun in the mob. They recounted how the mob threatened to burn down their house and harm them. This wasn’t an NRA fantasy invented to justify opposition to gun control laws. It happened. From June 29, 2020 onward, all bans on private ownership ****-capacity magazines should be deemed unconstitutional...

... It’s easy to see from a distance whether an AR-15 has a magazine loaded. Without a magazine, the AR-15 is just an expensive and ineffective club. It’s the very presence of that **** capacity magazine in the McCloskey AR-15 that made firing it unnecessary... (emphasis added)

... Too many times in the last month, police have abandoned their citizens to the ruthless mob. Like a tool, every gun has a specific purpose. An AR-15, credibly loaded with a standard-capacity magazine, is exactly the right tool to hold off a violent mob threatening a home, a business, or bodily harm.

[Beetlegeuse]

Hot off the presses, there were 314,319 NICS checks run in the most recently concluded calendar quarter vice 217,444 in the same (second) quarter of 2019. Which means America bought 30% more guns that quarter in than at the frenetic pace already set in 2019. Huzzah for the Anti-Fascist Fascists and Black Lies Matter for being history's greatest gun salesmen!

In addition, there were 5,801 NICS denials in Q2 2020 vice 3,085 in Q2 2019. So in 2020 denials occurred at almost twice the rate of 2019. Of the 5801 2020 denials, only 1,238 (vs. 1197 in 2019) were forwarded to law enforcement channels for enforcement and 83 people (vs. 42 in 2019) actually arrested.

Which means an undisclosed number of citizens paid $3,143,190 for NICS checks and all the Feds had to show for it was 83 arrests. Comes to about $38,000 per arrest, some pretty expensive investigating. Also robbed the Pew-Pew ecosystem the ownership of near as makes no difference 7000 Glocks or similarly-priced firearms.

That also means that the FBI didn't care about 5718 of the 5801 citizens whose attempted gun purchase was flagged, which means 98.5% of all the NICS positives were false. You can be flagged by NICS for having a bench warrant issued for your arrest for failing to appear in court to answer for a parking ticket but I hardly think that rises to the threshold that should be required for denying a citizen their right to own a firearm.



And to make matters worse, you can't appeal a false positive. Although there is an appeals process, Sheikh Obama (piss be upon him) ordered the FBI to stop processing them in November of 2015 and they have not yet resumed. Which means the FBI was (and is) disobeying existing federal law in order to comply with the dictates of Sheikh Obama (PBUH). So not only is the Brady Bill an infringement on 2A, the lack of an appeals process violates two of the bedrock tenets of American jurisprudence, the presumption of innocence (a power generally confined to the IRS) and the right to confront your accuser.

But even before the complete cessation was ordered in November of 2015, apparently the FBI had been dragging its feet on the appeals process for the entire Obama (PBUH) administration. The law firm I linked to above, Stamboulieh Law of Madison Mississippi, has featured prominently in several pro-gun cases. In this instance they sued the government on behalf of a client who had filed for appeal of NICS denial in 2010!!! Remarkably, they filed the suit on June 6 and announced on June 15 that the appeal had been granted.

So the FBI failed to act for six years and only got off their asses and did their phony-baloney jobs under direct threat of legal action.

So since there effectively is no appeal process, that makes for 5718 (Q2 2020) citizens who were unjustly denied the right to a firearm by the fecklessness of the Brady Bill (and in defiance of 2A). And that was just in one quarter of one year.

Speaking to the false positives, an accounting audit conducted by the Inspector General of the United States concluded that from 2008 through 2015, the Feds prosecuted "less than (sic) 32 subjects per year." (bad syntax, should have been "fewer than 32" subjects/year)

Over that same eight year period there were 142,399,507 NICS checks conducted at the cost to the citizenry of $1,423,995,070, (=~3.2 million Glocks or similar) resulting in fewer than 256 prosecutions. Comes to >$5,562,480 per prosecution. I'd call that money well spent.



Not.

[Beetlegeuse]

Belt-Fed Bullpup Lever-Action Rifle Chambered in .44 Magnum


click to embiggen

A dude in formerly great Britain took a Ruger 96-44 lever gun and converted it to a lever-action, belt-fed bullpup that feeds from a drum magazine. And it's UK-legal.

Utterly coolio.

[SampsonandDelilah]

Where do I get one? ^^^^

[Beetlegeuse]

More proof that artificial limits on magazine capacity are stupid and only put gun owners at greater risk. This incident occurred two days ago.

A woman Michigan Sheriff's deputy (of 22-1/2 years experience) pulled over a man who reportedly just had stabbed an elderly man in the face in an argument over not wearing a coronapanic mask. The suspect emerged from his vehicle carrying what appears to be two knives in his right hand and a large flathead screwdriver in his left. He ignored the deputy's repeated commands to drop his weapons and she fired -- by my count -- 12 or 13 rounds at powder burn distance.

Four of her first five shots were COM hits but the suspect continued to pursue her and he managed to strike her gunhand with what appears to me to be the screwdriver after her fifth shot. She evidently was uninjured but the blow might have been what caused her gun to jam, which she quickly cleared and continued to fire. The mook was still moving after he fell to the ground but later died in hospital.

This might be disturbing to watch. It's police video of footage from a nearby doorbell cam showing the stop followed by video from the deputy's body cam. It's pretty evident from his movement after he exited his car that he was up to no good.



And imagine the deputy's dilemma if there had been a second assailant. She wouldn't have had enough bullets to go around without a reload, even if she were carrying a Glock 17.

I wouldn't expect autopsy results for another few days but I'll be interested to hear the toxicology results, as well as how well the deputy shot. To press the issue with a police officer who already has the drop on you and all you have are edged weapons reeks of "suicide by cop" but the extreme violence of the earlier attack on an old man makes me wonder if he was on drugs, particularly PCP. How else do you explain two knives in one hand and a screwdriver in the other? That's just plain weird.

This attack put me in mind of the July 2017 incident when Atlantic City police shot a suspect 45 times.

It started when police received a call that the subject appeared drunk and was brandishing a firearm at patrons in a restaurant. He fled in his SUV when police arrived and at one point fired at them from his moving vehicle. Police pursued for about 10 miles and the SUV ultimately was spun out when the subject ran a red light and a motorist in crossing traffic at the intersection accidentally administered a textbook PIT maneuver to the subject's vehicle.

So when the pursuit ended and police had him cornered, you know nothing short of thoroughly convincing display of contrition was going to save his life. But no, this idiot stepped out of the car with his gun raised.

A dashcam video of the incident, which is potentially more disturbing than the previous video, is here.

