The U.S. Army has announced that it’s next helicopter isn’t a helicopter.
The US Army awarded Textron Inc’s Bell unit with the contract to build the next-generation helicopter, ending years of fierce competition between Lockheed Martin Corp.-Boeing Co. to replace the aging fleet of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks by 2030.
The Army’s “Future Vertical Lift” award went to Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft, similar to the V-22 Osprey. The new aircraft can take off and land vertically like a helicopter but rotate massive props to fly like a fixed-wing aircraft at impressive speeds.
Combat range: 580–920 mi (930–1,480 km, 500–800 nmi)
Ferry range: 2,400 mi (3,900 km, 2,100 nmi)
Service ceiling: 6,000 ft (1,800 m) ; in hover out of ground effect at 95 °F (35 °C)
Disk loading: 16[55] lb/sq ft (78 kg/m2)
The cruise speed is almost twice the 175 mph of the Black Hawk it’s replacing, and significantly faster than the competing Defiant X design (265 MPH). It also has higher troop carrying capacity than the Black Hawk (14 vs. 12). “Firstest with the mostest” is still hugely important in combat. And though the V-280 carries considerably less than the V-22, it has a much longer combat range.
Here’s a video showing the V-280 in flight, and covering some of the reasons it was selected over Defiant X:
One of the biggest reasons is simply logging more flight time, hundreds of hours since 2017. Defiant X first flew in 2019.
Any drawbacks? Well, tilt rotors share features of both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, so they can suffer the problems of both. The Osprey had fourteen crash or hull loss incidents (nine of them fatal), plus an additional eight non-loss incidents (with one additional fatality) for some 400 aircraft built.
By contrast, the UH-60 Black Hawk it’s replacing has been involved in its own share of deadly accidents, but with a much larger number being built (4,000, though how many of those were in U.S. as opposed to foreign service during the period covered is unclear). All V-22 Ospreys (save 2-5 used by Japan) are used by the U.S. military.
It can be hard to determine the truth in any war zone, especially one like Ukraine where honest, English-speaking reporters seem to be thin on the ground. Sometimes people are trying to be accurate and get things wrong, and others fall for propaganda, like Snake Island and the “Ghost of Kiev.” (I use pro-Ukrainian examples here because most Russian propaganda has been unbelievable, clumsy, and poorly executed (and the last two apply to so many aspects of Russia’s illegal war of aggression)).
Example the first: A commenter mentioned that Stingers sent to Ukraine had shown up on “black markets all over the world.” Possible, but I hadn’t heard anything about it. I went searching, where I found this piece:
On September 17, 2022, a worrying claim circulated on social media: FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) were reportedly available for sale online in Germany.
According to the post, which was picked up by prominent figures in Russia, authorities were alerted by a student in Bremen and “local journalists” found that the systems originated in Ukraine and were “meant for the Kharkov counteroffensive”.
A short video was posted alongside the tweet, showing what appears to be a partially disassembled Stinger system with its Identification friend or foe (IFF) antenna missing. The feet of several people in paramilitary clothes can be seen in the footage, and a German voice can be heard in the background.
he posts received thousands of likes and shares, including from the Deputy Representative of Russia to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy, who suggested that delivering weapons to Ukraine was backfiring.
English language coverage has not been widespread, but Russian media published numerous articles with differing variations of the claim. Some add that this is not the first time that Stingers have appeared on the European black market.
However, many others state that weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO countries have been discovered on black markets across the world. All the articles claim that the case resulted in “a scandal” in Germany, attracting the interest of authorities, the media, and spurring discontent among its citizens.
But further down, we find this:
The articles and social media posts refer to German authorities having supposedly intercepted a deal and apprehending the culprits. However, no statement about such an operation has been posted by any of Germany’s law enforcement agencies.
The posts also mention that local German journalists investigated and determined that the weapons were meant for the Ukrainian offensive. However, there is no proof that this took place, and the story was not covered by any prominent German media outlet.
Responding to a Twitter post sharing the video, Lars Winkelsdorf, one of the leading German arms trafficking experts, dismissed the claim.
“At the moment, nothing like that has been found by the authorities, nor have I found anything like this through my own research,” Winkelsdorf said.
