Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Quite. They wouldn't even need to attack the turbines, they could sever the interconnectors extremely easily and with virtually no risk of attack or even detection.
I think your ideological hatred of wind turbines is possibly just slightly clouding your judgment here.
Hitting thousands of small wind turbines and solar panels with drones might be possible but is evidently harder than hitting a single large station with thousands of drones (or even dozens, as Ukraine has shown in Russia).
Cutting interconnectors for wind is no easier than cutting transmission lines from a power station. Or cutting gas pipelines (as we’ve seen). Or blowing up gas storage (as we’ve seen).
I’m not just making this up. Just Google dispersed power generation and national security (or any similar phrase) and there’s days of reading material.
Not that I expect to convince you, of course. But it’s not enough to say a technology is vulnerable: all technologies are vulnerable. The question is whether it’s more or less vulnerable than the alternatives. I’d rather present the enemy with a target of several thousand dispersed wind turbines or 50 small gas plants than 5 huge nuclear or coal power stations.
I am sure that your comments on the vulnerability of coal and gas power stations (and particularly nuclear stations) is true, and I've criticised new nuclear for the UK on these grounds before (to precisely no agreement from PB I seem to remember).
However, it is you who seems still not to accept that nobody would need to attack individual windmills, given the fact that offshore wind is connected to the grid via large submerged power lines that can be taken out very easily. Yes this is the same risk as gas pipelines, but we've seen how effective a supposedly amateur attack on a gas pipeline was recently, so I don't think that helps your argument.
There are more underwater cables than the number of pipelines. You’d need to take out multiple cables to take out significant portion of the UK offshore wind.
All steam based power stations are very vulnerable - attack in on the turbine/generator sets. They are often quite long, quite massive and rotating at high speed. Slightly off balance and it tears itself to pieces in a fraction of a second.
Shorting out the open air high voltage systems was easier, but after Gulf War I, a lot of these facilities grew protective nets around the exposed cabling and equipment.
My brother did some work at a power station that lost several turbines at the same time (not whilst he was on duty...). It was quite a hilarious mistake with computers and redundant systems that stopped some lubrication systems.
The plant used (I think) Westinghouse kit, and there was *one* spare turbine in the US. They flew it over in an Antonov 124, as whilst it was not that heavy, it was a point load that was too heavy for a 747 or similar. That had to land at Prestwick, and it was taken down to the Trent Valley from there.
These things are ordered years in advance, and take ages to build.
To be fair death usually is a significant cause of long term inactivity but it’s probably wise to be aware of whether your candidates are still alive or not before you cause offence to their bereft family.
This is the reason I'm highly dubious about REF polling 15% in the 2024 general election. Not this scenario, per se, but just the general amateurishness of the REF operation.
This is a party still very much in it's infancy and I think that will tell in a general election. REF 10% lower than their current polling position and CON 8% higher than their current polling position, IMO.
Of course if Farage replaces Tice in the next few weeks, then all bets are off, but I don't think he will. He seems to have his eyes set on the US at the moment.
Yeah I’m not convinced by the REF hype. It reminds me of the James Goldsmith Referendum Party in 1997 that was going to cause the Tories all sorts and in the end got about 2% and may have made made a difference in the tiniest handful of contests but probably not.
UKIPs high-watermark in general elections was 2015 where they got 12% of votes. 2015 feels a generation away. Brexit party for all the noise and suggestion of a level of tactical behaviour with the Conservatives only got 2% in 2019.
That was the election where we voted for a majority Conservative government for the first time in 23 years so we could avoid all the chaos of a Labour-led government, right?
To be fair, and I don’t vote Conservative, (indeed have only done so once in 60+ years on the register) the memory of Brown’s last couple of years was much fresher in the memory.
To be fair death usually is a significant cause of long term inactivity but it’s probably wise to be aware of whether your candidates are still alive or not before you cause offence to their bereft family.
The party said they were "mortified" for not knowing he had died.
Not as mortified as the dead candidate presumably.
To be fair death usually is a significant cause of long term inactivity but it’s probably wise to be aware of whether your candidates are still alive or not before you cause offence to their bereft family.
The party said they were "mortified" for not knowing he had died.
Not as mortified as the dead candidate presumably.
Some of the best candidates for Soviet Leader were dead at the time. Think of the advantages -
1) Doesn't steal money 2) Doesn't start wars 3) No protecting friends, relations and subordinates from consequences 4) No stupid statements.
To be fair death usually is a significant cause of long term inactivity but it’s probably wise to be aware of whether your candidates are still alive or not before you cause offence to their bereft family.
