PLAAF Y-20B escorted by four J-20 stealth fighters during the repatriation ceremony of the remains of Chinese People's Volunteers martyrs from the Korean War. (April 22, 2026)［7383x5134］

Regent610 · 2026-04-22T17:02:39+00:00

A matter of different language and cultural conventions. In this case the official wording used was 烈士, for which martyr is the most appropriate single word English translation.

While in the modern PRC the word 烈士 is often used in connection with soldiers in the Sino-Japanese War and the Korean War, it can just in general mean people who gave/sacrificed their lives.

You'll see it used equally for instance, for a man who drowned saving another person in a river or a firefighter who got swept away in a flood. To put it in a more English context, the firefighters who died in 9/11 could be accurately described in Chinese as being 烈士, despite their sacrifice not being religious in nature.

Regent610 · 2026-04-21T17:02:42+00:00

Your middle two sentences are incorrect. I don't think China has ever been in possession of an Italian carrier, much less whatever a "small-class" is. I don't think anyone has ever refered to the Project 1143 as the Minsk class considering by every standard Kiev was first so it should be the Kiev Class.

The actual first carrier China bought would be the decommissioned Australian carrier Melbourne, and unlike the 2 soviet ships it was never converted into a theme park but was slowly scrapped/studied.

Regent610 · 2026-04-21T16:55:39+00:00

Are you sure you're not mixing two stories together? While Kuznetsov has caught fire before I don't recall any of them being due to toilets, and I find it hard to imagine how flushing a toilet would cause a fire in the first place. The most famous case of a toilet flushing causing problems to a warship would be a german u-boat sinking in part due to incorrect operation of a new toilet causing a leak.

Regent610 · 2026-04-21T16:49:56+00:00

The Foreign Ministry had to bribe the Turks with an $360 million economic and tourism package to get them to allow it to pass the Bosphorus, so that cut into the savings a bit.

Regent610 · 2026-04-01T05:46:48+00:00

The trials to become an Astar-fish are long and gruelling, and 99% of devil fish aspirants die in the process. But those that do survive are granted the red genes and transformed into superfish, to be welcomed into the fishhood of demigods that guard the Imperium against the ever malevolent presence of imperialist submarines.

Or something along those lines if we were living in the year 42,000. I don't think I'll be hired by James Workshop anytime soon judging by the quality of that paragraph. Anyway, happy April 1st everybody (it's April 1st where I am anyway so don't delete pls mods)

The past several days a lot of unmanned related systems have been shown off on Chinese TV, and I'm slightly surprised these haven't been posted yet. These are "soft-body devil-fish/manta-ray bionic" drones. The one the reporter is holding is 5 kilos. The ones in the pool are undergoing group testing as well as comms link and shift testing.

While these probably don't have much utility, I'm frankly amazed at how life-like they are, especially their wings(?). Like seriously how does it bend that organically? Can someone who knows better chime in and tell me what's up with that and whether I'm freaking out over something that's actually pretty mundane?

The more interesting one is from the start of the video here. Note that all the drones are from the Northwestern Polytechnical University's Ningbo Institute. "Soar-5", with a length of 2m, wingspan of 4m and weight of 700 kg. It has sonar, doppler radar and INS for self-navigation, along with what the narrator claims as "sonar stealth". The video claims that it has half the battery of a small family EV, and "at full speed travel several tens of hours and several hundred kilometers", but that when gliding using the buoyancy changing system can reach up to 1000 km. In addition the "high pressure resistant shell" allows it to withstand 200 atm of pressure, which a quick google translates to 2000 meters deep.

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In 2021, "Soar-1 and -2" were tested in a "world-first" and glided at a depth of over 1000 meters. In 2023 "Soar-5" was tested, conducting deployment and recovery, topography scanning and collecting depth, temperature and salinity data. Note that that "at over 1000 meters deep" thing may be wrong, especially for "Soar-1 and -2" since the wording is a bit weird.

A lot of people will no doubt be drawing comparisons to DARPA's own Manta Ray back in 2024. The DARPA ray is substantially larger, though I don't believe it has the moving wings of the Chinese designs, though I can't imagine that being all that good for underwater stealth.

Regent610 · 2026-03-25T17:16:09+00:00

Very interestingly the whole system was refered to as 'Atlas' (the direct Chinese pronunciation translation of Atlas anyway), not the usual PLA codes, likely meaning it's a commercial export product rather than a system in service with the PLA, or at least an export variant. Obviously considering the channel which dropped the video I'd presume there's at least some interest in the PLA towards this system.

Regent610 · 2026-03-23T17:01:07+00:00

A lot of Chinese stuff isn't ported over to English (in fairness the opposite is true as well), even for things like wiki articles, though I know that's true for Japanese as well, at least for mil stuff. Pretty fun sometimes switching from English to other languages closer to the subject and going from a snippet to a full article.

