Tag: Military

Precision in the Sky: Aerial Refueling of HH-60 Pave Hawks by a KC-130 Hercules | April 05 2026, 12:59

An interesting photo from Iran. An American Lockheed Martin KC-130 Hercules tanker and Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters connected to it. If you think about it, it’s incredibly complex. Look, the plane has to fly at a super low speed for it – close to the stalling speed – while the helicopters, in contrast, must push to their limits to keep up. To avoid entering into a spin, the plane is forced to rapidly lose altitude, consequently, the helicopters must also purposely drop altitude. The helicopters are positioned lower than the plane, so if the pilot slows down even more (though how much more can he slow down?), and the helicopters don’t slow down, the hose could hit the rotor blades and that’s it. The helicopters also gain several tons during refueling, which adds to the complexity. Why refuel two at once? It’s more complicated. Actually, it’s both more complicated and simpler, because the load on the wings is distributed symmetrically, making it easier for the plane to maintain a stable course. It’s also interesting how the issue of static electricity is handled in the dry air.

A good addition from the comments (Sergey Snegirev):

1. It is noted that the Hercules stalls at 100-110 knots (depending on the air temperature and altitude, which is important in Iran), and the photo shows the flaps deployed, allowing it to stay up to even 90 knots. Meanwhile, the Pave Hawk can accelerate up to 190 knots (but obviously, nobody performs AAR at max speed), with a cruising speed of 150 knots, so there’s quite a sizable overlap. It’s assumed that AAR takes place around 120 knots on the video.

3. It is noted that AAR happens at exactly the same altitude, so there’s no need to lose altitude

4. It is noted that the tanker – like any other aircraft – can dissipate static electricity using an electrostatic discharger. The refueling hose has a contact that equalizes the potentials of the two aircraft before fuel delivery.

5. It is noted that the fuel used to refuel external aircraft is stored in tanks in the aircraft’s cargo section, separate from the tanker’s own fuel system. Even if the pumping were from the tanker’s own fuel tanks, it would come from the central tank, which is set up to transfer fuel from the side tanks.

It is noted that on the underside of the plane’s wings, several metal “antennas” are installed on the flaperons to discharge static electricity into the air. It is noted that when the hose is connected, a wire passes through and the potentials on the bodies are equalized.

Echoes of Anthrax: The Amerithrax Investigation Unveiled | September 02 2025, 13:33

From the museum of the day before yesterday. Probably, some of you remember the notorious case in 2001: shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the USA experienced a series of bioterror attacks: someone mailed letters containing powder with anthrax spores (Bacillus anthracis). This led to the deaths of 5 people and infected 17, but it could have ended much worse for the entire planet. The investigation, known as “Amerithrax,” was conducted by the FBI in collaboration with other agencies and became one of the most complex in history.

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For those who might not know — the inhalational form of anthrax has a mortality rate of 85–90% without treatment. Symptoms appear after 6 days, by which time dozens will be infected. It can’t be destroyed — spores remain viable for decades in the soil. For example, on the Scottish island of Gruinard, they lingered for nearly 50 years after wartime testing. Only after 50 years had passed and after 280 tons of formaldehyde solution had been sprayed across all 196 hectares of the island, and the most contaminated topsoil around the dispersal site had been removed, did the island become relatively safe. Thus, anthrax could easily be more terrifying than a global nuclear war.

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So, returning to the subject. Initially, suspicions fell on various individuals, including Iraq or Al-Qaeda, but no evidence was found.

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The key breakthrough was scientific examination. Scientists analyzed the anthrax strain from the letters — it was the Ames strain used in American laboratories. Using microbial forensics (genetic analysis), they identified unique mutations in the spores that narrowed the source down to flask RMR-1029 in the USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

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In other words, every living being has names and genealogy from birth, it’s just a matter of willingness to dig into the genealogy. Apparently, controlled substances have their own registry office, so to speak.

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Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist who worked there, was the custodian of this flask and had direct access (although more than 100 others did as well).