This is the reason I'm highly dubious about REF polling 15% in the 2024 general election. Not this scenario, per se, but just the general amateurishness of the REF operation.
This is a party still very much in it's infancy and I think that will tell in a general election. REF 10% lower than their current polling position and CON 8% higher than their current polling position, IMO.
Of course if Farage replaces Tice in the next few weeks, then all bets are off, but I don't think he will. He seems to have his eyes set on the US at the moment.
Yeah I’m not convinced by the REF hype. It reminds me of the James Goldsmith Referendum Party in 1997 that was going to cause the Tories all sorts and in the end got about 2% and may have made made a difference in the tiniest handful of contests but probably not.
I agree. Although I daresay the Conservative Party assume that a big slug of those Reform voters come “home” to the Conservatives. I suspect that a lot will simply sit on their hands and stay at home.
Also I am not sure that Farage would change that equation much. UKIPs high-watermark in general elections was 2015 where they got 12% of votes. 2015 feels a generation away. Brexit party for all the noise and suggestion of a level of tactical behaviour with the Conservatives only got 2% in 2019.
Reform are just one of several not the Tories party. In a general election campaign, when they will be marginalised, many of these voters will choose a more mainstream not the Tories party.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Quite. They wouldn't even need to attack the turbines, they could sever the interconnectors extremely easily and with virtually no risk of attack or even detection.
I think your ideological hatred of wind turbines is possibly just slightly clouding your judgment here.
Hitting thousands of small wind turbines and solar panels with drones might be possible but is evidently harder than hitting a single large station with thousands of drones (or even dozens, as Ukraine has shown in Russia).
Cutting interconnectors for wind is no easier than cutting transmission lines from a power station. Or cutting gas pipelines (as we’ve seen). Or blowing up gas storage (as we’ve seen).
I’m not just making this up. Just Google dispersed power generation and national security (or any similar phrase) and there’s days of reading material.
Not that I expect to convince you, of course. But it’s not enough to say a technology is vulnerable: all technologies are vulnerable. The question is whether it’s more or less vulnerable than the alternatives. I’d rather present the enemy with a target of several thousand dispersed wind turbines or 50 small gas plants than 5 huge nuclear or coal power stations.
I am sure that your comments on the vulnerability of coal and gas power stations (and particularly nuclear stations) is true, and I've criticised new nuclear for the UK on these grounds before (to precisely no agreement from PB I seem to remember).
However, it is you who seems still not to accept that nobody would need to attack individual windmills, given the fact that offshore wind is connected to the grid via large submerged power lines that can be taken out very easily. Yes this is the same risk as gas pipelines, but we've seen how effective a supposedly amateur attack on a gas pipeline was recently, so I don't think that helps your argument.
There are more underwater cables than the number of pipelines. You’d need to take out multiple cables to take out significant portion of the UK offshore wind.
All steam based power stations are very vulnerable - attacks on the turbine/generator sets. They are often quite long, quite massive and rotating at high speed. Slightly off balance and it tears itself to pieces in a fraction of a second.
Shorting out the open air high voltage systems was easier, but after Gulf War I, a lot of these facilities grew protective nets around the exposed cabling and equipment.
It's also an interesting (and I hope known) design point for future building. Assuming that overall centralised generation is more vulnerable than dispersed, so the vulnerability in dispersed generation is in the power lines (the vulnerability of which would be of a different nature anyway, requiring sabotage rather than aerial strikes), it makes sense to disperse transmission too, as much as possible.
Given it's unlikely for now that Russia will make massive concerted attacks on UK power infrastructure, the interesting question is then Ukraine. How quickly could Ukraine stand up a few GW of dispersed grid power? It's not the windiest of places so I'd assume it would be solar and small gas turbines, connected to the existing grid. Would be interesting to know in principle how quickly a country's grid could adapt to the sort of attacks Russia is currently mounting.
To be fair death usually is a significant cause of long term inactivity but it’s probably wise to be aware of whether your candidates are still alive or not before you cause offence to their bereft family.
latest IPSOS/Reuters polling for the US election, polling 4-8 April 2024, (number in brackets is for January):
Biden: 41% (38%)
Trump: 37% (43%)
GOP are mad. Literally anyone (ANYONE) could beat Biden, other than the Orange One!
There's a trope that it takes a second stake to the heart sometimes to defeat evil.
