A few good grinding surface photos I located:
One Earth: Aerial View, Phoenix Driveway
Image by cobalt123
For the 1 Earth group project, my picture selected for the group pool. This is taken in my driveway in late afternoon. The robust light approaching sunset casts magical dark shadows. The image appears to me like what I’ve observed from traveling on planes more than the vast unpopulated areas of the Southwest. Doesn’t it appear like there is a river branching beneath, with dark shadows reaching down from the nearest clouds to Earth’s surface and the highest altitude clouds moving along with a lot smoother blobs of shadow?
Truly, the dark shadows at the bottom of this image are from the guidelines of leaves on the nearby privet hedge. The extended "log" or pipeline in the upper central focus is a rusty nail. If I had not taken this photo and looked at it in Photoshop, I would not have realized there was a NAIL in my driveway that necessary to be picked up!
Remarkable what you discover from searching straight down, at times. The preceeding photos are also from the driveway and out to the busy street in front of my house in central Phoenix. There is more pavement and asphalt here in this neighborhood than any other ground covering. This is also why it gets so exceptionally hot in metro Arizona and the heat stays, held like a warming plate does, in this pavement. Sometimes you can feel waves of heat increasing up through the ground as you stroll. I can’t wait for "winter" to come!
SAM S-75 Dvina. ЗРК С-75 “Двина”
Image by Peer.Gynt
Saint-Petersburg. Artillery Museum.
The S-75 Dvina (Russian: С-75 NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) is a Soviet-developed, higher-altitude, command guided, surface-to-air missile (SAM). Because its 1st deployment in 1957 it has turn out to be the most broadly-deployed air defense missile in history. It scored the initial destruction of an enemy aircraft by a SAM, shooting down a Taiwanese Martin RB-57D Canberra over China, on October 7, 1959 by hitting it with 3 V-750 (1D) missiles at an altitude of 20 km (65,600 ft). The achievement was attributed to Chinese fighters at the time in order to keep the S-75 system secret.
This system initial gained international fame when an S-75 battery, employing the newer, longer-variety and larger-altitude V-750VN (13D) missile shot down the U-two of Francis Gary Powers overflying the Soviet Union on Might 1, 1960.[3] The program was also deployed in Cuba throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis, exactly where on October 27, 1962, it shot down the U-two flown by Rudolf Anderson, nearly precipitating nuclear war.[4] North Vietnamese forces utilized the S-75 extensively in the course of the Vietnam War to defend Hanoi and Haiphong. It has also been locally produced in the People’s Republic of China making use of the names HQ-1 and HQ-two. Other nations have produced so several local variants combining portions of the S-75 program with both indigenously-developed components or third-celebration systems that it has become practically impossible to discover a pure S-75 method nowadays,
Improvement
In the early 1950s, the United States Air Force rapidly accelerated its development of extended-variety jet bombers carrying nuclear weapons. The USAF plan led to the deployment of Boeing B-47 Stratojet supported by aerial refueling aircraft to extend its variety deep into the Soviet Union. The USAF quickly followed the B-47 with the improvement of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, which had greater range and payload than the B-47. The range, speed, and payload of these U.S. bombers posed a significant threat to the Soviet Union in the occasion of a war between the two nations.
onsequently, the Soviets initiated the development of improved air defense systems. Although the Soviet Air Defence Forces had massive numbers of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), which includes radar-directed batteries, the limitations of guns versus higher-altitude jet bombers was obvious. Therefore, the Soviet Air Defense Forces began the improvement of missile systems to replace the World War II-vintage gun defenses.
In 1953, KB-2 began the development of what became the S-75 beneath the direction of Pyotr Grushin. This system focused on generating a missile which could bring down a big, non-maneuvering, higher-altitude aircraft. As such it did not require to be highly maneuverable, merely quick and able to resist aircraft counter-measures. For such a pioneering technique, improvement proceeded swiftly, and testing started a couple of years later. In 1957, the wider public very first became aware of the S-75 when the missile was shown at that year’s May Day parade in Moscow.
Initial deployment
Wide-scale deployment started in 1957, with various upgrades following over the next couple of years. The S-75 was by no means meant to replace the S-25 Berkut surface-to-air missile internet sites about Moscow, but it did replace high-altitude anti-aircraft guns, such as the 130 mm KS-30 and 100 mm KS-19. Amongst mid-1958 and 1964, U.S. intelligence assets located much more than 600 S-75 websites in the USSR. These internet sites tended to cluster around population centers, industrial complexes, and government control centers. A ring of internet sites was also positioned about likely bomber routes into the Soviet heartland. By the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union had ended the deployment of the S-75 with maybe 1,000 operational websites.
