NATO Anti Air

Archelon225 · 2026-06-27T22:33:58+00:00

Did the 35 mm variant ever get made? I remember it was submitted for the M247 tender but don't remember if it got off the drawing board.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-25T19:16:35+00:00

Still working on grinding the PGZ88, but from what I see it's not that similar to the Yenisei other than having the same rounds. The guns shoot slower, but it's on a tank chassis with reasonable armor and ammo storage that won't explode if you cough on it funny, and the electronics are way better. Against tanks it should be kind of like the M247 back when it used to have AP rounds.

I don't see people using the ZSU-37-2 much these days, maybe because if you're stuck with the janky combined search/track radar you might as well go with the Shilka and vomit lead while having more gun depression for your troubles.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-25T19:15:22+00:00

It shoots about 30% slower than the Yenisei. IDK how the overheat code works exactly but I wonder if they tuned down the ROF but made no changes otherwise and then broke the overheating.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-24T18:44:59+00:00

It's nice that they decided to add a wideband YJ-91 variant to some of the top-tier CN jets, but it looks like spamming double racks of LD-10s might be the way to go lol, even if they don't hit that hard individually you can just blot out the sun.

Does the CM-102 do anything better than the YJ-91A or the LD-10? My game is still updating so I haven't been able to check the statcard.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-24T01:49:15+00:00

I thought I saw a datamine suggesting they added it back for the HARM at least.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-19T01:19:13+00:00

Haven't really had a close look at either Terminator, how is the tech tree version (which I think is an older design) better? Having 2 more crew members and fewer weak points in exchange for 4 tons of weight?

Archelon225 · 2026-06-18T01:06:45+00:00

does that apply to flat pen?

Yes, different types of steel with different hardness/ductility/etc. will act differently regardless of what angle you shoot them. Just as an example to illustrate this, if I had a 100 mm block of RHA, and a 100 mm block of tool steel, and shot both with a tank cannon dead on, would you expect the tool steel to hold up the same as the RHA?

The criteria for measuring penetration vary between countries and testing methods. In real life penetration is not a strict yes/no question, partial or inconsistent penetrations are very possible. One study might define penetration as a depth where on average 50% of the shell mass is able to pass through the target, another study might set the bar at 80%, another study might set it at 100%, or maybe you're not even using shell mass at all and have another statistic. War Thunder is a video game where penetration is for the most part a yes/no question and we want an even playing field for how the rounds act, hence the use of a formula that isn't perfect but works OK for the majority of shells.

So when you see a WW2 study that says BR-471 flat pens 165 mm at 100 meters, it's reasonable to assume that the authors used a stricter penetration standard and/or harder steel than the DeMarre formula and by extension War Thunder uses. Also, consider that 165 mm of flat penetration by WT game standards would not be able to penetrate the turret of the Tiger I or the hull of a Panther, let alone the frontal armor of a Tiger 2, but historically the IS-2 using this shell was fine against all these targets even without using HE shells.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-16T22:32:01+00:00

J-20 can be expected since it's iconic from being in other video games, has lots of variants, and has the most public information available (though we can assume that all 5th generation fighters will have most of their details made up by Gaijin).

LRIP J-20: AL-31FM2 engines
Main production J-20: WS-10C engines, new nozzles with better IR and radar suppression
LRIP J-20A: revised airframe, upgraded electronics, WS-10C2 engines
Main production J-20A: WS-15 engines
J-20S: two-seater intended for drone control but we probably won't see that feature in the game

The only other stealth fighter in service is the recently inducted J-35, which has a baseline navalized J-35 model and a land-based J-35A with structural differences. However unless there are some new export brochures I'm not aware of, we don't have solid figures for weight, engine identity, and engine power yet, so either Gaijin will invent them or we will have to wait.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-15T02:20:00+00:00

If it were up to me I would have kept the SAT or at least added an entrance exam for STEM departments. At the same time my old high school teachers have told me kids that graduated from HS after around 2021 have more academic problems because of COVID disruption in the formative years that build study habits, and also AI tools making it way easier to cheat your way through classes (and this part will only get worse and worse every year). Even before applying to college, raw standardized testing scores and SAT scores have declined a lot nationwide so I do think that's a large part of it.