The police had to shoot him 45 times (that's not 45 shots fired, that's 45 GSWs by the coroner's count) because:

1. Official Atlantic City police policy dictated that firing should continue so long as the suspect retains his weapon (which is the prevalent policy in American LEAs). This mook continued to grip his weapon and demonstrate voluntary motion until he'd been shot 45 times.

2. From the outset the subject was surrounded so police knew this fight would be over in a hurry. Although civilians were around, the tactical situation escalated too rapidly to do anything apart from engage with all possible violence and get the fight over with as quickly as possible. There were six or seven police involved, so the subject was too outgunned for police to take unnecessary risks by exposing themselves to return fire. So they mostly stood behind whatever "hard cover" was available and fired primarily with their service weapons (although there were at least two long guns in use, one a rifle and the other a shotgun). Because of the distance from the nearest hard cover to the subject, most of the hits from handguns were peripheral and caused too little damage to end the fight.

3. The tox screen done during the autopsy showed he was on PCP, AKA angel dust or Vitamin K. Ketamine is a tranquilizer used primarily on farm animals (horses, for the most part) and has the unique ability to suppress the sensation of pain without depressing cardiovascular function. It also causes some people to become wildly maniacal. Good shit to be on if you're hoping to walk through a hail of bullets and keep fighting back so long as there's a spark of life left in you.

I count ~17 shots fired before the subject fell. No idea how many of those were fired by whom.

At about 22 seconds you can see two small flashes at the subject's right hip, occurring a fraction of a second apart and each visible for only one frame. I suspect that a police rifleman switched to targeting his pelvis hoping to cause a mechanical structure failure that would deprive the subject of the ability to stand or walk. The flashes probably were sparking from bullets hitting something metallic in the subject's pants pocket, house keys or crack pipe, and might even have come from near-simultaneous shots from different riflemen. Or the first flash might have been the bullet striking a butane lighter, and she second flash was the escaping gas igniting. In any case, the shot (or shots) was perfectly placed and in less than a full stride after the flashes, the subject slumps to the ground.

Once he was on the ground, all the fire was incoming. At 26 seconds the subject flashes gang sign with his left hand, a feat that probably elevated him to sainthood among his gang of peeps.

The proximal cause of death, according to the coroner, was a single shot to the top of the head. AC IA and a grand jury cleared all LEOs involved of any impropriety.

As a side note, right after this incident and before all the pertinent facts were released, the owner of Alien Gear Holsters felt the need to publicly take a big shit on the Atlantic City police department for the obvious excessive use of force. Which is why I won't buy anything from him and hope his business fails. I don't just support the cops so long as I'm sure they're right, I support them until the fullness of time proves them wrong. Besides, CrossBreed and Comp-Tac and about a dozen other companies sell an almost identical product at a comparable price, and AFAIK none of them has ever publicly disrespected or disparaged that thin blue line. YMMV.


Back on topic, it's not always the drugs that makes people hard to kill. The tox screen of both subjects came back clean from the FBI's infamous 1986 Miami shoot-out. But both mooks were career criminals spoiling for a fight. And they knew that if they couldn't escape capture, it was incumbent upon them to go down guns a-blazing. So by the time the FBI had rammed their car and disabled it, they were amped on adrenaline and piss & vinegar, ready and willing to fight to the death and looking for as much company as they could recruit for the ride to hell.

Six of the seven men present fired at least one weapon and between them discharged more than 125 rounds. The two mooks absorbed 14 hits from 9mm and .38+P between them, yet both remained ambulatory and were attempting to steal an FBI sedan when their careers finally were brought to an end by the 15th & 16th hits, both administered to the back of their heads from coup de grâce range.


The moral of this story is, it's not even remotely possible to ever have too much ammunition ... unless you're drowning or on fire.

[Beetlegeuse]

I find this interesting. India is switching from the home-built hybrid-sorta-AK-203 in 5.56 NATO to the Sig 716, which is an OpRod AR-10 pattern rifle, in 7.62 NATO.

They abandoned an 'updated' Kalashnikov design in favor of a 65-year-old Stoner design.

[almostgone]

The 716 in 7.62 NATO ought to be a sweet ride. SIG is really carving a name for themselves on government contracts. LOL, I wonder if that is why SIG has dropped their recommendation of TW25B grease and oils and seem to be calling for CLP usage even in civilian firearms. E

That new MG338 is supposed to be a whole new ballgame in terms of weight (21 pounds), heat dissipation, superior ballistics of the 338 Norma Mag round over the the 7.62 x 51, and to top it off several components are ambidextrous. The suppressor offering kind of threw me unless they are managing the rate of fire when it is in use.

Thought the barrel shifting to reduce recoil was pretty nifty as well, although I believe it has been done before.

[Beetlegeuse]

They're making suppressors now from solid inconel. 3d-printed inconel with no welds, seams, joints or threads. I doubt you can burn one of them out.

...Thought the barrel shifting to reduce recoil was pretty nifty as well, although I believe it has been done before.

Most big guns are recoil-operated. Probably the most conspicuous example is the Bofors gun. Bofors were in all the WWII films about sea battles, usually the 2-barrel 40mm gun. You could see the barrels recoiling alternately.



The recoiling barrel gets more obvious the bigger the bore is. This one is 57mm. The barrel recoiling back into the receiver is what powers the cycling of the action.

JMB (all face Ogden and genuflect) used recoil operation in the Ma Deuce. Barrett uses it in the M82 semi-auto .50 BMG and the XM109 25mm anti-materiel rifle. There's slo-mo videos of them on YouTube.

Before the M2 Browning used it in the Auto-5 shotgun (ol' humpback), which was in production for 100 years. But if he intended it to perform recoil reduction in the A-5, it's a mizzable failure. Those things kick like a Missouri mule. I've got a 20-ga A-5 and when I was a kid I would judge how good the opening day of dove season was by how blue my shoulder was the following day. Now I've got a gas-operated 12-ga Browning Silver that kicks less with 3" shells than the 20 does with 2-3/4".

[Beetlegeuse]

A St Louis circuit court prosecutor (who bears all the hallmarks of a Marxist activist) has filed charges against the couple in the gated high-rent community who warned off the Black Lies Matter protestors with an AR-15 and a Taurus pop-gun (the McCloskeys) for "unlawful use of weapon" (a felony) and fourth-degree assault.



This despite the facts that:

1) Missouri has a castle doctrine law that specifically indemnifies the use of a firearm in protecting “personal safety and property.”

2) State AG Eric Schmitt already has filed to have the charges dismissed.

... and ...

3) Governor Mike Parson already has stated he will pardon the McCloskeys.

So how could this be anything more than virtue signaling by the prosecuting attorney?

