Friday, December 30, 2011

Bravehearts of the Indian Air Force

Watch out for the $10 billion dollar contract to be awarded to either the consortium of EADS, Finmeccanica and BAE Systems (Eurofighter) or the French Dassault (Rafale) in January 2012.

I would go buy stocks in shares of these companies before Government of India finalizes on the IAF's choice by 2nd or 3rd week of January.

ST Kinetics 155mm 39 calibre Lightweight SP Howitzer Pegasus

Specifications
Weight5.4 t (5.3 long tons; 6.0 short tons)
Barrel length6.045 m (19 ft 10 in) L/39
Crew6-8

Caliber155 mm NATO
Rate of Fire4 rpm for 3 minutes
2 rpm for 30 minutes
Effective range19 km (12 mi) (with M107)
Maximum range30 km (19 mi) (with ERFB BB round)
__________________________________________________


Is air- transportable by a Hercules C130 and Chinook - CH47 because it is made in part by titanium and aluminium.



Russia battles fire on nuclear submarine - The Yekaterinburg




Russia said it had won the battle with a raging blaze aboard a nuclear submarine on Friday by submerging the stricken vessel at a navy shipyard after hours of dousing the flames with water from helicopters and tug boats. There was no radiation leak, authorities said. Television pictures showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as over 100 firemen struggled to douse flames which witnesses said rose 10 metres (30 feet) above the Yekaterinburg submarine. "The fire has been localized," Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu told officials who were leading the firefighting effort from an emergencies control room in Moscow more than nine hours after the blaze began at 1220 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT) on Thursday.


Firefighters spray water on the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine in a dock at the Roslyakovo shipyard in the Murmansk region, Russia Photo: AP Photo/Ru-RTR Russian state channel/ Via APTN

Shoigu's comments indicate the fire was still burning but that efforts to partially sink the submarine at the dock had succeeded in reducing the intensity of the flames. Russia said the nuclear reactor had been shut down and all weapons had been removed from the 167-metre (550 feet) Yekaterinburg, which launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea at a firing range thousands of miles away in Kamchatka as recently as July. "Radiation levels are normal," a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry said. "No one was injured." After hours of trying to put out the flames, officials decided to partially submerge the hull of the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo dock, one of the main dockyards of Russia's northern fleet 1,500 km (900 miles) north of Moscow.


Thursday, December 29, 2011

China's new-type tanks unveiled - ZTZ-99A2 (Type 99A2) Main Battle Tank

China has a strange habit  of unveiling new technology at the end of the year.

Watch that extra armor on the gun turret.



Saturday, December 24, 2011

Arctic Methane Emergency Group Letter to World Leaders

Arctic Methane Emergency Group  

Emergency intervention to stabilize Arctic sea ice and thereby Arctic methane is today a matter of our survival

I write to you on behalf of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, which includes among its founding members Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics, Cambridge; Stephen Salter, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design, Edinburgh; and Brian Orr, former Principal Science Officer at the UK DoE (as was). The Group has received support and advice from many pre-eminent climate science colleagues around the world.  The purpose of this letter is to respectfully bring to your attention new evidence of the rapidly deepening climate change crisis in the Arctic. We appeal to you to support our call to put the imminent loss of Arctic summer sea ice and escalation of Arctic methane emissions at the top of the climate change agenda and to support emergency measures to cool the Arctic.

Professor Peter Wadhams, on behalf of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, spoke about this critical issue at the December 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, USA. Key elements of his talk have been widely reported, following an article in the UK's Independent newspaper.

The substance of our concerns – and the basis for these media reports – is outlined in our 16-page document entitled Arctic Methane Alert. To summarise:

The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and increased warming of the Arctic seas threaten methane hydrate instability and a massive catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere, as noted in IPCC AR4. 

Research published by N. Shakhova* shows that methane is already venting into the atmosphere from seabed methane hydrates on the East Siberian Arctic shelf, or ESAS (the world's largest continental shelf), which, if allowed to escalate, would likely lead to abrupt and catastrophic global warming.

The latest research expedition to the region (September/October 2011), according to Professor I. Semiletov, witnessed methane plumes on a "fantastic scale," "some one kilometer in diameter," "far greater" than previous observations, which were officially reported in 2010 to equal methane emissions from all the other oceans put together.

