Tag: tanks
China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) – From ballistic missiles to fighter jets, China has rolled out a host of high-tech weaponry ahead of a parade next week commemorating victory over Japan in World War Two, in a signal of Beijing’s growing confidence in its military might.

China has poured capital into developing its home-grown weapons industry with an eye toward export markets as it projects greater military power in disputed waters in the South and East China Seas.

Qu Rui, a military official and deputy director of the office organizing the parade, says all the weapons and equipment on show would be Chinese-made, 84 percent shown for the first time. “They represent the new development, new achievements and new images of the building of the Chinese armed forces,” he said at a recent briefing.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said the military parade is not directed at any other country, but diplomats and experts say countries with which Beijing has territorial disputes, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, may react with uneasiness to the broad display of military power.

“It’s possible that Japan and Southeast Asian countries will interpret this as a kind of warning to them,” said Xie Yue, a political scientist at Tongji University. “I can’t say whether that’s warranted or not.”

State media has reported that the parade, which involves more than 10 foreign military delegations including Russia, is the first in which China has showed off such a broad array of weapons.

BIGGEST DISPLAY YET

Qu said 12,000 Chinese troops would take part, along with 500 pieces of equipment and nearly 200 aircraft. Air echelons on display will include bombers, fighters and carrier-based aircraft.

Several ballistic missiles – including one that analysts say is capable of reaching a U.S. base in Guam – were spotted during parade rehearsals, Shao Yongling, a senior colonel from the PLA Second Artillery Command College, told the state-owned Global Times newspaper.

The Second Artillery Force, the nuclear force, is set to display seven types of missiles including conventional and nuclear models, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing unnamed military sources. “The scale and number of missiles will surpass any previous outing,” the source told Xinhua.

The parade will also involve modern tanks and missile-launchers, state media has reported. An upgraded long-range bomber will also be on display, flying in formation over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Thursday, a leading pilot of the formation told Xinhua.

The latest version of the J-15 aircraft carrier-based fighter jet has also been seen in rehearsals, Beijing-based air defense expert Fu Qianshao told the Global Times. Medium-sized early warning and control aircraft, used for surveillance and other missions, will lead ten formations at the parade.

A formation of military helicopters flew over Beijing during a parade rehearsal last weekend as tanks rolled through parts of the capital.

Sino-Japan relations have long been affected by what China sees as Japan’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during the war. Western and Chinese historians estimate millions of Chinese civilians were killed.

Jack Midgley, a defense expert at Deloitte, said next week’s parade was not necessarily meant to send a message to the West or other countries in the region.

“It’s to demonstrate China has achieved first-world status with its military, and to display its products for foreign buyers,” he said, adding much of the weaponry will already be familiar to foreign military analysts and intelligence services.

(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Photo: Paramilitary policemen and members of a gun salute team fire cannons during a training session for a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War Two, at a military base in Beijing, China, August 1, 2015. China will hold the parade on September 3, Picture taken August 1, 2015. (REUTERS/Stringer)

So, You Always Wanted To Own Your Own Tank

So, You Always Wanted To Own Your Own Tank

By Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. — The tank took two direct hits at the end of the Cold War that hurt its reputation more than any battlefield defeat. The first blow was the image of Michael Dukakis grinning as he clung to a tank turret while running for president in 1988. Less than a year later, the standoff at Tiananmen Square between a column of Chinese army tanks and a lone man, who refused to let them pass, electrified the world.

But this week, the tank makes its triumphant return to glory — its big guns metaphorically blazing — when the majority of what is believed to be the largest collection of armored military vehicles on the planet is auctioned at the formerly private playground of collector Jacques Littlefield, a Stanford grad who turned his boyhood hobby into an obsession, and had the family fortune to make it possible.

The auction will feature upward of 80 tanks, although exactly how far upward, even Bill Boller, who has overseen the collection for the past five years, isn’t sure. “There are more” tanks, he says, “than I ever bothered to count.”

The auction — open only to registered bidders — will take place Friday and Saturday. And though there is no minimum bid required on most items, collectors will need an up-armored credit line to take home an M4 “Jumbo” Sherman tank, expected to fetch bids of about $1.6 million. A German Panzer IV has an estimated value of $2.6 million, the highest in the collection.

Auctions America declined to reveal the names of registered bidders — though Boller did say “there are some names you would know” — but if North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un is in the hair-trigger gallery Saturday, he might be interested in three pieces that were built to launch a nuclear warhead before being demilitarized. The Russian-made 203-millimeter Pion mobile cannon is the largest land-based gun ever built, able to lob a nuke 20 miles. And here’s a friendly reminder to post on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook wall: a pair of Scud missile launchers in his front yard could turn Zuck into the “Scud Stud” of social media.

“We have a tremendous amount of interest from people who have never owned even a Jeep before, who are interested in a Sherman tank or halftrack,” says Rob Collings, CEO of the Collings Foundation, to which the entire collection was donated last year. Collings’ organization will build a 66,000-square-foot military vehicle museum in Stow, Mass., with the $10 million it expects to make from the auction. “These things stormed the beaches at Normandy,” Collings says, “and had a profound impact on the world we live in today.”

At the time of his death from cancer in 2009, Littlefield was building his tank corps so quickly that it appeared he might be preparing to invade Northern California. Huge trucks hauled German Panzers, American-made Sherman tanks, and the odd nuclear missile launcher to his hilltop ranch at a rate of one a week, forcing him to scatter some battle wagons around the 450-acre estate like armor-plated lawn jockeys. Most are operational, but some haven’t moved in more than a decade.

