Varsevan / Valra
banner
varsevan.bsky.social
Varsevan / Valra
@varsevan.bsky.social
Scattered interests, often naval
Reposted by Varsevan / Valra
The politicians know this, they've heard it repeatedly over the past decade. The noise has grown louder this past year or 2, but so too has SA's economic situation deteriorated. The only way to meaningfully increase the Def budget is to increase SA's GDP, but I fear this will not be anytime soon.
/7
April 30, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Varsevan / Valra
24/ Project 1164 Atlant-class ships like Moskva have continous corridors along the entire lengths of their upper and lower (residential) decks. This contributed to the rapid spread of the fire and smoke. The bulkheads could not be sealed due to buckling caused by the explosions.
May 2, 2025 at 6:30 AM
May 2, 2025 at 10:10 AM
I don’t have Shkrebets account right to hand, so I will check later if he specifically said MA-2
May 2, 2025 at 10:09 AM
I generally find this point to be underrated, because not only was the VMF massively incompetent by not keeping Moskva in good shape, but even if had they done this, she was still wholly unsuited for combat

The fundamental error was keeping her in service at all
May 2, 2025 at 10:06 AM
I mention this because while a lot of attention is rightfully on the poor state of Moskvas systems, even if everything was working as intended, her ability to intercept sea skimming ASCMs was very limited

With Osa-MAs (and not MA-2s) she arguably had no real capability to do so
May 2, 2025 at 9:58 AM
One detail here is that the Moskva had Osa-MA-2s (also that they were at least partially functional). This nominally has a point-defense capability against ASCMs.

Previously it was thought that Moskva only had Osa-MAs
8/ At the time, as the captain's technical report recorded, the ship's radar and anti-missile systems had malfunctions which reduced effectiveness. On 7 March 2022, an Osa-MA2 air defence missile system on the starboard side had detected a probable UAV when it was only 7 km away.
May 2, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Varsevan / Valra
Just in the same way Google didn't make people smarter because you have to know how to research, AI won't either. In fact, AI will likely make people significantly dumber because it gives anyone the ability to boil all the complexity and nuance out of a topic and feel like they understand it.
April 15, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by Varsevan / Valra
Some of the CSIS stuff is direct and to the point about what this means, and theres links to longer reporting about the whole supply chain and end uses
The Consequences of China’s New Rare Earths Export Restrictions
China has imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements and magnets in retaliation for new U.S. tariffs. These materials are vital to defense technologies, but the United States is entirely...
www.csis.org
April 15, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Varsevan / Valra
I (and others) have said it elsewhere, but a big problem right now is that today's right-wing elites' beliefs and desires are so deranged that trying to properly explain them to the average offline person makes *you* sound like the deranged conspiracy theorist.
April 14, 2025 at 2:14 PM