I’ve hypothesized before that he just bought Twitter to destroy a platform for “woke” people, but it’s still weird reading it out like this. This whole thing reads like destroying one of the biggest social media platforms while wasting billions of dollars is about the same level of investment for him as buying a new phone is for me. Not insignificant, but also something he just does on a whim. And honestly I think his daughter will not exactly like him more after this lol. Rich cunts like Elon buying whatever they fancy just to gain more power is exactly what she’d hate if the article is to be believed.
As much as I’d like to laugh as any Russian military stupidity, the aircraft in the picture doesn’t appear to have propellers attached, so it’s likely in some form of maintenance. Without the weight of engines and props, any strong wind over the wings is likely to move the plane around quite a lot. Putting tires on the wings disrupts the lift and helps keep the plane from moving around in storms.
That feels like a better explanation then the other theory that they are used for some form of anti-drone tech.
Would the tires do anything to protect them other than blunt the damage? Ignoring the fact that each tire conveniently has a bomb sized hole in each section?
I would imagine shrapnel would have an easier time going through a tire then through the exterior of the plane. And those bombs already do that.
Tires are very tough. Aircraft skin is very thin. I think tires would help reduce damage from shrapnel, but agree that weight and airfoil disruption is also a very plausible expansion.
My guess: You can remove the tires for flight, paint adds weight and I don’t see the Russian army scraping off the current paint without fucking up the primer/anti corrosion layer.
Light paint keeps the heat away, so it’s the default. Plus, this entire kerfuffle has been a matter class in lack of planning. They never thought they would need it, so why bother painting 50+ year old planes another color.
In the case of strategic bombers, anti-flash white is a key feature to reflect as much of the thermal pulse of a nuclear detonation as possible; theoretically you want these planes to survive the apocalypse that they’re unleashing to return to base and do it again.
most likely explanation: somebody's uncle owns a tire factory and is a good salesman.. or even more likely, somebody stole a bunch of military tires from the Army, and then sold them to the Air Force as an effective "drone deterrent"..
telegraph.co.uk
Active