Reply With QuoteSo it's cheaper to pay for mining new steel, than recycle old steel? Aren't there specific methods for recycling hazardous materials? Do they not have the capability to remove all the toxins?Originally Posted by TheCorruptedOne
There are supposedly several new rounds developed but not in mass production yet. Little is known about the 2A82 other than the fact that it allows higher chamber pressures. Generally as a rule, Russian military hardware specs and developments are fairly secret unless it is on the export market. 2A82 and new tank rounds are not available for export yet, hence little is known.
So it's cheaper to pay for mining new steel, than recycle old steel? Aren't there specific methods for recycling hazardous materials? Do they not have the capability to remove all the toxins?
Usually yes, at least when it comes to easily available metals. Problem is usually the amount of manual labour involved in recycling. You dont just smelt an entire tank in one go, you need to disassemble it, cut it up, etc. Mining new iron ore is comparatively easy.
You may find this interesting:
http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20120323/172346264.html
MoD started to form first military police brigade - in Russian http://lenta.ru/news/2012/03/26/police/
But why is the ship salvage industry booming? It's alot more expensive and dangerous to cut up and tow a rust bucket off a reef than to recycle a tank. The Dutch are salvaging ships like their lives depend on it, so it must bring some good coin.
Or does most of the profit from ship salvage come from clients who want the ship wrecks removed from their waters rather than metal scrap itself?
This may sound insensitive, but overall the world's ship recycling industry is booming mainly because Indian lives are cheap. The huge dismantling yards of the Malabar Coast feature such bleeding edge technologies as a gently sloping beaches and hordes of impoverished men with blowtorches, nothing more. They also remove and sell everything valuable aboard, including cabin furnishings and useful machinery that could be sold as spare parts. It's horribly unsafe and indeed, a lot of people die or become crippled every year, but however little are the wages they're getting there, it's still preferable to many than to do the farming, for example, so there's no shortage of workforce. Thus, dismantling ships there is incredibly cheap, and much more affordable than doing it in a Western shipyard by safer, but more technologically advanced (and thus expensive) ways, and to pay much higher wages the Western workers are accustomed to. Dutch salvaging industry I don't really know, but aren't they subcontracting the actual ship dismantling to Indians, after removing most of the valuables?
Damn it, it is messed up I think.
Thank you for this article
I'm not sure that it's like this. A great deal of a tank's weight is in its armor and armor is designed to be very hard and to withstand great forces. I guess that cutting a tank will be a lot harder than cutting a ship's hull.But why is the ship salvage industry booming? It's alot more expensive and dangerous to cut up and tow a rust bucket off a reef than to recycle a tank.
No, you didn't - but cutting so much of stuff out there is not easy for at least 3 reasons:
1) As far as I am aware in Russia there is no real commodity market so recycled stuff. If you try to follow for example on Alibaba or any other scrap metals sites you find Africa,India, Pakistan - usually those who is buying from scrap yards located in "clean economies" USA/UK sometimes NL or Germany, Italy. If I understand correctly there is no legal framework regarding recycled commodities' export yet. I guess MoD can help with this regard but cannot change business mentality so quick.
2) Economical viability - not only cutting is expensive but tanks are not made simply form HMS steel usually lots of different alloys. Thus process to recover it must be more technological complex.
3) Environment - lots of things can be toxic in old ships or even armors - this means special procedures AND PR must be applied otherwise all xamsters will be yelling from top of their lungs :P
Nevertheless I admit, that your right. This can and shall be done! Probably economically it could be 0 sum game but: a new industry is born, new jobs and lot's of unused stuff is gone. Please note that in Russia they still are producing lot's of cars, weapons buildings - some day this will need return to nature and new industry will be there
1) Summary of Russian signed and running contracts regarding planes/choppers
English translation:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/b...ogs%2F15480%2F
2) Fizik1 - I might not correctly understand news but is this true about this outstanding abilities of new torpedo (since it was made long time ago) or just author's creative fantasy? Was engine really Mk 48 based?
Pardon my French, but Fizik2 will be kind of BLOCK 2 for newly adopted torpedoes?
English translation:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/b...%2F570782.html
Fizik has been a subject to of a lot of smoke and mirrors recently, seems that it now has became a main method of the counterintelligence.