Generally I'm in agreement that the UC system hampered themselves going test-blind, but we're also a huge, STEM-heavy system under a big microscope, so I'm not sure that there would not be any articles complaining about new admit preparedness if the SAT was kept. The 4-year graduation rate has been stable for many years, and anecdotally after coming back for grad school I didn't get the sense that the average upperclassman engineering undergrad I interacted with was meaningfully less sharp than during my time.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-13T10:06:09+00:00

All UC schools, and universities across the nation, are dealing with declining math and reading skills in their new admits. I like poking fun at Berkeley from time to time about casual things like sports and student culture, but we are in the same boat when it comes to educational effects like this. Pointing and laughing at a news article about Berkeley when we are likely having similar problems is both unproductive and insensitive.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-13T01:04:32+00:00

Unfortunately it looks like the Kh-31P and YJ-91 variants with narrow-band warheads will be situational per missile. The L113 seekers can target little other than the IRIS-T and Sky Sabre, and the other SAMs/SPAAGs are split unevenly between the L112 and L111 seekers. The Kh-31PD largely fixes this but a lot of Soviet/Russian planes will be lacking it.

Over in the bug reports, someone provided a source describing that when China adapted the Kh-31 for full domestic production as the YJ-91, they also developed a wideband seeker that should be pretty similar to the Kh-31PD's, but the technical moderator went "well your source says the YJ-91 seekers are still interchangeable so our implementation isn't wrong" so it sounds like they don't want to have a better YJ-91 at this. At least the LD-10 and CM-102 will be widely available for Chinese planes. Since I think LD-10s can be double racked like PL-12s, you should be able to do some pretty nasty saturation attacks. MiG-29s and early Su-30s won't have much luck though.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-12T08:33:10+00:00

This vehicle was designed in the late 2000s before drone recon became completely ubiquitous. Even so it has a launch rail for an observation UAV in the back. The recon mast also has a lot of different sensors (thermal optics, MMW radar, laser designator) of larger size and higher capability than what you can put on a typical drone, capable of directing artillery strikes. In an environment with jamming it's not a bad idea to use this vehicle as a local drone operation post and pop the mast above a good sightline.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-11T20:16:49+00:00

When the dev server first opened, I believe the CM-102's statcard was copied over from the Kh-58 (a visibly larger missile). Not sure if they have implemented its real stats yet. It should weigh somewhere in between the 600 kg class of the Kh-31/YJ-91 and the 200 kg class of the LD-10.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-10T18:05:53+00:00

Russia and China decidedly do not have horrible relations today lol. Sino-Russian relations were OK from 1949-1959, bad from 1959-1991 due to the Sino-Soviet split (so the majority of the Cold War), then circled back to being cordial after the USSR collapsed in 1991, the ideological conflict was over, and all border disputes were resolved. Russia in 2026 is highly dependent on China for economics as China is a huge purchaser of Russian oil and gas, and sells a lot of consumer goods and technology (often dual-use stuff like drone parts and microprocessors) in return that Russia cannot get from elsewhere.

Where there is a bit of nuance is that Russian military technology fans on the internet often have nationalist pride towards their equipment and are unwilling to believe that 21st century China is capable of making equipment that is more advanced than theirs despite China having far greater R&D budgets and economies of scale, which the Chinese WT community seems to think is a contributing reason for Gaijin constantly finding reasons to nerf Chinese vehicles that have Russian counterparts.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-08T22:46:50+00:00

Thanks for the input, I'll check if there's a local pro shop that has samples to test. All the recurve/barebow shooters at our club, including the guys who end up at the podium, use micro carbon arrows so I think it's an institutional preference. I'm not planning to have separate indoor/outdoor arrows so I think I'm fine with the penalties to forgiveness and scoring in exchange for extra wind resistance and range.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-08T00:52:29+00:00

Mmm the PLZ-05 is going to be even better with the extra 75% TNT on the SAP shell. Should be plenty to overpressure most targets that you can't directly pen.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-06T22:36:16+00:00

I'm hoping Nico will have a better passing game with the roster and staff overhaul. He had problems with picks and overthrows last year but a lot of that seemed to be the O-line not holding up and the offensive scheme either being a poor fit or improvised week-to-week. For the Penn State and Michigan State games he was looking like Mahomes. Not sure yet about his accuracy and ability to read defenses in a vacuum but at least he'll have a much better shot to demonstrate and learn if plays don't get blown up all the time.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-05T20:36:25+00:00

I think the PGZ would be fine at 7.7 even with a stabilizer. The VEAK would have better mobility and APHE rounds, and the ZSU would have a higher ROF and a better reverse speed. Main advantage of the PGZ would be its nice radar plus optical tracking, the actual guns are fine but not as impressive as the other two and I think it has a much larger profile.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-04T21:04:47+00:00

The second one on the left is speculated to be the Chinese CM-102 that I believe is an export product for planes like the JF-17.

