Vet 0369

Yeah, regarding the Bushnaster fire, the Russians were in Ukraine, and they were alive!

Exactly as I said in my first sentence. It was just the military doing what the military does best; wasting monies.

This was exactly the same format that the U.S. Army used for line maintenance “hints” for the gas turbine engines in tanks and Blackhawk helicopters in the 1980s that I referenced above. I don’t remember what her name was. They used two depictions, one black and one white. It’s really disgraceful that they had to use “comics” to train the soldiers to even maintain their weapons!

That was really more dependent on whether or not the owner properly maintained the vehicle. Regular oil changes and other preventative maintenance worked wonders. In the 1970s, hitting 250,000 miles on an engine was common on properly maintained cars trucks, and vans. Especially the Japanese vehicles. Even today, vehicle user manuals recommend changing the oil at about 3,500 miles and what most folks don’t realize, flushing and changing the brake fluid on anti-lock brake systems every two to four years because the brake fluid is hydroscopic, and the water can damage your anti-lock components.

Aw, come on, that’s nothing. The Russians were wiping out companies of Leopards and Bradly’s weeks before they arrived in Ukraine!

I have read that during WW II, the prime requirement for tank driver was having been a heavy construction vehicle operator (bulldozers) or driving a tractor on a farm. Also, with many soldiers having grown up maintaining and fixing their own vehicles and farm equipment, a “field repair” by almost anyone was much easier to accomplish it because of the lack of complexity. Today, manufacturers put pushbuttons in vehicles because everything is controlled by computers and most people can’t tune or time a reciprocating engine by ear as many in my generation could. I lament that I can’t maintain, tune, and fix my vehicle without all sorts of computerized equipment.

This is pretty much correct, except that it’s a tad insulting to the “Grease Monkies,” and there is a more nuanced difference. I can’t speak to Army or AirForce manuals and maintene “levels,” but in Navy/Marine Corps Aviation, we had “Flightline,” Internediate,” and “Depot” level maintenance. The basic mechanical training for all levels was done in the same training school classes. When you finished your training, you were assigned to either a Squadron (Flightline), a Headquarters & Maintenance Facility (HAMS) Facility, or a Naval Air Rework Facility (NARF), you would receive some additional training for each, but you wouldn’t receive “a bigger hammer!” It all depended on the tooling available to you. In fact, the NARF was considered to be equivalent to the original Factory that built the engine or the airframe. When I was writing procedures for the engines on the F/A- 18A/B, we wrote for Line, Intermediate, and Depot Manuals in the same office and frequently moved from one team to another depending on need. Our most driving factor was the Navy requirement that the procedures be written at a reading comprehensive level of 9th grade or lower (for folks not familiar with U.S. education, High School, our secondary school, started at 10th grade). That was in 1985 though and might be down to 6th grade by now. In fact, the Army at that time sent out Line Maintenance instructions for armor and helicopter turbine engines in comic book form.

Well then, I obviously had bad information, and stand corrected! Thank you.

So was Adolf Hitler! So, are you saying that it was wrong for his Generals to try to remove him from office with a bomb?

Well, to be fair, the U.S. did sign a treaty (George W. Bush) with Ukraine to protect them from foreign invasion after they destroyed their nukes after the dissolution of the USSR (or CCCP). Did the U.S. intervene with the Russian invasion of Crimea and other Ukrainian regions? NO! So, why would Ukraine or Ukrainians trust in anything the U.S. says, especially when the individual who made the decision on what to do, or more important, what NOT to do, was the Vice President of the U.S, and is now the President of the U.S. named Joe Biden!

Hmmmm! If NATO collectively declared an Article 5, and a United response, would Turkey open the straits to NATO vessels to passage into the Black Sea?

Classic ambush tactic; take out the point and I’ve tail so the main body is trapped in the kill zone. The tactic is very useful in a number of different scenarios, and has need used on formations since WWII.

If AFU didn’t redeploy the Patriots IMMEDIATELY after use, they would stand a high risk of drones locating them and taking them out, so I’m pretty sure that’s what they did.

I don’t know, I find it amazing that both Ukraine and Russia are having so much trouble dealing with drones. Whenever I played CNBS against the Russians, those damn Tunguskas seemed to easily take down my Ravens any time I got anywhere close enough to see them!

The most recent incidents with which I was involved was just before I retired from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was a program called “Suspected Unapproved Parts”. “A.K.A. counterfeit parts that were being sold to U.S. Air Carriers. It involved parts from non-Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that U.S. Air Carriers purchased to maintain their fleets. This was a problem that extended across basically all major airframe and engine manufacturers products in service, and throughout most, if not all, Air Carriers in the world. The incidents that really kicked off the program were reports of incidents in engine turbine discs reported by Lufthansa. Do you all really think the manufacturers of the SUPs have gone out of business in the last seven years? I sincerely hope they have, but I kinda effing doubt it. I was involved in aviation for more than 50 years, and i know what these “Second Source Manufacturers” are capable of! Graft and lax maintenance are surely involved, but an inability to produce or acquire parts, even if counterfeit, are not the reason IMHO.

I would actually suggest walking!

There is really no reason that the Russians should be having issues with aircraft maintenance. They actually have a very competent industrial and manufacturing base tha should be capable of producing virtually any airframe or engine part that they need, unless they have cannibalized their competent machinists, engineers, and mechanics as meat for the SMO. Now, it could be a completely different story if they can’t get the electronics, computers, and such to main their manufacturing base.

What isn’t included here is that Xi used a very specific term during his discussion with Biden. That term was “Peacefully.” When we quote a statement, we should truthfully post the entire statement, not just that which supports our argument!

Now there’s an interesting question for the engineers on this thread. What is the ground pressure per sq ft or sq m of a U.S. Navy LCAT, and would it set off mines it passed over? Granted they are big and loud, but could they be used for flanking maneuvers? If I remember correctly, the Russians (or at least the Soviets) had hovercrafts for landings back in the 1980s.

Little item of interest; when I first read “Starship Troopers” in the mid-1970s, i was amazed at how much of the training and organization of the “MI” seemed like the training and general Chains of Command seemed just like the U.S.M.C. As it turns out, RH was a former Naval Officer, so that was probably what he used as his model for the MI. His second blockbuster novel in the 1960s, “Stranger in a Strange Land” (Grok) was the exact opposite, and actually became the “Bible” for America’s counter-culture. Do you grok Hippies?

Sorry, I screwed up my editing of the quote. Bottom line is that the number of Ukrainian military in a support role to the number in a combat role, is quite a good ratio. In the U.S. Military it’s (or used to be) a minimum of 10:1 support to combatant.

And the 1st prize goes to …… Robert Heinlein again!

Now that was pretty impressive! Beats the “Bell Flying Jeep” indeed it will be interesting how fast they workout “range anxiety,” non explosive fuel, etc. it could definitely work for assaulting s static line, etc.

Back in the “mid 70s”. When, when some auto manufacturers were starting to install seat belt switch systems that would prevent starting the vehicle if the seat belt wasn’t assembled to complete the circuit, people would just splice the necessary wires in a loop to ensure starting. You could probably do the same. No system can be “Idiot-proofed” because idiots are so ingenious!. What humans can create, other humans can defeat!.

Fair point!