Russian armoured vehicles to roll on single platform
Russia is the first to be switching to a uniform combat platform in three major types of ground vehicles, which will presumably make them easier and cheaper to build and maintain, while their modular design will allow to develop different systems, depending on their purpose. The first platforms of this kind of modular design will be produced in two to three years.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has approved the design of a new heavy crawler platform for the Russian armed forces, says Major General Alexander Shevchenko, Chief of General Tank Automotive Directorate. The development of “perspective technologies” for the Russian military is now going through a major transformation. And what comes out of this can forever change the country’s army.
“Standardization can simplify both the maintenance and combat application of the military hardware, increase modularity in its design, including possible usage of versatiletarget modules on chassis to meet different objectives. All platforms have the so-called “open architecture” avionics to make it easier to add new systems,” says Viktor Murakhovsky, an expert on armoured vehicles. “Different hardware complexes can be built on the basis of a single sighting-system node by adjusting the number of various observation channels to create a system for a combat, reconnaissance or a command vehicle.”
A new versatile armoured platform, “Armata,” is expected to “set to rights” the Russian armoured forces, plagued by chassis and components of every stripe. The most popular tank, the T-72, and its upgrade, the T-90, will be revamped to stay in the Russian army, except for its first-line units , which are to be equipped with the cutting-edge “Armata” by 2015 to 2025. But the T-90 won’t disappear for good as its recent modification, known as the T-90S, is in fact set to keep its export market. It was announced that the T-90S will make its reappearance at the upcoming Defexpo-2012 show in India.
The Russian armed forces will have as many as four versatile base platforms: the “Armata” crawler platform for heavy tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other types of motorized infantry brigades weighing up to 65 tons. Among other projects are the “Kurganets-25” medium crawler platform in the 25-ton range and two wheeled platforms – a medium 25-ton and a light 10-ton platform of the “Bumerang” family.
The idea to build modular-design platforms was up in the air for quite a while. The collapse of the Soviet Union crippled the production of already existing hardware and stalled its further development. The West was the next in line to dip its toes in this water, with the American line of the “Stryker” wheeled combat vehicles and a whole family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) clearly coming off the charts.
Still, no Western army ever considered bringing all vehicles of all weight classes onto a single, unified platform. The US tried to grapple with this task in its modernization program called Future Combat Systems (FCS), which was cancelled after over-ambitious plans of the US military command to outfit its vesicles with cutting-edge equipment threatened to drain its funds.
Russia had it easier, having had to learn from the FCS example, which proved that any sweeping modernization can only bust the budget. In this sense, Russian armoured vehicles, which are capable of employing both the existing equipment and systems that are still under development, have much more chances to come off the blueprints and into reality.
Fizik has been a subject to of a lot of smoke and mirrors recently, seems that it now has became a main method of the counterintelligence.
But this is not a cable but fiber optic cable I hope? are those parameters comparable to western torpedoes? I mean stealth and possibility to approach to ship/submarine only with cable when only passive sonar is on or controlled via cable?
I wish some day also I can hear about unmanned underwater combat submarines in Russian Navy. This to me is in the future good alternative for sea denial strategy. Such lurker staying long time in standby mode. Just waiting for order.
Optic cables are used in torpedo guidance in Russia since USET-80, IIRC. And I've heard that the problem with the towed spool started exactly because of it: traditionally, Russian torpedoes use a towed spool, because it allows for the full-auto loading of them into tubes, and buffeting in the wake didn't cause problems, as copper wire can tolerate much, much smaller bending radius. In fact, if you use something like a phone wire, that is, thin strips of foil or extra-thin wire wound around a thread and covered in insulation, you can sew and weave with it, without the wire breaking. Optic fiber, on the other hand, is much more sensitive to the bending and shaking, and tends to break much more easily. Thus, towed spools turned the wire guidance into a sort of luck-based mission: you fire the torpedo and pray that the wire doesn't break, because as soon as the wire breaks, torpedo either switches to wake homing (which is notoriously unreliable) or turns on the active sonar, and so long, stealth. UGST reportedly has a body-mounted spool, which exposes only the thin wire itself to the torpedo wake, and also uses a pumpjet, which makes it much less turbulent, so the chances of the wire not breaking is basycally the same as for Western torpedoes with their tube-mounted spools.
Well, some research is definitely underway, but a) not much heard of it, and b) it's not yet out of the lab stage. Some automatic subs do exist, but these are strictly civilian.
Last edited by Khathi; 03-27-2012 at 08:11 AM.
Posting Permissions