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Later, investigators gathered circumstantial evidence. Ivins had been working late at the lab just before the mailings in September and October 2001, which was inconsistent with his usual schedule. He could not convincingly explain these hours. Moreover, in early September 2001, he was vaccinated against anthrax, which seemed suspicious. The FBI also accused him of attempting to mislead the investigation: he allegedly provided false anthrax samples to divert suspicion and attempted to frame colleagues. In 2001, Ivins sent an email to colleagues offering the Ames strain for analysis, which might have been an attempt to cover his tracks.

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Behavioral signs also played a role. Ivins suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, especially after another suspect (Steven Hatfill) was cleared in 2008. In June 2008, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, where during therapy, he made statements that the FBI interpreted as “denials without denial” — for example, that he “had no heart for killing” and did not remember participating in the attacks.

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By 2008, the investigation had narrowed down to Ivins. When he learned that charges were being prepared against him, on July 29, 2008, he took a lethal dose of Tylenol (acetaminophen). Formal charges were never brought. In 2010, the FBI officially closed the case, declaring Ivins the sole perpetrator.

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However, the conclusions remain controversial: the US National Academy of Sciences noted in 2011 that the genetic examination was not convincing enough for a definitive conclusion, and some microbiologists, victims’ families, and politicians demanded further investigation. As of now, no new discoveries have been made, and the case is considered closed.

Mexican Mosaic: Frida, Trotsky, and the Tale of an Ice Axe | September 02 2025, 00:33

Nadia with a Frida Kahlo purse encounters a painting by Frida Kahlo in which Frida Kahlo is holding a letter dedicated to Leon Trotsky, and an hour later, we see an exhibition at another museum dedicated to the assassination of Trotsky. Such a revolutionary Mexican vibe.

By the way, here he is Leon, not Lev. And not Trotsky, but Bronstein. But these are trifles.

There is something to tell here, although the story is, of course, very well-known. Probably everyone knows that Trotsky was hiding in Mexico, and that Kahlo was his lover (Diego Rivera did not mind). In 1939, Stalin through Beria ordered to eliminate Trotsky, and on the second attempt, the NKVD succeeded.

The murder was carried out by Ramon Mercader. He came to Trotsky under the pretext of showing him a manuscript of an article supposedly in need of editing. He carried an ice axe under his coat. This Ramon’s mother was also a Soviet intelligence agent, who actually recruited her son. Additionally, her lover was close to the organizer of the previous, unsuccessful attack, when a bunch of bullets were fired at the bed behind which Trotsky and his wife were hiding, and not a single shot hit. In general, they did their job as best they could. Well, after six months, the ice axe came.

The Mexican police preserved this ice axe as evidence after the murder, and later exhibited it in a museum. When the museum’s director retired in the 1960s, he received the axe as a gift. For 40 years his daughter kept it under her bed, not really understanding its value.

It took nearly four decades for historian and collector, an espionage specialist Kitten Melton, to locate the ice axe and understand why the assassin sent by Joseph Stalin, Ramon Mercader, used it specifically to kill Trotsky. Actually, this ice axe is exhibited in the museum.

So, this is how Ramon gained trust. Trotsky was brought to Ramon by Sylvia Ageloff, who was Ramon’s mistress, plus Trotsky was very much in contact with Ramon’s mother. Sylvia was the daughter of Samuel Ageloff and Anna Maslova — Russian emigrants, who spoke Russian at home. In general, in all this environment, it’s difficult to stay alert, but Trotsky managed to.

By the way, the first thought — of course, an ice axe in hot Mexico is something that doesn’t catch the eye at all. Anyway, where did the ice axe come from? It turned out that it was normal, as there were no refrigerators, and ice was brought down from the mountains, which “worked” almost all year round with proper thermal insulation.

