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Sweden has just announced its biggest ever weapons package for Ukraine, including mini-AWACS aircraft which will be great for drone and cruise missile defence, and their entire stock of retired Pansarbandvagn 302s. This is an IFV carrying 8 troops in the back and sporting a 20mm cannon. They made 65...

Countries which have explicitly given permission to Ukraine to use their weapons to attack Russia on Russian territory: Longstanding: UK Last few days: Sweden France Poland Unknown: Finland Uncertain: Germany - Scholz has just made a (probably deliberately) convoluted statement. The German State wou...

This longer version of the same video shows it to be a straightforward road accident, and not the fault of the tank transporter driver.
https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112520755225560548

Lethal robots. It's relatively easy to program one to detect it's fallen over and self-right. In fact, this is normally where the designers of the motion sub-system start. If you can get the thing to self-right, all the other movements follow from that. The main problems are target identification an...

I recall a large exhibition at the Science Museum in London, put on by the Medical Council, that we took the kids to. It pointed out right at the entrance that being treated by a doctor only increased life expectancy, on average, after 1920. Before that, on average, it decreased it! Some stuff they ...

Just discovered by UBC researchers last year - allergies appear to be due to imbalanced gut bacteria. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-common-major-childhood-allergies.html Given the recency of the increase in allergies, especially among children, a study into what has caused the gut bacterial...

Given the value the Americans are gaining from the Russian equipment destroyed, the Yanks should be sending the Ukrainians every spare ATACMS they have, and let them use them wherever they like.

Sat pics taken just before the strike show a Nebo-M SAM radar system at the same co-ordinates as the strike. https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112520702359882906 The pics show what the poster thinks is an RLM-M at the centre of the targetted area. I concur. This is the long range search and acquisit...

Quite right. The girl should probably not be in any closed air system for a long time where nuts may have been consumed. Allergies have a huge scale of response - we had one pupil who was desperately allergic to strawberries, but this is relatively easy to control in a boarding school for such an un...

The place I jumped at did it properly. Everyone had their weight (inc. chute) on a wall board, and the pilot and jumpmaster did the weight and balance for each trip. It generally worked out OK anyway with a rear door, as the lighter people for formation jumps were closer to the door as they jumped f...

First satellite view of the Luhansk airfield, post-strike. https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112519448904752049 It does indeed look like it was the grass burning. The centre of the burnt area is here. https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B032'16.4%22N+39%C2%B023'44.5%22E/@48.5391866,39.3839264,29...

Private schools are largely registered charities in the UK, and are VAT-exempt for that reason. It is thought that charities, as exempted, benefit the country by a value that exceeds the amount the government would have to spend to replace them. Labour wants to have its cake and eat it. Right now, d...

Ah, but we are talking about Socialists. They don't do whole cycle and consequential estimating, because it would show up over 90% of their ideology for the b#llocks that it is. The problem for the UK (and similarly for Canada, the USA, etc), is that all political parties are now functionally social...

I have no opinion on whether it should be or not. I am pointing out the likely consequences of changing it now. The functional difference is that, whilst everyone has a right to state healthcare, they may have to wait years for it. Making children wait years to enter state education is not viable, n...

It was the crew member who was "impacted".
The guests were affected.

Most private schools couldn't handle a 10% drop in numbers, is my estimate. At my first school, we had just such a crisis in numbers, and the Head was honest enough to open the books to the staff, so I know exactly the financial problems in this situation. What will happen is that about 30% of priva...

Second breakfast on the go. Just dashed out for an hour or so's hard yard work in an increasing wind, as we have a storm approaching. Thunderbolt and lightning, very very fright'ning. High wind is actually good for strimming and mowing, as the mossies can't get you back for destroying their habitat....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/27/private-school-parents-escape-labour-vat-state-places/ Private school parents looking to escape Labour’s VAT raid have been warned there are very few state school places available. One mother who contacted her local council about the possibility of mov...

What about the ring of fire in the right foreground about half way into the clip. Burning fuel? I think we may be looking at concentric rings of fire due to the dispersion of the cluster bomblets, from somewhere either inside or close to the edge of one of the patterns. It's probably the airfield g...

I was the Station Flight Safety Officer at Coningsby when we had to reopen the Inquiry on the Hurricane crash. The reason for the Merlin failing had not been discovered exactly by the first one. It did indeed turn out to be something very obscure, and the answer eventually came with input from some ...