Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched. The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand.

Yarynich is talking about Russia's doomsday machine. That's right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called "the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination." Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

The silence can be attributed partly to fears that the US would figure out how to disable the system. But the principal reason is more complicated and surprising. According to both Yarynich and Zheleznyakov, Perimeter was never meant as a traditional doomsday machine. The Soviets had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves.

Soviet War paintings

A fascinating collection showing how horrific World War II was for the Soviet Union.

Aerodynamic air-cushion vehicle "paleness" project 903 * Nov. 30th, 2009 at 4:42 PM Here in me reached hands [ekranoplana].[Ya] I will break story about it on 3 or 4 parts: 1- aerodynamic air-cushion vehicle outside (1 or 2 parts) 2- aerodynamic air-cushion vehicle from within, the 3- dock of aerodynamic air-cushion vehicle. In 1987. to the water descended "the paleness" the first ship of a series of the combat rocket-carrying aerodynamic air-cushion vehicles with a weight of 400 T. Chief designer he was [V].[Kirillovykh]. Ship was armed by three pairs of the cruise missiles of 3[M]80 or 80[M] "mosquito" (NATO designation SS- N -22 Of sunburn). The second "paleness" also was embedded as rocket carrier, but the begun conversion introduced its correctives, and it they planned to finish building as rescue. [LTKH]: Modification is paleness the span of wing, m 44.00 length, m 73.80 height, m 19.20 wing area, [m]2 550.00 mass, the kgf of empty aircraft 243000 maximum takeoff 380000 ty

Sito russo di foto di uno strano progetto di veicolo anfibio ad effetto suolo detto "ekranoplan" una via di mezzo tra un Hovercraft ed un aeroplano. Sfrutta l'effetto suolo generato dal moto dell'aria sotto le ali ...

massive!