Now begrudgingly on Twitter

I've always thought Twitter was pretty stupid. Now it looks like I'll be issuing or Tweets or Twits or whatever the hell you call it with the rest of ya.

Test

I'm at PD passing very close astern....

Pic of the day

Moskva takes a shot line from the Petr Velikiy, somewhere in the Indian Ocean a couple of weeks ago.

I don't think the Russians are going to reconstitute their rail mobile ICBM force anytime this century

Questions about rail-mobile missiles started to pop up a few days ago. I haven't heard about "reloads", though, until I saw a piece by Christopher Ford, currently a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Entitled "Does 'New START' Fumble Reloads and Rail-mobile ICBMs" the piece conveniently summarizes the arguments and "frets about" scenarios in which

"SS-25-style treaty-accountable deployed ICBM launcher could be accompanied by one or more nuclear-armed reload missiles and any necessary reload vehicles,"

or, even worse,

"unlimited numbers of rail-mobile launchers deployed with nuclear-armed missiles."

All this, of course, is just plain crazy.

I think its worth noting what an insane amount of very expensive infrastructure and rolling stock and trials and testing it takes to make a rail mobile ICBM system which you can see for yourself in this video:



Best part of the video is at about 4:30 where, somewhere on the test range in Plesetsk, they set 900 tons of high explosive 650 meters from an SS-24 rail car set and blew it up for shits and giggles or testing or something. And yet, the narrator of the video claims that that very rail car set survived the explosion and successfully launched an SS-24.

Watch what you put on Facebook kiddies!

It will stay with you forever!

Although it CAN be almost like poetry (nsfw).

It's also slightly amusing that sailors seem to be disproportionately more dissatisfied with their service than their soldier, airmen and Marine counterparts, although to be fair to the jarheads, only one of them is a Marine and saying FTM.

But the sailors seem to be very unhappy.

Panteleyev sailors conduct a ship boarding - video

I make no claims to the authenticity of this video. I am not certain of the context. It is mostly is Russian (with much NSFW language), partly in English (with NSFW language) and shows several obviously wounded men.

The explosion at the end is nice though!

From the description at You Tube:

Yesterday on Tuesday (27 April) at 1812 Moscow time the large antisubmarine ship Admiral Panteleyev captured a pirate ship off of Somalia according to the Ministry of Defense.

The capture took place at 1812 Moscow time and took place about 15 miles from shore. Inspection of the vessel revealed seven Kalashnikovs, pistols, aluminum boarding ladders, navigation equipment, including satellite navigation, fuel cans and ammunition.

Twenty nine were detained.

Based on the number of pirates in this video, I don't think these were the pirates killed under the auspices of Russia's "catch and release" program.

And this concludes the winter training cycle...

In the Sea of Japan, a strike group consisting of a destroyer and two missile boats (at least one a Tarantul, the subject of this report), destroy a group of targets simulating an enemy strike group. The report notes that the boat performed a launch that was complicated, not only because they made multiple simultaneous launches, but because it was an offset launch with the boat moving in the opposite direction from the targets. The report also noted that the target, which was 70 km away, was successfully destroyed. The commander of the Brigade of Surface Ships, Igor Osipov was satisfied, noting that this is the sixth year in a row of successful launches.



Meanwile, in the Black Sea, much the same was happening at the same time last week:



In the waters around Crimea, a task group repelled an attack by a notional enemy. Cruise missile strikes destroyed targets with direct hits. More than 15 ships participated in the large scale exercises. The strike group consisted of the air cushion missile boat Samum, the small missile boat Shtil and two cutters. Naval Aviation helicopters and aircraft supported the exercise. The tactical commander was given complete freedom of action. These have been the first exercises of its kind in almost three years. The agreement to extend the lease of Sevastopol Naval Base has led to better relations between the Slav brothers and means that the Russians plan to hold joint exercises with the Ukrainian Navy.

And here are some fun eyewitness pics of the Black Sea exercises.

Twenty four years later...

Pripyat, April 2004:

The Russian Navy Blogger doesn't have those clothes anymore...

Photos of the day: Alang shipbreakers, India

Via

For more on the Alang shipbreakers, see William Langewiesche's great article from The Atlantic, "The Shipbreakers", an article I read over a decade ago and has stuck with me to this day. 

Is Wonderwall the new British national anthem?

Rock on.

Imagine

Imagine: 

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

 What do I imagine? I imagine a lot of white folk with dirty undies, that's what I imagine!

Happy Charles Krauthammer Day!

Charles Krauthammer has had seven years. How's that search going, Chuckie?

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

 Yet, that war worshipping pundit continues to have a forum, like Bill Krystal, like Tom Friedman, et. al, while the Dirty Fucking Hippies that were right continue to be Dirty Fucking Hippies.

It's Fox News' world, we only barely survive in it.

Jump

Rock on.

Smokers in the Gulf of Aden

 Anyone remember smokers?



