I make videos on some of the more esoteric areas of military history and affairs, particularly obscure/forgotten aircraft, the conflict in Myanmar, new technology in defence, and current conflict news. I've also uploaded some combat footage from my time in Syria.
Get more content on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ednash
Desert Sniper: How One Ordinary Brit Went to War Against ISIS (2018) uk.bookshop.org/a/6523/9780349143385
Kurdish Armour Against ISIS: YPG/SDF tanks, technicals and AFVs in the Syrian Civil War, 2014-19 (2021) amzn.to/3kZigIP
I am 82 years old and have been a diligent of aircraft World War II. I believe this the first time I have heard about this aircraft. It is great looking plane, and had quite a service record. Thank you for introducing such an plane to me. Great video.
Some say the wire guided drones although communicatively secure, are short range forget that early wire guided atgms (and even now as military tends to update tech very slowly) faced the same problem as they have to be big and bulky as their components are both bigger and heavier. Now replace the wire guidence with fiber optic gudience you can save both weight and space while increasing range drastically. I mean literally the longest range wire guided missile is under 10km but the longest range fiber optic guided missile has a range of over 50km. So eventually they will evolve this way.
I thought about this as an issue just after what happened in July. I wanted to talk to others about it and discuss the severity, but everyone who knows about drones just wanted to avoid talking about it because they're scared of it too
I think that this is really why the US FAA is leaning on the RC aircraft hobby. I left the hobby because of the increasing burden of government regulation and oversight. The public claim is that FAA "drone" registration is preparatory to an anticipated expansion of commercial drone traffic. But I think the real issue is that a smart motivated individual could build an autonomous, GPS/INS guided smart weapon with off the shelf technologies in his home workshop. Add a small turbine engine and gyro stabilization and you have a cruise missile that can travel over a hundred miles at hundreds of knots just a few hundred feet above the ground. The only thing missing is an energy-dense high-explosive payload. But bad guys always seem to find a way. It's not science fiction anymore.
As a grandson of a Halifax tail-gunner during the war, its always annoyed me that it seems only the Lancaster is remembered by the greater population of the UK. There were other planes that contributed to the Bomber Command war effort. The Stirlings biggest fault was it was the first of the heavies, with requirements to fill that we know now were going to hold it back but ones that freed up the later 4 engined heavies to do a better job. Did the Stirling have to learn to fly a bomber campaign so the Lanc and Halifax could soar?? Ive always had a thing for the Stirling, and being astounded how big the 1/72 scale airfix model of it was compared to the Lanc and Halifax that i had. Its a shame there isnt any around these days to see.
When the F401 didn't pan out as intended, the Navy should have had the Tomcat fitted with the F100 engine from which the F401 was developed. Admittedly the F100 was having some issues at the time, but those were resolved more satisfactorily than the TF30's issues ever were. To top it off, the F100 delivered as much as 5,000lb more thrust than the TF30, so the Tomcat's power loading issue would have been largely mitigated as well. It wouldn't have been the same as the eventual F-14B and D, but it would have been far better than the criminally underpowered TF30.
11:30 Many Ukrainian heavy night bomber multi-copters and unmanned kamikaze boats are already being controlled by Starlink, in fact, it is a technology, which makes the boats a viable weapon for deep strikes into Russia's naval assets. UPD: A Russian Shahed-136 long-range one-way drone was shot down and was also found to be using Starlink for its control. Yes, even though Russia is reportedly restricted from buying and operating those. Looks like these days you can get your hands on pretty much anything anywhere in the world.
I cringe when I hear the phrase, 'unfortunately, the Cold War ended, and the boat/plane/tank/bomb was cancelled'. It wasn't unfortunate for the millions of people living under the boot heel of the failed communist promise of prosperity and security. Not mentioned was the pathetic short range, load carrying capacity of the Soviet VTOL jets. The dedicated lift engine concept was abandoned long before by the Germans, French, Brits and Yanks. Not only did it add a staggering weight penalty, but occupied space needed for fuel carriage. Thanks as always for bringing us these excellent videos, Ed
Most talk about the 🦟’s wood airframe in a “whoa, that’s cool” spirit. Only one that knows nothing about aviation would cite the fact in contempt & few outside the 🇬🇧 not into mil-av would be aware of its existence. OTH, the Albermarle deserves contempt. An awful aircraft in every way. It’s arguable that they’d have been better off w/nothing than that thing. Even its name was awful.
