A multi-national treasure, at that.

Pins fail in predictable ways, and they’re in double-shear anyway. The big risk is the ball hitch shank failing under tension, as its retaining nut (if torqued to spec) is putting down a clamping force of 15-25,000 lb, depending on hitch class. Not so much trouble if your trailer is always putting a compressive load…

You’re assuming that it’s just going to be playing one pure tone per wheel at any given time, but you could in principle overlay several tones (groove spacings) with different amplitudes (groove depth) on one track. The real issue is frequency content; at 6mph and a minimum groove pitch of 1" you’ll be limited to 1000…

The first rule of foreign policy: everyone is self-interested. Altruism exists, but not among nation states. Of course Europe is going to have limited defense spending, it means they can direct spending elsewhere and the act is relatively risk free due to how closely their foreign policy aligns with the United States.…

But what is the Canadian identity, really, if not petty passive aggressiveness? There are a couple quick win-win-wins for procurement (good for the military, industry, and taxpayer) that aren’t considered because they involve some political capital. That’s just how it’s going to work in the foreseeable future.

Excluding small arms? The entire LAV / Stryker family is designed and built in Canada (4000+ vehicles). The MRAP program procured about 5000 South African-built vehicles. About 800 British-built howitzers. The Independence-class littoral combat ship is built in the United States by an Australian company. Many major…

You could write a book on the awful saga that is the Sea King replacement program (find it in the horror section). But this is slightly off. Canada aimed to buy new maritime helicopters based on the Agusta 101. These would directly replace the Sea King and would therefore be primarily for anti-submarine warfare,…

Armoring the windows is can be a pretty big endeavor, depending on what rounds you want to stop. Often the glass can’t be made as thin, so you end up with fixed panes (which might not be appropriate for a regular patrol vehicle). You also end up reducing visibility due to the inset frames to hold the fixed panes -…

Don’t the British operate essentially regular AH-64s from Royal Navy ships? Or was there a lot of modification involved?

That’s easily the biggest part, but I was saying that, surprise to some, there are actual aerobatic advantages to them too.

The trend among air forces everywhere is moving to jet trainers for their display teams. Not only because of how much cheaper it is to operate, but the slower and quieter aircraft can linger closer to crowds, which can be similarly impressive to the big and fast demos.

You could go the same route Canadians go for American netflix: use a proxy.

Here’s some simple math: diesel and air have a flame temperature of 2200K. Say atmospheric air sits around 300K, that’s a carnot efficiency of 85% or so. A really good diesel engine is around 40% efficient, or second-law efficiency almost half (house-sized stationary diesels can come close to 50%, but those don’t…

In the immediate post-war United States, it was policy to assume that any nation capable of producing nuclear weapons would seek to do so; that possession of nuclear weapons would become a normalized wartime development, the way of jet aircraft and radar. It was anticipated that Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan would…

Many banknote companies, under the control of many national governments, have the printing presses to make near-perfect copies of US currency. But most nation states aren’t willing to just straight-up forge another nation’s currency.

The thumbnail made me think they were pulling off of the tow ball, but I’m glad to see that their crime and villainy was conducted in a safer way than that.

Its a derailing device, to stop unauthorized access to track.

These beat train, every time:

Absolutely, but engineering school has made me a pedantic shithead.

I’m not contesting that ball hitches break, I’m contesting that they break under shear. The 6000 pounds from a dynamic recovery won’t shear a 1" shank. They fail under tension, because they’re pre-stressed to 20k+ pounds simply by torquing them in place to spec. So whereas in shear, putting them under 6000+ pounds of…