Buffy dealt with this in Buffy vs Dracula, while any other staked vampire in the series would turn to dust and that would be the end of it, Dracula turned to dust then Buffy waited and he reformed so she staked him again saying "I've seen enough of your movies to know you'd be back".
We had that trope come to political life in the UK with Corbyn, he lost the 2017 election but acted like he won it (not as badly as Trump acted of course) and it took a second defeat in 2019 to see him lose his until-then tight grip on Labour.
Hopefully a second stake through Trump this November, a second defeat, would release the GOP from the thrall like state it is in to Count Trumpula.
Lets hope Biden's victory is actually very comfortable or a landslide (I think it probably will be) to see off the Orange One and all his heirs and descendants once for all.
I've been part of every pb.com groupthink bubble going (except for the Brexit referendum, when I want spending much time on the site at the time), so I'm finding the current experience of looking into a pb.com groupthink from the outside refreshing and unique.
Just a reminder, Biden's approval ratings are awful and so not presage re-election for an incumbent. Biden is polling so much further behind than in 2020 that it's plausible Trump will win the popular vote.
The polls are moving Biden's way, although Trump may still be ahead. Also factor in the unpopularity dumping Roe v Wade, the Republicans in the House, Trump's court cases and the fact that he's losing his mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkHShhTSMeA
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Quite. They wouldn't even need to attack the turbines, they could sever the interconnectors extremely easily and with virtually no risk of attack or even detection.
I think your ideological hatred of wind turbines is possibly just slightly clouding your judgment here.
Hitting thousands of small wind turbines and solar panels with drones might be possible but is evidently harder than hitting a single large station with thousands of drones (or even dozens, as Ukraine has shown in Russia).
Cutting interconnectors for wind is no easier than cutting transmission lines from a power station. Or cutting gas pipelines (as we’ve seen). Or blowing up gas storage (as we’ve seen).
I’m not just making this up. Just Google dispersed power generation and national security (or any similar phrase) and there’s days of reading material.
Not that I expect to convince you, of course. But it’s not enough to say a technology is vulnerable: all technologies are vulnerable. The question is whether it’s more or less vulnerable than the alternatives. I’d rather present the enemy with a target of several thousand dispersed wind turbines or 50 small gas plants than 5 huge nuclear or coal power stations.
I am sure that your comments on the vulnerability of coal and gas power stations (and particularly nuclear stations) is true, and I've criticised new nuclear for the UK on these grounds before (to precisely no agreement from PB I seem to remember).
However, it is you who seems still not to accept that nobody would need to attack individual windmills, given the fact that offshore wind is connected to the grid via large submerged power lines that can be taken out very easily. Yes this is the same risk as gas pipelines, but we've seen how effective a supposedly amateur attack on a gas pipeline was recently, so I don't think that helps your argument.
There are more underwater cables than the number of pipelines. You’d need to take out multiple cables to take out significant portion of the UK offshore wind.
All steam based power stations are very vulnerable - attacks on the turbine/generator sets. They are often quite long, quite massive and rotating at high speed. Slightly off balance and it tears itself to pieces in a fraction of a second.
Shorting out the open air high voltage systems was easier, but after Gulf War I, a lot of these facilities grew protective nets around the exposed cabling and equipment.
Some of us have watched way too many videos of imbalanced turbines.
(They only actually test a large fan blade failure, the internal rotating components are assumed to have infinite energy, and are expected to never fail in service. There is nonetheless the occasional uncontained engine failure, and they are often fatal to people who happen to be in the path of the expelled parts).
Related to the topic: Years ago I read about early efforts to computerize large banks in the US. Four large computer companies started trying to build banking software at the same time. Two of the four failed to provide a finished product, in spite of the profit opportunities.
Creating large software systems is hard. Worse yet, it looks easy to almost everyone with little software experience.
Expecting such systems to be bug-free, when delivered, is foolish.
I used to work for an organisation which had its code quality reviewed by a former NASA software engineer. Our code - the main component of which came to just shy of one million lines - was deemed to be of high quality because our bug rate - number of bugs per hundred thousand lines of code - was low. But it always seemed to me that was a terrible way to measure code quality. What about all the bugs you hadn't found yet?
The problem with a system is never that it has bugs, but that it's difficult to fix bugs, or to correct any errors those bugs introduce into the data. It's not mistakes that are the problem, but what you do about them.
This is a major problem with politics at the moment. We'd expect that even a competent government would make lots of mistakes. It's responsible for so many different moving parts that it would be impossible for it to be otherwise. But our systems and culture for detecting, recognising and fixing these mistakes are really, really poor. They ultimately come down to whether a politician can be forced to resign or not, and the issue itself doesn't get addressed except in that context.
