/k/ - Weapons

>>671733

By law of conservation of energy smoothbores still have a projectile velocity advantage and consequently better penetration advantages (if they hit from the right angle) also keep in mind that railguns will most like be technically smoothbores since there are not even theoretical materials for a rifling that would not get instantly vaporized by a cell moving at above mach 8 in the barrel. Maybe western anti-ship missiles have better skimming (therefore concealment) and tighter maneuvering characteristics due to low speed, maybe they have larger more destructively shaped warheads due not having to be supersonic-shaped. Maybe mach-3 missiles were too prone to over-penetrating and causing only superficial damage.

>>672141

It has nothing to do with the engines. The engines are literally the best on the fucking market reliability wise.

It has to do with retarded state piloted industrial boondoggle.

The maintenance issues because the morons in both Russia and France did the usual thing, make a high tech project, make a a very technical piece of tech with lots of eggheads in charge, then pat themselves on the back for the brilliance of their engineering teams and drank champagne…

Companies started to buy the thing… and realized they needed to ship back the engines for REGULAR maintenance (every 1000h) to Irkustk or even fucking Cahors because the idiots forgot about training and deploying enough maintenance teams and workshops.

Which lead to planes being grounded for 9 month on average once they hit 1000 flight hours (about a year)… Which is completely unacceptable by the civilian industry standards.

>>672004

>You can consider all current Russian/Chinese stuff to be still 1st gen, since its never been used effectively.

I don't know, Russians are easily massacring ISIS in Syria with like 4x less resources than America had in Iraq to fight ISIS.

And Russia isn't secretly helping ISIS in Iraq, like America is secretly helping ISIS in Syria…

>>672141

>>672145

The jet is perfectly fine, it's having issues because there is no one to fix it at the hundreds of tiny airports that use it. So when the first crucial part wears out they just have to be sent to the scrapyard or flown to Moscow for repair.

>If it ain't Boeing,

>I ain't going.

Retard Boeing is currently involved in a huge scandal because they installed a computer chip that forces pilots to crash the airplane. It literally forcefully noses down the airplane until it hits the ground, no matter what input the pilot gives it.

>>672149

It's not caused by greed, it's caused by stupidity. RANK FUCKING STUPIDITY. They could have mounted the same engines if they just used longer landing gear. So instead of lengthening the landing gear, they jammed the engine into the wing body itself, then had to install a chip that crashes the airplane with no survivors.

>>673183

>They could have mounted the same engines if they just used longer landing gear. So instead of lengthening the landing gear,

Prob is AFAIK you can't just stretch the landing gear. Watched some thing about 737 gear and why you can see tires when retracted and how some seal inflates up against the tire, etc.

What they gonna do, relocate the main pivots outward toward the engines???

I'm pretty sure that main pivot is baked in.

What I don't get is why after 1000 of pre-computer 737 with good record and design changes this last tweak needed some uber-auto-pilot. Seems to me this should've been a memo about "with 737-Max, start takeoff rotation 7-10% later than 737-200", or something.

>>673479

>when you have shitty hardware you compensate with software

That's actually perfectly valid. But the quality of the software must exceed the shittines of the hardware. E.g. if hardware quality score is 30/100 points, then software quality has to be 300/100 points to compensate. But that's obviously not what happened over at Boeing. They cheaped out on designing and certifying new airframe that uses new engines, and likewise they cheaped out on developing flight control software of stellar quality to make the retrofitted old airframe airworthy. All they had to do is to program the firmware on assumption that the hardware might and will actually fail, because that's the fucking reason they're writing it. In which event the air control system should bail and let the pilot have at it. "Unstable" airplane simply means that if you, for example, let it pitch up, it won't level and will only continue to further pitch up, so you must use "hands-on" piloting style and correct for attitude errors manually. Even a scale model of pentagon can fly, if you keep it level.

>>673420

>Prob is AFAIK you can't just stretch the landing gear.

Yeah it's possible, airbus did it. It would add weight to the airframe, and would require a redesign in collapsing them, but it's 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000x safer and more practical than stapling the huge engine to a wing full of fuel and then adding a suicide autopilot when the engine position robs the wing of all lift.

>>673534

>That's actually perfectly valid.

It's not. Planes used to be designed to be capable of landing in case of total power failure, especially civilian airliners.

A plane that flies well is a plane that doesn't eat as much fuel as one that doesn't.

>>673552

>It's not. Planes used to be designed to be capable of landing in case of total power failure, especially civilian airliners.

this. The removal of backup hydraulics and electric (non computer electronics) systems from new aircraft variants scares me.

Say what you will about the sukhoi superjet but that is a new design of plane that apparently in the most recent incident landed without electronics after a severe lightning strike.