In addition to the Soviet Union, several S-75 batteries have been deployed throughout the 1960s in East Germany to defend Soviet forces stationed in that country. Later the system was sold to most Warsaw Pact countries and was supplied to China, North Korea, and ultimately, North Vietnam.
Employment
While the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 in 1960 is the 1st publicized success for the S-75, the first aircraft really shot down by the S-75 was a Taiwanese Martin RB-57D Canberra higher-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. In this case, the aircraft was hit by a Chinese-operated S-75 web site near Beijing on October 7, 1959. More than the next few years, the Taiwanese ROCAF would drop a quantity of aircraft to the S-75: both RB-57s and a variety of drones. On Might 1, 1960, Gary Powers’s U-two was shot down even though flying over the testing site close to Sverdlovsk, although it is thought to have taken 14 missiles to hit his higher-flying plane. That action led to the U-two Crisis of 1960. In addition, Chinese S-75s downed five ROCAF-piloted U-2s based in Taiwan.[five]
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a U-two piloted by USAF Key Rudolf Anderson was shot down more than Cuba by an S-75 in October 1962.[six]
In 1965, North Vietnam asked for some help against American airpower, for their own air-defense system lacked the ability to shoot down aircraft flying at high altitude. Right after some discussion it was agreed to supply the PAVN with the S-75. The choice was not produced lightly, due to the fact it drastically elevated the chances that a single would fall into US hands for study. Web site preparation began early in the year, and the US detected the plan almost quickly on April 5, 1965. Even though military planners pressed for the websites to be attacked just before they could grow to be operational, their political leaders refused, fearing that Soviet technical staff may possibly be killed.
On July 24, 1965, a USAF F-4C aircraft was shot down by an SA-two.[7] 3 days later, the US responded with Operation Iron Hand to attack the other websites before they could grow to be operational. Most of the S-75 had been deployed about the Hanoi-Haiphong area and have been off-limits to attack (as have been local airfields) for political causes. President Lyndon Johnson announced on public Television that a single of the other internet sites would be attacked the next week. The Vietnamese removed the missiles and replaced them with decoys, whilst moving each and every obtainable anti-aircraft gun into the strategy routes. The tactic worked, causing heavy American casualties.
The missile technique was used extensively all through the globe, especially in the Middle East, where Egypt and Syria utilized them to defend against the Israeli Air Force, with the air defense net accounting for the majority of the downed Israeli aircraft. The final apparent accomplishment appears to have occurred during the War in Abkhazia (1992–1993), when Georgian missiles shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter close to Gudauta on March 19, 1993.
Countermeasures and counter-countermeasures
Among 1965 and 1966, the US delivered a quantity of options to the S-75 difficulty. The Navy soon had the Shrike missile in service and mounted their 1st offensive strike on a web site in October 1965. The Air Force responded by fitting B-66 bombers with potent jammers (that blinded the early warning radars) and by establishing smaller sized jamming pods for fighters (that denied range data to the radars). Later developments included the Wild Weasel aircraft, which have been fitted with anti-radiation air-to-surface missile systems produced to residence in on the radar from the threat. This freed them to shoot the websites with Shrikes of their personal.
The Soviets and Vietnamese, however, were able to adapt to some of these techniques. The USSR upgraded the radar many occasions to boost ECM (electronic counter measure) resistance. They also introduced a passive guidance mode, whereby the missile could lock on the jammer itself. This had an added benefit, simply because the radar had to be turned off, which prevented Shrikes from becoming fired. Additionally, some new tactics have been developed to combat the Shrike. A single of them was to point the radar to the side and then turn it off briefly. Given that the Shrike was a relatively primitive anti-radiation missile, it would follow the beam away from the radar and then basically crash when it lost the signal (right after the radar was turned off). One more was a "false launch" in which the tracking radar was turned on, but the missiles had been not truly fired. This permitted the missile crew to see if the target was equipped with a Shrike. If the aircraft fired one, the Shrike could be neutralized with the side-pointing technique without sacrificing any S-75s.
Despite these advances, the US was able to come up with efficient ECM packages for the B-52E models. These planes had been in a position to fly raids against Hanoi with comparatively few losses (though nonetheless considerable adequate to lead to some concern see Operation Linebacker II).
