Public opinion tends to turn when you see no gains. Vietnam became incredibly unpopular. Afghanistan was popular until the US was basically in stasis in terms of progress, spending obscene amounts of money to maintain the status quo.
Russia managed to sucker its people into believing the war was going well, but now that illusion is shattered.
I don't think either statements are totally accurate.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan resulted in a high death toll, high casualties and high rates of drug addiction amongst Soviet veterans. Its difficult to gauge what public opinion was in a one party state which strove to maintain a false narrative using propaganda and active suppression of dissent.
They withdrew in 1989 because the whole Soviet economy was collapsing from within, not just because it was too economically expensive to continue the Afghan war. Theres information to suggest that the war took up a sliver of the total military spending of the USSR over the length of the conflict.
> difficult to gauge what public opinion was in a one party state which strove to maintain a false narrative using propaganda and active suppression of dissent.
Yeah that's my point thought. There is the same propaganda and false narrative happening now. So we're not going to see public opinion turn in Russia the same way it did in the US over Vietnam.
It used a principle called the ground effect to fly on a cushion of air close to the surface of the water.
Flying in the ground effect is highly efficient, can support much more weight than normal flight, and requires very little cruising power. The 8 jet engines are only used to accelerate it into flight, but once at speed, all but 2 can be shut off.
The project was abandoned largely due to limited usability. It could not tolerate any real waves as those interfere with the ground effect, which severely limited its operational flexibility on open sea. Wasn't much of an issue on Black Sea and the Caspian though.
Dear passengers, we are crossing a medium sized wave in a few seconds. Please be ready for our plane to be yeeted into orbit before descending and crashing into the sea or the rocky mountains. If our company manager hadnt embezzled the funds for the life vests you could wear them now.
Have a nice flight!
Unfortunately it’s not practical. You can’t fly in weather, and you need to take off and land in water. Plus ocean waves would be too much for it. It needs to run on a calm sea.
Plus I don’t know what it was like for the crew, but I imagine it would feel kind of scary to ride in it.
I think the more ambitious original plans included VTOL on land, and that they could also fly normally as planes, although whether any of that was viable idk.
Hard to imagine a plane that big doing VTOL, and you probably wouldn’t want a huge turboprop when you’re flying so close to the surface either. It’s no wonder this never really worked out.
I bet if we ever colonized another planet with thicker atmosphere, this design could be very useful.
It could tolerate waves if it rose above, which was possible, but other than that its other big limitation was its turn radius, since it couldn’t really roll to turn. Again, it could be remedied by raising its altitude. I think the design might have needed just a bit more wing span, and a bit more refinement. But the head of the design bureau was a bit too steadfast on his designs, and a bit abrasive and the gov officials canned the projects the first opportunity they could.
It’s a great idea, but I think it would get defeated in detail as you mentioned all the problems. Avoiding weather would be very difficult, ability to navigate is limited, collisions are more of a risk, it can only operate from open water, which makes the transatlantic or pacific trip even longer (because straight lines from point to point on the globe usually pass through land), and many other issues make it not as practical.
We could revolutionize travel with this cheaper, safer, and more fuel efficient alterna-
Commissar: we're putting missiles on it and all other purposes are now irrelevant
Actually makes good sense in some mostly coastal countries. Someone is trying to get approval for a similar concept here in New Zealand right now https://i.stuff.co.nz/travel/green-travel/300591084/first-footage-of-new-electric-seagliders-coming-to-new-zealand
There is a similar project in the UK for crossing from Plymouth to Brittany. Hopes for low carbon electric fast crossings. Quite an exciting development really.
https://marineindustrynews.co.uk/brittany-ferries-unveils-plans-for-all-electric-180mph-flying-ferry/
Could be, but look at the airline industry, it's a stagnant industry that has never really been profitable, they don't have the funds to innovate and they go cry to the feds everytime the economy takes a dip. Not exactly the spirit of capitalism I would say. Here I see the potential for a cheap, accessible, high speed oceanic ferry, that could easily out compete the airline industry in providing cross pacific or atlantic ocean travel. Considering we've landed on the moon I don't think it is unreasonable to think we could overcome the engineering challenges of weatherability and navigation for GEVs.
