Showing posts with label heavy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heavy. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 September 2015

Self-Propelled Guns. Part-Two.

Anti-Aircraft.

With the advent of the missile one would think that the days of anti-aircraft guns have come to an end, but you would be wrong. Every day and night our 24/7 media portrays militants around the world converting Toyota 4X4's for this purpose along with various types of trucks.

Guns from heavy machines U.S. and Russian 12.7, 14.5mm to small cannons of Swiss Oerlikon 20, former Soviet 23mm are used in general clashes. meanwhile bigger cannons are recovered from defunct military vehicles such as in the 30mm calibre.

Despite this many countries still have mobile anti-aircraft guns such as the Russian/Chinese built ZSU-23 quad 4X23mm and various takes on the 30mm rotary cannon and most successful Swedish Bofors 40mm.

All these weapon systems now make helicopters venerable to ground fire more than aircraft, unless they are coming into land or taking off.

Thursday, 11 June 2015

Road Trains. Part-Two.

Problems.

The problems with road traffic is the quality of the roads, from Highways to dirt tracks. This is what limits the use of heavy haulage traffic who need to keep on the smooth, rather than getting stuck on broken ground. 

Russia, China, America, Brazil and many other better developed nations can take advantage of this type of long distant haulage and there are many new concepts coming on the the commercial market. The moving of machinery is the main need for some road trains, but it can be animals and general goods that would be cheaper than flying or sailing them in?

The one disadvantage seems to be the side moving bus development is still not available to heavy haulage and would be of benefit to expand into countries with worse road conditions?

Thursday, 4 June 2015

Aviation Lifters. Part-Two.

Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, Antonov An-124/224.

These are currently the three largest giants of the aviation world in the area of heavy lifting, as yet there no cargo version of the civil Airbus A380 on the cards. Lifting of oil and drill rigs parts are the main uses today, apart from the ability to Carry ICBM (Inter-continental Ballistic missile) components. Russia, Canada and Australia along with the Amazon in Brazil are the areas for this type of work. 

We do not hear much about this, because these aircraft really are military more than they are civil. But now with exploration and the ever increasing demand of fossil fuels by developing nations, such as China, India and Brazil there is a demand for commercial contract flying.

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Armoured Cars.

When is a car armoured?

There has always been the concept of an armoured chariot or device to move ones troops in relative safety near to the enemy. With the introduction of the petrol engine, the car or automobile was born. Having such a vehicle to patrol, the car was made heavy by the introduction of armoured plating. Thus the early form of the Armoured car.

Today we have a host of vehicles which have been specifically designed for the military, para-military police, anti-terrorist operations and riot control. Each has a differing measure of hull plating, while armament varies from smoke dispensers to light machine guns up to heavy weapons and rocket launchers of various types.

Some vehicles have become known as the ARV (Armoured reconnaissance vehicle), these have serious fire power 76, 87 or 90mm guns, some such as the Brazilian Engesa EE-9 Cascavel. They also may be armed with SAM (Surface to air missile) systems.