GarryB wrote: According to available data, economic speed of pr/677 SSK on batteries is 650NM @3knots, which is a decent figure, not far from stirling driven swedish boats. If future russian AIP can achieve 1000NM range @, say, 6 knots it can be real step forward! It corresponds to 4x bigger energy capacity, or something like that.
Russian subs don't have to go anywhere, the real value in AIP is not having to surface.
Off the top of my head I seem to remember the stats being something like the Kilo can stay underwater for 5-7 days, while the Lada with the new batteries can do more than twice that, and with the AIP it extends to 3-4 weeks underwater but not zipping round at high speed of course.
The talk was that the new batteries plus the AIP basically made them nuke powered equivalents in terms of time underwater... but without the speed of a nuke of course.
Their sensors and equipment including land attack cruise missiles and the like also make them nuke like in performance... but as mentioned the first in the series did not meet expectations to start with... they found and fixed the problems and now they are finishing number two and three and likely making one or two more.
Or Xena from New Zealand lol1 lol1 lol1 GarryB should know her better
Yeah... thats Lucy... she lives down the street... everyone in New Zealand knows each other... it is not a big place....
Regarding this gender respect stuff and feminism... in Desert Storm there was a ship nicknamed the Love Boat, because over half the crew were women... the Navy was so proud... so many brownie points I am surprised they didn't send a camera crew and make a TV show about them... except when it came time to actually go to Desert Storm to a real war something like 80% of the women crew suddenly got pregnant and couldn't go... obviously the ship couldn't go without replacement crew.
I remember reading Soldier of Fortune magazine in the 80s and 90s and they would talk about units with women in them where the men did the extra work to cover for the fact that the women were not physically strong enough to do their job... officers would see logistics units shifting boxes of ammo... what they didn't see was that the boxes were empty because the women in the unit couldn't move the full boxes... that is training to win...
Career soldiers couldn't say anything... one soldier left the army because he said to one woman recruit that was struggling to handle the M60 machine gun that she didn't need to worry because she would likely never get to use it... I say left, but I mean kicked...
Made my blood boil too...
Females now serve on the USN SSBNs. There r also some pilots. Don't know how good their performance compared to males.
There are some jobs women are better than men at... I have read that being a sniper requires patience and women can be very good at it, but when you mix in PC where she is in the job because if she can't get combat roles it hurts her chance of promotion... even though most women tend to get promoted faster than men anyway... because we don't want to be seen as sexist... if you can promote a man or a woman you promote the woman or risk being labelled sexist...