>>673552

>>673559

You can still fly it without power, all 737s have physical connection between the yoke and control surfaces, and the max is not exception. It's just when the airframe is aerodynamically unstable it's not noob-friendly, you can't let go of the stick and expect it to level itself, actual piloting is required, but it doesn't mean that it just randomly goes apeshit. It's more difficult to fly than your typical Cessna but it's nothing a commercial airliner pilot couldn't handle.

>Planes used to be designed to be capable of landing in case of total power failure

They still are. Well, except the ones that are so big they would be literally impossible to steer by force of a pair of humans, these don't have mechanical backup since it won't do shit if it's actually needed, and beyond that it's just extra weight. If power fails you gonna die regardless, the difference is whether in your last moments you will feel spiteful about the airplane's failure and the fact that you can't do anything about the situation, or miserable about your complete and utter physical inadequacy and the fact that you can't do anything about the situation. But you'll die regardless, so the engineers care more about efficiency than your fee-fees.

>removal of backup

What the fuck are you talking about, nigger? There are more redundancies and backups than ever, and the airplane crash rate is at the all time low, and continues to drop.

>>673549

>stapling the huge engine to a wing full of fuel

First, literally everyone are doing it, except single engine planes. And second, where the fuck else would you put the fuel? In the fuselage, so that not only does it takes valuable space and increases wing stress, but also turns the airplane into a pressure cooker in the event of a fire?

>>671577

▶Anonymous 05/18/19 (Sat) 06:21:06 5f4a6b No.13291811>>13292025 >>13292044 >>13292100 >>13292116 >>13292226 >>13292317 >>13292382 >>13292754 >>13292854 >>13293373 >>13293415 >>13294976 >>13295038 [Watch Thread][Show All Posts]

ROBOT WARS Based China unveils terrifying new armoured truck which launches swarms of killer drones to attack its enemies

The war machine - based on a Russian Tigr vehicle - can direct the drones so they simultaneously converge on targets and detonate their explosive payloads

The mighty YJ2080 is equipped with 12 launch tubes - four for reconnaissance drones and the other eight for explosive laden drones which can travel at 110mph.

Its mission will be to eliminate targets beyond traditional line of sight and kill from above with four pound bombs.

The truck's deadly drone system can search for and destroy its own targets, reports Popular Mechanics.

Earlier this year, China revealed a lethal fully autonomous drones that can carry out targeted military strikes

The killer drones and pilotless aircraft are fitted with AK-47 rifles and are already being exported to combat zones in the Middle East.

US national security think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) said in a report that Chinese officials see this AI ‘arms race’ as a threat to global peace.

▶Anonymous 05/18/19 (Sat) 06:24:03 5f4a6b No.13291824>>13291899 >>13292419 >>13292841 >>13294976 >>13294979

One example is the Blowfish A2 drone, which China exports internationally and which Mr Allen says is advertised as being capable of “full autonomy all the way up to targeted strikes against people of color.”

The Blowfish A2 “autonomously performs complex combat miss

>>673647

>It's just when the airframe is aerodynamically unstable it's not noob-friendly

Please don't tell lies on the fucking internet the Max crashed itself in the hands of experienced pilots. It noses down with no limit as to what "down" is if its retarded faulty sensor thinks that you're going to come CLOSE to stalling the retarded wing configuration. No matter what input the pilot gives, the airplane simply doesn't respond to it.

Every other limiter and autopilot on the market came with at least a blinking light that its on, and a switch to turn it off, and most of the good autopilots stop functioning when the human pilot grabs the stick.

It's a badly programmed software solution to a hardware problem caused by incompetent Boeing engineers.

>>673647

Retard do you think I'm complaining about the wing full of fuel which is common and normal and beneficial to the airplane - or the engine which fuselage is merged into it. You're so dumb I think you work for the company.

>>674410

>>having more frontal cross section is more efficient for powered flight

Not partial either way on the subject but I'd expect said configuration to disrupt normal airflow along the leading edge which could potentially be anomalous at certain angles of attack. Not an aerodynamicist but there's probably a good reason non-pyloned engines are a rarity in both airliners and military aircraft with externally mounted engines.

>>674412

Yeah because they're easier to service that way. Putting them directly in the center of the wing ensures symmetrical aerodynamics, putting them on pylons actually creates turbulent disrupted airflow over the wing behind the engine at high angles of attack, lowering lift. Not to mention, engines hanging that low create very strong thrust-pitching moment so they handle worse in critical scenarios. They have their benefits but aerodynamics is not one of them, by far.

>>674416

>pic

Prime example of retard pilot. Autopilot disengaged because of airspeed sensor getting stuck (all pitot tubes froze over, but they'd thaw in a minute or two). All he had to do is to keep the airplane level. Instead, the fuckwit started dicking about with rolling and pitching the plane at extreme rates, and then just straight put the it into stall, and kept it stalled for the entire 4-something minutes of descent. Go check the black box reconstruction. It's fucking hilarios and tragic.