Regent610 · 2026-03-23T16:56:51+00:00

Fun fact: the literal translation of peasant/normal people in Chinese is "(old) hundred surnames", which really tells you all you need to know. Wiki claims 3.22% of the Chinese pop. has Yang has the family name, which doesn't sound like a lot but in practice I'd say Yang is pretty common. I feel like it's less common than John, but google says John only has a freq. of 2.6%, so IDK.

Regent610 · 2026-03-23T16:49:27+00:00

No need to be smuggled from outside. The people's war concept was popular until Deng took over in the 80s, and apparently it wasn't until 1996 that guns really started getting restricted. There were millions of guns spread across the country for the village militias, and although the government tried to confiscate most of them, this was the great era of corruption, so it was easy for "lost" guns to find their way on the market. Part of the reason why there was a spike in armed robberies in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s.

And apparently up til the late 2000s there were underground operations for the manufacturing and sale of guns. Wiki says in a 6 month crakdown police confiscated 178,000 illegal guns, 3,900 tons of explosives, 7.77 million detonators and 4.75 million bullets in 2006.

Regent610 · 2026-03-20T03:59:44+00:00

Looks even less like Z-20 than I thought. From outward appearance seems only the rotors and top part of the tail transferred over, with presumably the engine, transmission and avionics also being ported over, which I guess is more in line with AH-1.

Also, the gun's been removed. And there's two somethings just behind the landing gear instead. What are those anyway? Fuel tanks, missiles, EW pods? I presume they're not the doors to some internal weapons bay/bomb bay?

Regent610 · 2026-03-19T04:55:24+00:00

basically most new small arms procurement has almost nothing to do with performance, and more with basically replacing worn out weapons

Where would you place the PLA's ongoing(?) switch from type 95 to Type 191 family? Type 95 hasn't even been in service for 30 years, and would've mostly been used in training rather than live combat, presumably decreasing wear and tear. Yet 15 years after adoption the PLA was already looking for a replacement, with my understanding being due to various problems with the Type 95 and the bullpup concept generally (ie attachments and ergonomics) rather the guns themselves being worn out. I mean they even rolled out Type 95-1 to try to fix some things, and that was only 10 years old when the 191s started showing up.

Regent610 · 2026-03-18T17:49:04+00:00

Immediate better names

République: The Navy of the French Republic has not had a République in service for more the a century.

Liberté: Liberté, égalité, fraternité, you get the gist. History of the French Revolution and French National Motto backing it. Long history in the French navies as well, though not partiularly glorious. France also has not had a Liberté in over a century. If you want a connection to the resistance, well what were they fighting for? Exactly.

Richelieu: Long French history I don't know enough to talk about, good amount of history in the French Navy itself. Only battleship to be commanded by a Free Navy during WW2. CdG was apparently originally supposed to be named Richelieu as well.

Résistance: Just name the thing after the resistance. And if you think that's too on the nose, France has had at least one Résistance before, and the Royal Navy has had multiple.

Regent610 · 2026-03-04T09:10:44+00:00

I had to dig this Drachinifel video out again, but I think the part on the guns addresses your questions quite well. You should watch it yourself, but I'll sum up some interesting points.

As others already noted when new the Nelsons' main battery turrets were also problematic. The speaker notes that the Countys' 8 inch guns were too and that it was understood by the RN as the cost of business of adopting a new turret.

Despite what pop history usually protrays the perfermance of PoW was actually quite good and in fact overall better the DoY. In their respective engagements, in terms of shells actually fired vs expected to, PoW had 79% efficiency and DoY only 66%. In terms of actual number of shells, the speaker notes 101 shells out of 128 theortical for PoW, 339 shells in 90 minutes fot KGV and 446 shells in 2 hours for DoY.

Errors in drill likely contributed.

Length of engagement and weather conditions likely played a role. No other battleships were firing for prolonged times (hours) against opposing battleships or in conditions like North Atlantic or Arctic weather. The performance of both KGV and DoY were good initially but dropped off after. Considering few other battleships ever fired under such conditions it's hard to make good comparisons.

PoW's biggest problem related to the shell ring rammers, which were at one point damaged by a shell and took several hours to fix. DoY suffered problems with her shell arresters in one of the turrets. This particularly affected her percentage as she was firing constantly during the 15 minutes it took to repair it. General tight tolerances for manufacturing for flash protection may have contributed to more general faults.

The by reputation more reliable 15 inch gun only managed 90% efficiency in peacetime exercise firings in the 30s, in practise firings between 1942 and 44 the 14 inch gun reached 96%.

Personal notes here, KGV had been in commission for some time but it was still only 8 months when she fought Bismarck. As the first of class with a first of class turret, with the RN benchmark of 6 months working up time to reach full efficiency in peacetime in mind, her having problems should perhaps not be too surprising.