Comrade Prosecutor is claiming that this was necessary to protect the First Amendment rights of the protestors. However, as you clearly can see in all the videos of the incident, all the protestors still were merrily protesting and seemed not one whit deterred, tra-la. In fact the only impact of the Rambo couple brandishing their firearms was it kept the protestors off their land and prevented damage or theft of their property. And being as both are members of the Bar, I suspect that was all they intended from the start.

And before anybody goes there, these were not "peaceful protestors," these were criminal intruders. This was a clearly marked private gated community (photo below) and the -- call them what they are -- TERRORISTS broke through the gate (breaking and entering, destruction of private property) to commit a disturbance of the peace, which adds up to criminal trespass.



Yet not one of the TERRORISTS was arrested. Police gave the McCloskeys no protection or assistance whatsoever, so they were forced to take matters into their own hands.

[Beetlegeuse]

Dick Heller, who filed the suit that gave us the DC-v-Heller court case (which DC lost) is mulling another fight against DC over gun rights. Apparently he bought a .32 in Pennsylvania in mid-April and DC is dragging its feet about the transfer to him in DC.

Considering who Dick Heller is, it only reinforces the stereotype of DC civil servants as lazy and underqualified that they would pick this bear to poke.

[Test Monsterone]

I think cops are too quick to pull the trigger. The guy could have had a plastic spoon and he would still have been shot. How about get in your police car and call for backup. The guy may have been under psychological distress, gone schizo, whatever. That can be treated with medicine. You can't treat a dead man. The answer for any aggression in the US seems to be to shoot. That's bullshit.

[Beetlegeuse]

The blogger at Books, Bikes, Boomsticks is opining that coronapanic-induced gun buying spree is producing a different class of gun owner from the panics of '13 and '08. In those previous periods, gun shops were cleaned out of even stripped AR lowers and lower parts kits, which he reasons shows it was the doing of experienced gun ownersr. But now everybody is out of built-up ARs but there's still stripped lowers and parts a-plenty. Plus there's been a run on pump shotguns, long a staple of home defense. So this is for home and hearth, not for CCW.

EDIT:
The blogger at Irons in the Fire has a similar take on it. The gun store where he works is being flooded with first-time buyers. Their CCW and beginner gun safety courses are booked solid, as are all the private instructors he knows.
[/edit]


On a related note, the jeanyuses at Phys.org are calling the coronapanic buyers "gun culture 3," and claim that it is a movement created from whole cloth by the NRA. And all this anti-government and pro-gun public discord is the result of NRA indoctrination. But they've obviously started with a conclusion that suits their political bent and are scrambling to find (or fabricate) what they call 'facts' to support it.

[almostgone]

They're making suppressors now from solid inconel. 3d-printed inconel with no welds, seams, joints or threads. I doubt you can burn one of them out.



Most big guns are recoil-operated. Probably the most conspicuous example is the Bofors gun. Bofors were in all the WWII films about sea battles, usually the 2-barrel 40mm gun. You could see the barrels recoiling alternately.



The recoiling barrel gets more obvious the bigger the bore is. This one is 57mm. The barrel recoiling back into the receiver is what powers the cycling of the action.

JMB (all face Ogden and genuflect) used recoil operation in the Ma Deuce. Barrett uses it in the M82 semi-auto .50 BMG and the XM109 25mm anti-materiel rifle. There's slo-mo videos of them on YouTube.

Before the M2 Browning used it in the Auto-5 shotgun (ol' humpback), which was in production for 100 years. But if he intended it to perform recoil reduction in the A-5, it's a mizzable failure. Those things kick like a Missouri mule. I've got a 20-ga A-5 and when I was a kid I would judge how good the opening day of dove season was by how blue my shoulder was the following day. Now I've got a gas-operated 12-ga Browning Silver that kicks less with 3" shells than the 20 does with 2-3/4".

I've seen prottype Inconel rotors and turbines made via additive matching but thinner geometry tended to distort @ higher pressures. I would have to see a sectional or detail view of the baffles unless they went with a monolithic design , which would make sense if they're printing.


I have an old Remington model 11 made under the Browning patent and it has absolutely no qualms about inflicting trauma. LOL, my wife will shoot my Model 1100, but will take no part of the model 11; just the weight isn't comfortable for her, much less the factory buttplate.

[Beetlegeuse]

I've seen prottype Inconel rotors and turbines made via additive matching but thinner geometry tended to distort @ higher pressures. I would have to see a sectional or detail view of the baffles unless they went with a monolithic design , which would make sense if they're printing....

The first all-inconel can I'm aware of was the 3-d printed jobbie from Thermal Defense Solutions. They claim its baffle design was ginned up by computer modeling on a supercomputer by Oak Ridge national labs. So they naturally claimed it was the quietest and most sophisticated design in existence.



It bears more than passing resemblance to AAC's baffle, which was regarded as the best design in use. I don't see any "clipping," which was one of AAC's key features, but maybe that means AAC's wasn't the best design after all.

[Beetlegeuse]

I tried to do a simple edit of a few typos and royally screwed this post up, but I think it's fixed now. Sorry for the foul-up.
[/apology]

Sig-Sauer is now making a 3d-printed Ti can. Just a teaser so far and few significant details, no weight specs or price. Titanium has a modulus of stretch that is unusually high for a 'hard' metal, which makes it less susceptible to failures due to stress, which hints at a long service life for something subjected to extreme changes in pressure. However, I still want my blast baffle made from inconel because it's more wear-resistant and it's much more common for a suppressor's blast baffle to wear out from years of use than for the suppressor body to rupture from stress fatigue.

Ti and inconel both are notoriously hard to machine so I'm seeing a bright future for 3-d printing of both, especially for pieces parts made from materials that are so difficult to machine but that could benefit from designs utilizing complex curves, like suppressor baffles, and that might be impractical or impossible to make without 3-d printing.


And on a quasi-related note, the Chi-Coms have figured out how to 3-d print gunpowder. Not really gunpowder but it's a firearm propellant based on RDX, the primary explosive constituent in C-4. The point of the 3-d printing is that instead of charging a cartridge with a pile of individual powder granules, you can use a stack of disks of propellant or even print a propellant charge pre-shaped to match the interior of the cartridge case.

The biggest trick of course was printing something from high explosive without exposing it to enough heat to ignite it. In their initial test they fired the same cartridge as used in the A-10 warthog's 30mm GAU-8 cannon and got about half of the GAU-8's customary muzzle velocity. Which doesn't sound like a successful test but they knew the RDX in its pure form burned far too fast to be useful as a firearm propellant so they had to "water down" its potency and deliberately erred on the side of caution. But now that they know to a certainty it's possible to print an RDX-based propellant charge that will fire when used in a firearm cartridge, they can go back and tinker with the formulation to get the conflagration properties that will make it sho-nuff usable in that role.