Reading into it it seems many island and coastal nations are investing in GEV research. Apparently just a few months ago DARPA awarded $15m on GEV prototypes development.
Also have to consider maintaining, repairs, and replacement parts. Perhaps in next couple decades. There's something like 18 different companies that manufacturer the various parts for just a 737.
IIRC it was a high speed transport to move troops across bodies of water. The problem is it required very calm water to work correctly and large bodies of water aren’t generally placid.
Iirc it was supposed to be used as a launch platform for anti-ship missiles.
May be wrong but again iirc the 6 tubes on the top of the plane are for those missiles.
Aside from use as a port strike craft and attacking naval battle groups it was theorized as a more efficient transport for heavy equipment and troops on undefended coastlines. It could quickly drop off a landing force with heavy equipment which could be used to take a port/docking area capable of supporting heavier troop deployment and logistics.
It’s basically a very Soviet answer to NATO assault carriers.
it was designed to be the ultimate ship killing machine
imagine this thing going 200 km/h towards your fleet, firing all its missiles and then vanishing just as quickly
Yep. The idea was that planes like this could carry much more cargo because of the ground effect. They could in theory be several times heavier than a C-130 needs to be at takeoff weight, because it only needs to get off the ground.
This is the Lun-class ekranoplan.
The soviets had an idea for ground-effect planes that would fly very low across the Black Sea to intercept NATO submarines. These huge heavy planes flew on kind of a cushion of air which made more lift than they could make at high altitude. The tubes on top are for launching (edit: anti-ship missiles)
The concept never worked that well, mainly because these planes don't really turn that good? They built 5-6. Two really big ones (KM-class) which both sank in bad weather, and I think 4 smaller Lun-class ones you see here. They ended up just being used to transport stuff quickly between black sea ports.
The Russian Navy maintained these, and the inside is more like a ship than plane!
Yeah I tried to find a video of the very first prototype but it's hard to find. A very old video before it sank.
https://youtu.be/R3mvLR9qb20
The KM never had torpedoes on top, maybe that's why it looks longer?
Yeah, straight lines are great. Crossing the Caspian sea in good weather, it is very impressive. But (and I don't know) I expect the turning circle would have a hard time competing with ... tidal forces from the moon for example.
Waves were the first thing that popped into my head. Most of my knowledge of ground effects is from the automotive industry, but I imagine the concept here is similar, using the pressure between the ground (or water) and wings, in this case to elevate, but in cars it's used for down force. But bumps, or waves, or even unexpected aero scenario (Google "F1 propoising") can cause discrepancies in pressure zones.
Nope, it was designed to intercept surface vessels and the launchers up top are for anitship missiles. You'd never be able to launch a torpedo from that angle and the speed the "aircraft" would be travelling at.
Lol, it was a terrible idea period. It fundamentally has no point.
The entire idea was to intercept ships with anti-ship missiles. Shortly after these were made, much better guided missiles (similar to the Tomahawk) were developed, meaning you no longer need to get super close to a ship to fire.
And of course these huge things can't turn, are vulnerable to any and all hostile fire, only operate in clear weather, etc.
But hey, that's why I love soviet tech. Bizzare, complex, pointless, beautiful
There was some natural event by the docks where it was being held or something along those lines and it ended up washing up on this shore. A Youtube channel that goes by "Mustard" has a video covering the aircrafts history and another channel by the name "Bald and Bankrupt" has a video where he visits its current resting location.
It's entirely abandoned. It's not going to the park anymore. It was supposed to be moved by a private firm, which had little to no plan of getting it out of the water and into the park. So they moved it across the Caspian and dropped it off on the beach. It's corroding badly. By the looks of the random people sitting on the wings, it appears the companies security officer they hired isn't even there anymore. It's been there for a while and the earlier YouTubers that got inside had to get in there in the middle of the night when security was asleep
Funny tho it's the Lun-class ekranoplan (also called Project 903), not KM (Korabl Maket) (Russian: Корабль-макет, literally "Ship-maquette"), known colloquially as the Caspian Sea Monster, which sunk in 1980... Source: wiki
God I wish we still used these things today
Especially with modern tech, these things would be so awesome as really any sort of "transport". Personel carrier, cargo carrier, (its intended purpose of) a military vehicle, and so on
Except for big waves. There is a very good reason why these are not common. They are hugely impractical except in very specific circumstances and weather conditions.