Replacement systems
Soviet Air Defence Forces started to replace the S-75 with the vastly superior SA-10 and SA-12 systems in the 1980s. Nowadays only a couple of hundred, if any, of the 4,600 missiles are nonetheless in Russian service, even although they underwent a modernization program as late as 1993.[citation necessary]
The S-75 remains in widespread service all through the world, with some level of operational capability in 35 nations. Vietnam and Egypt are tied for the biggest deployments at 280 missiles every, although North Korea has 270, and Poland has 240. The Chinese also deploy the HQ-two, an upgrade of the S-75, in fairly large numbers.
Soviet doctrinal organization
The Soviet Union utilised a relatively normal organizational structure for S-75 units. Other countries that have employed the S-75 might have modified this structure. Generally, the S-75 is organized into a regimental structure with 3 subordinate battalions. The regimental headquarters will manage the early-warning radars and coordinate battalion actions. The battalions will contain a number of batteries with their linked acquisition and targeting radars.
Site layout
Each and every battalion will usually have six, semi-fixed, single-rail launchers for their V-750 missiles positioned around 60 to 100 m (200 to 330 ft) apart from each and every other in a hexagonal "flower" pattern, with radars and guidance systems placed in the center. It was this special "flower" shape that led to the internet sites becoming simply recognizable in reconnaissance photographs. Usually an additional six missiles are stored on tractor-trailers close to the center of the site.
An instance of a web site can be observed right here just to the west of the junction to Bosra on the M5 motorway in Syria, south of Damascus. This place covers the borders with each Israel and Jordan, so it is of strategic value.
Missile
V-750
V-750V 1D missile on a launcher
TypeSurface-to-air missile
Place of origin Soviet Union
Production history
VariantsV-750, V-750V, V-750VK, V-750VN, V-750M, V-750SM, V-750AK
Specifications (V-750[9])
Weight2,300 kg (5,100 lb)
Length10,600 mm (420 in)
Diameter700 mm (28 in)
WarheadFrag-HE
Warhead weight200 kg (440 lb)
Detonation
mechanismCommand
PropellantSolid-fuel booster and a storable liquid-fuel upper stage
Operational
range45 km (28 mi)
Flight altitude20,000 m (66,000 ft)
Increase time5 s enhance, then 20 s sustain
SpeedMach 3.5
Guidance
systemRadio manage guidance
Accuracy65 m
Launch
platformSingle rail, ground mounted (not mobile)
The V-750 is a two-stage missile consisting of a strong-fuel booster and a storable liquid-fuel upper stage, which burns red fuming nitric acid as the oxidizer and kerosene as the fuel. The booster fires for about 4–5 seconds and the principal engine for about 22 seconds, by which time the missile is traveling at about Mach three. The booster mounts 4 huge, cropped-delta wing fins that have small handle surfaces in their trailing edges to manage roll. The upper stage has smaller cropped-deltas near the middle of the airframe, with a smaller set of manage surfaces at the intense rear and (in most models) a lot smaller sized fins on the nose.
The missiles are guided making use of radio control signals (sent on 1 of 3 channels) from the guidance computers at the web site. The earlier S-75 models received their commands through two sets of four small antennas in front of the forward fins, although the D model and later models used 4 considerably larger strip antennas operating in between the forward and middle fins. The guidance technique at an S-75 internet site can deal with only one target at a time, but it can direct 3 missiles against it. Added missiles could be fired against the identical target soon after one particular or far more missiles of the very first salvo had completed their run, freeing the radio channel.
The missile typically mounts a 195 kg (430 lb) fragmentation warhead, with proximity, speak to, and command fusing. The warhead has a lethal radius of about 65 m (213 ft) at decrease altitudes, but at higher altitudes the thinner atmosphere allows for a wider radius of up to 250 m (820 ft). The missile itself is correct to about 75 m (246 ft), which explains why two were typically fired in a salvo. One version, the SA-2E, mounted a 295 kg (650 lb) nuclear warhead of an estimated 15 Kiloton yield or a conventional warhead of comparable weight.
Standard variety for the missile is about 45 km (28 mi), with a maximum altitude about 20,000 m (66,000 ft). The radar and guidance technique imposed a relatively lengthy short-variety cutoff of about 500 to 1,000 m (1,600 to 3,300 ft), making them fairly safe for engagements at low level.