What I can't figure is why Red China would be interested in something like this in the first place. For one thing, now that they've let the cat out of the bag, it will inspire all of the big hitters in the western world to try to learn how to do the same, even if they don't know why.* So they've lost whatever hope they had for a monopoly on this technology by announcing it. And none of the gun pundits I've come across seem to have an inkling of why the Chinese might have thought there would be adequate return on this investment. But considering the Chinese penchant for playing the long game (make that very long game), IMHO it's a fair bet that they have an objective in mind that no one in the west yet has thought of.

*The US Air Force used to (and might still) have a top-secret museum at Nellis Air Force Base (outside Las Vegas). I got to visit it when I was there for a big inter-service exercise.

One of their "exhibits" was a Soviet-made MiG-23, a swing-wing supersonic fighter jet. Although it was Soviet-made, it was an export-only item, only ever intended to be used by the USSR's "monkey" states, so they called it a "monkey jet."

It was common for the Soviets to use designs and design elements stolen from the west, particularly in aircraft. The Tupolev TU-4 bomber of WWII was a rivet-perfect copy of the US's B-29. The US had consistently refused to give the Soviets any B-29s under Lend-Lease but a few of them that were engaged in the War in the Pacific had of necessity taken emergency refuge in the eastern USSR. The Soviets had not yet declared war on Japan so it coinsidered itself neutral in that conflict. As a neutral party it chose to abide by the pre-war Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, which specified that the two countries agreed not to return any hardware it came into posession of from a country that was belligerent to the other. So the Soviets kept one of the B-29s and made faithful copies of it.

But back to the MiG-23. Yugoslavia used to have a communist strong man/dictator known as Marshall Tito. Although he was in the Soviet sphere of influence, if Yugoslavia got in a bind for cash he was know to sell the odd piece of military hardware the Soviets had lent him --- albeit with a Niemann Marcus mark-up -- to the west. Which is how the US Air Force came into possession of this particular MiG-23.

The MiG-23 started out with a number of elements copied from American aircraft, most notably the specific angles that the swing wings could be adjusted to were sourced from the F-111 Aardvark; 16° at the leading edge for take-off and landing and 72.5° for high-speed flight.

But in the early Mig-23 flight tests a problem emerged. The shock waves produced at transonic speeds interfered with the air flow into the engines and caused them to "flame out." They looked to other western aircraft for a zero-cost solution and some wizz kidski said, "Hey! The F-4 Phantom has a device mounted in front of the engine intake to deflect the shock wave so it doen't re-join the airframe until it's past the engine intakes....

So they simply copied the device (the US calls it a "ramp") from the F-4. The first image (below) is a MiG-23. The second image is an F-4 Phantom. And you can see how the device just forward of the engine intake might have been copied from the F-4 and modified only to suit the differences in the shapes of the aiframe.



But they didn't just copy the ramp. Notice in the bottom photo that there is a gap between the ramp and the F-4's airframe. There also is a similar gap aft of the intake between the fuselage and the engine nacelle.

This gap caused a potential problem because the US Navy employed the F-4 as a carrier-based fighter. Which obviously means it had to take off from and land on aircraft carriers.

Carriers have a system of "arresting" gear on the flight deck that can stop a landing aircraft without either letting it slide off into the ocean or stopping it so abruptly that the pilot's head gets popped off. The Vietnam-era aircraft carrier had a series of four steel cables they call "arresting wires" stretched across the flight deck with either end anchored to a shock absorber sort of device that would soften the impact when the tail hook on the landing aircraft snagged that cable.

Every time a pilot lands on a carrier his landing gets scored and each pilot's running scores are posted on a board in the flight room for all to see. And no matter how picture-perfect it might be, no landing is perfect unless you've snagged the "3-wire."

But what if you miss all four wires? In that case there's a net beyond the fourth wire that the jet will have a sort of controlled crash into.

And that's where the F-4's ramps proved a problem. If the top wire on the net ran right down the fuselage, it could get snagged behind the intake's ramp.

So how was that a problem? Look again at the second image, the one of the F-4 with the cockpit canopies open. If the top wire of the net slid all the way back to the wing root, it would be directly on top of the second (rearmost) canopy. That's the weapons system officer's (wizzo's) station. So the Wizzo would be trapped in the aircraft until somebody cut the cable at the top of the arresting net.

So they put a V-shaped hacksaw-like device at the wing root to serve as a wire cutter to preclude just such an eventuality. Same sort of device as many helicopters have on them in case of a "wire strike."


A Bell Jet Ranger with upper and lower WSPS (wire strike protective systems)

So whatever Soviet wizz kidski it was who grafted the F-4's ramp design onto the MiG-23 included the wire cutter as well.

But here's the deal. Look again at the top photo. The MiG-23 is a single seat aircraft. There is no "rear-seater", hence no canopy far enough aft to get held closed by the net.

Not only that, when the MiG-23 was designed, excluding submarines the Soviets still only had a "brown water" navy, for operating only in shallow "brown" waters near shore. And aircraft carriers are for projecting power over great distances, which is a blue water endeavor, so neither did the USSR have any true aircraft carriers.

So the MiG-23 was designed by a country with NO aircraft carriers and with absolutely ZERO attention given to operating it from a flat top.

So how come they copied the F-4's wire cutters? The only plausible explanation is that they couldn't figure out what they were for. But if the F-4 had them, they must be good for something, so we'd better use them to.

So you can bet the Americans (et Al) now will get fully invested in 3-d printing of gunpowder. Because even though we don't know what it's for, the Chinese wouldn't be doing this just for shits and giggles, so we can't afford to let their technology get ahead of hours.

[Beetlegeuse]

Remington has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They did the same in 2018 and in the doing shed $775 million in debt but they claim lawsuits from Sandyhook still have them mired down.

The argument being used in the Sandyhook nuisance lawsuit is that they let Bushmaster (which Remington owned until they shut it down) marketed to minors and mass-murderers. But that dog won't hunt because 1) I've been looking at Bushy adverts for decades and have never seen so much as that first ad that had anything that might be construed as targeting appealing to youngsters. IOW, there was no Joe Camel. 2) It's not Bushmaster/Remington who's constantly telling us that the AR-15 is the best possible weapon for the would-be mass-murderer, there's nobody but the propaganda wing of the demoncrat party (i.e., the mainstream media) that's beating that drum. AND MOST RELEVANT TO THIS CASE, 3) The Bushmaster AR-15 that the Sandyhook murderers used was stolen from the mother of one of the murderers after her son had murdered her.