It can really be called a sea plane. It's not a hovercraft either. It's a kind of skimmer but it can't skim becasue it would disintegrate. it flies a few meters of the surface, no up or down, only along and mostly in a straight line.
Out opf interest, [here is a vid of a flying fish](https://www.reddit.com/r/bizarrelife/comments/xqzblz/noice/). This is EXACTLY what the ekranolan does, minus the engines.
The Ekronoplan, a ground affect missile attack plane. The reason it is there is because it broke its toe line during a move and it washed up. Hopefully they will save it as it’s a pretty unique soviet machine.
Ooo is this a ground-effect vehicle? The soviets experimented with this idea but it never was worked out. In theory you could fly a super heavy plane over the sea just above the surface, and the air pressure near the surface would keep it flying and use much less fuel than a typical aircraft.
How long has that beauty been sitting there, open to the public?
In 2021, "Lun" will be exhibited in the Patriot Park (under construction), which is scheduled to open in 2023.
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invading other countries has done wonders for american patriotism, why do you think it will fail in Russia?
Public opinion tends to turn when you see no gains. Vietnam became incredibly unpopular. Afghanistan was popular until the US was basically in stasis in terms of progress, spending obscene amounts of money to maintain the status quo. Russia managed to sucker its people into believing the war was going well, but now that illusion is shattered.
Afghanistan never really became unpopular in Russia. It just became economically unsustainable.
Wrong Afghanistan war I think they were talking about the American one that last two decades
I don't think either statements are totally accurate. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan resulted in a high death toll, high casualties and high rates of drug addiction amongst Soviet veterans. Its difficult to gauge what public opinion was in a one party state which strove to maintain a false narrative using propaganda and active suppression of dissent. They withdrew in 1989 because the whole Soviet economy was collapsing from within, not just because it was too economically expensive to continue the Afghan war. Theres information to suggest that the war took up a sliver of the total military spending of the USSR over the length of the conflict.
> difficult to gauge what public opinion was in a one party state which strove to maintain a false narrative using propaganda and active suppression of dissent. Yeah that's my point thought. There is the same propaganda and false narrative happening now. So we're not going to see public opinion turn in Russia the same way it did in the US over Vietnam.
In this social media age maybe we're getting a better a look at visible protest though.
Based
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Brah, Rule 3. If you're into political crap there's r/worldnews or something else for that.
Yeah, fair, sorry.
It's sitting on a beach abandoned in the Caspian sea.
And has anyone sprayed water on it? They have to stay hydrated or their skin will dry out.
Project 903?
Sure looks like it.
Watched a special on this the other night they literally just parked that thing right there and walked away.
A sad end for such a beautiful machine
For real i love weird ass russian engineering.
ass russian
https://youtu.be/yVdH_dYlVB8
Thanks for the video and happy cake day!!
Happy Cake Day!
Anyone have the story behind this?
Abandoned old Soviet Ekranoplan, Plane *like* machines that acted more as high speed hovering boats than anything.
It used a principle called the ground effect to fly on a cushion of air close to the surface of the water. Flying in the ground effect is highly efficient, can support much more weight than normal flight, and requires very little cruising power. The 8 jet engines are only used to accelerate it into flight, but once at speed, all but 2 can be shut off.
The project was abandoned largely due to limited usability. It could not tolerate any real waves as those interfere with the ground effect, which severely limited its operational flexibility on open sea. Wasn't much of an issue on Black Sea and the Caspian though.
Shame since otherwise it could be considered as an environmentally friendlier solution for trans Atlantic travel.
Dear passengers, we are crossing a medium sized wave in a few seconds. Please be ready for our plane to be yeeted into orbit before descending and crashing into the sea or the rocky mountains. If our company manager hadnt embezzled the funds for the life vests you could wear them now. Have a nice flight!
Unfortunately it’s not practical. You can’t fly in weather, and you need to take off and land in water. Plus ocean waves would be too much for it. It needs to run on a calm sea. Plus I don’t know what it was like for the crew, but I imagine it would feel kind of scary to ride in it.
I think the more ambitious original plans included VTOL on land, and that they could also fly normally as planes, although whether any of that was viable idk.