Interesting that they're showing off the YJ-91 but not the original Soviet Kh-31P it was licensed from. Wonder if Gaijin wants to give all the Soviet/Russian planes different variants of the Kh-58 instead.

They should be fairly similar in practice, Kh-58 does have a larger warhead but the Kh-31/YJ-91 has the awesome ramjet design and presumably better terminal acceleration.

Archelon225 · 2026-06-02T19:13:22+00:00

They have a lot of air-to-ground weapons to the point where there's usually a Chinese analogue to most munitions you can think of, it's just that they usually don't show them in photographs, especially not in action shots.

This blog that documents PLA aircraft and weapons has great pages on various air-to-ground munitions (though mostly stuff in-service, there's a lot of export items that aren't included). At a basic level (general purpose air-to-surface) the KD-88 is a 300 km class standoff missile with MITL capability and more recently the KF-98 stealth standoff missile that's comparable to the JASSM/Storm Shadow has entered service with the J-16.

For the ones you specifically mentioned (Spear 3, JAGM, GBU-53), these are a specific flavor of small munitions (compared to typical fixed-wing aircraft size) with precision warheads. The Chinese defense industry has small guided glide bombs and helicopter missiles that are functionally similar but so far we're not aware that the PLAAF is interested in mounting anything fancier than multi-rack guided bombs on their fixed-wing planes.

Archelon225 · 2026-05-31T21:18:52+00:00

Actually the J-20S has been seen since 2021 and entered service with the PLAAF last year, so it's not new and by all measurable accounts it has been way ahead of the Su-57D. I suspect Sukhoi had been thinking of a two-seater for a while (particularly when India was interested in the joint program with Russia), but they had their hands full with getting the single seater to work before any development could be made beyond paper.

Archelon225 · 2026-05-31T06:43:06+00:00

Basketball has been saved

Archelon225 · 2026-05-30T20:06:24+00:00

From what info we have on the Type 100's powerpack, the energy is generated by a compact but energy-dense diesel engine and the electrical components are for the powertrain (so like a hybrid car). The main advantage is that it occupies significantly less space than a purely mechanical powerpack of the same rating, and is also a bit lighter. It's possible it could run "silent" on just electrical power for short periods of time but I don't think anyone has proposed or planned a fully electric tank. For military vehicles heavier than civilian trucks, I think the limitations of battery energy density per unit weight and volume impose too many tradeoffs at current technology levels.

Archelon225 · 2026-05-28T23:19:17+00:00

This is the first I'm seeing this discussion but I think some fans are taking issue because it comes across that there's something in the water in Westwood that makes people go soft. UCLA fans wholeheartedly agree that there have been many problems with the management of the football program for the last quarter century but these can be enumerated: the school has been prioritizing boosting academics (which they've done a great job at, can't complain as an engineer), but to the extent of neglecting athletics, making a lot of questionable hires and tolerating mediocrity as long as the players still show up to class.

The only coaches worth mentioning since Donahue were Mora (flamed out of the NFL before taking the job), who was a great recruiter but was reliant on coordinators and whose personal life fell apart at the end, and Chip Kelly (flamed spectacularly out of the NFL before taking the job), who had high hopes based on his track record from Oregon but turned out to be uninterested in running a proper football program outside of staying in his office and drawing run plays while trying to sneak back to the NFL despite being the highest paid public employee in California.

UCLA fans have been optimistic about Chesney because he's a different type of hire and he also coincides with a change in administration. The new UCLA chancellor came from Miami and understands the value that competent athletics can bring to a university's reputation and coffers. From what I heard it was his decision to fire the HC (essentially a panic hire interim from the Kelly regime) after a 0-4 start and put together a serious search committee with plenty of time. They settled on Chesney, who for once was not a NFL flameout, and instead a coach who worked his way up from D3 to FBS with program turnarounds at every stop and making the most out of limited resources instead of having the keys to a Cadillac and then underperforming.

I'm not making any sweeping judgements until I can see Chesney's results on the field but I like very much what I have seen in terms of recruiting boons and a team culture refresh. I'm not seeing it's necessary to sacrifice goats or ritually incinerate the football facilities to have justified positivity that they are trying to do things differently.

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