So they're suing Remingotn because Bushy's advertising was so powerful that it provoked a teenaged boy into murdering his mother so he could get her AR-15.


That's some damn good advertising. Whoever wrote those ads has misplaced their skills, they should be selling real estate or at least used cars.

[Beetlegeuse]

Joe Bite-Me (AKA Sleepy Uncle Joe) is prone to claiming that he doesn't want you to own an AR-15 because neither can you own a bazooka. Here's a guy who is Form-1-ing (BATFE Form 1 is the application to build a home-made NFA device) a Panzerfaust.



The Panzerfaust isn't a bazooka (which was the US-made man-portable anti-armor weapon of WWII) but it pretty much unarguably is a better weapon. So good that it was the inspiration for the Russian-made RPG 7, which went on to become the most widely-distributed anti-armor weapon in history and still is in use three quarters of a century later.

But you could just as easily do the same with a bazooka.

Not only that but there any number of privately-owned (army) tanks in America. In fact the tanks themselves are completely unregulated by the Feds. You can buy them as easily as a pack of chewing gun. It's the armament (main gun, which is tube artillery, and machine guns) that gets tricky but you can buy with all armament "demilitarized" with the same (federal) paperwork and registration as a pack of bubblegum.


BTW, if anybody cares, RPG does NOT stand for "rocket propelled grenade.' At least not to the Rooskies. Their term for it is "Ручной противотанковый гранатомёт," which means "hand-held antitank grenade launcher." The reason it usually gets called a "rocket propelled grenade" is that when the godless Reds shipped RPGs to their puppet states where they didn't speak Rooskie, what they printed on the boxes they shipped them in was "Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot," which is the phonetic spelling of Ручной противотанковый гранатомёт using the Roman alphabet instead of Cyrillic. And some English-only monoglot idiot who had no friggin' idea what "Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot" meant made up "rocket-propelled grenade" from the obvious Roman acronym.

[Beetlegeuse]

The St. Louis persecutor who charged the Rambo couple for defending their home against criminal trespassers impersonating protestors is asking that the state AG's decision to halt the targeted prosecution be dismissed.

The George Soros stooge claims the only constitutional rights that were trampled were those of the trespassers who trampled the locked iron gate blocking entrance into the private community.

The stage AG stated he was acting in the broader interest of Missourians lest their 2nd Amendment rights be negatively affected.

Sounds to me like she'd better rush right out and stock up on ...

[RaginCajun]

My first print!

[Beetlegeuse]

My first print!

Congratulations, it's a 4-ounce baby Glock! Now pass around the seegars.

Bien fait, mon ami. Tu m'en fais un peut-être?

Das' all da coon-ass I know but it has served me well everywhere from the Central Grocery to Ms Mae's. Ayeee!

[Beetlegeuse]

The McCloskeys (Mr & Missus Rambo) have sued to have the St Louis prosecutor disqualified from prosecuting their case because she is using her case against the McCloskeys in her re-election campaign, which they argue is a conflict of interest under Missouri law:

The courts have stated that a prosecutor should be disqualified if the prosecutor has a personal interest in the outcome of the criminal prosecution which might preclude affording the defendant the fair treatment to which defendant is entitled.

This should get intersting 'cuz I 'spect this is a case of a piss-ant lawyer screwing with the real deal. A civil servant who only got elected because George Soros financed her campaign versus two obviously highly successful attorneys in private practice.

[i_SLAM_cougars]

My first print!

This is sweet!

[Beetlegeuse]

The Missouri state AG is turning up the pressure on the St Louis prosecutor who is charging the McCloskeys to dro the prosecution.

And the Missouri prosecutor herself is being investigated for not reporting trips she took that were financed by someone else, which is required under Missouri law. According to an investigative report by St Louis' CBS TV affiliate, KMOV, she took several (unreported) trips -- including overseas -- financed by a bunch of 'progressive' attorneys and ACLU-wanna-bees called Fair and Just Prosecution. Which is financed through a San Francisco non-profit called The Tides Foundation. Which in turn is funded by the Open Society Foundation, which was founded by George Soros, who remains its chief financier.

[i_SLAM_cougars]

The Missouri state AG is turning up the pressure on the St Louis prosecutor who is charging the McCloskeys to dro the prosecution.

And the Missouri prosecutor herself is being investigated for not reporting trips she took that were financed by someone else, which is required under Missouri law. According to an investigative report by St Louis' CBS TV affiliate, KMOV, she took several (unreported) trips -- including overseas -- financed by a bunch of 'progressive' attorneys and ACLU-wanna-bees called Fair and Just Prosecution. Which is financed through a San Francisco non-profit called The Tides Foundation. Which in turn is funded by the Open Society Foundation, which was founded by George Soros, who remains its chief financier.

Sucks when you try to accuse innocent people of being criminals, and then someone finds dirt on you lol. Fucking bought and paid for

[Beetlegeuse]

Here's some Korean gun pr0n from the 1992 Los Angeles Rodney King riots, the weapons the Korean shopkeepers armed themselves with.

One of them is a Daewoo's take on the AR15. Been drooling for one of those since I saw them in Iraq.

For a time I had an office in one of Saddam's palaces around Baghdad that was a hub of high-level activity. Coalition commander Gen. Casey, among others, had his office in the same building so there always were lots of "high-profile" members of the coalition allies (and the American press) about. One day I found myself standing at a urinal next to a Ukrainian army officer (in a camo uniform) who 25 years before would have been my blood enemy. It was all I could do to resist the urge to perform open-heart surgery on him with my Randall.

But I digress. The ROK (Korean) soldiers were part of the coalition. Getting to rub up against them dramatically increased my respect for them. For one thing, they were one of only two coalition countries who saluted not just their own officers but allied officers as well. The other country was ... not coincidentally ... Iraq. Americans didn't salute nobody because we don't salute anybody when we're in a war zone because it tells the enemy who the high-value targets are.

So the Koreans saluted American officers, presumably because it was the US who spared at least half of the Korean peninsula from Communist occupation in the 1950s. And I admire people who show appreciation to (and respect for) old allies.

Oddly, the Koreans drove Barbie jeeps. They weren't pink but they were tiny, like the old Suzuki jeep from the 1970s with the 80-inch wheelbase. Small like a clown car in a circus.

Except the Koreans were YUGE. Linebacker-sized. 6-feet plus and 200 lbs, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the waist. I figured they had specifically selected abnormally large guys for this duty to make their army look more impressive. So the Barbie jeeps really did look like clown cars when four Dick Butkus-sized guys (in full battle-rattle) unfolded themselves getting out of them.

Beautiful. It uses a long-stroke Op-Rod so it's got something in common with both the AR and the AK. And it looks a lot like the Stoner 63, which was long the favorite of the SEALs. Bad-ass.

