Mark Bailey posted this alternative to the Australian phibs on the warships1 board, I also found it in an argument on another board.

WW Tamesis class 4th Generation RoRo.

Working exclusively from open source material shows that a twin-screw ‘militarised’ version of this ship with a starboard side island and a flight deck with a ski-jump, 20m x 30m steel flat products lift (takes 800 tons or a fully spread Chinook), 6 fixed decks with the one below the upper deck given 30′ clearance so to act as a hangar and a slewing dipping stern ramp (300 ton ramp load) would have internal volume for 2500 troops, 40 days of sustainment, 32 helicopters (in the hangar deck) with all their maintenance needs, firefighting gear, 50 Abrams and their support vehicles, 100 M113, 100 ASLAV, 400-750 softskins, a field hospital with all its components, and 4 x LCU carried internally and launched thru gunport door gantry cranes plus 14,000+cz of fuel for the helos etc using just her existing double bottom volume for ballast water.

That load, BTW, would leave one of your six decks quite empty! Cost roughly AUD350M in 2006 dollars, delivery in 15-18 months if ordered at Daewoo today.

Oh, before I forget, SEABEE = Sea going barge carrier. There is a current Korean commercial design (unbuilt as yet IIRC) for one of these puppies with a 5000-ton stern lift. Ships like this enable you to carry a vast amount of material in big, boxy barges. Or you can carry those, and a pontoon wharf, and a crane barge to unload them, and a bunch of self-propelled beachable lighters, or a bunch of fully loaded LCU, or a causeway to actually link the ship to the shore.

(A link I found to the Tamesis

http://www.wilhelmsen.com/services/shipping/fleet/Pages/MVTamesis.aspx

)

Any guestimates on the jet thrust needed to get a Brabazon airborne?

I

Compared to the C-130J the A400 is larger, and the USAF has a glaring need for lift and volume.

Given the original C130 was stretched, how confident are Lockheed and the USAF that the C130J will still be the size required in 5, 10 etc years?

However, the US needs Venezuelan oil, and Venezuela needs the US refineries (for technical reasons US refineries are about the only ones regionally that can process Venezuelan oil). The two have an almost unique hostile symbiotic relationship, that has to be based upon pragmatism despite public pronouncements to the contrary.

🙁

At the momnet yes, but in a few years….

from 2007

http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/chinainstitute/nav03.cfm?nav03=61479&nav02=58460&nav01=57272

Moreover, it is learned that CNPC will cooperate with the Venezuelan side to build three refineries in China with a total capacity of processing 800,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude per day, which would be likely completed in two or three years.

Chavez emphasized that Venezuela and China would also establish a joint oil shipping company to carry crude and other products between the two countries, and do business in the Caribbean and take shipments to Africa.

With these moves, China has become a strategic partner of Venezuela, which will help the country reduce dependence on oil export to the U.S. At present, the U.S is still the biggest oil customer of Venezuela, although oil export to the U.S. has declined from 1.5 million barrels per day in March 2006 to 1.2 million in the first quarter of 2007.

Chavez said China is set to replace the U.S. as Venezuela’s top oil buyer, as Venezuela plans to raise oil export to China to one million barrels a day by 2012 from its current level of about 150,000 barrels a day. Besides, PdVSA hopes that Chinese oil companies will produce at least 400,000 barrels of crude a day in Venezuela by 2011.

What the article doesn’t say is that the Chinese are getting the oil at a reduced rate and Venezuela is paying all the extra shipping cost for having the tankers at sea for far longer.

Seeing as we seem to be going ET, I read earlier tonight that a stack of UK UFO files are due to be released soon thanks to the FOE act but I cant seem to find the site again at the moment.

Are there any figures for the the number of times a Halifax with a ventral 0.5″ saw a nightfighter closing in from below particularly one fitted with Schrage Musik