EMP Won't Work On the Rooskies

They are using vacuum tubes at all their phased array radar installations.

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Reply to
Bret Cahill
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Its been common knowledge for many years - probably as far back as the 70s.

On MIG fighters; all the sensitive high tech electronics is buried deep in the airframe. To a significant extent, its surrounded and shielded by low tech tube circuitry nearer the skin of the aircraft.

It would be foolish to assume they didn't apply this knowledge to other mission critical stuff that the West would try to knock out with EMP.

Reply to
Benderthe.evilrobot

Phased array radars are all about digital signal processing. Even if they use tubes in their power amp finals, there will be zillions of semiconductors to fry.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

7 years ago they managed to redo a Core 2 Quad w/ vacuum tubes. It's about the same size as Ethiopia.
Reply to
Bret Cahill

Realistically: Many, if not most, semiconductors and ICs are made in China. China is probably selling everything it can to the Russians.

In the 70's they were still using vacuum tubes extensively, but I seriously doubt that is true today.

Reply to
default

So this is where the global warming is comming from.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I thought some of that was myth.

Other countries wouldn't sell them stuff, so they were stuck with old technology. They didn't have access to the latest scientific documents, so even when they did do semiconductors, they were behind. I remember the article in Byte in the late eighties or early nineties that was about USSR microprocessors, and they either stole designs from elsewhere, or had inferior products. There was one popular microprocessor that they produced, but they had to use multiple ICs for the same device that elsewhere would be only one IC.

They probably also lacked funds, so even if they could buy technology to be ultramodern when it came to ICs, they coudn't afford it. Sticking with tubes meant old equipment wsa still useful, and since they were already good at making tubes, they could continue to do well in that area. Note they still make some tubes in Russia.

That time someone flew their MIG to a US base and defected, that was some time ago, and yes, I remember commentary about the tubes. But just because someone said "it's because of EMP" at the time doesn't man it actually was. Later insight into the USSR at the time probably changes it to "they didn't have much beyond tubes" but the comment from decades ago still sticks.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

First of all, things have changed. Second of all some of the stuff we heard about Russia simply is not true.

With the breakup of the USSR and the advent of a newly turned over leaf in Putin, that country is doing fine. If I was willing to learn Russian I coul d consider moving there, but I am not going to be like the immigrants here who won't or can't learn the language. But they have jobs and a robust econ omy now. Back in the Soviet days all the wealth was sucked dry.

Putin was a crook, but now he simply has enough. Probably has more money th an Trump, only allows limited foreign (read Jew) involvement in business th ere and has been building the military because he clearly sees the US aggre ssion in the area. They have missiles that go twice as far and twice as fas t as anything the US has and MIGs have consistently outperformed US planes, vacuum tubes or not. Ad yes, a MIG will fly without a computer and I am pr etty sure the F-15 will not. You can just about bet your left nut the F-35 boat anchor won't. Those things were not made to win wars they were made to enrich military contractors. And don't call them defense contractors, this country has no defense, ever attack on this country has succeeded. The US defends other countries much better.

I would suspect they are using tubes in the front end and it is not even fr om fear of a US attack because you would have to be crazy to attack Russia. Sure the US would probably win in the end but at what cost ? The US milita ry has trouble even with countries the size of US states. Sure, might win b ut if you win a fight because you killed the other guy, how good is it real ly when you are in the hospital with broken arms and legs and bleeding and internal damage ?

A nuke is not the only source of an EMP. Lightning strikes do it, and I hav e worked on electronics where lightning simply hit near the house and had t o replace relays and relay drivers. Didn't take out the power supplies or a nything, just induced too much voltage across those coils. The power suppli es were protected by the filter caps.

But you'll never get the gain and low noise along with being able to take a beating voltage wise out of a transistor.

As far as Russian economy, they are not Germany. Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse that used to make the fuel injectors for almost half of the car s on the planet, and that mean four to eight of them or even more per car. But Russia has oil. Now that the Soviets are not constantly vacuum cleaning the money out they are rebuilding the military there. They are pulling som e sort of "sub killer" out that they agreed to mothball during the cold war .

The cold war did not kill the Soviet union, their treatment of the People d id. People there said "They pretend to pay us so we pretend to work". I hav e known quite a few immigrants. In Soviet/eastern European countries, Russi an product were very inferior, defects and so forth, and cheaply build. Whe n they ran east Germany they literally had cars with paper mache' front fen ders.

I heard specifically about Russia CRTs. They could not get it right and the y didn't last. Frought with shorts and leakage, like Zenith toward the end of the CRT era.

They were behind in some ways in the Soviet days, but now their teenagers c an bust into US government computers, think they're using vacuum tubes for that ? I have much doubt about that.

Things have really changed there. Unfortunately things have also really cha nged here as well. While their economy gets better ours gets worse, ad don' t believe the numbers because they keep changing the formula. Do you REALLY think there is only 5 % unemployment ? And remember "I can't eat an ipad". The price of gasoline has gone down but that is only to punish Russia for not letting us take over Ukraine. we did, but they pretty much couldn't sto p it. The whole east side of that country is against us. I think there will be more trouble there.

And the whole shakeup over there supported by your tax dollars is to keep R ussia from getting any richer by sale of oil and natural gas. What you see there would be aptly named "Pipeline wars". It is all a money game and alwa ys has been. Even the founders of this country were avoiding paying tax to England. Not that they really owed. When you make your money because of int ellectual property laws you owe. When you benefit from the infrastructure a nd the market you owe. But England wasn't doing shit for the territories so they got nothing, well after a certain date that is. So even then it was a bout money. No sense in pussyfooting around that fact now.

Reply to
jurb6006

Their spies kept them well supplied - not just military stuff.

They are/were a bit behind - but the MIGs have all the high tech computing stuff buried deep in the airframe.

They've been testing nukes nearly as long as the US - hard to imagine they wouldn't know what EMP is.

Reply to
Benderthe.evilrobot

my understanding was valves re more resistant to the effects of EMP and not immune to the effects

Reply to
David Eather

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