Soviet artillery tractor - videos

[Jon]

Soviet artillery tractor. 2:28 video:

1:42 video:

4:00 video:

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDK-2M

Previously:

WWI mechanical trench-digging machine - GIF
Belt-driven tractor with giant trenching wheel - GIF
V-trenching excavator - GIF
1954 Fordson Major trencher with Rotopad tracks

[DIYSwede]

Enter the Soviet Tracked Atomic Reactors!



Feelin' nosy? (Google Translate for the Russian-lingo Impaired):

Мобильные атомные Ñ�лектроÑ�танции в СССÐ*

Still alive and kickin' even today (Prepper alert):

Мобильные реакторы | �томна� �нерги� 2.0

[Frank S]

SO what else do you do with a bunch of retired military trucks? You salvage parts from tanks and everything else and make something useful out of them. Many countries around the world do this with their outdated military equipment. Everyone except for the USA.
From 1990 through at least 2013 but most especially from 2003 through 2008 millions of pieces of US military equipment was shipped over seas from National guard, reserves, and active bases from all over including equipment shipped from Korea Guam and allover the European theater. Mountains of it wound up in Kuwait cut up or whole but with holes burned through the frames engine blocks transmissions hydraulic cylinders differentials virtually every major component had been rendered impossible to repair. All done so the military could justify expenditures for new updated equipment.
This is nothing new though after WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and many times during the in named conflicts the US participated in equipment was sent there during but mostly after the conflict was over.
One of the main reasons the equipment has to be destroyed is not so much because it is obsolete but because the only way the US military can get new equipment is it has to make a justification for it in order to get congressional approval it must be destroyed. Another reason for the destruction of perfectly good equipment is it cost less to destroy it than to ship it all back for rebuild which is something that has to be done after any equipment has been used in combat or in a combat zone to insure that it is always 100% operational ready.
this is another reason why no country anywhere in the world ever assumes that the USA will not be able to carry out a mission when or if called upon.
Lastly the reason this is done is to prevent any possible use of USA equipment by a hostile against the USA.
Some equipment is sold to allies though.

[DIYSwede]

Thanks, Frank.
The Russians are in a league of their own when it comes to repurposing and field expediency, also shown here at HMT.

What was real interesting (IMHO) regarding the very existence of the Soviet Mobile Reactor programmes,
are that these didn't or couldn't even have had a surplus use - and the Cold War reasons for that.

Their startup seems to have been the US pioneer ML-1 program from the late fifties/ early sixties:

https://atomicinsights.com/ml1-mobil...m-reactor-box/

It didn't meet the design criteria, and seems to have been canned by the Kennedy administration who had enuff problems anyhow.

Here comes the interesting part:
There's some evidence floating up that this "test Atomic Box" were intentionally leaked to Moscow back then,
and consequently the Politburo decided that "if it can be done - we'll also have one ASAP, and eventually perhaps find a use for it."
ТЭС-3 "sorta worked" - but wasn't put to practical use. Canned, so this could've been the end of the story.

Enter Reagan, who launched (purported) massive armament projects, within which also fake, expensive projects were included and leaked.
Purpose of these ops was to distract, divert and dilute Soviet material, economical and personal resources.
Here again, the Soviet Intels amazingly "got wind" of a (fake) biggie portable US reactor - Politburo at attention,
and consequently they started out in Belorus with Pamir 630D up until Chernobyl blew.

Some committe's or institute's idea was for some reason or other, "to provide energy to the Siberian Taiga",
but the reactor trucks were so heavy that they were hardly transportable,
and then only at a snail's pace on concrete roads, NOT on the perma-frost.

Massive resources were put into this (and several similar) "dead-end street" projects -
with NO possible surplus use whatever, in spite of the Russian's "Field Expidiency" traits.

The leaked fake arms programs also "sorta worked", just as the reactors - Soviet folded eventually.
Last bits and pieces of the Pamir Reactors were eventually moved from Belorus to Russie as late as in 2010...
And now similar projects seems to have resurfaced again, on both sides - but that could be "just another put-on" as well.

[Frank S]

DIYSwede. Once in a social science course that I took I was asked what I thought about the ramifications of the nuclear arms race and the build up of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I told the Proff this all depends on which country you are wanting a perspective on.
From the stand point of the USA it means a lot of jobs for 1000s of well paid people. and economic growth. From the stand point of a country such as the soviet Union remember this was in the early 70s at the time. It will ultimately become an unsustainable drain due to the structure of their government and economic distribution system. in the USA many development technologies will spin off into civilian life.
the best thing about the build up is that while both super powers know full well neither is going to attack the other since both need each other to maintain some semblance of balance on the global scale. without the 2 superpowers showing a fake bluster and continual chest beating others will get the idea they too could be a super power but probably not with the same level of willingness not to use them.
I said besides someday someone will figure out these massive missiles might even be of use without their warheads to boost payloads into space.
So guess what it turned out I was right to a large extent in more ways that I could have possibly known or understood back then.
Brezhnev and Gorbachev could never have been called stupid but their philosophies were as flawed as Stalin's but I think they might have been puppets just like many of the US presidents have been.
But geo political discussions are better left to forums other than here
An interesting thing about semi mobile nuclear power generation is if it were possible to be made safe enough and transportable enough to be viable they would be an excellent solution to supplying temporary or supplemental power overloaded sections of the grid in any part of the world. or in the eventual eminent EMP taking out the grid Not saying an EMP would necessarily be planetary born either. These mobile reactors could be stored off line then transported to where they were needed and instead of half or the whole world being thrown back into the 1600s for possibly years it would only become what could almost be called a minor hiccup in history.
I'm all for it just like I am all for figuring out how to.
raise weapons grade plutonium into a much higher grade and figuring out how to utilize that as a better nuclear propulsion fuel than is currently used on some space craft.
Imagine creating a fuel that is 10,000 fold more efficient than current so powerful that the very fuel can be utilized to provide a means of providing its own shielding with in a multipolar magnetic field. then as simple crystal vacuum bottle could shield any stray radiation.