Firstly, Discard All Notions About Cartoon Dogs Or Planetismals
No, we are not talking about Clyde Tombaugh's finest moment and his discovery of the planet Pluto, which has of late been downgraded to a planetismal, or A Very Small Planet. I needn't detail that dog. Art!
This an artist's impression of the Ruffian 'Burevestnik' nuclear-powered cruise missile, which translates as 'Storm Petrel' because they haven't released any pictures of the beast itself. Putinpot recently used this beast as yet another nuclear sabre being rattled in it's scabbard, claiming that it had flown to Alpha Centauri and back at x200 the speed of light and made the crew a pot of tea and crumpets when it got back. Or, it flew 14,000 kilometres and only made the crew an instant coffee with a digestive biscuit when it got back. Take your pick. Art!
In August 2019, a fatal accident occurred at a missile test site near Severodvinsk, Russia, during the testing of a liquid-fueled rocket engine. Five military and civilian specialists died and three were injured. While Russian officials initially downplayed the event, evidence of a brief radiation spike and official confirmation from Russia's nuclear agency led to speculation that the incident involved the testing of a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, likely the 9M730 Burevestnik
Oooops. Pretty obviously it wasn't 'Liquid fueled' as molten uranium in a rocket engine would be a spectacle for the ages. As long as you were watching from 5 miles away via binoculars. Art!
Here is a South Canadian design from the late Fifties and into the Sixties, branching off from research into nuclear-engined bombers, that could stay up indefinitely and travel to any target on the planet - you know, as Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks has been boasting. Art!
The Burestevenik engine design is what the engineers from the Fifities 'Project Pluto' would have called 'direct', meaning that the atomic pile is cooled directly by airflow over it, thus leaving behind an exhaust plume that contaminates the ground below, and also anyone not wearing a hazmat suit. The much, much safer 'indirect' designs that the South Canadians evolved were much, much more complicated, much much more expensive and much, much harder to realise. Art!
What you are looking at now, gentle reader, is a 'Tory II' experimental nuclear engine, circa 1961 in the sadlands of South Canada. Yes, it's as big as a rail car, but it worked. Had Project Pluto continued, this would have been the motive power for thermonuclear-armed atomic-propelled cruise missiles. Conrad did ponder, back in 2016 when this blog and photo was originally posted, about what a contemporary nuclear engine would look like. Much smaller, given material design, one would guess.
ANYWAY ANYWAY seven years ago I wondered where the South Canadian prototype would have been made to land, as you can't risk a nuclear accident in upstate New York or the Florida panhandle. One presumes that with Stormy Petrel they crash-land it anywhere in Ruffia where there's space and a lack of wary residents. Art!
'Dull fireball' would seem to be more apt. No, this is just a coincidental meteor or satellite burning up over Mordorvia, in what our superstitious ancestors would say was a 'fell omen'. You can choose any one of a dozen different things going wrong in Ruffia to choose from.
ANYWAY AGAIN there is, of course - obviously! -, absolutely no evidence that this missile actually exists in real life nor that it ever flew 14,000 millimetres let alone 8,400 miles. Test film? Before and after shots? Telemetry data? Trust me, bro. Art!
We know more about SLAM that we do about Burevestnik.
Once again, this is Bunker Grandad trying to scare the global West with sinister Ruffian technology, which is the kind of threat he trots out every few months when things aren't going particularly well. Note that the South Canadians gave up on nuclear-engined cruise missiles because MIRV'd ICBMs - sorry for the acronym salad - Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles on Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles - were far less complex, much more reliable and (bonus!) considerably cheaper. Note, too, that the Storm Petrel is sub-sonic, making it slow and thus easy to shoot down.
One is struck by the parallels with another bunker-dwelling fantasist who blathered on about his 'Wunderwaffe' that were going to turn the tide and bring victory -
Well, that scotches the original Intro I had planned, which was all about 'Charley's War'. Maybe tomorrow. I bet you can hardly wait.
Aha! That Reminds Me -
From the contents of my sagacious, or at least capacious, mind, Conrad recalls a quote from John Wyndham's magnum opus 'The Kraken Wakes'. To wit:
"The petrels of Muscovy -"
The 'petrels' he mentions here were a phenomenon of the Cold War (as this novel was published in 1953) being fellow-travellers who were big on pushing the Sinister agenda, as long as they didn't have to live there. Art!
An evocative cover showing an event that never happens in the novel. Sorry about that.
More Cold War Combatants
Yes, we are going to hop, skip and jump our way to BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM once again. This time for a South Canadian entry now that we've had the British, Teuton and Sinister variants. Art!
Apologies for not getting the full barrel in. This, gentle reader, is an M-48, one of the mainstays of South Canadian armour up to the early Eighties. After that it was replaced by the M1 Abrams, and good luck begging one of those from the South Canadians.
ANYWAY AGAIN AGAIN thanks to South Canadian production capabilities, they made 12,000 of these 50-tonners. They were armed with a 90 mm gun and you can distinguish them from the later M-60 by the lack of a cupola on their turret. These were the main battle tanks that went to Vietnam, as it was thought they were better suited to the jungle. Art!
I don't think a British CO would stand for the hull art. A bit garish, don't you know.
Woodent It Be Nice
Another instalment in the litany of woe enacted by 'Joe Blogs' on his vlog about the industrial troubles facing Ruffian industries. In this instance we are looking at 'Sveza', the Ruffian timber enterprise. Art!
They are a middle-level employer, with 19,000 staff. So far! Thanks to a slump in domestic construction, a dramatic fall in exports and a surge in production costs, profits have died on their bottom. Thus their timber mill at Tyumen has been closed, and it will be followed by others if things don't pick up big soon. Going broke when the resource you utilise grows for free takes some achieving, but the Ruffians managed it! Well done chaps!
No longer smoking, I'm afraid, and this Tyumen mill is a lot bigger than I expected.
I'm Shocked! Shocked, I Tell You! Well, Not Very Shocked
Conrad saw this item in his news feed and immediately copied it. No idea what the lie is - 'Oil is made by ants out of honey and sand', perhaps - just that it allows me to hit the Word Count. Art!
"India has rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that it agreed to stop importing Russian oil, signaling that tensions between Washington and New Delhi over energy policy are far from resolved."
Ah, that makes sense. BOOH wishes for a thing, then in his confused cranium that magically makes it happen. Don't forget - covfefe.
What A Difference A Year Makes
Waaaay back on the 30th October 1918, the Battle Of Vittorio Veneto was ongoing, fought mostly between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians, with British and French also involved on the Italian side. Art!
Our Italian allies. By this date the Austro-Hungarian positions had been split in two by the Italians capture of Vittorio Veneto, across a front of 35 miles and to a depth of 15 miles. After a week of fighting the Hapsburg army suffers 250,000 casualties, nearly all prisoners, meaning that their morale is at absolute rock-bottom. The hilarious irony is that exactly a year earlier in October 1917 the shoe was ln the other foot and it was the Italians who suffered 250,000 casualties at the Battle of Caporetto. Art!
The Hapsburg soldiers were also terrified of the British, who were all - allegedly - eight feet tall with poison fangs and whom loved nothing more than to dine of Hapsburg liver, whilst the Hapsburg was still alive. Not quite accurate.
And with that we are done!
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