Why put tires on top of aircraft.

Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
 
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martinbayer said:
Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
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Simple text paragraph is harder to monetize...

Anyways, seemed that couple of planes were probably saved from destruction by tire coverings, as drones were forced to hit other parts than highly vulnerable fuel tanks. Those examples had their tanks covered by thick mass of tires (or sandbags, as it seemed in the case of A-50). And they were probably non-operational, as removing all that before the flight would be horrendously laborous.
 
martinbayer said:
Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
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Ikari said:
Simple text paragraph is harder to monetize...
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Nailed it. It's not a generational warfare thing, it's that BS merchants got way too big for their britches the past decade and change. I'm a millennial who was raised by a boomer. Dad never told me what or how to think, just to think. To never stop avidly reading, pursuing knowledge, and running experiments. To never stop being curious enough to find the truth about how the world works.

Oh and I use to sell actual cow manure at my old hardware store job. I know a bit about BS.
 
martinbayer said:
Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
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The Google analytics will literally show the channel owner the sweet spot for video length that maximizes a paycheck. The longer the video, the more ads, the more money. You live in a new world called "planet advertising" now. Google is your daddy and there is nothing we can do about it.
 
martinbayer said:
Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
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My feeling exactly. I find it a very annoying tendancy of late.

As a matter of fact, I NEVER watch a video without a small summary of what's in it and an indication of its length. I probably miss on some stuff, but more often than not, such videos are not really worth their while.

Moreover, the proliferation of such posts in the forum (a link to a video without a single word of description) is especially annoying, not just because it screams "lazy", but also because whenever the video is taken down from the web (which often happens) at least a short description remains to tell us what it contained. There are numerous examples on this forum of video integrations that no longer work, and because we don't have any details, it is impossible to know what they were about, or to go look for an alternate version.
 
This thread REALLY makes me wish that there should be a separate "concur" button apart from the "like" button, because especially in this thread there have been numerous instances where I completely agree with the analysis of a poster while also completely disliking the logical conclusion.
 
The original reason for using tires in such a way back in the cold war as I understand it was to give dispersed and otherwise parked in the open aircraft some protection from falling debris caused by distant nuclear strikes as well as by conventional airstrikes on the airfield itself.
 
martinbayer said:
Why is there an 8+ minute video instead of a simple text paragraph or two to explain the situation? What is the drive to needlessly slow down information transfer, and what did we boomers ever do to mentally deform millennials to such a dysfunctional extent??? Seriously, TLDW.
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I wonder if part of it is the ongoing shift away from text to videos - see the massive popularity of TikTok. I don’t much care for it, but no one ever listens to Zathras.

On topic: re: the use of tires, I’m presuming it’s because they’re cheap, and a sufficiently complex shape to confuse warhead sensors?
 
No room to consider a more mundane reason e.g Maintenance, to keep CG of the plane stable as the aircraft might have some of its heaviest items removed ?
 
sublight_ said:
The Google analytics will literally show the channel owner the sweet spot for video length that maximizes a paycheck. The longer the video, the more ads, the more money. You live in a new world called "planet advertising" now. Google is your daddy and there is nothing we can do about it.
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Say it with me: Shock On Lip. It's less fun when it's you being treated like air molecules.
 
targetpractice said:
https://www.twz.com/air/russia-cove...-image-matching-seekers-u-s-military-confirms
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I very much doubt this explanation. Tires began to appear once Ukrainians had done few audacious attacks employing spec ops teams and quad copters. These first attacks often used drones dropping munitions on planes. Covering the vulnerable fuel tank with some tough substance might just stop the munition from penetrating to the tanks, or maybe even going off at all. If they wanted to just break the visual outline, then camo nets or pieces of canvas (or just painting the airframe!) would have been more efficient.

Any way, apparently this was an order coming from higher ups, and execution of it varies: some planes had only few tires for mostly symbolic effect so nobody can blame the personnel that no effort was done at all, and others were well covered.
 
I've seen that before in Africa. When an aircraft goes a long time without flying and with empty fuel tanks, the hydraulic cylinders of the landing gear become too exposed and rusty. The P-43s already had that problem in China and the Kawanishi N1K1s in the Pacific weather conditions. Stacking tires on the aircraft keeps the landing gear compressed and if necessary, it is very easy to roll them out of the aircraft. I've seen other videos where Soviet bombers were partially covered by something like sandbags.