Robinson Armament has a knock-off of the 63 they call the M96 expeditionary carbine (which accepts belt-feed) they build from time-to-time that has a pretty fiercely loyal following.

Anyway, I applaud the Los Angeles Koreans for their choice of rifles. It's got some quirks but it's overbuilt like a bank vault.

[Honkey_Kong]

The Missouri state AG is turning up the pressure on the St Louis prosecutor who is charging the McCloskeys to dro the prosecution.

And the Missouri prosecutor herself is being investigated for not reporting trips she took that were financed by someone else, which is required under Missouri law. According to an investigative report by St Louis' CBS TV affiliate, KMOV, she took several (unreported) trips -- including overseas -- financed by a bunch of 'progressive' attorneys and ACLU-wanna-bees called Fair and Just Prosecution. Which is financed through a San Francisco non-profit called The Tides Foundation. Which in turn is funded by the Open Society Foundation, which was founded by George Soros, who remains its chief financier.

I almost wish they'd be found guilty just so that it'd inspire riots in these communist cities. We're never going to go back to being great as long as these bolsheviks are still running our country and our schools.

[Beetlegeuse]

This St Louis prosecutor (whose name I am deliberately not mentioning) has corruption to spare. A St Louis newsman is investigating the prosecutor charging a former governor but then dropping the case before it came to trial for lack of evidence.

There's only three reasons why a prosecutor would ever charge a high-profile individual (such as a state's governor) then drop the case before it came to trial citing lack of evidence. First, she's stupid. Second, she's looking to score brownie points among some segment of her constituency, and tarnish the reputation of the accused in the exchange. Which the Klintons termed "the politics of personal destruction." Which is now the coin of the realm in the demoncrat party. Or third, both. She's both stupid and engaging in character assassination in the bargain.

So a news reporter (the genuine article, not some shill for the People's Socialist Party ... AKA the demoncrats) by name of John Solomon filed a request under Missouri's "sunshine" law for two-and-a-half years worth of communiques between the prosecutor (& her staff) ... and the Great Satan himself, George Soros.

He filed the request in July of last year and for that year she has refused to comply. After all, she is a demoncrat, which puts her above the law, right?

This past week a St Louis judge ordered little miss Bolshie to turn over the messages that the bulldog of a reporter asked for. Which probably now will conveniently be discovered to have mysteriously vanished because the criminal penalties for contempt of court and tampering with evidence are less severe that what she would face if her collusion with Soros were exposed.

[almostgone]

Here's some Korean gun pr0n from the 1992 Los Angeles Rodney King riots, the weapons the Korean shopkeepers armed themselves with.

One of them is a Daewoo's take on the AR15. Been drooling for one of those since I saw them in Iraq.

For a time I had an office in one of Saddam's palaces around Baghdad that was a hub of high-level activity. Coalition commander Gen. Casey, among others, had his office in the same building so there always were lots of "high-profile" members of the coalition allies (and the American press) about. One day I found myself standing at a urinal next to a Ukrainian army officer (in a camo uniform) who 25 years before would have been my blood enemy. It was all I could do to resist the urge to perform open-heart surgery on him with my Randall.

But I digress. The ROK (Korean) soldiers were part of the coalition. Getting to rub up against them dramatically increased my respect for them. For one thing, they were one of only two coalition countries who saluted not just their own officers but allied officers as well. The other country was ... not coincidentally ... Iraq. Americans didn't salute nobody because we don't salute anybody when we're in a war zone because it tells the enemy who the high-value targets are.

So the Koreans saluted American officers, presumably because it was the US who spared at least half of the Korean peninsula from Communist occupation in the 1950s. And I admire people who show appreciation to (and respect for) old allies.

Oddly, the Koreans drove Barbie jeeps. They weren't pink but they were tiny, like the old Suzuki jeep from the 1970s with the 80-inch wheelbase. Small like a clown car in a circus.

Except the Koreans were YUGE. Linebacker-sized. 6-feet plus and 200 lbs, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the waist. I figured they had specifically selected abnormally large guys for this duty to make their army look more impressive. So the Barbie jeeps really did look like clown cars when four Dick Butkus-sized guys (in full battle-rattle) unfolded themselves getting out of them.

Beautiful. It uses a long-stroke Op-Rod so it's got something in common with both the AR and the AK. And it looks a lot like the Stoner 63, which was long the favorite of the SEALs. Bad-ass.

Robinson Armament has a knock-off of the 63 they call the M96 expeditionary carbine (which accepts belt-feed) they build from time-to-time that has a pretty fiercely loyal following.

Anyway, I applaud the Los Angeles Koreans for their choice of rifles. It's got some quirks but it's overbuilt like a bank vault.

I went through BCT @Jackson as a 17 year old and we had 2 former ROK soldiers in our company. One was in my platoon, the other wasn't. I don't recall, but I'm guessing they had became citizens of the US and enlisted. Anyway, the one in my platoon was almost twice my age and came very close to smoking my time on Victory Tower. The guy was just flat out unstoppable. You could tell by looking at him he was tougher than woodpecker lips.

[Beetlegeuse]

George Soros pours $116,000 into PAC supporting controversial St. Louis prosecutor

̶L̶i̶b̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ Communist [I fixed it for 'em -- BJ] billionaire George Soros has contributed $116,000 to a political action committee supporting St. Louis prosecutor <CENSORED>, whose pursuit of Missouri's former GOP governor and a couple who displayed their guns during Black Lives Matters protest have stirred national controversy and legal repercussions.

A Missouri Ethics Commission filing on Saturday showed the Soros donation to the Missouri Justice and Public Safety PAC formed to support <CENSORED>, and indicated the liberal philanthropist was the sole donor to the group so far.

The PAC reported it has spent about $104,393 so far, including about $77,804 directly on <CENSORED>. Soros' donation allowed the group to pay off prior debts it incurred in supporting <CENSORED>, who faces a primary this Tuesday, the new report showed.

You can review the latest report here.

[Beetlegeuse]

This just keeps getting better.

St. Louis prosecutor to detective on McCloskey case: 'I suggest you quickly reassess this evidence'

When the prosecutor wrote up her account of the charges against the McCloskeys and showed it to the lead detective for his endorsement, he refused to sign it.

[Beetlegeuse]

This sheds some light on a discussion were were having several posts ago about suppressors on machine guns.

Video of the Army testing its new "smuzzle" (suppressor-muzzle brake) on (7.62) M-240:



By my reckoning they run about 670 rounds through it non-stop in about 62 seconds, which would be consistent with the 240's gas setting #1, which by the book is 650-750 rpm.