The original source of the report seems to be the Journalisten friekorps Telegram channel, which is billed as a “channel for honest journalism”.
“Our task is to help the German state and the German people. The people must be united, Germany must be free,” the channel’s description reads.
One of the Telegram posts state that the channel is created by the team behind Socialharmony.de, an initiative which lists discontinuing arms shipments to Ukraine and stopping support to Ukrainian refugees among its main goals.
Conclusion:
It can be stated, with a high degree of certainty, that the claim regarding FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS being shipped to Ukraine and found on the German black market, is false.
The claim states that the weapon dealers were apprehended by German authorities, yet the German police denies being involved.
The video, provided as evidence, contains a sound recording that was filmed in January 2022. The letters from Ukrainian authorities, provided as a confirmation of connection with Ukraine, also appear to be counterfeit.
Finally, claims that the case was highly prominent and even resulted in a scandal in Germany, do not appear to hold water. This was only covered by social media channels of dubious origin and several sensationalist websites.
So that one we can chalk up to propaganda followed by the social media game of telephone.
The next example is from two sources on the Russo-Ukrainian War that are usually pretty solid.
First up, Suchomimus (whose videos I’ve feature a lot here) has a report on an attack on a Russian headquarters barracks in Melitopol that may have killed some 200 officers:
I thought I’ll take a look at last night’s strike on a Russian barracks in Melitopol. I guess most of you have seen the news by now, as this was a pretty major incident reports are saying around 200 soldiers were killed in this strike.
Snip.
Let’s take a look at the site itself this graphic was put together by a Twitter user TheIntelCrab. Now, a few sources online have said that the strike was of a Melitopol Christian Church. That is not exactly accurate. It was near there, but instead, it hit the area circle to the left, which was being used by the barracks.
Here’s a screen cap:
So it didn’t hit the church itself. Now, this is quite interesting. These photos here of some of the rooms at this place. This was a luxury resort. A few people say it was a spa.
Suchomimus goes on to explain why such luxurious accommodations were probably used by officers. “If this was indeed officer’s accommodation, then this is a even more important strike than realized, especially for numbers of 200 gone are accurate.”
But here’s Ukraine News TV (“Josey here”) with his daily update, including reporting various strikes in Russian occupied territory:
At 1:38 in, he notes “explosions as well at the airport at Simferopol, so a little bit into the the middle of the peninsula.” Part of this screen cap should look familiar:
That fire behind that distinctive gate looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
CNN is also reporting the blast in Simferopol, so presumably that actually happened as well. Later in the video (starting about 7 minutes in), Josey reports on the Melitopol strikes, noting a wide range of estimates for casualties, stating “possibly 200-300.” So that’s mostly in accord.
The most likely explanation is that Josey simply grabbed the wrong image for the Simferopol image. These things happen.
But it’s a reminder that war news reporting (including my blogging) is an aggregation of already aggregated sources one or more steps removed from the actual front lines. Everything you see or hear about it deserves at least a basic level of judicious skepticism.
Ever since the Toyota War, when Chad’s cheap, fast-moving force of Toyota-based technicals left $1.5 billion worth of Libyan Soviet equipment burning in the desert, it’s been obvious that such forces could be very cost-effective units in future conflicts. The furious rate of smart-munition depletion in the Russo-Ukrainian War also demonstrated the need for cheaper alternatives to Stinger and Javelin.
L3Harris’ Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) is a portable kit that can be installed on most vehicles with a cargo bed for launching of the advanced precision kill weapons system (APKWS) or other laser-guided munitions.
This L3Harris suitcase-type APKWS launcher and designator kit provides a rapid solution for arming non-tactical vehicles (NTV) and a variety of tactical vehicles, while integrating components to customer-specific specifications. Our capability provides ground forces the ability to engage targets beyond the range of weapons normally carried by SOF and light forces.
Modular and palletized, the VAMPIRE system offers a low-cost and effective weapon deployment solution.