These are big boy toys, so size matters. The heaviest and widest tank in the collection is the British Conqueror, a mighty beast at 72 tons. Adolf Hitler touched off World War II by invading Poland with an armada of lightweight Panzers — also well represented in the collection — but der Fuhrer always seemed to be overcompensating for something. As the war widened, he pushed the size of some Nazi tanks to 120 tons. “It was a really stupid idea,” Boller says, because the Allies soon were meeting every German supertank with lightning quick columns of rolling thunder.

Some 75 to 80 vehicles from Littlefield’s vast motor pool will make up the core collection at the new museum. The jewel of the camo-colored crown, which is headed for the museum after Littlefield spent seven years restoring it, is a Panzer V that is believed to have been in retreat from the Russian front when it attempted to cross a frozen river that turned out to be less frozen than the Germans thought. It sank to the bottom of the river, where it remained for 50 years, until it was meticulously restored, down to its cloth-coated wiring. Littlefield only lived long enough to see it fired up one time.

Says Boller, “It was his pride and joy.”

Another 114 pieces of military history will be for sale, although those are hardly the collection’s castoffs. When everything else is gone Saturday, five special pieces with minimum-bid reserves will provide the auction’s closing drama.

Littlefield graduated from Stanford and after a short stint working for Boller’s engineering group at Hewlett-Packard, he retired to his ranch — once owned by San Francisco Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph — to oversee the family fortune, made in construction and mining.

In 1983, Littlefield bought his first Stuart tank. “A week later he bought a Sherman,” Boller says. “The way he described it, owning tanks was like eating popcorn — you can’t have just one. His collection philosophy was ‘yes.’ What he cared about was having something rare. He would say, ‘Rare is when there’s only one in the world and I have it.’ He did love that.”

Colin Rixon, a tanker who spent 32 years in the British army, then enlisted for another 15 years in the American tank corps when he was 55, spent much of the past year restoring the collection’s Centurions and Conquerors in anticipation of the auction. (Fun fact: British tanks are often designed with a small cubby for brewing tea next to the commander’s seat.) He considers Littlefield a hero. “Without him doing this collection,” Rixon says, “these things would be Coke cans.”

One of the highlights of Littlefield’s annual Fourth of July party was the moment he climbed into a tank, gunned the diesel engine, and purposely crushed a car. The party ended at age 59, however, when Littlefield lost a decade-long battle with colon cancer.

Photo via WikiCommons

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MRAP, Maxx, And The Militarization Of Our Local Police Forces

MRAP, Maxx, And The Militarization Of Our Local Police Forces

What a Christmas little Bastrop had! It’s still a mystery how Santa Claus got it down the chimney, but Bastrop got a nifty present that most children could only dream about: A big honkin’, steel-clad, war toy called MRAP.

But Bastrop is not a 6-year-old child, and an MRAP is not a toy. Bastrop is a Texas county of some 75,000 people, and MRAP stands for “Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected.” It’s a heavily-armored military vehicle weighing about 15 tons — one of several versions of fighting machines that have become the hot, must-have playthings of police departments all across the country.

Are the good people of Bastrop facing some imminent terrorist threat that warrants military equipment? No, it’s a very pleasant, laid-back place. And while the county is named for a 19th century land developer and accused embezzler, it’s never been a haven for particularly dangerous criminals — indeed, the relatively few crimes in Bastrop today don’t rise above the level of routine police work.

Even the sheriff’s department, which is the proud owner of the MRAP tank, says it doesn’t have a specific use for the machine, but “It’s here if we need it.” Well, yeah … but that same feeble rational would apply if the county decided to get an atom bomb — you just never know when a big mushroom cloud might come in handy!

What we have here is the absurdly dangerous militarization of America’s police departments. Our sprawling Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon (which gave the MRAP to Bastrop) are haphazardly spreading war equipment, war techniques and a war mentality to what are supposed to be our communities’ peacekeepers and crime solvers.

Having the technology and mindset for military actions, local authorities will find excuses to substitute them for honest police work, turning common citizens into “enemies.” As a spokesman for the Bastrop sheriff’s department said of the MRAP, “With today’s society … there’s no way the thing won’t be used.” How comforting is that?

But now, let’s turn from the battlefield to the gridiron.

In the ever-escalating competition to be the No. 1 big-time college football program in the nation, Ohio State University bulked up last fall with a monster recruit named Maxx.

Actually, it’s not the coaching staff that signed up this brute, but the OSU campus police department. And the recruit’s full name is MaxxPro — not a player, but a 19-ton armored fighting vehicle built by a pentagon contractor to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs, and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical environments.” Wow, college games really have gotten rough!

But the campus PD, which received the MaxxPro as a gift from the Pentagon (ie, us taxpayers), says it’s not just playing games, but deploying Maxx for things like hostage scenarios, killers loose on campus, and extreme flooding of up to three feet. Well, have such things been a problem at OSU? Uh … no. Would a huge, slow, gas-guzzling vehicle designed for warfare be effective if any of the above were actually to occur? No response.

Oh, by the way, operating these machines requires specially trained personnel — is anyone in the department qualified? Again, no answer. Also, the vehicles are subject to frequent rollovers, and they lack the ability to go off-road or to maneuver in confined areas. That doesn’t sound ideal for a college campus. Not to worry, though, for the gendarmes said they were adjusting Maxx to fit their needs. How? Removing the top gun turret and repainting the vehicle.

OSU police finally admitted that Maxx would mostly be used to drive them around campus and provide a police “presence” on football game days. Great — police authorities now believe they need a show of military force to keep tailgaters in check.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: U.S. Army via Flickr