I Imagine You'd Roll Your Eyes
- expecting me to yark on about how under-rated the Crusader was or that the final drive on the Panther was a major source of breakdowns, or post yet more photos of BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM, or explain how rubbish the T-34 was in reality. Art!
Petrol Engine Mother
Now, I do have a set of notes on the Sherman tank, taken from the 'Historical Notes' Youtube channel, which I will inflict upon you one day, although that day is not today. Art!
The brawny beast you see here is the Challenger 3, an upgraded version of the Challenger 2, adapted for modern drone-intensive warfare - note the interesting-looking kit atop the turret. One innovation you can't tell about is the use of a smoothbore barrel for the first time in a British Main Battle Tank. Previously they had been rifled and were the only MBT not to have gone over to smoothbore. Art!
Here we see the Sinister T-62, which was the first production tank to have a smoothbore gun in 1961. Smoothbore eliminates the drag from rifling and permits much higher muzzle velocities to be attained, meaning armour penetration is much improved. However - a word you were surely waiting for - I recall Sinister army veteran Victor Suvorov saying that the T-62 was hopelessly inaccurate 'An all-powerful gun that always missed.' Because for effective use if a smoothbore, you need computer control, and Sinister computers in 1961 capable of doing that took up most of an office block. Nowadays there's probably a phone app that'll do the trick.
ANYWAY the kind of 'tanks' that I intend to inform you about today are the kind used to store oil and fuels, because once again Ukraine has been blamming the living daylights out of them. Art!
The 'tank farm' as the South Canadians like to call them, at Tuapse has been extensively blammed, on the 16th of April, then the 20th of April, then the 28th of April, then on 1st May. Art!
Courtesy 'Jake Broe'
The Kozaky drones hitting the refinery aren't being intercepted and the fires are so massive and widespread it's not worth the FSB's time to track down and threaten people who post clips. Tuapse has now been hit eleven times in total and seems about 75% destroyed.
Then we have the critical pumping hub at Perm, which as of Sunday was still on fire. Art!
Don't forget, this site is in Siberia, meaning that very little Ruffian infrastructure is beyond Ukrainian drone range, and it's another indication that Ruffia's size is a major weakness; there are simply too many sites spread out over too much land to protect more than a fraction of them. Especially when 280 SAM and radar systems are defending Moscow, and another 27 protecting Putinpot's Valdai palace. Art!
That's one of the storage tanks at Perm burning merrily away. Art!
Courtesy 'Special Kherson Cat'
Six 50,000 cubic metres capacity storage tanks were destroyed, burning up almost 2 million barrels of oil. Jake then put up some pictures of a tank of that size being constructed, not sure whom to attribute for them. Art!
Inside Outside
Constructing one of these things is a major engineering project in itself. 'EMPRmedia' on Twitter did a bit of digging and found that the cost of a single 50,000 cubic metre tank is $1.5 million, with the contents being worth $30 million at current prices. So, $9 million in construction costs and $180 million in lost oil. Caused by 6 'Lyuty' drones that cost $1.2 million, or a return-on-investment ratio of 157.
O and the governor of Krasnodar Krai Oblast has demonstrated what a copium overdose looks like. He claims there is no damage to any oil infrastructure, the Ukrainian drones carry fuel tanks of their own that rain down burning fuel when hit, nothing to see here, just keep shovelling that oily sand into a bucket. Art!
How do the Kozaky know which tanks to hit? I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. The long-range drones used have thermal cameras that detect how full or empty the tanks are, so the operator can prioritise targets. My guess is that the four tanks left alone at Perm are empty. Art!
I'll stop here to avoid being boring, but above are two more 50k cubic metre tanks blown up at Gorky in Mordorvia, another $63 million in losses.
So - tanks!
Oooops
One thing that popped up on my news feed was an item about a film released in late April, 'Desert Warrior', to resounding failure. It seems to have been in Development Hell for 5 years, ballooning the cost to $150 million. Art!
It has been an utter failure at the box office. Art!
So the studio will get back $350,000. That $150 million very probably doesn't include marketing and distribution so the final cost could be even higher. Art!
No details of performance in May yet. Conrad confidently predicts it will be pulled from all but a handful of cinemas and then sold to Netflix.
King Piggy Gets Peggy
Conrad uses the slang 'peg' for 'tooth', just so we're clear. This Item allows me to use another awful photo of Donnie Dorko. Art!
He looks like he's sucking a lemon. ANYWAY there are questions being raised about a trip he took to a dental surgeon in Florida, because the White House has it's own dental surgery, a fact I was entirely ignorant of. We may never know the truth. But it's fun to speculate.
Whilst We're Making Cheap Shots At Cheap Sh-
The repellent crook Rudy Giuliani, a former acquaintance of the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut, has been taken to hospital. Predictably, cruel jokes are making the rounds about him.
Art!
His finest moment
Droning On Again
I need a wordy Item to hit the Word Count, so we're heading back to Mordorvia and how things are going in Barad Duh. There's an interesting illustration on Twitter by 'Jay In Kyiv', who needs to be treated with a certain caution, given that they were posting 'Prune60's railway data with no attribution. Art!
What you have here are SAM sites where missiles, radar and guns are concentrated, having been stripped out from any other locations, in order to try and protect the May 9th Victory Parade, since the Kozaky aren't participating in a truce. There are 280 units allegedly protecting Moscow.
HOWEVER - for the second time today - Art!
What you're seeing here is Mosfilmovskaya Street, where a high-rise apartment building was hit by a Ukrainian drone. Since a civilian apartment isn't the kind of target the Kozaky select, it had probably been spoofed by electronic warfare kit. But it's not a good look a mere 5 days before the big parade. I bet Putinpot is chewing the carpet with rage at the news.
Finally -
Going out with a Biercism.
"Interregnum, n: The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again."
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