VAMPIRE FEATURES
Designed to complement the low-cost, low-signature and availability of common NTVs and fit in any pickup or vehicle with a cargo bed
Installation can be completed in approximately two hours by two people using common tools
Can be configured to meet customer-specific requirements
Everything is on the pallet. Power supply eliminates the need for a 24-volt alternator on the vehicle
The WESCAM MX-10™- RSTA independent stabilized sighting system provides ISR overmatch
Can be equipped with APKWS or other laser-guided munitions
The Fat Electrician (who you may remember from his Sky Warden video) has an amusing rundown:
Takeaways:
“What is it it is literally a DIY kit that shows up on a pallet, and according
to the brochure, two men in two hours can install it on any pickup truck, giving them what amounts to a miniature version of HIMARS.” More like a miniature MLRS.
“As of August 22nd 2022 America is going to start exporting these to countries that are allies or entities that have America’s interest in mind.”
“America’s been sending out a lot of Javelin and Stinger missiles lately, and
those are really expensive, so we made this as a cheaper alternative, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s way fucking cooler.”
“It looks like they gave Xzibit a DOD contract for the deadliest episode of Pimp My Ride. He found out the DOD liked guns and he put the entire Second Amendment in the bed of the pickup.”
“I keep saying any pickup truck. We all know I’m talking about Toyota…that is the official truck of guerrilla warfare.”
“This thing can shoot four Hydra 70 rockets. Now the reason they chose Hydra 70 rockets is because they’re probably the cheapest munition that America uses” at $2,799 a pop. Hydra 70 tops out at around 17 pounds, though most commonly around 10 pounds, so they’re not going to have the kinetic penetrating power of a 120mm APFSDS round to take out a tank, but are probably sufficient to take out a lot of other targets.
“The downside of that being they’re considered a dumb munition because you can’t actually guide them…However, the Hydra rockets being used with the VAMPIRE system are going to be equipped with a retrofit guidance module which is going to allow the Rockets to be laser guided.”
Unit cost with the guidance system is about $22,000, which makes it an order of magnitude less expensive than Javelin or Stinger.
So a soldier can “pull up to the side of the battlefield, throw up his Periscope launch four missiles, and take back off all without even getting out of the air conditioning of the cab because he can do it from the computer in the dash.”
Can also take out drones.
“In conclusion, I’m sure we’re gonna start seeing these in the news a lot more and, it’s probably only a matter of time until some crazy fucker from Texas or Florida acquires one of these mounted on the back of their El Camino, and then uses it to go hunt hogs or iguanas. And that’s the news article I’m looking forward to.”
When Russia bogged down trying to take Kiev, I thought that a raiding force of 100 or so technicals would be perfect to destroy those long lines of trucks (assuming they could be equipped with wheels wide enough to make it across the infamous rasputitsa mud). A system like VAMPIRE, with an ability to take out both light armored vehicles and helicopters, moves us significantly closer to making such a force a lot more practical.
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I still haven’t had time to wrangle all those Twitter revelations into a coherent article, so that will have to wait for another post.
How different it feels this time around. Broadcasters are lustily cheering anti-lockdown protesters in China. Members of Congress offer unqualified support. President Joe Biden, although more guarded, is sympathetic.
No Western politician, as far as I can see, is insulting the protesters. They are not dismissed as selfish or sociopathic, nor as dupes of conspiracy theories. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) captured the mood: “To the people of China — we hear you and we stand with you as you fight for your freedom.”
Broadcasters and columnists who spent 2020 calling anti-lockdowners kooks and criminals are now uncomplicatedly applauding their Chinese counterparts. They see ordinary people standing up against an authoritarian government the anti-COVID policies of which were crushing liberty.
So, what changed? Perhaps pundits tell themselves that the disease is less virulent now, or that vaccination has altered the balance of risk, or that, in some other way, Beijing’s crackdown is less proportionate than those of 2020. But none of these explanations stacks up.
Yes, the coronavirus became less lethal. All viruses that spread through human contact eventually become less lethal because they have an evolved tendency to want to keep their hosts up and active and therefore more infectious. For this to happen, they require a critical mass. Enough people need to be incapacitated or killed by the original version to give milder strains an advantage. And, yes, the vaccines helped, too.