The Space Shuttle had four flight computers. The usual three identical units for redundancy, which could outvote each other in the event of a failure, and the fourth one developed by a totally different software team, to the same spec, with no code in common but equally tested, and able to be switched in by the Commander should he encounter some random bug that the other three computers messed up.
At Aintree today in the cheap seats near the last fence. Already placed a couple of bets and had a pint (£7.80). Might have a couple more bets but think I will give alcohol at those prices a miss. Can of diet coke is £3.20 ffs
£7.80?! That's more than I was paying at Lord's last summer. And of course being Lord's it was good quality stuff, not Carling. I accept there's a premium at these events, but that's taking the piss.
I could get two pints for that locally. Almost, anyway!
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Isn't that what happens to Scotland all the time? They don't vote Tory but they get a Tory government.
That isn't relevant to the West Lothian question and EVEL, though.
The point of the West Lothian question is that, in a system where powers are devolved to Scotland but not to England/English regions, Scottish MPs vote on some matters that affect English voters but do NOT affect Scottish ones. The same is not true in reverse. It isn't simply that the Government isn't of the political stripe you'd like.
Is there a Dumfries and Galloway question whereby the Secretary of State for Scotland can overrule democratically agreed decisions of the Scottish Parliament, sometimes for sensible reasons, which is fair enough, but in the case of the current SoS, sometimes for purely partisan reasons?
No, because the extent of devolution - to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and some English regions - is governed by UK legislation on which all MPs get a vote. If you want the powers of the Scottish Parliament and Executive to be less constrained (potentially up to full independence) then that's fine, and there's a clear route to achieving that that via the UK Parliament in which all parts of the UK are represented. Likewise if Wales, or the West Midlands, or wherever want a different constitutional settlement.
I think the practical problems raised by the West Lothian question are a little overstated. But it does raise a fundamental point that, if you have a system of devolution where not all powers are equally devolved in all areas, you unavoidably get a situation where decisions are made about a person living in an area where there is less devolution by MPs whose own constituents have no skin in the game at all because the matter is devolved in their country or region the route to change it is via the UK Parliament. EVEL has been proposed as a "solution" but is highly problematic in that there is no English Executive in that model.
What you're raising is a feature of the constitutional settlement that you personally disagree with - we can all do that in a range of policy areas. But there's a clear mechanism to change it. What the West Lothian question does is point out a problem which is pretty much inherent in the system.
I don't say that to diminish the issue you raise. I disagree with pretty much everything the Government does and I want them out. But my position on that doesn't raise a fundamental constitutional question - the mechanism for not having a Tory Government is clear and well established - you have a General Election where they (and potential allies like the DUP) lose enough seats across the UK to ensure that they can no longer form a Government.
Fair amount of bollox in there, we are prisoners as London based parliament will not allow Scotland to be free to make decisions. No matter the English party elected Scotland has no vote, total waste of time voting for MP's.
Comments
The plant used (I think) Westinghouse kit, and there was *one* spare turbine in the US. They flew it over in an Antonov 124, as whilst it was not that heavy, it was a point load that was too heavy for a 747 or similar. That had to land at Prestwick, and it was taken down to the Trent Valley from there.
These things are ordered years in advance, and take ages to build.
I may not have remembered this quite right.
Not as mortified as the dead candidate presumably.
1) Doesn't steal money
2) Doesn't start wars
3) No protecting friends, relations and subordinates from consequences
4) No stupid statements.
https://news.sky.com/story/o-j-simpson-has-died-at-the-age-of-76-his-family-says-13112706
www dot o j simpson dot com forward flash forward slash back slash back slash slash slash slash condolences
Given it's unlikely for now that Russia will make massive concerted attacks on UK power infrastructure, the interesting question is then Ukraine. How quickly could Ukraine stand up a few GW of dispersed grid power? It's not the windiest of places so I'd assume it would be solar and small gas turbines, connected to the existing grid. Would be interesting to know in principle how quickly a country's grid could adapt to the sort of attacks Russia is currently mounting.
NEW THREAD
Also factor in the unpopularity dumping Roe v Wade,
the Republicans in the House,
Trump's court cases and the fact that he's losing his mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkHShhTSMeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcALjMJbAvU
(They only actually test a large fan blade failure, the internal rotating components are assumed to have infinite energy, and are expected to never fail in service. There is nonetheless the occasional uncontained engine failure, and they are often fatal to people who happen to be in the path of the expelled parts).