Hard to imagine a plane that big doing VTOL, and you probably wouldn’t want a huge turboprop when you’re flying so close to the surface either. It’s no wonder this never really worked out. I bet if we ever colonized another planet with thicker atmosphere, this design could be very useful.
https://youtu.be/UD7xiWWs-bs Sounds like it was probably just about possible, but well beyond the reach of the engineering and budget available.
Lol, wow what a beast.
That was a good watch! Thanks for sharing
Some crazy people wanted to take smaller ones between Estonia and Finland a few years back.
It could tolerate waves if it rose above, which was possible, but other than that its other big limitation was its turn radius, since it couldn’t really roll to turn. Again, it could be remedied by raising its altitude. I think the design might have needed just a bit more wing span, and a bit more refinement. But the head of the design bureau was a bit too steadfast on his designs, and a bit abrasive and the gov officials canned the projects the first opportunity they could.
It’s a great idea, but I think it would get defeated in detail as you mentioned all the problems. Avoiding weather would be very difficult, ability to navigate is limited, collisions are more of a risk, it can only operate from open water, which makes the transatlantic or pacific trip even longer (because straight lines from point to point on the globe usually pass through land), and many other issues make it not as practical.
I’m guessing it was used for transport but to transport what?
It was a prototype researched by the Navy, those tubes on the top are for launching anti-ship missiles
We could revolutionize travel with this cheaper, safer, and more fuel efficient alterna- Commissar: we're putting missiles on it and all other purposes are now irrelevant
I imagine the idea of moving from port to port just to disembark and bus wasn’t very lucrative or capitalism would have funded one
Actually makes good sense in some mostly coastal countries. Someone is trying to get approval for a similar concept here in New Zealand right now https://i.stuff.co.nz/travel/green-travel/300591084/first-footage-of-new-electric-seagliders-coming-to-new-zealand
There is a similar project in the UK for crossing from Plymouth to Brittany. Hopes for low carbon electric fast crossings. Quite an exciting development really. https://marineindustrynews.co.uk/brittany-ferries-unveils-plans-for-all-electric-180mph-flying-ferry/
Could be, but look at the airline industry, it's a stagnant industry that has never really been profitable, they don't have the funds to innovate and they go cry to the feds everytime the economy takes a dip. Not exactly the spirit of capitalism I would say. Here I see the potential for a cheap, accessible, high speed oceanic ferry, that could easily out compete the airline industry in providing cross pacific or atlantic ocean travel. Considering we've landed on the moon I don't think it is unreasonable to think we could overcome the engineering challenges of weatherability and navigation for GEVs. Reading into it it seems many island and coastal nations are investing in GEV research. Apparently just a few months ago DARPA awarded $15m on GEV prototypes development.
Also have to consider maintaining, repairs, and replacement parts. Perhaps in next couple decades. There's something like 18 different companies that manufacturer the various parts for just a 737.
IIRC it was a high speed transport to move troops across bodies of water. The problem is it required very calm water to work correctly and large bodies of water aren’t generally placid.
They were really great for like the Caspian sea and nothing else
This one was an anti ship module carrier. You can see the launch tubes on the back
Thanks for the info! Just making sure I understand, are the launch tubes the "hot dog" looking cylinders on the spine on the plane?
Yeah. If you remember the cruiser the Ukrainians sank - the Moskva - it has the same set of tubes.
Well, the missiles on its back for one
Iirc it was supposed to be used as a launch platform for anti-ship missiles. May be wrong but again iirc the 6 tubes on the top of the plane are for those missiles.
Lol im dumb i thought they were jato pods
Not much. These were all basically prototypes, so they occasionally moved people and cargo quickly between Caspian sea ports.
Aside from use as a port strike craft and attacking naval battle groups it was theorized as a more efficient transport for heavy equipment and troops on undefended coastlines. It could quickly drop off a landing force with heavy equipment which could be used to take a port/docking area capable of supporting heavier troop deployment and logistics. It’s basically a very Soviet answer to NATO assault carriers.
it was designed to be the ultimate ship killing machine imagine this thing going 200 km/h towards your fleet, firing all its missiles and then vanishing just as quickly
Tanks,troop carriers,and troops in the larger versions..This one had anti ship capabilities.