But the trade-offs are essentially the same in China today as they were three years ago — coronavirus deaths versus other deaths. The current unrest was sparked by a fire in Xinjiang, which was allowed to become needlessly deadly because the authorities were following COVID protocols. In other words, they were elevating COVID above other forms of harm.
Most countries did the same in 2020 with, as we now see, disastrous results. The lockdowns did not just cause an economic meltdown from which we will take years to recover. They also failed on their own terms. They killed more people than they saved.
Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD. By way of comparison, the equivalent figures were 18% in Australia, 24.5% in the U.K., and 54.1% in the U.S.
“Loudoun County Fires Superintendent over Handling of Sexual-Assault Cases. The Loudoun County school board fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night after a special grand jury released a report blaming the district for failing to escalate cases of student sexual assault in 2021.” The black-pilled who proclaim that electing Republicans is useless aren’t considering the Glenn Youngkins of the world.
he Washington Post announced in October that it was welcoming a new communications chief. The paper’s official announcement lauded Kathy Baird, a veteran of Nike and the public relations giant Ogilvy, as a “key strategic partner” positioned to “realize our ambitious vision for the publication.”
It also noted her membership in the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” and service on the board of IllumiNative, which it described as “a nonprofit working for accurate and authentic portrayal of Native people.”
That’s one way to put it. IllumiNative is a self-described “racial justice organization” funded by a dark money behemoth that encourages elementary school students to fight for Democratic Party initiatives like universal health care. Its purpose is similar to various far-left activist groups, focusing on “breaking through systems of white supremacy” and “grassroots organizing,” according to IllumiNative’s website.
Argentina’s Vice President (and former President, and former First Lady) and leftwing Paronist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is sentenced to six years of corrupt fraud.
Paralympian: “Hey, can I get a wheelchair ramp?” Veterans Affairs Canada: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like assisted suicide instead?” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Suspended Smith County Constable [Curtis Harris] Found Guilty of Theft, Official Oppression. Since his indictment, the 34-year-old Democrat has been jailed for violating the conditions of his bond and removed from office by a judge.” Smith County is in northeast Texas, and the biggest city is Tyler. Not to be confused with Deaf Smith County, which is completely different…
Great Pyrenees watchdog fights off 11 coyotes, killing eight. Good boy! I didn’t realize there were coyotes in Georgia, but evidently they’ve been extending their range from the southwest.
Remember the post on how Alex Jones horribly misrepresented a video on Tyler “Hoovie” Hoover’s trouble with a Ford F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck? Well, there’s a follow-up:
It turns out that it isn’t just towing that drains the F-150 Lightning EV’s battery at an alarming rate. In mild winter weather (37°F), he found the Lightning using up 120 miles of estimated range in a mere 60 or so miles. “Towing nothing! It’s just cold outside! What!?!”
Teslas can suffer from the same problem, but even by that standard, the Lightning loss of range seems pretty extreme.
This is yet another example of why our urban elites decreeing that everyone should drive EVs to phase out gasoline-powered cars is foolhardy. EVs may be adequate for an urban commuting environment for people who have garages in which they can recharge them overnight, but is deeply unrealistic for people who need to do lots of driving in a single day, or need to haul around a lot of equipment or a trailer, or just any country driving in general.
And the F-150 Lightning EV seems unsuitable for, well, just about any real pickup truck tasks. Unless you live in Hawaii, southern Florida or the Rio Grande Valley, and even then there are better options.
Sidenote: At the end of the video, Hoover replaces the Lightning with…a Hummer EV! I thought the Hummer brand had been sold to China a decade ago, but evidently that deal fell through, and GM has evidently kept the brand dormant until recently.
It’s more than a little ironic that a 9,000 pound behemoth (the battery alone weighs more than a Honda Civic) with a nameplate treehuggers used to treat as synonymous with evil now counts as “green.”
Ukraine has been so successful at hitting Russian infrastructure with HIMARS that it’s no longer news when they hit something 100 kilometers behind Russia’s lines.
But when they hit something 600 kilometers away, that’s news.
Several people have been killed in explosions at two Russian military airfields, according to reports.
A fuel tanker exploded killing three and injuring six in an airfield near the city Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, Russian state media is reporting.