The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and subsequent increased Arctic surface warming will inevitably increase the rate of methane emissions already being released from Arctic wetlands and thawing permafrost.

The latest available data indicates there is a 5-10% possibility of the Arctic being ice free in September by 2013, more likely 2015, and with 95% confidence by 2018. This, according to the recognised world authorities on Arctic sea ice, Prof. Wadhams and Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, is the point of no return for summer sea ice. Once past this point, it could prove impossible to reverse the retreat by any kind of intervention.  The data indicate the Arctic could be ice free for six months of the year by 2020 (PIOMAS 2011).

It is on the basis of this latest and best information that we are calling for urgent and immediate action to arrest the escalating decline of Arctic sea ice.

Action is demanded by the precautionary principle and under the terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which states: "The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures."   

The conditions that have long been recognised as potentially causing vast quantities of methane to be released in the Arctic are clearly developing. The calamitous impacts of inaction are well-known – runaway climate change. As US Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate, Steven Chu, said when addressing the consequences of an Arctic meltdown, "A runaway effect… We cannot go there." The only way to prevent this critical situation from developing into a global catastrophe is through international recognition of the issue, and collaboration on the immediate and urgent intensification of scientific inquiry and the emergency scale development of countermeasures such as geoengineering to cool the Arctic.

As you are a guardian of the global community, we are counting on your support.

John Nissen,
Chair, Arctic Methane Emergency Group

* "Remobilization to the atmosphere of only a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming….Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of deabilization already. If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger. The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times."

— N. Shakhova, Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Science, 5 March 2010

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Arctic Methane Alert

SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 8 - Professor Peter Wadhams (Professor of Ocean Physics, Cambridge University) and Arctic Methane Emergency Group Chairman, John Nissen, discuss the need for geoengineering in the Arctic to prevent runaway climate change.

Where: Moscone Center South, Halls A-C, San Francisco
When: Thursday December 8, 2011.
Session: Global Environment Change Poster: GC 41B

Arctic Methane Workshop: An assessment of threats to Arctic and global warming; and an evaluation of techniques to counter these threats
http://eposters.agu.org/abstracts/arctic-methane-workshop-an-assessment-of-threats-to-arctic-and-global-warming-and-an-evaluation-of-techniques-to-counter-these-threats/

See poster at:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/agu-poster.html

See brochure at:
http://www.flipdocs.com/showbook.aspx?ID=10004692_698290

For more, also see website at
http://www.arctic-methane-emergency-group.org/#/dec-2011-agu/4558306797
and associated discussions at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arctic-methane

Cheers,
Sam Carana

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Indonesian navy Corvettes: Sigma Class

Num  Name
365 KRI Diponegoro (DPN)
366 KRI Hasanuddin (HSN)
367 KRI Sultan Iskandar Muda (SIM)
368 KRI Frans Kaisiepo (FKO)
 
Technical Data :Displacement   : 1,700 tons
Dimensions : 90.71 x 13.02 x 3.6 meters
Propulsion : 2 shafts; 2 cruise diesels, 8,910 bhp, 28 knots;
Crew : 80
Combat System : Thales TACTICOS
Radar : MW 08 3D Radar
Sonar : Thales UMS 4132 Kingklip hull mounted
Fire Control : LIROD MK2 Tracking radar
ESM : Thales DR 3000
ECM : Racal Scorpion 2L
Aviation : Aft helicopter deck
Armament : 4
MM40 Exocet SSM, 2 Mistral TETRAL SAM positions, 1 Oto Melara Super
Rapid 76mm Dual Purpose, 2 Denel Vector 20 mm, 2 B 515 inch torpedo
tubes.
Builders : Royal Schelde Shipbuilding, Vlissingen, Netherlands

367 KRI Sultan Iskandar Muda (SIM)
         368 KRI Frans Kaisiepo (FKO)
366 KRI Hasanuddin (HSN)
365 KRI Diponegoro (DPN)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Let have a look at PLAN Shi Lang (ex-Varyag) more carefully....

PLAN Shi Lang 83 Sea Eagle Radar









Phased array Radars











Fresnel-lens Based Optical Landing System











Artists impression of PLAN 83 Shi Lang a.k.a. Varyag










Fresnel-lens Based Optical Landing System











1030 CIWS with tracking radar



















FN-3000N missile system

















FN-3000N missile system on starboard Bow