Ramon’s mother fled to the USSR. Ramon served a maximum of 20 years and also fled to the USSR, where he received a medal. Ramon Ivanovich Mercader was posthumously honored with the title Hero of the Soviet Union for the assassination of Lev Trotsky. And he received the Order of Lenin. The award was made for his actions as an agent of the Soviet special services. Why he became Ivanovich is unclear, it seems his father was Pau. Ramon died in Havana in 1978 from cancer, buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo Cemetery, under the name “Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.” Havana extradited him.

Frida Kahlo’s painting almost got destroyed after the assassination of Trotsky, “out of anger,” but it was saved, and is now one of the exhibits at the museum of women in art in Washington, from which our yesterday began.

A couple of very notable photos in the comments

The Ingenious Spy Device Gifted in Friendship: Unveiling The Thing | September 01 2025, 01:03

Today in the museum I saw The Thing in person – simply a brilliant espionage device. In 1945, a group of Soviet schoolchildren presented a large wooden Great Seal of the United States to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, as a “gesture of friendship”. The seal was beautifully hand-carved and hung in the ambassador’s office for a whole 7 years. And it leaked secrets!

No batteries involved! It was all very clever, especially for 1945.

Essentially, it was a passive radio relay or “parasitic resonator”. Inside the wooden seal was a small metal cylinder with a membrane and an antenna-rod.

Soviet operators directed a specific frequency radio wave (about 330 MHz) into the ambassador’s office.

Inside the device was a cavity resonator, tuned to the same frequency. It “responded” to the radio signal and began to retransmit it back.

On one side of the cylinder was a thin flexible membrane. It vibrated from the sound in the room (voices, footsteps).

The vibrations of the membrane altered the capacity and resonance parameters of the device, slightly shifting the reflected radio signal by frequency and phase. This was the modulation of speech onto the external signal.

Outside the building (like in a KGB car nearby), the retransmitted signal was received and the sound modulation was extracted – effectively capturing the overheard conversation.

Why was this almost impossible to detect? The device had no battery and emitted nothing by itself. It “came to life” only when irradiated with an external radio signal. In standard radio monitoring checks, it remained “dead”. Essentially, it was akin to an ancestor of the RFID tag – a passive device that operates only on external request.

But most interestingly, the inventor was Leon Theremin, the same person behind the musical instrument “thereminvox” (played with hands in the air).

His biography reads like a novel. In the early 1920s, Theremin went to the U.S., patented his thereminvox instrument, and collaborated with RCA; his New York studio was visited by Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, Gershwin, and other notable personalities. It is written that he visited the USSR – Already in 1926, he demonstrated television at the Kremlin.

At that time, televisions with screens the size of a matchbox were being created, but his television had a huge screen (1.5 x 1.5 m) and a resolution of 100 lines. In 1927, the scientist demonstrated his installation to Soviet military leaders K.E. Voroshilov, I.V. Tukhachevsky, and S.M. Budyonny:

state minds watched in horror as Stalin walked through the Kremlin courtyard on the screen.

This sight so frightened them that the invention was immediately classified and quietly buried in the archives, and television was soon invented by the Americans.

Eventually, in 1938, he secretly returned to the USSR, but was soon arrested as a “non-returnee” and sent to the camps, but his talent was still used in the so-called “sharashka” – on projects together with Sergei Korolev, including the development of radio-controlled apparatuses and listening systems, including the aforementioned “Great Seal bug”.

Beijing Parade Marks 80 Years Since China’s WWII Victory | August 31 2025, 14:02

On September 3rd in Beijing, a military parade dedicated to the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in World War II will take place. Apparently, I did not pay enough attention during history lessons at school: it turns out that China’s losses during WWII were almost comparable to those of the USSR, considering the official figures (in both cases, they are significantly lower than the actual ones). However, there is a catch – the war between China and Japan began in 1937, and later merged with World War II when Japan attacked the USA and its allies in 1941, officially making China part of the anti-Hitler coalition. Germany in 1937 was just preparing: a year later, in 1938, the Anschluss of Austria began, and another year later (1939) – the invasion of Poland, and at the same time the USSR attacked Finland.