Another two people are reported to have been hurt in an explosion at an airfield in the Saratov region.
It is not known what caused the blasts. Both areas are hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Long-range Russian strategic bombers are believed to be based at the Engels airbase in the Saratov region.
Here’s a Suchomimus video on the Engels Airbase attack:
Ukraine’s ever-increasing range puts a whole lot of Russian infrastructure (military and otherwise) under potential threat. Perhaps Putin should take that into consideration before ordering the next round of attacks on Ukrainian power plants…
Early on, a lot of observers predicted that Russia, with it’s vast store of Soviet-era aircraft, would quickly achieve air-superiority over Ukraine. That hasn’t been the case.
This video from the British Imperial War Museum lists some reasons why.
Takeaways:
They failed to hit Ukrainian aircraft on the ground in the opening phases of the war.
A “great deal of mismanagement, kleptocracy, you know, favored projects over some kind of strategic effect.” Note how Putin is always announcing some sort of awesome wonderwaffen while neglecting basic needs like logistics.
“The level of corruption in Russia itself has had an impact on its ability to have a tactical or even strategic effect without support from the air. Russia’s ground forces have been largely unable to mount effective combined arms operations.”
“The key reason for Russia’s inability to effectively use its air force has been its failure to take out Ukraine’s mobile surface to air missile systems. They have been unable to suppress enemy air defenses.”
Ukraine made an early effort to obtain SAM systems from the west.
Both mobile tracked systems like S-300 and MANPADS have been used.
Failure to achieve air superiority has both sides investing in drones.
“What you do is you flood the airspace, almost like a denial of service attack, as we see on the Internet. As you attack a server, for instance, by having so many pings against it, it essentially shuts down the server. And what we see in the case of Russia is that it’s doing the same thing. It’s trying to flood the air defense systems.”
“The relatively low cost of these drones is one of the main reasons for Russia to deploy them, and in such numbers. Each drone reportedly costs around $20,000. And so losing an expensive advance guided missile to these drones is not an ideal strategy for Ukraine.”
One reason not covered: Russia seems to have used up a good portion of it’s high tech weapons in the opening phases of the war, and western sanctions mean that it can’t easily replace them. Sophisticated fighter bombers are a whole lot less effective when they’re reduced to dropping gravity bombs rather than guided munitions.
Ordinary Chinese have gotten so fed up with the endless Flu Manchu lockdowns that they’ve started mass protests in multiple cities, even going so far as to demand the CCP and Xi Jinping step down.
Some commenters have even suggested that a revolution is the offing. I’ve seen too many hopeful shoots of Democracy crushed in not only China, but also Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc. to have much optimism on this front. It would be nice to be proved wrong.
So how are Chinese communist authorities fighting the movement? Would you believe with pornbots?
As Chinese citizens take to the streets to protest the county’s “Zero Covid” policies and President Xi Jinping’s lockdowns, searches for names of cities and hashtags regarding the protests on Twitter have been filled with sexually explicit posts and ads for escorts to reportedly block out news of the massive protests.
Searches for the names of major Chinese cities have resulted in a massive spike in content for porn, escorts, and gambling, “drowning out legitimate search results,” wrote Twitter user Air-Moving Device. The account shared a chart showing a massive spike in the number of accounts posting such content on November 28. “Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a significantuptick in these spam tweets.”
For example, searching for the Chinese characters for Shanghai (上海) brings up the following on Twitter:
In my previous post on crime statistics, several commenters (here and over on Instapundit) noted that Louis Rossmann had also put up a video covering the final straw that caused him to decide to leave New York: an audit he was subjected to after making a video discussing how incompetent New York taxing authorities were. I had seen it, but it was a bit long and I already had the crime statistics video cued up. Here it is by way of prologue for the next video.
The upshot is that, after having millions in fines and the possible destruction of his business dangling over his head for over a year thanks to New York authorities, the audit found that Rossman’s reporting had a 0.11% error rate.
If you thought that was the end of it, you underestimate the penny-ante fury of petty bureaucrats against those who would dare to criticize them. New York has launched a spite audit of Rossmann on his way out of the state:
Yet another excellent reason for business owners to leave New York as soon as possible…
