Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[Montegriffo]

That particular boat turns out to be the Draken Harald Hårfagre I think and is very experimental.
https://www.drakenhh.com/about-the-ship

Yes, she is a viking ship although built in modern times. Thousands of ships were built in the Viking Age, but only a few burial ships and shipwrecks have been found. This small sample hardly represents the best of the Viking ship technology. The original vessel material that is found is often fragmentary and poorly preserved. If important details are missing, one is dependent on the archaeologists” interpretation when the pieces of a ship are put together or drawings are made. This can be crucial for the seaworthiness of the ship.

Usually, replicas of Viking ships are based on interpretations of archaeological material. We went the opposite way. We were based in a living Norwegian boat building tradition that has existed since the Viking Age. From there we worked backwards in time to recreate an ocean going Viking ship by using all available sources. This includes:

Archaeological material
The Saga literature and other sources from the Old Norse literature.
Foreign contemporary sources from the Viking Age
Visual representations of Viking ships
Old sailing records, purchasing lists, reports, and more.

[Hastur]

The original ships were built with planks that were split from a log. Most of the replicas are built with sawn planks. They get heavier, stiffer and less durable.

[C-Mag]

The original ships were built with planks that were split from a log. Most of the replicas are built with sawn planks. They get heavier, stiffer and less durable.

Modern planking would be just as tough if they were Quarter Sawn, instead of Flat Sawn. The splitting techniques we recently had posted here on logs show that technique.

[BjornP]

[C-Mag]

Pretty Damn Cool

[Otern]

Fuck, I'm mad about this.
The frigate had their transponder turned off, in the middle of a narrow straight, where there's always a shitload of civilian traffic. In the middle of the night, at a time of the year where it's fucking impossible to see anything.

Then they didn't watch the screen where every other civilian ship that did have their transponder turned on, would be visible. (The tanker was visible, and did have its transponder turned on, so did the tugboat accompanying the tanker).

Also, the standard operating procedure looks sketchy as fuck. As the "normal" standard, according to the Norwegian navy would be to have five people on the bridge. Of them two lookouts, one helmsman (if that's the correct english terminology), one commander, and an assistant commander. But it could very well be manned below normal, as the Navy didn't specify the "normal" as the absolute minimum.
I've been going through a straight pretty close to this one on another boat once, where I was the lookout. And even then, we had a minimum two lookouts in front, and two on the back. And still having plenty of professionals keeping watch, so we wouldn't crash even if the unprofessional me would fuck up.

Also, they had to report going into the straight to the harbor control. The harbor control did send out warnings to the frigate about them being on collision course with the tanker. The tanker also sent warnings, when they were aware of the frigate being on collision course. The frigate responded with "we have control of the situation".
https://www.aldrimer.no/fregatten-anrop ... te-ganger/

Now they're just patting themselves on the back that no lives were lost. But that's no thanks to the frigate command and crew. Just blind luck that the tanker didn't hit the sleeping quarters or anything.

I really hope there's plenty of prison sentences handed out for this. It's less than a month since another navy twat got over four years in prison for corruption, so this just brings further disgrace on the navy.

Maybe we should go back to the Swedish union, and just let them deal with defense. There's simply too many stories of fuck ups in the Norwegian armed forces, for them to maintain any illusion of competence. Corruption, mismanagement of funds, insane spending on stuff we then can't afford the maintenance costs of, selling old naval bases to the Russians, turning newly bought tracked vehicles into scrap metal before it enters service, corrupt officers selling old boats to nigerian war criminals and pocketing the cash, upgrading the Orions for billions, just to scrap them in favor of new airplanes when the upgrades are complete, spending billions on helicopters we're not going to get. The list goes on, and on, and on.

"But this happens in every military, doesn't it?"
No, there's no way this happens to such a fucked up degree in other militaries. Case in point, the brits: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews ... years.html
This is nothing, compared to the losses in Norway. I (may or may not have) personally seen more functional stolen smoke grenades, illumination rockets, and ammunition, than what the brits have lost in actual military equipment. And I've never even been in the military.

Fuck this fucked up fucking armed forces.

[Hastur]

Good rant. We have a bit of the same in Sweden but not to the same extent. I don't think we are more competent it's just that we don't have as much money to waste. Unpredictability when it comes to procurement causes a lot of waste. Systems get upgraded in case they're not allowed to buy next gen stuff. Then when the decision to buy comes no one is going to turn it down just because the old stuff just got an upgrade. Happen all the time.
We make a lot of our stuff ourselves because we got burnt in the '30s not being able to rearm and because as "neutrals" during the cold war we were left to our own. We could sell a lot more of it if we were part of NATO. We get discriminated against today. Rightly so.
I'm still a bit pissed off that Norway left us in the lurch on the Archers.

https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/20161013.aspx

[Otern]

I wish smitty was here. I'd love to hear his take on it.

[Otern]

I'm still a bit pissed off that Norway left us in the lurch on the Archers.

Oh, I totally forgot about the whole artillery deal. Norway bought 12 M270 multiple launch rocket systems, before promptly putting them in storage, never to be used again. So less than a year ago, while we have those in storage, never to be used, we decided to spend a couple billions more on some worst Korean artillery instead.

I would be positive to that purchase, as South Korea and Norway have pretty similar situations when it comes to geography and use of artillery. But. This is Norwegian armed forces spending. We'll buy them, and forget about the whole maintenance issue, put them in storage with the rest, and fall for the next sales pitch.

I'm almost in favor of Norway joining the EU army because of all this. At least then it would be the EU's problem, and it could effectively lower the EU's combat capabilities.

I'm fucking amazed how we still can't meet NATO's demand of 2% of GDP spending, even with all those retarded decisions. And no, it's not the "left wingers" fault. These retarded decisions are mainly made during conservative governments. (Although social democrat governments are FAR from innocent either). But the armed forces themselves are the main culprits here. They ask for stuff, whatever government in charge try to give them it, they continue to fuck it up, and ask for new stuff.

Our military spending is comparable to Israel's military spending per capita. We spend half as much, and has about half as many people. But we're nowhere near half of their capabilities. And the shitshow has barely even started. We're buying more F-35s per capita than any other country. At the same time, we scrapped all maintenance education programs within the armed forces, so the maintenance of them has to be outsourced. We're going to have some of the best equipment in the world, just collecting dust because we didn't take maintenance into account.

And it should worry all of you, as NATO's general secretary is Norwegian. He's part of this perfect machinery of incompetence. He hasn't got any real power, thankfully.

[Montegriffo]

Pretty Damn Cool

That would be fun to try. I wonder if I could afford an oak log big enough to build a trebuchet from. Probably not but a dead ash tree might be cheap enough.