romad1 Posted June 30 Posted June 30 9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said: The two most critical pieces are probably the top of the reactor column, which has complex internals and takes a big mother crane to service. If you lose that you have to get a new top with internals fabbed, than you have to cut the top off the old on to install the old one. In the entire US there are only a couple of cranes capable of lifting the top of a cat-cracker reactor and just assembling that crane takes a week and staging of 3 or 4 smaller helping cranes so just doing the scheduling for that is hard. The other highly bespoke piece is not in the picture. A CatCracker is like a turbocharged engine. The exhaust gas from the reactor drives s huge recovery turbine that in turn compresses the feed stream and runs a power recovery generator. These three sit on a long common shaft on a rig about the size of two diesel locomotives. Hit hat and the you are waiting of a whole bunch of very custom fab. Take out the 'Cat' and you cut refinery gasoline production somewhere in the 70% range and the remaining gasoline is lower quality. Effect on diesel and jet production is less severe. Listening to WW2 pod "We have ways of making you talk" and they were going on about the run up to the Barbarosa invasion of the Soviet Union and they were saying that the paranoia about fuel supplies in Ploesti, Rumania caused the Nazis to support Mussolini's failed invasion of Greece to the detriment to the early start of the attack in the Soviet Union. Now imagine if you were a petro-state whose very existence was owed to your ability to produce fuel for cash and you were unable to provide gas for your citizens. Stressful. Quote
gehringer_2 Posted June 30 Posted June 30 (edited) 11 minutes ago, romad1 said: Listening to WW2 pod "We have ways of making you talk" and they were going on about the run up to the Barbarosa invasion of the Soviet Union and they were saying that the paranoia about fuel supplies in Ploesti, Rumania caused the Nazis to support Mussolini's failed invasion of Greece to the detriment to the early start of the attack in the Soviet Union. Now imagine if you were a petro-state whose very existence was owed to your ability to produce fuel for cash and you were unable to provide gas for your citizens. Stressful. So strategically, refineries are a concentrated resource that is hard to replace while oil production facilities are dispersed and relatively easy to fix - so there is your targeting logic. But one somewhat ironic part is that if they lose refining capacity, that leaves more crude available for export so Vladdie will still have cash to spread around. Edited June 30 by gehringer_2 Quote
romad1 Posted June 30 Posted June 30 1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said: The somewhat ironic part is that if they lose refining capacity, that leaves more crude available for export so Vladdie will still have cash to spread around. They won't change that part of the equation but they can make Russian citizens question the regime as they sit idle in a car waiting for rationed gas. 1 Quote
romad1 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 India as always is Russia's friend. Is this the worst thing in the world? Not really. India is a diametric foe of Pakistan and Pakistan is the PRC's greatest friend. So, the alignment of India with Russia keeps the PRC from aligning with Russia too much. Quote
gehringer_2 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 26 minutes ago, romad1 said: India as always is Russia's friend. Is this the worst thing in the world? Not really. India is a diametric foe of Pakistan and Pakistan is the PRC's greatest friend. So, the alignment of India with Russia keeps the PRC from aligning with Russia too much. India's policies are always transactional, and this sounds like a pretty nice transaction.💵 Quote
romad1 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 14 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said: India's policies are always transactional, and this sounds like a pretty nice transaction.💵 For India. For Russia it rhymes with Trump selling discounted soybeans to Argentina because of China tarrifs and then Argentina sending those soybeans at a profit to China. Quote
romad1 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 WOAH! Big Polymarket bets have been placed on Putin’s downfall Quote
romad1 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 30 minutes ago, romad1 said: WOAH! Big Polymarket bets have been placed on Putin’s downfall So a lot of this is paywalled. The bet was around $370k I would guess this guy has a white house badge or is within one order of separation from a Trump child. 1 Quote