And nothing fails. There's nothing even glowing (in this light) except the can. My G**gle-fu is faltering and I can't discover what it's made from, but I'll keep looking.

IMHO they squandered an opportunity by not testing it to failure. Seems to me that any engineer worth his salt would want to know when that happens and how (mean time between failures/mean rounds between stoppages). But in typical military fashion, they probably only tested it to meet a minimum standard.

[Beetlegeuse]

An entirely different result with a (5.56) M-249 running a Silencerco SWR:



Regarding the glowing barrel (whereas if the 240's bbl is yet glowing, you can't see it in this light), that's one of the differences between a 20-lb "light-weight" MG and a 30-lb "general purpose" MG. Even the gas block is glowing on the 249.

I don't know if those guys suspected the can was going to fail on the 249 but you'd think if they'd considered that a possible outcome they'd have worn more protective gear. Because if it hits you, a 1500°F piece of shrapnel is going to leave a mark. Literally.

The clowns who designed the "smuzzle" are crowing that what they've "invented" is the first combination muzzle brake and suppressor but apparently they don't know that ALL suppressors function as something of a muzzle brake. They wouldn't work as a suppressor unless they slowed down the hot propellant gasses to limit (or eliminate) the muzzle blast. What they apparently fail to realize (as do most shooters) is that the propellant gasses are responsible for more of the recoil impulse than the bullet itself.

Sounds counter-intuitive put it is true. Except for low-powered cartridges but especially in centerfire rifle rounds, the jet of hot gas that's released from the barrel once the bullet gets out of its way causes more recoil than the bullet itself does. It's effectively a small scale version of what comes out of the ass-end of a jet engine. Cue the "Jet Principle" visual aids.



I'm sure you've seen a balloon used to demonstrate the "jet principle," but let me put that in another perspective ...



In the real world, the cloud of smoke has more energy than the bullet does. The bullet is just the delivery vehicle that transports all that force in a coherent package to a target beyond the end of the barrel. It isn't even necessary unless the target is further away than the end of the barrel. People have killed themselves for not knowing that a blank gun still can be deadly at very close range.

Based on the "accepted" values for the recoil reduction from a standard suppressor that's known to be pretty good at the reduction, and their claimed recoil reduction for the "smuzzle," I figure it's only at most 20% more effective than a plain old suppressor that's good at it by accident. They could have got the same result by just making an old-fashioned suppressor a bit larger so if you ask me they've done nothing (in that respect) apart wasting taxpayers dollars.

Pretty ironic that the gimmunt hired somebody to make suppressors for the military who knows so little about firearms.

[Beetlegeuse]

Muboy Matt at YouTube's Demolition Ranch explores the destructive force of the propellant gasses vented sideways from the main gun on a WWII tank by its muzzle brake:



I'd suggest watching the entire video because Matt is one funny sumbitch, and he's sharper than a bowl of razor soup. IMHO he does the best "gun" experiments of anybody on the 'web. If you don't fancy waiting, FF to about 6:45 to see him abusing the frigidaire.

Most T-25s had 90mm guns but none of them were "production" models, plus this one has had extensive restoration, so I don't know what this one's got on it but to my eye, 90mm looks about right. And the gas coming out of the side of that muzzle brake plum knocks the frigidaire's pecker into its watch pocket.

Which shows how much force remains in the gas after the bullet has left the barrel. And which mounting a suppressor deprives it of by forcing it to slow down before it exits.

The last US tank to run a muzzle brake on its main gun was the M-48 Patton, which also happened to have a 90mm main gun. The fact that a 100,000-lb armored vehicle still was in need of the recoil reduction that a brake could provide shows just how powerful the jet of burning propellant can be.

[Beetlegeuse]

James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, an organization that infiltrated demoncrat organizations and exposes their corruption, criminality and anti-Trump biases tried to buy a gun and was surprised to find he was on the FBI's prohibited persons list ... because he is a convicted felon.

Except he isn't.



O'Keefe is a well-known conservative crusader and the shopkeeper is excited to meet him once he makes the connection. They mull the possibility that this is retaliation against O'Keefe for his political activism, after which the shopkeeper says, "You probably have a law suit on your hands." And indeed he does. He's suing the FBI.

[almostgone]

This sheds some light on a discussion were were having several posts ago about suppressors on machine guns.

Video of the Army testing its new "smuzzle" (suppressor-muzzle brake) on (7.62) M-240:



By my reckoning they run about 670 rounds through it non-stop in about 62 seconds, which would be consistent with the 240's gas setting #1, which by the book is 650-750 rpm.

And nothing fails. There's nothing even glowing (in this light) except the can. My G**gle-fu is faltering and I can't discover what it's made from, but I'll keep looking.

IMHO they squandered an opportunity by not testing it to failure. Seems to me that any engineer worth his salt would want to know when that happens and how (mean time between failures/mean rounds between stoppages). But in typical military fashion, they probably only tested it to meet a minimum standard.

It would have to be one of the superalloys to overcome thermal creep. Surefire favors stainless steel and Inconel on most of their stuff as far as I know

Other than welds, I wonder if tungsten/Wolfram is in the mix as it has the highest mp of any metal @ 3,422°C.

I'd be interested to know myself.

[Beetlegeuse]

I'm telling you, if this doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, there's something wrong with you.

It's a 17-second Twatter video that I can't link to here.

[Beetlegeuse]

Well, if we're to take the term "weapons of war" literally, it's obvious my ARs and my AK have to be involved in a horrible boating accident. Along with my Model 94 Winchester, my Model 70 Winchester, my Mossie 590, my .45 Colt Single Action Army, all my Glocks, all my 1911s, my Webley .455, my replica LeMat percussion revolver, my replica Griswold & Gunnison percussion revolver, my Randall Model 1, my Gerber MkII, my kukri, my army-issue cavalry saber, my entrenching tool, my recurve bow, my scuba gear, my hatchets, my axe, my pickaxe. my machete and my Cessna L-19 Birddog.

In fact all my BDU uniforms, my old flight suits (make great work overalls), my flight gloves and my combat boots, too. Because in addition to all the stuff I listed above, these also were invented expressly for or used extensively in war. So if they're being consistent, they all have to go, too.

Plexiglass was invented for war (airplane canopies). The material tampons and sanitary pads is made from was created for warfare. Men's wrist watches were created for warfare. The Epi-pen. Penicillin. The ambulance. Digital photography. Drones. Super-glue. The jeep. Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses. GPS. Duct tape. The computer. Freeze-dried coffee. The satellite. The jet engine. Radar. The ball point pen. Canned food. The photocopier. Plastic surgery. Virtual reality. Silly putty. Nuclear power.