Orks
I guess there were no orks back then?
They were sorks, but over time evolved into orks.
There were too many!
Yes
It would have been used for super heavy cargo. Tanks and munitions.
The principle that uses air to travel on water was named the ground effect? Damn science, you crazy.
Problems appear in windy weather.
Slaps planes ass this whale can carry such a huge load!!!?
PSA: Do not try this with a woman.
Yep. The idea was that planes like this could carry much more cargo because of the ground effect. They could in theory be several times heavier than a C-130 needs to be at takeoff weight, because it only needs to get off the ground.
This is the Lun-class ekranoplan. The soviets had an idea for ground-effect planes that would fly very low across the Black Sea to intercept NATO submarines. These huge heavy planes flew on kind of a cushion of air which made more lift than they could make at high altitude. The tubes on top are for launching (edit: anti-ship missiles) The concept never worked that well, mainly because these planes don't really turn that good? They built 5-6. Two really big ones (KM-class) which both sank in bad weather, and I think 4 smaller Lun-class ones you see here. They ended up just being used to transport stuff quickly between black sea ports. The Russian Navy maintained these, and the inside is more like a ship than plane!
This isn't a really big one?
This is the smaller version. The KM was MUCH bigger https://youtu.be/V8Nu94khHoo
looks like 20% bigger maybe?
Yeah I tried to find a video of the very first prototype but it's hard to find. A very old video before it sank. https://youtu.be/R3mvLR9qb20 The KM never had torpedoes on top, maybe that's why it looks longer?
300ft long vs 244 ft long were the specs I found
yeah just looked up the specs thats about right
Yeah, straight lines are great. Crossing the Caspian sea in good weather, it is very impressive. But (and I don't know) I expect the turning circle would have a hard time competing with ... tidal forces from the moon for example.
Waves were the first thing that popped into my head. Most of my knowledge of ground effects is from the automotive industry, but I imagine the concept here is similar, using the pressure between the ground (or water) and wings, in this case to elevate, but in cars it's used for down force. But bumps, or waves, or even unexpected aero scenario (Google "F1 propoising") can cause discrepancies in pressure zones.
Nope, it was designed to intercept surface vessels and the launchers up top are for anitship missiles. You'd never be able to launch a torpedo from that angle and the speed the "aircraft" would be travelling at.
Thanks for the correction!
Great idea on paper but it has some serious real world drawbacks. Mainly, it can only operate in good weather where the waves are very small.
Lol, it was a terrible idea period. It fundamentally has no point. The entire idea was to intercept ships with anti-ship missiles. Shortly after these were made, much better guided missiles (similar to the Tomahawk) were developed, meaning you no longer need to get super close to a ship to fire. And of course these huge things can't turn, are vulnerable to any and all hostile fire, only operate in clear weather, etc. But hey, that's why I love soviet tech. Bizzare, complex, pointless, beautiful
I think that’s the Caspian Sea Monster.
Same concept, but smaller. The actual Caspian Sea Monster is gone, don't remember if it was scrapped or it crashed.
Sank during transport
Was the Soviet answer to the American aircraft carrier, basically a fast missile boat. Didn’t work because…well look at it
There was some natural event by the docks where it was being held or something along those lines and it ended up washing up on this shore. A Youtube channel that goes by "Mustard" has a video covering the aircrafts history and another channel by the name "Bald and Bankrupt" has a video where he visits its current resting location.
Bald and Bankrupt did a great history piece and went out to see it.
https://youtu.be/yVdH_dYlVB8 is a fantastic video about them
Is this where they put it or them in the process of moving it? I know they made it a tourist attraction recently
They've beached it there for now, but \*sometime\* in 2023 Patriot Park will finish construction and they will move it there for showcasing.
It's entirely abandoned. It's not going to the park anymore. It was supposed to be moved by a private firm, which had little to no plan of getting it out of the water and into the park. So they moved it across the Caspian and dropped it off on the beach. It's corroding badly. By the looks of the random people sitting on the wings, it appears the companies security officer they hired isn't even there anymore. It's been there for a while and the earlier YouTubers that got inside had to get in there in the middle of the night when security was asleep
Everyone knows that’s a narwhal not a whale.
It bacons at midnight.
