Tag Archives: Tanks

But Can I Keep My Torpedo?

July 2, 2015 By in Helplessness, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

As you may know, German authorities are really touchy when it comes to gun control. Sort of. But it doesn’t just stop there. They totally freak out and call the Bundeswehr if they find out that you have a tank in your cellar. Skeleton in the closet? OK. But a tank in the cellar? No way.

Like take a chill pill already, officer. It wasn’t even loaded.

Tank

Police searched a villa in a wealthy suburb of Kiel on Wednesday and found a Second World War tank, a torpedo and other weaponry in the cellar. On Thursday they were still working on removing the tank.

“He was chugging around in that thing during the snow catastrophe in 1978.”

Just Out Of Cold War Storage

April 12, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Demothball: to remove (naval or military equipment) from storage or reserve, usually for active duty; reactivate.

Leopard 2

Germany plans to bring 100 mothballed tanks back into service in what is widely seen as a response to rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine.

Die im Zuge der Neuausrichtung der Bundeswehr festgelegte Obergrenze von 225 Kampfpanzern Leopard 2 soll auf 320 erhöht werden.

Tanks For Nothing, Vlad

January 4, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, History, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The end of the Cold War didn’t necessarily mean the end of war between big countries, and Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine undermines the notion that a quiet Europe is forever free from war. And modern warfare means tanks. Germany recently bolstered their current arsenal of tanks by buying and upgrading 20 Leopard 2A7 tanks acquired from the Netherlands, though originally from Canada.

Tanks

Upgrading old tanks is fairly routine and accounts for the dangers of the present. Developing a new advanced tank, instead, is a bet on the future. In August, German company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), makers of the current versions of the Leopard tank, merged with French defense company Nexter. Speaking to the merger, KMW CEO mentioned the idea of a Leopard 3 tank, noting that France has a strategic perspective that stretches decades into the future. In October, when the budget committee of Germany’s parliament put together their draft of a 2015 spending bill, the proposal to develop a new tank was quietly noted, and then debated in an independent German armed forces journal.

German Tanks Finally Doing Something Useful

June 13, 2014 By in Helplessness, Higher Education, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

They have rolled in to occupy the city of Düsseldorf.

Tanks

I mean they have rolled in to occupy themselves with Umweltschäden (ecological damage) in the city of Düsseldorf.

This damage was caused by a big honking storm that slammed Germany the other day. And this means war or something.

„Hier sieht‘s aus, wie nach dem Krieg.“

A Sound Panzer?

May 14, 2014 By in Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

What will they tank of next?

The Sound Tank (or “Sound Panzer,” as Nowak refers to it in the video) is a reconfigured mini-dump truck that Nowak was able to transform into a colossal mobile soundsystem. Nowak designed the bass-bumping vehicle’s giant speaker wall with a hydraulic system, enabling him to raise it upright and point the 13 loudspeakers and three 18-inch subwoofers at any target.

Someone fired a gun next to Nowak’s ear as a young child, and as a result the artist lost the ability to hear high frequencies with his right ear. “That experience brought home to me the extent to which sound can shape reality,” Nowak muses in the video.

PS: For those interested in old school NSA stuff, there are some good shots of what is left of the old Teufelsberg facility in the video, too.

Berlin Starts Talking Tough To Russia After All

April 15, 2014 By in Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Sort of. Jeepers creepers already! This ought to stop old Vlad Putin dead in his tank tracks.

Tanks

Germany should remove a pair of World War Two-era Soviet tanks standing on pedestals next to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in protest at Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine, Germany’s best-selling newspaper Bild said on Tuesday.

Launching a petition to get rid of the two green T-34 tanks that have stood in front of the Soviet war memorial since it was built in 1945, Bild and Berlin tabloid B.Z. urged readers to send letters of protest to parliament against the war symbols.

Wir wollen keine Russen-Panzer am Brandenburger Tor!

Tanks For The Memories

April 4, 2013 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Or if you combat ’em, join ’em?

Tanks

The U.S. Army’s 69-year history of basing main battle tanks on German soil quietly ended last month when 22 Abrams tanks, a main feature of armored combat units throughout the Cold War, embarked for the U.S.

“There is no [U.S.] tank on German soil.”