>>674416

Also Boeing couldn't just make longer landing gear for 737, fuselage being low to the ground is its key feature making it so attractive to the companies (baggage handling is a lot cheaper that way). Not to mention they'd have to redesign basically the entire landing gear bay. Then there's the issue of certifying the new airframe. Something as trivial as engine swap doesn't warrant all this, which is to say, all this would command such high price tag on new airplanes that it'd defeat the purpose of having a more economical engine. Having different plane dynamics compensated for with digital flight control is an adequate approach, especially considering that virtually all airplanes fly like this anyway. The problem was that they fucked up sensor hardware by not making it redundant, fucked up software by not making it detect sensor failure and bail out of attempting to steer the plane, and fucked up their upgrade policy by making a sensor failure light an optional feature that cost extra money but without informing the customers what was the nature of the option, just its price tag.

>>674419

>putting them on pylons actually creates turbulent disrupted airflow over the wing behind the engine at high angles of attack, lowering lift.

This is complete bullshit, you have no idea what you're talking about.

The more separated an engine is from the wing the more complete the wing surface is, providing superior lift. That's why a lot of airliners mount the engines on the freaking tail, even though it's massively interfering with control surfaces, it's worth it because it brings superior lift at the engine.

Merging the engine with the wing is the worst of all possible worlds. It lowers safety in case of engine blowout, it increases felt noise and vibration, it decreases maintainability, and yes - it fucks with lift. I can't believe you're denying this considering the MAX software even EXISTS!!!

>>674428

We're well aware that you're a retard, but thanks for clarifying this again.

>>674381

>Max crashed because the fucking pajeets didn't disable the stabilizer computer and tried to physically wrestle it instead.

According to my sources my dad, who is an aircraft mechanic at a major airline with 30 years experience, that's not entirely true. When the stabilizer is in the full down position AND the pilots are pulling full back, the amount of pressure on the stabilizer trim is more than the manual override can exert. So in order to reset your stab trim, you have to let the control yoke forward, letting the plane dive while you frantically use the manual controls.

>>674530

There's a difference between dynamic stability and static.

>>674540

>Don't blame pilots for bad design & no training.

As a Seattle local, near the heart of Boeing manufacturing, I've found that a critical part of this story that hasn't necessarily reached national or international attention is the corporate politics of Boeing.

Some years ago - around 2009 I believe? - Boeing went through a merger with another corporation. The Boeing name was kept, being widely known, but the management positions went almost entirely to the new company.

Boeing engineers and machinists had historically been an incredibly strong union, as the managers of the company knew that these were the people who actually made the company function. While of course there are written plans for all the planes, the technical knowledge of how to build them correctly was passed down directly from old employees to new ones,somewhat like a traditional mentorship.

Now, when the new management came in, there was already tension between the management and the union, since the union had been on strike at the start of the 2008 recession, which had caused a significant blow to company profits. Of course, there's no way the union could have known this, and sometimes that's how strikes go - but rather than understanding that they needed to bargain with the union, the new management decided to destroy it. They fired the vast majority of their senior engineers - I learned all this from a bus driver, who'd been fired just years out from retirement, after working as a boeing engineer for his entire career. They tried outsourcing production of individual parts to China and merely assembling the parts at the Washington plants, but that was a disaster - parts came back in all kinds of wrong sizes and with significant quality issues. So they realized it was critical to make everything in the same plant - and decided to build a new plant in North Carolina, a "right to work" (anti-union) state. This was also a disaster - the engineers they hired there were trying to figure out airplane manufacturing basically from scratch. Again, massive quality issues ensued. Eventually the corporate management realized just how important the mentoring of experienced engineers had been to their production, and sent the handful of engineers they hadn't fired yet to NC to train the scabs. Things stabilized after that, but they'd still lost a massive amount of knowledge and skill with all the people they'd fired. The Washington plants continued operation, at a significantly reduced volume, but the union was massively weakened.

The bigger picture here is that Boeing has built its entire reputation on reliability, quality, and expert engineering. The old management squabbled with the union, but they knew that, and they respected it. They understood that a passenger airplane is a piece of infrastructure, something which must be absolutely reliable, easy to repair and maintain, long-lasting, and replaced with new purchases only as needed.

The new management, despite a series of expensive manufacturing disasters which perfectly illustrated the importance of consistency, reliability, and expertise, entirely failed to learn their lesson. They view airplanes as a commodity to be marketed. They are willing to cut corners, push deadlines, mislead with marketing, and treat core safety features as "bonus upgrades" with an extra cost. Everything that has gone wrong with the 737 max can be explained by this corporate mindset.