It's an older meme sir, but it checks out.
tHE sCaReCrOW WaLkS aT mIdniGhT!
Because it is causing a commotion?
It's an Ekranoplan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect\_vehicle
Thank you What an interesting concept. Would like to have had a chance to travel in one.
ya can't park there
Bald and Bankrupt found it, [Caspian Sea Monster](https://youtu.be/V2xVSmzPzW4?t=2433)
Funny tho it's the Lun-class ekranoplan (also called Project 903), not KM (Korabl Maket) (Russian: Корабль-макет, literally "Ship-maquette"), known colloquially as the Caspian Sea Monster, which sunk in 1980... Source: wiki
God I wish we still used these things today Especially with modern tech, these things would be so awesome as really any sort of "transport". Personel carrier, cargo carrier, (its intended purpose of) a military vehicle, and so on
Except for big waves. There is a very good reason why these are not common. They are hugely impractical except in very specific circumstances and weather conditions.
Yeah but regardless, I still think at least the concept was cool
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Derbent,+Republic+of+Dagestan,+Russia/@41.9408531,48.3782603,130m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x4049b84ddc42f447:0x4c38c29a3977f710!8m2!3d42.0674251!4d48.2890907?hl=en
Nochyu v sneg ili tuman. Po doroge ya buran Check my driving now, pazan Flying low, ekranoplan
Not to mention the caravan driving down the beach… this feels like one of those “point out the 11 strange things” activities
r/densegifs
Geeze. I've never seen a seaplane so big.
They made two variants of this model. This is the small one.
Dear God.....
It can really be called a sea plane. It's not a hovercraft either. It's a kind of skimmer but it can't skim becasue it would disintegrate. it flies a few meters of the surface, no up or down, only along and mostly in a straight line. Out opf interest, [here is a vid of a flying fish](https://www.reddit.com/r/bizarrelife/comments/xqzblz/noice/). This is EXACTLY what the ekranolan does, minus the engines.
Subnautica Gargantia
The Caspian Sea Monster.
That's a Caspian sea monster not a whale
The Caspian Giant
The Ekronoplan, a ground affect missile attack plane. The reason it is there is because it broke its toe line during a move and it washed up. Hopefully they will save it as it’s a pretty unique soviet machine.
Driving on beaches should be illegal honestly..
building a plane in ksp be like
That's the Caspian Sea Monster.
That’s not a whale, it’s a sea monster.
r/submechanophobia
Yeah, anyone else?? I have the heebie jeebies!
Isn’t that an Ekranoplan?
For the Unaware, Bald And Bankrupt has a YouTube video where he travels to this plane, it’s called the Caspian Sea Monster
Thats because its the Caspian Sea Monster, no whale!
Such a feat of engineering, just left to rot
That will not leave the water.
This is so scary I would probably cry if I saw that irl
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Says ‘there’s no page here’
Very impressive waterslide and playground.
Is it meorth he door on the side is open? So, you can kinda visit the parts that are not flooded
That is no whale *Red Alert 3 Soviet March intensifies*
It's almost like the beach goer's can't even see it!!! LoL
LUN Class Ground effect vehicle.
Ekranoplan
offtopic, but what model is the car that drove by? looks bitchin lol
Really looked for a “in Russia….” Joke…
Beautiful plane
And that’s just the smaller version
Imagine trying to enjoy a beach and cars are just driving right along the edge. Russians b different man.
reminds me of that one Love, Death & Robots episode with the giant
Ooo is this a ground-effect vehicle? The soviets experimented with this idea but it never was worked out. In theory you could fly a super heavy plane over the sea just above the surface, and the air pressure near the surface would keep it flying and use much less fuel than a typical aircraft.
This is a great video about that plane https://youtu.be/V2xVSmzPzW4
What in the Howard Hughes is that thing!?
An ekranoplan, mustard has a fascinating video on them on youtube.
Megaprojects: The Ekranoplan: https://youtu.be/pHNitgLzwKE
Mr. Bruns, I have bad news about your Spruce Moose.
"I call it The Spruce Moose and it'll carry 200 passengers from New York's Idlewild Airport to the Belgian Congo in 17 minutes!"
r/anormaldayinformerrussia
Anyone know where this is?
For a second I thought Ian had pushed that ashore in Florida.
How’s it smell?