All created for use in warfare or to support the conduct of war. We'll also have to get rid of horses, donkeys, mules, dogs, pigeons, ....

[Beetlegeuse]

It would have to be one of the superalloys to overcome thermal creep. Surefire favors stainless steel and Inconel on most of their stuff as far as I know

Other than welds, I wonder if tungsten/Wolfram is in the mix as it has the highest mp of any metal @ 3,422°C.

I'd be interested to know myself.

The magic ingredient in turbine engine impellers is rhenium, which melts at close to 5800 °F and is rarer than hobby horse turds. And if you've gone that far you've got yourself into a bidding war with the like of GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce. The stuff is like $3 a gram. Which is chicken feed to a military budget, especially as crazy high-tech and astronomically expensive as military hardware has become.

OT but did you know some of the latest Apache helicopters have their own reconnaissance drone? And not only that, they're developing autonomous tanks to fight along side a manned tank. They're calling it the "wing man" tank. Because we can build a new "wing man" faster than we can train up a new tank crew.

Ike Eisenhower tried to warn against the military-industrial complex taking control of the military, and I have to wonder if we're not close to (if not beyond) that point. But there's no doubt we've fallen down the hi-tech rabbit hole. Our new order of battle is full of "force multipliers" that promise to improve our warfighting but at the same time reduce the potential casualties on our side. But the risk is it's only an effective strategery for so long as we can maintain our technological lead. And for as long as the batteries don't run out. And nobody introduces EMP into the battlefield.

Speaking of turbines, the temperature inside the combustion section is high enough to melt the walls of the burner can but they prevent the flame from touching the walls by using laminar air flow as a barrier. That's why the start procedure for all turbine engines includes energizing the starter motor until the gas producer section is at a minimum RPM before introducing fuel. That establishes the laminar flow before you light the fire. I remember that in the Army's OH-58/Bell Jet Ranger -- which had a completely manual start procedure -- you motored until the N1 gauge (compressor section) was at 12% RPM before opening the throttle to flight idle. If you're ever around a turbine when it's starting you can usually make out the two phases. You can even tell whether the sound of the starting engine you hear on TV or in a film is for real by listening for this. When cranking starts you can hear a sort of a low roar with a faint whistle not unlike turbocharger noise. And sometimes you can hear the rapid clicking of the igniter, which only needs to run until the flame is lit because the flame is self-sustaining. This might only take a couple of seconds until they introduce the fuel. But you can't mistake that because in an instant the low roar becomes very pronounced, drowning out the whistle, and the clicking stops. You might see flames shooting outs its ass when that happens.

Anyway, all that to get to this. I can't recall the source but I seem to recall scanning an article in the last few weeks about some new suppressor that uses (or at least attempts to use) laminar flow to insulate the suppressor body. Some of the suppressors now use voodoo to redirect all the pressure forward to prevent overgassing the action or the blowback of vaporized copper. This one tried to engineer that forward flow to create that laminar barrier and give the suppressor body some temperature relief. But I didn't pay the article much mind because at best it seems such a tiny volume of air in comparison, and I can't imagine it would be very much return on the investment. But hey, from tiny acorns, might oak trees grow.

[charger69]

The magic ingredient in turbine engine impellers is rhenium, which melts at close to 5800 °F and is rarer than hobby horse turds. And if you've gone that far you've got yourself into a bidding war with the like of GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce. The stuff is like $3 a gram. Which is chicken feed to a military budget, especially as crazy high-tech and astronomically expensive as military hardware has become.

OT but did you know some of the latest Apache helicopters have their own reconnaissance drone? And not only that, they're developing autonomous tanks to fight along side a manned tank. They're calling it the "wing man" tank. Because we can build a new "wing man" faster than we can train up a new tank crew.

Ike Eisenhower tried to warn against the military-industrial complex taking control of the military, and I have to wonder if we're not close to (if not beyond) that point. But there's no doubt we've fallen down the hi-tech rabbit hole. Our new order of battle is full of "force multipliers" that promise to improve our warfighting but at the same time reduce the potential casualties on our side. But the risk is it's only an effective strategery for so long as we can maintain our technological lead. And for as long as the batteries don't run out. And nobody introduces EMP into the battlefield.

Speaking of turbines, the temperature inside the combustion section is high enough to melt the walls of the burner can but they prevent the flame from touching the walls by using laminar air flow as a barrier. That's why the start procedure for all turbine engines includes energizing the starter motor until the gas producer section is at a minimum RPM before introducing fuel. That establishes the laminar flow before you light the fire. I remember that in the Army's OH-58/Bell Jet Ranger -- which had a completely manual start procedure -- you motored until the N1 gauge (compressor section) was at 12% RPM before opening the throttle to flight idle. If you're ever around a turbine when it's starting you can usually make out the two phases. You can even tell whether the sound of the starting engine you hear on TV or in a film is for real by listening for this. When cranking starts you can hear a sort of a low roar with a faint whistle not unlike turbocharger noise. And sometimes you can hear the rapid clicking of the igniter, which only needs to run until the flame is lit because the flame is self-sustaining. This might only take a couple of seconds until they introduce the fuel. But you can't mistake that because in an instant the low roar becomes very pronounced, drowning out the whistle, and the clicking stops. You might see flames shooting outs its ass when that happens.

Anyway, all that to get to this. I can't recall the source but I seem to recall scanning an article in the last few weeks about some new suppressor that uses (or at least attempts to use) laminar flow to insulate the suppressor body. Some of the suppressors now use voodoo to redirect all the pressure forward to prevent overgassing the action or the blowback of vaporized copper. This one tried to engineer that forward flow to create that laminar barrier and give the suppressor body some temperature relief. But I didn't pay the article much mind because at best it seems such a tiny volume of air in comparison, and I can't imagine it would be very much return on the investment. But hey, from tiny acorns, might oak trees grow.

There are actually a number of magic ingredients in turbine components. I can’t remember the % of Rhelium but it is very minute. However the main ingredients are either cobalt based or nickel based. The cobalt base is used right outside the burner can on the T1 vanes. The nickel based usually start after that. The matrix formation also plays an important role with the introduction of the single crystal ( probably in the 1990’s.
Most of the materials technology that they are using is from the 50’s and 60’s on commercial jets. Yes there have been minor changes, but other than single crystal it’s essentially the same.
There are so many factors, but Above 2100 F ( I am referring to time based exposure) you start to see structure changes in the metal matrix which results in an “over temp” condition and deems the part non usuable.
You are never going to have perfect flow in a turbine engine. There are no requirements for profiles on the turbine blades and vanes once they go through the repair cycle.
The V2500 has this whistling even while operating. You can tell right off the bat that it is a V2500.


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