B-17 did 'middling-to-heavy" lifting, BUT, it didn't do the EFFECTIVE LIFTING when you figure in DEATHS ... Funny how the RN did the same kind of Penny Wise/Pound Foolish when it came to effective ships vs Cheapskates on dry docks, etc. That includes Scapa Flow in WWI, too.
The F-16, while a spectacular fighter jet, didn't turn out to be so austere, cheap, or easy to maintain. Northrup gave the USAF an aircraft that was exactly what it sorely lacked in Vietnam, and the AF spit on it. We have the best fighter jets in the world, but in a major war of attrition, you need stuff that doesn't take 5 years to build.
This was in Eon Flux the movie with Charlis Theron in... 2005. At least partially as idea. And even far earlier in Dune was version of small assassins drones... So it was only question of time.
It is, rightly, proverbial as one of the ugliest aircraft ever, but actually the overall layout is very sensible. There are just two things that curse it: the tangle of macrame holding the wings together, and the deliberately ugly design of the nose. The Supermarine S 5 shows how elegant the installation of the Napier Lion could be. And I guess that as its primary role was to be a spotter for fall of shot for the fleet, a very low-speed activity, there was no incentive to make it sleek. But, even after this moment of seeing the point, it does look horrible.
The Trump attempts only prove that people hate the guy. However, on a real note: The Israeli performed terror attack in Lebanon proves that you can use cellular systems for attacks. Imagine a couple of scenarios: A rally where there are a lot of phones and other such things. You slip a little Bluetooth malware there that makes the phones bork and that way the batteries burn or even explode. Nice little decentralised attack. Similarly if the target has a pacemaker there's a good chance of getting someone close enough to bork their pacemaker in a situation like this. Mini or "nanodrones". Nowadays you can use hive/AI to fly tiny drones in a swarm anywhere and any way you want. Yes, facial recognition is fairly easily done nowadays. Pictures will confuse the drones, but with large enough saturation this will make the attempt easier too, since the emergency sevices are very swamped with dealing with the attack and so there's a higher possibility of drones getting through. Remember, you can set the drones off remotely, or even have them wait for certain cues like audio. Have one listen and once things are on the way it signals the rest of the swarm and off they go. In today's world funding isn't that a huge thing. 3D printer, etc. You basically need time and dedication.
An open challenge to Ed. I will send you the components to a racing quad. You will then simply assemble it, program the controller area network and fly it into the equivalent of the back door of a 'track' You think this is realistic or accurate?. It takes a minimum of 60 hours to learn any rotocraft, even racing quads or radio controlled helicopters. FPV isn't a rating type. A store purchased cheap crap DJI 'observation drone' is an fpv drone. If you are not flying it by line of site, ie standing on the ground looking directly at it whilst flying it - 3rd person view: Then it is an fpv drone. You're confusing racing quadcopters with observation drones. A simple mistake I guess, like mixing up a Cessna with an F-18 or a smle with an ar...😅😅😅 No low end commercial drone is equipped or remotely ready for combat. And no tommy crook is going to spend 100+ hours learning to fly a racing qwad.
At 57 seconds here, a B25 is seen flying over a river with the tall, Story bridge, the second, not so visible, Queen Street bridge. This is Brisbane, Australia. Where I live. During WW2 a USN support base with three dry docks and a floating dry dock. Ahead of the aircraft, is famous Hanger 7, where near all interesting perloined Japanese aircraft came to be assembled and tested. The first Zero was found in Alaska and went to Boeing.
One possible takeaway - maintaining a standing army is no longer necessary. Creating the necessary skills in the citizenry to use drones, and making the necessary arrangements so that in the event of a threatened invasion there would be stashes of drones and the necessary exploding things in every town and city and throughout rural areas, becomes what a wise government would do. That and a sh*t ton of money into counter drone technology. For those of us in the UK, a nation capable of producing armoured fighting vehicles unsuitable for any terrain, at significant cost, there will probably be a ban on citizens being able to buy drones, use drones or make drones.
That is a fair point. Perhaps they’d like to look again at the thinking behind the peace dividend. You know, actually spend some money on making the nation something worth fighting for? I know, what sort of socialist nonsense is this? It’s not binary. We can occupy a position that’s not all the way at one extreme or another.
I wonder if the woman who didn’t believe the plane could possibly fly got to see it take off. Assuming the “Young man, what kind of fool do you take me for?” isn’t apocryphal.