Meanwhile, in Germany, it is considered that the precision of German accounting was incomparably higher, and the cumulative losses of the aggressors, together with Japan, turned out to be four times less than the cumulative losses of the defenders.

The figure of China’s losses mainly consists of civilian population. Their military losses were 3-4 million, while 12-17 million suffered from bombings, punitive actions, diseases (remembering Japanese Unit 731 and biological warfare) and other war consequences.

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Below I quote my post from January 25th of this year – just relevant and timely:

Who won the Second World War? Interestingly, note that no one paid attention to Trump’s words about the Second World War in his recent tweet-ultimatum.

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He writes “Russia helped us win the Second World War” — everyone noted the incorrect figure of 60 million losses, but somehow not this.

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I found an interesting study from 2017. It was a survey (1,338 people) from 11 countries including 8 allied countries and 3 Axis countries.

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It showed significant differences in how the former Soviet Union and 10 other countries remember the war.

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Events marked by representatives of the Soviet Union were almost completely different from those mentioned in other countries. Besides, Russians stated a greater responsibility for the victory in the war (75% of military efforts), than representatives of any other nation (although the USA and Great Britain also estimated their contribution as more than 50%).

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However, when people from each country assessed the contribution of other countries to the war, they attributed a greater role to the USA than to the former Soviet Union.

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An interesting finding is that, when asked why the USA dropped atomic bombs on Japan, most people from ten countries responded that it was to win the war, except for Russians.

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Moreover, the older the respondents were in 7 of these countries, the more often they agreed with the statement that the USA dropped the bombs to end the war.

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Russia (USSR) in the survey results demonstrates a unique narrative centered on the Eastern Front, unlike Western countries.

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Most countries (including former Axis countries) focus on events related to the USA and Great Britain, such as Pearl Harbor, the Normandy landing, the atomic bombings of Japan, and the Holocaust.

USSR holds a central place in the Russian narrative (75% contribution to victory). The USA and Great Britain also overestimate their evaluations, stating their contribution exceeds 50%, focusing on the Western Front and the Pacific Campaign. The total estimates of the contribution of the eight allied countries amount to 309%, showing the effect of “national narcissism”. Most countries prioritize the USA (27%), while the USSR — 20%.

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Four events gained the status of “key” (mentioned by more than 50% of respondents): the attack on Pearl Harbor, the atomic bombings of Japan, the Normandy landing, and the Holocaust. The Russian narrative concentrates on events termed in Soviet and contemporary Russian historiography as the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). Russians highlighted unique events: battles near Stalingrad, Kursk, Moscow, Berlin, and the blockade of Leningrad. Thus, although the USA and Russia fought together as allies, research shows that there is almost no overlap in which events are remembered as most important. Members of each group mainly remembered those events related to their own country. However, this is not surprising.

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On the subject of atomic bombings, most respondents believe that the purpose of the bombings was to end the war. Russians see this event as an act of intimidating the USSR. Opinions within countries vary by age: older generations are more likely to support the official version of ending the war.

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In France in 1945, 57% of the population considered the USSR the main victor. By 2004, this figure had dropped to 20%, while the share of the USA increased to 58%.

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The reasons are clear: history textbooks and popular culture reinforce national emphasis. In the USA and Great Britain, films and books praising their role in the war predominate. The USSR and the USA fought on different fronts and represent different ideological systems, which determined the narratives. And of course, all countries overstate their role in historical events.

The Multi-Functional M1 Helmet: Beyond Battlefield Protection | July 14 2025, 02:26

Today I learned from the museum that in field conditions, soldiers used the steel body of the M1 helmet as makeshift dishware: they boiled water, shaved, washed clothes, etc. The helmet consisted of two parts: a steel outer body and a separate inner plastic or fiber liner (liner), which could be worn separately (for instance, for ceremonies). By the way, it was in military service from the beginning of WWII until the 1980s.