BOOJUM!: Naval Gazing

Conrad Droning On Again

NO! that is not a typo. It doesn't apply especially well to Conrad, either, as he is not noted for self-awareness, contemplation or meditative rigour.

No, what I want to detail here is a small part of We Are Living In The Future, an assertion I mention every so often, because it's true. We now have digital doorbells that record in sufficient depth and detail to solve crimes, which you the owner can watch from the other side of the planet. Art!

That looks suitably futuristic, doesn't it? Done via the trusty AI image generator, working off the 'Cyberpunk' skin, and using "Gravity's Rainbow' as the template.

So, what am I referring to? Why, as you may have guessed, nothing more or less than naval drones as used in modern marine warfare. Art!

O - yes - ignore that, I'm going to, it's still far too expensive.

ART! NAVAL DRONES! <sound of Tazer charging up>

That's Cyrillic for "SBU"

Which is the abbreviation for "Sluzhba Uzpeki Uraini" (NOT "Submarine Bomb Unit") or "Ukrainian Security Service", who are the people responsible for these kamikaze kombat killers. As you can see from the above, they are a low-profile boat. Thanks to a technical essay on Twitter, we can now understand why they're so hard to spot and shoot. Art!

Simply put, the curvature of the earth. A radar mounted on a ship will have resolution sufficient only to identify the upper ten inches or so of a naval drone a yard in height over five minles distant, and that on a fairly calm sea. In any kind of rough sea state an approaching drone may be invisible against the wave background.

Then there is the speed of the drone itself, which, in the Ukrainian 'Magura' model, can be almost 60 knots, or 50 miles per hour. Art!

This means a drone travelling at this speed can cover about a mile in a minute. We are presuming a static target here, so if the vessel is travelling away from the drone, time to impact would be longer. On the other hand, if the direction of travel is towards the drone, the time to detect decreases accordingly. This gives perilously little time to do anything except to clench and pray. Art!

This is the "Tsezar Kunikov" landing ship, sunk earlier this year by Ukraine. The image is an infra-red one because the attack was made at night, when the Mark One Human Eyeball is at a distinct disadvantage. Likewise mist, fog, rain, low cloud, choppy seas, flotsam and even seagulls can distract or divert attention from the real threat. Art!

Then, if you can spot the drone, what do you have to attack it with? That above is a Go-Pro clip from a crewman aboard the Kunikov, whose crew were reduced to shooting at it and others with AK-47s, to absolutely no effect. The problem is, these drones are too small to be hit with anti-ship missiles or large-calibre gunfire, and cannon in the 20 - 30 mm range don't come with infra-red sights but are instead guided by radar. Which cannot be used on small surface targets because of the 'clutter' given off by waves. Don't forget, for every ten seconds that pass, said drone will be 300 yards closer. Art!

Nor do these things come solo. O no! They come in swarms, five or six at a time, from different directions in order to thin out any defensive response and so that, if one gets blown into little bits, the blast won't affect the others. The Uke pilots are also trained to aim follow-up drones directly into any hull breach caused by a prior detonation, because this is how you turn a damaged ship into a sinking one.

I use the word 'swarm' advisedly, because there is strength in numbers, and it becomes exponentially harder to stop drones attacking from all points of the compass instead of a single one on a direct bearing. If the Ukes lose all six drones to sink a Ruffian warship then the balance sheet is grossly tilted in their favour: $1.5 millions worth of drones for a $60 million warship.

How does it feel to be living in the future?

ART!

Talking Of Flamethrowers ...

Conrad recalled that, back in the last century, there was a brief fad in South Africa for flamethrowers as deterrence against thieves and various ne'er-do-wells. I'm sure that there was a flamethrowing briefcase, yet cannot find any confirmation that such an infernal engine ever existed.

However - O that word again! - in conjunction with 'engines' and 'flamethrowers', I do have this for you. Art!

No, this is not a joke. It was a very real thing, and perfectly legal at the time. Conrad would think "The Roaster" a better title, or perhaps "Do You Want Fried With That?".

There is no information about whether it was ever used or not. Probably not; a gang of well-done villains turning up at hospital would have definitely made the nine o'clock news.

We Haven't Bashed The Flabby Farting Fraudster For A While

He's not had a good week in court. Unlike the civil trial, he doesn't have a choice about attending; he has to be in the New York courtroom during the week, with Wednesdays off, and the weekends, too, because the law does not work a 7 day week in South Canada. Witnesses say he looks bored stupid, which may be why he falls asleep regularly. Art!

As many pundits have already gleefully pointed out, even mass-murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy had their parents in court to provide moral support. White-collar fraudster Sam Bankman Fried, a more appropriate analogy to Pumpkinhead, had his parents present in court.

Not so Donald! Art?

Not only are his family entirely absent from the courtroom, his legions of MAGA fans have stayed away, too. That's them above. Hardly the thousands he expected to turn out and protest for him, possibly discouraged by the last mass protest he inveigled into marching on a certain large building full of senators and congressmen. I think 2 Republican politicians visited Manhattan to support him. Gee, I wonder why so few? Art!

Possibly because anyone who gets involved with him inevitably gets the short end of the excrement-smeared stick. Take Rudy above; he's now in the hole for $148 million dollars thanks to promoting Pimpkinhead's election lies, he's now bankrupt and cannot now practice law. And Donnie's response? "Rooney who? Never met him. Stood next to him once. Don't know the guy. Wanna buy a bible?"

If Donald Judas Trump were to keel over dead tomorrow, the blog would be bereft. He provides so much free content!

"City In The Sky"

Construction proceeds apace in Arc One, with the Doctor aware of how precious time is.

Spread out across the entire sphere, not visible because they worked indoors, still more workers were “knitting” titanium wire into giant sheets, after their colleagues put salvaged sphere material through a pulling press to produce kilometres of five-millimetre metal thread. Slow work, but important.

Warning lights at the North airlock indicated that M3’s MEV had arrived from the Moon with another load of regolith, five hundred tonnes for processing split into ten individual blivets.

Excellent! mused the Doctor, rocking back on his heels, thumbs in lapels. Feeling like a project manager and unused to operating at a distance from his own ideas, he decided to visit Broughton and see what progress the scions had made towards the sphere’s eventual landing. His progress took twice as long as it should, thanks to detours around welding teams working in trenches everywhere.

The township’s central house buzzed with activity; charts and screens arrayed on tables indicated pie charts and graphics dealing with this unique operation. He peered over the shoulder of a young woman inputting data from her Tab, seeing the legend “% Loose Artefacts Rendered Safe”, and a series of coloured bars with headings like “Personal Effects” “Livestock” “Storage”.

Yes, sheets of woven titanium. I can claim it's a thing because it's the future.

O Joy Unabated!

Look what I just discovered - Art!