>>674553

As the video explains, the 737 max was a hastily-designed attempt to put an entirely new engine on the fuselage of the 737 line, which significantly changed the balance of the plane, and caused it to tip up into an angle which could cause stall conditions. From an engineering perspective, this should be an absolute dealbreaker. You don't launch a plane that's going to send itself into stall conditions during normal flight manouvers. That's absurd. The only sensible thing to do would be to redesign to fuselage to balance properly with the new engine. And that's absolutely normal in the world of airplane engineering. It might take a few more years, but the service life of an airplane is a good three decades, so it really shouldn't matter that much whether you're making that profit right now or a few years later.

Only from the perspective of a company trying to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, veiwing market competition as a game to be won in the month-to-month comparison of profits, could the decision to rush the plane to production with such a fatal design flaw possibly occur.

And the way they chose to "fix" this problem by hiding it takes this profit-driven mindset to even more bizzare levels.

A plane which had such severe balance issues would not have passed regulations - so they hid it with a software system.

A plane which relied on an autonomous software system to prevent total failure would not have passed safety regulations - so they pretended it was a minor stabilization system, not a critical safety system.

If the actual function of the tilt control system was known to pilots, it would have been obvious that the plane was a safety disaster which should never have been cleared to fly - so the pilots manual didn't mention that the system even existed.

If pilots had known what the system was, how to tell if it wasn't working correctly, and how to manually override it, the crashes may have been averted (though the Ethopia flight data shows the pilots did regain manual control, it was too late - but they may have had to waste precious time figuring out what was going wrong.) But that information was intentionally hiden from them, entirely for the purpose of making the plane "marketable."

Worse still is the marketing of the sensor upgrade. The automatic tilt control system relied on measurements from a sensor on the tail of the plane. Every plane had two sensors built in, but by default, only one was activated and connected to the tilt control system. If customers paid extra, they could recieve an upgrade in which both sensors were activated, compared data to eaxh other, and set off an alert to the pilot if the two sensors were reporting different readings. Such a system would have, presumably, detected the sensor reading errors responsible for causing both of the crashes. Of course, to act on this information, the pilots would still have had to know what the tilt control system was and how to manually override it.

Boeing chose to market the plane as being functionally the same as the previous 737 designs, specifically so it would be given less thorough safety anaylsis and require less pilot training, and be on the market faster.

Boeing specifically requested, and recieved, special treatment from the FAA - a faster and less thorough review process.

After the second crash, Boeing lobbied the federal government not to ground the fleet, without any respect for the obvious safety concerns or the tradgedy of massive loss of life.

Now, with the fleet grounded, Boeing is trying to claim that they can fix the planes with a software upgrade and more pilot training - even though the problem remains that the plane will tip itself into stall conditions without active intervention, and even with both pilot knowledge and a non-malfunctioning software system, that's an incredibly dangerous design flaw.

>>674555

>Every plane had two sensors built in, but by default, only one was activated and connected to the tilt control system. If customers paid extra, they could recieve an upgrade in which both sensors were activated

>we now live in a world where there is on disk DLC for fucking airplanes

Fucking hell.

>>674555

>A plane which relied on an autonomous software system to prevent total failure would not have passed safety regulations - so they pretended it was a minor stabilization system, not a critical safety system.

I was under the impression that additionally, they would have had to certify the 737 Max as if it were a totally new plane as opposed to as a variant of an existing one. So they covered up the computer death causing fudge factor because they feared a lengthy cert process.

>>674590

haha holy shit.

>>674553

Did you just link to Vox? Neck yourself.

I thought about this when I was 12 after watching Area 88 and too much Air Combat.

This is an ad and overstating it but the idea of a combat jet in a two-car garage of a suburbian house tickles my fancy…

>>671557

>retarded boomer posters

Go back to cuckchan

The phillipines and saudis are buying a shitton of munitions. the flips test their ordnance in the jungles and areas where they know terrorist activity takes place. There's no war but they drop the shit over jungle knowing full well they're killing undesirables. fucking based if you ask me.

>>671460

Reason why not is because MiG-31 is actually needed for other duties, like intercept. That might not be true in the future.

>>674597

>instead of being a massive scamming+undercutting contest

But how else are you supposed to turn a profit? :-)

Why was the Yak-141 thread shoah'd?

>>688849

Clearly board is too active.

>>688862

>>688849

>oh boy, low PPH board, time to create 1-line threads!

>>688857 lov u bb

>>688857

It is nice to see this articulated. It feels like most passive income options consist primarily of scamming idiots.

>>689610

Because having a military is about appearance and shaking down the people for money, not actually fighting air wars.

They don't need air superiority. They would only be strafing white girls and boys in schools in Britain, right?