Rough gist: The flagship of the Black Sea Fleet has reached the Gulf of Aden, one of the most dangerous seas in the world. The cruiser will spend a few days there training. As the cruiser passes through the Bab el Mendab, the Gulf of Aden lies ahead. But the cruiser doesn't have to worry about Somali pirates that the sailors are vigilant against. There have been a couple of times in the past month when Somali pirates mistook warships for civilian ships, with disasterous results. The crew is read history and stories about the region during meals over the 1MC.

Marines stand four hour watches on deck. After watch in the 40 degree heat, the Marines do PT. Dozens watch as they do hand to hand combat on deck. A Marine explains that long-range combat can turn hand to hand at any minute, so they practice. The gunners' mates won a competition, their Captain lifting a 24kg weight more than 100 times.

By the end of the week, the ship will be on course for India and they'll start reading up on the Indian Ocean.

Local old age home turns out to greet USS John L Hall in Sevastopol, Ukraine

Gist: About a hundred activists turned out to greet the USS John L Hall at the pier in Sevastopol. They carried anti-US and anti-NATO signs and shouted "Yankee go home!". The Ukrainian authorities delayed the Hall's entry into port in hopes the small crowd would disperse, but in vain.

Comment: In contrast to the visits of the USCG Dallas and the USS Mount Whitney back in 2008, right after the Five Day War, the crowds are much smaller and there isn't much discussion of the visit on message boards.

Just a normal port visit to an almost normal foreign port, like anywhere else in the world.

Is this some sort of anti-ballistic missile maybe?

I'm guessing an ABM of some sort...
(Via)

Update: Apparently it is an ABM...

Looks like the Peter the Great made it through...

Peter the Great apparently made an uneventful transit through the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, the Moskva is supposed to make a port call in Muscat, Oman on 24 April en route exercises in the Indian Ocean and eventual participation in Vostok-2010.

In other deployment news, the escort ships Yaroslav Mudriy and Neustrashimyy along with the tanker Olekma returned to their Baltic Fleet base in Baltiysk. The Yaroslav Mudriy was in the Mediterranean on her first deployment when the Neustrashimyy joined her as the Neustrashimyy was returning from her duty off the Horn of Africa.

Given the lies of Fox News

this can only be a good thing (no link, I refuse to give that fat, Nixon protege, Jabba the Hut looking motherfucker Roger Ailes the traffic):

Members of the U.S. Navy were denied access to FoxNews.com for hours on Friday before service was finally restored shortly before noon ET, the Navy confirmed.

Cmdr. Danny Hernandez, a Navy spokesman, said he was unable to offer an exact reason why access to Fox News' Web site had been blocked, but he said it most definitely was a technical issue.

"This was not a policy issue," Hernandez said.

...

Fox News - lying liars who are destroying America with their lies. Keep it shut off, Navy! For more about Fox News' hard fought legal right to lie, click here. And all that lying done by Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and the whole "news" division led by Jabba the Hut stunt double Roger Ailes is tearing this country apart.

And you thought coastal artillery went out with the Lindy Hop...

The self propelled artillery system Bereg is the only coastal artillery system of its kind in service in Russia and is based exclusively in Novorossiysk. Today's exercises took place on the Taman Peninsula, where the littoral zone is perfect for firing upon any sort of target. The coastal defense system consists of six mobile units on a MAZ chassis. At full battle readiness, it is as long as two buses and reaches cruiser speeds, 60 km/hr, and it can deploy in less than five minutes.

The objective of this exercise is to prevent an enemy landing by destroying the enemy while he is still fourteen to twenty km from the shore.

Crewman with thick, unidentified accent: I'm talking about the gun-layer's station...It's the most important place.

Many specifications of the weapons system are a military secret. Civilians are strictly prohibited from approaching the camo covered command post. The number of sailors manning the Bereg is classified. Riflemen guard the perimeter even during exercises.

Pavel, the crew commander, says that the system can engage in combat in any conditions, day or night, in temperatures from -50 to +50 degrees. The coastal artillery system has advantages over guided missiles:

Track commander: "You can knock a missile out, but a shell is, basically, a hunk of iron. Not much you can do about that."

You can tell if a target has been destroyed only by looking at the radar screen. A couple of hits will sink a destroyer. Just one hit will send a landing vessel capable of making 180 km/hr to the bottom. Only the Bereg can hit that kind of target.

Igor Siratskiy, commander of the Novorossiysk coastal defense forces: One Bereg system can track four targets, on land or at sea. Any combination of forces, any combination of equipment.

...Today's exercises took three hours and expended a hundred rounds and sank dozens of targets. They packed up in less than five minutes and returned to base. The sailors say that the main thing is suddenness and accuracy.

The Great Migration to Vostok 2010 update

Peter the Great welcomes visitors, including the Russian ambassador to Syria and the commander in chief of the Syrian Navy aboard during her two day port visit to the Tartus roadstead:



I see from the video that the Russians also believe in the "if the foreigner doesn't understand you, just repeat it louder and slower until they do" method of foreign language translation. I hope the libs in Tartus were good, since this will be the last port they hit for a month and a half, according to the reporter.

Two days in Tartus, and its off to Egypt to follow the Moskva through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea.