Armoured Reconnaissance Vehicle

The ARV combined Vehicle?

It is strange how in modern warfare the Main battle tanks are being replaced by a newer battlefield multirole vehicle that combines the armoured car, and armoured personnel carrier with a smaller fire power than the tank and on at least six wheels.

The U.S. LAV and the Swiss MOWAG with the Finnish SISU are the bases of a new range of ARV, they being more an APC with addons?  Experience worldwide has seen the demise of the armoured car and the APC apart from para-military security operations and some UN work.

The ARV will not fully replace the MBT as yet, but robotic and drone vehicles of various types under development and secret trials probably will?

What this new generation of armour provides is the transportation of specialised troops, light artillery and rocket power combined with speed and maneuverability and much computerised and military satellite software for more accurate aiming of moving as well as static targets! 

The Peoples Republic of China, N-Korea and Russia have also developed their own versions along side their traditional fleets and newer versions of their mobile missile sytems?

Ghost Ships?

There are two kinds!

It is strange to know that there are many abandoned ships in our Oceans floating about, and one hopes that they are being tracked?

The Ghost ship comes in two forms the mentioned above, with many in the Pacific ocean after the Japanese Tsunami some years ago and the recent arrival of a research ship on the south-Cork coast this week after Storm Dennis, Republic of Ireland.

The other type is a weather related sea mirage, in which vessels at some distance appear to much nearer or floating about the water. In some cases this has lead to fanciful tales of cities, islands and even seen UFO's?

Despite the modern advances in GPS global positioning there is still so much that we do not now about the vastness and the isolation of our oceans and what is floating out there from the obvious containers and abandoned or ship wrecked vessels? 

Helicopters 75 Years! Part-One.

Come a long Way!

The day of the helicopter is not yet over, despite many new drones are cheaper than keeping an helicopter in the sky? The helicopter derived from gyro-dynamics in aircraft to act like an early form of the Boeing-Vertol Osprey BV-22, which still occupies U.S. military research into the development and deployment of much newer and stable platform, which is changing the battlefield from science-fiction to reality!

Today nearly anyone can go up in a helicopter from pleasure flying to search and rescue? The small machines are in the Robinson family, while Bell and Sikorsky have held both the military and commercial market, go to any horse racing event and there are more helicopters between the tracks now parked up since riders cover more than one meeting a day?

The largest machines are still dominated by the Russians and Ukrainians with the Mil Mi-26 capable of carrying three tracked vehicles and one hundred and twenty-five combat troops! This helicopter was a development of the Mi-6 well known is Russia as the Cow because it was slow and vulnerable to ground rocket fire?

Mid range giants are the Chinook, Boeing-Vertol CH-47, which has been around since the Vietnam wars of the 1960s and the Sikorsky CH-53 Super stallion, S-92 SAR after that is the successful Westland-Leonardo EH-101 and the various derivatives of the Puma SA-330 to the H332 Super Puma that dominates the North Sea oil and gas supply rigs and wind turbines.

Europe has also taken the lead of the world market with the H-135/145 helicopter in Air Ambulance and police, electric line work along with several other smaller types?

Replacing the Land Rover Defender?

The Grenadier?

It was hoped that this would be a newer version of the successful Defender, but the Germans have produced their own newer version, leaving this new venture of the Grenadier possibly in the doldrums?

There are always problems with trying to keep a good thing going, corporations want to mass produce, because that has been the way over the last one hundred years since the Ford Model T?

Many have tried with aviation and other armaments only to find that the existing owners have done their own new design and have undermined these new upstarts?

Wither is will now go-ahead is not known and what success it might have is also not known, despite there being a demand perhaps more so for existing parts to keep the series going amongst the collectors and enthuseasts?