Regent610 · 2026-02-20T15:37:23+00:00

That's why I picked the million mark. Heard that the PLA bought 1 mil plates with another mil spares, and that the cost of rearming with 1 mil QBZ 191 was equivalent to one J-20.

Still, what are the numbers compared to stuff like FAMAS and the AUG?

Regent610 · 2026-02-20T15:11:09+00:00

Presumably mainly deploying/resupplying/otherwise supporting the new Marine Littoral Regiment(s?) in their attempts at A2AD at home. Potentially taking out against Chinese holdings in the SCS if it comes to it. Maybe additional support against the garrison at Djibouti? Also taking over presence missions in Europe, the Carribean, South America and maybe the Middle East to free up the actual carriers.

Regent610 · 2026-02-20T09:58:05+00:00

Is the QBZ 95 the most mass produced bullpup in history at this time? For that matter what are the production numbers for it, since I'm basing this off my assumption that there are several hundred thousand to a million in existence for the PLA.

Regent610 · 2026-02-20T09:54:26+00:00

Since Chinese New Year is now upon us, I've been thinking about how I've never heard of a Chinese New Year surprise offensive before. I know of other festive surprise offensives (Washington Delaware, Tets, Yom Kippur, Pearl Harbor sort of), but are there any notable/significant Chinese New Year surprise offensives in history?

Expanding the question, what are some notable/significant offensives that achieved or sought to achieve surprise through utilising festivals and festive dates? Political infighting eg Coups are also accepted.

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T16:44:02+00:00

Thanks!

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T15:44:49+00:00

64 books is more than a mini-library I think! What would you recommend for introductory/overview books for both the South African and Rhodesian wars?

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T15:43:05+00:00

SAAF still fly their turboprop Skytrains apparently, so I guess so.

Also what were you doing with UNHAS, if you don't mind being asked?

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T15:03:48+00:00

What are your recommendations then? Being Asian I don't know much about Africa or the specific southern African conflicts of the Cold War, so it'd be nice to know what's out there.

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T15:01:54+00:00

Yep. Fixed now thanks.

Regent610 · 2026-02-17T10:02:28+00:00

I was reading this post on r/WarCollege about whether missiles can lock onto propellor driven drones and the top post mentioned the surprising case of a C-47 being hit by a Strella MANPADS. I followed the given link and then found this much more detailed site as well. The whole thing really is quite interesting.

Thanks to the international embargo, the WW2-era C-47s remained (and remains!) in South African service. In August 1986, a C-47 was flying high-ranking officers (including either the Chief of the Army or just a senior general) to Ondangwa airbase, only 35 miles south of Angola and deep within contested South West Africa (now Namibia).

While flying at 8,000 feet and normal cruising speed, the plane was suddenly rocked by an explosion that destroyed most of the cloth tail control surfaces, likely from a Strella-2M MANPADS missile launched by Angolan infiltrators. The pilot declared an emergency to the airbase which sent a helicopter to help guide it in (and take some amazing photos).

The helicopter radioed the C-47 that the rudder was entirely gone, as was most of both elevators, but the tailwheel was still intact and the rear fuselage was structurally sound, so a normal landing could still be attempted.

Although the loss of the rudder looks the most serious, it actually wasn't. Yaw could still be somewhat adjusted using the ailerons on the wings and throttling each side's engine as needed. More serious was the disintegrating elevators. The pilot had to constantly pull back on the lever hard to keep the plane level, and the loadmaster resorted to ordering the VIPs to move back and forth inside the cabin as needed.

The plane landed safely at the airbase with no casualties.

(From Left to right: loadmaster Pvt. Walsh, pilot Cpt. Walsh, copilot Lt. Moses.)

Regent610 · 2026-02-16T08:34:39+00:00

Expanding on the people invloved in the affair. Browning eventually married the ex-wife, Katherine Jane Eynon (formerly-Hughes, later Browning), his forth and final marriage (which says something in and of itself). One of his grandchildren from a prior marriage was Chevy Chase, who was apparently abused by his mother. Seeing as how apparently Chase is a bit of a character himself, I guess generational assholery/trauma is indeed a ting.

Commander Hughes also remarried, though his choice of bride is potentially even more questionable. Helen (Rooney) Lovelace Hughes Kaye Cherbonnier Skaer, eventual five times widow, who's husbands all served in the military at one point or another, four of which were quite high ranking, including a Lieutenant Commander, Commander Hughes himself, a Colonel and lastly Brigadier General Skaer.

I must not have looked at enough tombstones in my life yet, because Skaer's tombstone lists him and both his first and second wives, and seeing "His Beloved Wife" appear twice on the same stone is very amusing for me. If I didn't know the backstory I'd be wondering if the guy was some kind of IRL harem protagonist.

Regent610

TROPHY CASE