The MiG-25 was a masterpiece of “minimum necessary” engineering.

The US was originally laughing at the parts of the airframe that were stainless steel (where the US would have used titanium)… until they did testing of a copy shape and realized that where high heat was generated titanium was used, where high-strength but low temp was present SS was used, and where neither was present aluminium was used… meaning that in every case the cheapest material that could be used, was… despite its greater weight.

Similarly, most of the electronics was vacuum-tube (“valve”) technology. “Why didn’t they use much lighter solid-state circuitry” we asked… then it dawned on us that since the aircraft was capable of carrying all that weight while still carrying all the fuel & weapons it required for its mission, the Soviets had simply went for the cheapest way of building the electronics as well.

Yes vacuum-tube circuits ARE much less vulnerable to EMP than solid-state circuits… and integrated-circuit “chips” are even more vulnerable… we were sure that that also factored into the Soviet decision (the pilot, Belenko, said during his debriefing that the Soviet pilots had been told that their electronics were much less vulnerable to interference than Western stuff was).

This explained how they could make aircraft so much cheaper than we could (and thus build more than we could)… they settled for “good enough”, while we always went for “the best”.

And, it turned out, “the best” sometimes had important disadvantages!

The final sentence of that report is very interesting:

The ministry also unveiled a plan to build six 5,600-ton “mini-Aegis destroyers” between 2019 and 2016.

A vessel in that size class but outfitted with the Aegis system presumably with AN/SPY-1F could be very attractive on the export market.

In other words, a South Korean equivalent to the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates… SPY-1F equipped ships of the Norwegian Navy built by Navantia (Ferrol) in Spain… the last of 5 commissioned 18 January 2011.

Type: Multi-role Frigate (Guided Missile and ASW)
Displacement: 5,290 tons full load

I’m sure Navantia would love to build more, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest, so I question the market for a SK-built equivalent.

http://balancer.ru/forum/punbb/attachment.php?item=294785&download=2

Just a pic – floating base for refueling nuclear submarines, never completed, and rotting away @ Nikolayev.

That’s what happens when your country breaks apart, and your main southern shipyard and many of the ships in it are in one of the break-away parts.

Preparing an EMP test on a B-52 in 1982.
The wood platform is at Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The official name is ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), but it is commonly called The Trestle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacebrother/3957731471/

Aircraft and other equipment are commonly tested for EPM resistance in anechoic chambers.

Here is a link to the USN’s facility
http://www.navair.navy.mil/nawcad/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.content_detail&key=D14B7224-6142-467C-A1BC-79F33431A003

And a link to PDF about European aircraft EM testing
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r8/germany/emc/Documents/Hamburg-Aircraft_Testing_Handout.pdf

You are aware of this thread, right?

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101986&page=12

Fancy a trip to Liverpool?

so true, and yet we so many navies make the same single carrier mistake – brazil, russia, india, france, etc.

why do they all make the same mistake? a navy should have at least two carriers or no carriers.

Cough, collapse of USSR, cough.

Kind of a big event 😉 .

Exactly…
1990: 4x Kiev class STOVL/helo carriers in commission, 2x STOBAR carriers under construction & launched (one on builders’ trials), 1x CTOL&STOBAR carrier laid down (Ulyanovsk 1988).

1994: 1x Kiev class STOVL/helo carrier in commission* **, 1x STOBAR carrier in commission***.

2000: 1x STOBAR carrier in commission.

* Kiev & Minsk decom’ed 1993, sold to China 1995/6, Novorossiysk decom’ed 1993, sold to South Korea for scrapping 1995.

** Gorshkov (ex-Baku) decomm’ed 1996, under negotiation for sale to India (sold 2004).

***1x STOBAR carrier incomplete and construction suspended (Varyag, 1992, transferred to Ukraine same year, sold to China 1998), 1x CTOL&STOBAR carrier scrapped (1992, 40% complete).

4 X-51s were built.

3 have been launched, with all 3 failing to complete the planned test flight (the first flew for 200 of the planned 300 seconds, the second failed to switch from booster fuel to sustainer fuel, and the 3rd (this one) never got the scramjet fired up).

They are failing earlier & earlier in the test-flight.

I wonder if the 4th will drop off the B-52 and immediately fall apart?

I am a little unsure as to the direction of this -were human remains not found fairly close to the location of the aircraft a while ago?

As for the efforts to recover human remains – I am a firm believer that a greater clarity and possibly more forthright approach needs to be adopted towards the recovery of human remains.
We have the instance of the two Corsairs in the U.S that contain the remains of two FAA aviators. Their location is known and I find it shocking that efforts have not been made by the Mod to recover the aircraft and give the unfortunate crews a decent burial. I understand that if your a sailor there is always going to be an understanding that your end might be a watery grave but I don’t think that an aircraft should come within the same remit.

In the case of the Sebago Lake Corsairs, the MOD filed a request with a US court that the court ban removal of the remains… even though there was an organization willing to do it free of charge and even if next-of-kin permission had been obtained.

So the MOD not only made no effort themselves, but blocked anyone else from doing that.