1984Echoes Posted July 4 Posted July 4 Turkey still wants back into the F-35 program... Solution: Send their S-400's to South Korea, which is officially neutral in the Russian war against Ukrainian sovereignty... Putin will LOVE that!!! Of course, South Korea will pull apart the air defense system and reverse engineer all of Russia's tech and... hand it over to the U.S. Putin will just LOVE that!!! Putin's ally stabs him in the back in desperate bid to secure US fighter jets Quote
romad1 Posted July 4 Posted July 4 51 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said: Turkey still wants back into the F-35 program... Solution: Send their S-400's to South Korea, which is officially neutral in the Russian war against Ukrainian sovereignty... Putin will LOVE that!!! Of course, South Korea will pull apart the air defense system and reverse engineer all of Russia's tech and... hand it over to the U.S. Putin will just LOVE that!!! Putin's ally stabs him in the back in desperate bid to secure US fighter jets The F-35 got a lot of bad press but IYKYK Quote
ewsieg Posted July 5 Posted July 5 22 hours ago, romad1 said: The F-35 got a lot of bad press but IYKYK Yup, two things can be true at the same time, it could have not lived up to initial promises (features and costs), yet still be a major upgrade. I honestly think it's speed was the biggest issue, on paper it was something you could quickly see and wonder why are we spending so much on a 5th gen fighter that can't even outrun most 4th gen fighters. Quote
gehringer_2 Posted July 5 Posted July 5 9 minutes ago, ewsieg said: Yup, two things can be true at the same time, it could have not lived up to initial promises (features and costs), yet still be a major upgrade. I honestly think it's speed was the biggest issue, on paper it was something you could quickly see and wonder why are we spending so much on a 5th gen fighter that can't even outrun most 4th gen fighters. also with these airframes there can be a big difference between functional speed and ideal max speed. I actually thought the bigger public spec limitation with the '35 was range. Quote
romad1 Posted July 5 Posted July 5 1 hour ago, ewsieg said: Yup, two things can be true at the same time, it could have not lived up to initial promises (features and costs), yet still be a major upgrade. I honestly think it's speed was the biggest issue, on paper it was something you could quickly see and wonder why are we spending so much on a 5th gen fighter that can't even outrun most 4th gen fighters. Big fan of the process. Speeds exceed what humans can do safely most of the time anyway. The platform is a man-in-the-loop system in a world where the man is often geographically separated. But, its really good at the things it does. Quote
1984Echoes Posted July 5 Posted July 5 Love it... and there are still roles to be played by the F-15, F-18, and F-22... Quote
romad1 Posted July 6 Posted July 6 If you ever watch a playthrough of the DCS simulation of Taiwan or other conflicts you see how short the lifespan of these aircraft. They calculate the victory in the games by cost of assets lost. Yeah, if we could spend less on all these it would be better. F-35 though does a lot of things exceptionally well. Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 Big summit this week. Might be a lot of good for Ukraine if it can survive Trump's adoration of Putin. Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 3 minutes ago, romad1 said: Big summit this week. Might be a lot of good for Ukraine if it can survive Trump's adoration of Putin. NATO making a strong case for Ukraine joining and providing security guarantees would end the war. 1 Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 Crazy Donnie from Queens might destroy NATO this week if he goes nuts enough. And that would guarantee we'd (your children or grandchildren) have to fight Russia at some point in Europe. Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 Farage is holding a presser at 2pm GMT... Speculation he's dropping out of Reform leadership. Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jul/07/nigel-farage-reform-uk-donations-investigations-parliament-electoral-commission-defence-nato-keir-starmer-latest-news-updates Quote
romad1 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/07/nato-summit-zelenskyy-trump-ukraine-rutte-defence-eu-spending-turkey-france-macron-le-pen-europe-latest-news-updates Holy crap! What is happening? Did Gandalf return? Quote
gehringer_2 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 9 minutes ago, romad1 said: that is the weird thing in Parliamentary systems - the losers never go away - Le Pen, LaFarge. At least in the US parties tend to kick their losers to the curb - Nixon being the exception that proves the value of the rule. Quote
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