Huh, I’ll be damned. I assumed that was a Ukrainian homebrew jury-rig. It looks pretty awkward, even by Soviet standards.
I dug a bit and found a pic of a Mi-8MT in (I think?) the Afg with the nose mount.
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Europe under extreme duress
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
I dug a bit and found a pic of a Mi-8MT in (I think?) the Afg with the nose mount.
I don't know if this is folklore, but apparently the Mi-8 is purposely a nightmare ergonomic design. It purposely takes three people to even start the thing with spring-loaded switches that must be simultaneously activated beyond what even two people could cover.
Russia sure loves that teal color.
It was supposedly to relax the pilots, although- compared against the absolutely abysmal human factors of most Russian cockpits I have seen- I doubt it made much difference.
Russia does seem to engineer a lot of "guard against defection" into their gear (hard-channelized radios in the MiG-29 also comes to mind)... which says a lot about how desirable living under communism isn't.
More to keep things simple than to prevent defections, hard to fuck up freq changes when you only have 4 to choose from.
That's a fair point- Russian engineering of that era does tend to be all about keeping things as simple as possible.
I highly recommend the book Fulcrum, it is a great first-person account of the VVS (the 'regular' air force) in the 80's from the last Soviet pilot who defected in 1989. There was a lot of interesting info in it about how the Soviets did things, and the Russians still do, and keeping things simple was a big one. Interesting fact about their training, it is regimental-based and not the FRS-RTU model we utilize in the US. Every regiment is individually responsible for training newly winged pilots, who often stay with the same regiment their whole career, and the quality of regiments at the time varied greatly back then according to the author.
The PVO (the air defense air force, the ones responsible for air defense of the Motherland) was of pretty poor quality compared to the VVS according to the author, who denigrates them quite often in the book basically describing them as ground-controlled drones so keeping things simple was even more important to them apparently. And drunks too, which for a Russian is saying something. Viktor Belenko, the guy who defected in a MiG-25 to Japan in 1976, was a PVO pilot and apparently they did have some things in place to prevent defections at the time.
Two US soldiers are attacked Turkey
Two U.S. soldiers were attacked in Turkey Monday - as video circulated online purportedly showing a service member swarmed by a group of men who placed a hood over his head.
Thailand libo > Turkey libo. Convince me I'm wrong.
I spent 4 months deployed to Incirlik, and I had been to Istanbul as a kid with my parents. Really cool country/people/food, but I know the political climate has changed a lot since Erdogan came to power. It reminds me a lot of OR and WA east vs west... each with two distinct cultures and political factions that used to more or less get along, compromise, and tolerate each other, but are now at each other's throats because of messianic political figures and manufactured culture war nonsense.Two US soldiers are attacked Turkey
Two U.S. soldiers were attacked in Turkey Monday - as video circulated online purportedly showing a service member swarmed by a group of men who placed a hood over his head.www.dailymail.co.uk
Thailand libo > Turkey libo. Convince me I'm wrong.
I haven't seen a good analysis about NATO members like Turkey and Hungary, who seem to act like they're straddling the line between the West and others. I'm curious what leverage the US/EU/NATO have, or will, to keep them somewhat in line. I'm sure it's a delicate diplomatic dance, but goddam, their populations need to know they can either choose to be with the West, or not. I'm somewhat sure their majorities would choose the West, vice Russia or China...but that's just my assumption, and neglects the authoritarian nature of their governments.
Yeah the whole F-35/S-400 saga was a bit perplexing, but I think Erdogan thought he'd call our bluff and was surprised at the outcome. I do think that an increasing portion of their people view western culture with disdain, and fancy themselves as more of an independent regional actor. This group doesn't mind a little autocracy if it also promotes more Islamic influence in their government and society... an overcorrection to a century of rigorously enforced secularism. Hope that works out for them.
Some Nazis and a Commie did well in German state elections in the former East Germany, neither one of them are very supportive of Germany's current level of support to Ukraine or NATO.