It's always sad to see planes destroyed, but during the Cold War one of them could have turned me into light and heat.

.Ukrainians read Tom Clancy.
 
The Russian's were getting "tired" of being attacked. Also related to this type of countermeasure, they had to consider who would be attacking them which drives what brand of tire to use, its tread pattern, tread depth, side wall height, etc, all import features regarding this technology. Used tires would not meet requirements, they had to wheel and deal with all of the tire stores, probably a procurement and supply chain nightmare. I'm done.
 
Hydroman said:
The Russian's were getting "tired" of being attacked. Also related to this type of countermeasure, they had to consider who would be attacking them which drives what brand of tire to use, its tread pattern, tread depth, side wall height, etc, all import features regarding this technology. Used tires would not meet requirements, they had to wheel and deal with all of the tire stores, probably a procurement and supply chain nightmare. I'm done.
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C5705DB8-906F-4706-A91E-46B6CF8697CC.jpg
 
Sferrin said:
He didn't predict it. I've seen artwork of Tomahawks attacking Backfire bases with submunitions back in the 80s/90s.
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That's true, I saw those illustrations too, but Tom's genius was to describe the intelligence work needed to surprise the bombers at their bases.
 

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Justo Miranda said:
That's true, I saw those illustrations too, but Tom's genius was to describe the intelligence work needed to surprise the bombers at their bases.
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Tom Clancy almost didn't get his first novel "Red Storm Rising" published as he had to prove he didn't use any classified information when writing the novel.
 
NMaude said:
Tom Clancy almost didn't get his first novel "Red Storm Rising" published as he had to prove he didn't use any classified information when writing the novel.
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You don't need to access classified information to understand the problems that smart militaries care about most, just talk to them and discuss possible hypothetical solutions to design video games.
 
Justo Miranda said:
You don't need to access classified information to understand the problems that smart militaries care about most, just talk to them and discuss possible hypothetical solutions to design video games.
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I know but Clancy had a couple of military officers (USN IIRC) visit him after his draft novel was examined and they were very concerned with the detail he had becoming convinced that he was using classified information so as a result he had to prove that he was only using publicly available data.​
 
NMaude said:
I know but Clancy had a couple of military officers (USN IIRC) visit him after his draft novel was examined and they were very concerned with the detail he had becoming convinced that he was using classified information so as a result he had to prove that he was only using publicly available data.​
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It is difficult for the intelligence services to accept the concept that in the end everything ends up being known.

But writers can sometimes be fooled by posting fake stealth configurations with Frisbee-shaped wings.

Remember the anecdotes about top-secret keywords that popped up on the New York Times crossword puzzle at the most inopportune times?
 
NMaude said:
I know but Clancy had a couple of military officers (USN IIRC) visit him after his draft novel was examined and they were very concerned with the detail he had becoming convinced that he was using classified information so as a result he had to prove that he was only using publicly available data.​
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Stanley Kubrick supposedly got in trouble for Doctor Strangelove since his version of B-52 cockpit layout got too close for comfort for USAF…
 
siegecrossbow said:
Stanley Kubrick supposedly got in trouble for Doctor Strangelove since his version of B-52 cockpit layout got too close for comfort for USAF…
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But history will remember him as a cassandra who failed in all his predictions, like Michael Crichton.

Human intelligence was not stimulated by extraterrestrials; in fact, it was an ancestor of mine who realized that a good bone is good for killing pigs. He ate better than the other herbivorous monkeys, he reproduced much more and that's where it all began. I suspect that cassandras are descended from herbivores and have always acted out of envy.:)
 
Justo Miranda said:
But history will remember him as a cassandra who failed in all his predictions, like Michael Crichton.
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Oh Justo, my dear, poor, sweet, little, naive, young at heart, exuberantly passionate, artistic hispanic soul - both Crichton and Kubrick provided us with dystopian visions of the future in order to *WARN* us of the potential dangers ahead, and whaddyaknow - so far they've actually kept us out of hitting the particular ditches they identified...
 
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