🇨🇿 Conflicts and Militaries from around the world in 1:250 scale in paper, WW1 to Present era - My models Are Apolitical | @ArmadaRotta blog contributor
Czeski Cieszyn
Joined September 2021
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Early T-55s also kept the driver's hole for the machine gun and given the absence of T-54 features, I'd argue these two were T-55s. Libyan AM1s weren't factory AM1s but T-54/55s modified with Kladivo FCS.
Although Yemen too has a lot of AM1s that feature the driver's hole.
One of at least 18 Pantsir-S1 on MZKT-7930-415 chassis struck by a Ukrainian drone outside Mariupol, February 2026.
In April 2026, Militarnyi reported that Belarus supplied Russia with 18 MZKT chassis for installation of 72V6 Pantsir module.
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
Este ataque ucraniano es interesante porque alcanzan un Pantsir sobre una plataforma poco habitual...no está en el gráfico de los módulos
charly015.blogspot.com/2026/…
Speaking of MH-47s, anyone here knows whether the MH-47s in the Operation Neptune Spear looked exactly like these two from June 2011 in Kandahar or received any extra external modifications and had markings blacked out?
Let's talk about the 160th SOAR MH-47. The helicopter that looks like "two palm trees trying to hump a dumpster," according to a few Night Stalker pilots.
Jokes aside, the MH-47 Chinook is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s (160th SOAR) heavy-lift workhorse, built so Night Stalker crews can put special operations teams into denied terrain at night and bring them back out.
After the failed 1980 Iran rescue attempt, the Army created what became the 160th and began turning standard Chinooks into special operations aircraft. The first dedicated variant was the MH-47D in the mid-1980s, followed by the MH-47E and the current MH-47G.
Performance is why the regiment still relies on it. Two powerful turboshaft engines give the MH-47G the power to work at high altitude and in hot conditions that beat smaller helicopters. It can haul around 50 troops or a mix of operators and light vehicles, cruise near 120 knots, and push toward 170 knots in a dash. Most people assume it's slow because of its size, when in reality it's one of the fastest military helicopters in the world.
Unrefueled mission radius is nearly 400 miles, but mid-air refueling from MC-130s stretches that almost without limit. On the ground it can also act as a “fat cow,” landing with extra fuel bladders and topping off other aircraft at remote sites. That combination of lift and range has put the MH-47 on some of the 160th’s most important jobs.
In 1988, two Night Stalker Chinooks flew about 490 miles at night across Chad during Operation Mount Hope III and sling-loaded a captured Soviet Mi-25 Hind out of the desert. In October 2001, two MH-47Es lifted Green Beret teams ODA 555 and 595 (the Horse Soldiers) from Uzbekistan over the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan on an 11 hour flight that required three in-flight refuelings.
MH-47s later became the backbone of insertions and extractions in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the 2005 Operation Red Wings rescue attempt in which an MH-47 was shot down. And more recently, they went into Venezuela on the mission to capture Nicolas Maduro in 2026.
When a raid needs a large assault force delivered far, fast, and in the dark, the Night Stalkers still send the Chinook.
"Night Stalkers Don't Quit"
Note the armoured structure built around the shield of the howitzer, which can be lowered for crew comfort and space, as well as the metal structure for holding tarp cover. The vehicle also received sideskirts from T-55M/AM.
Here a picture from 2020 Tigray war with the tarp on.
Another picture showing the typical Eritrean self-propelled howitzer conversion using T-55 chassis modified to carry 122mm D-30A howitzer during the Badme war.
At least a dozen of these would be made during the war and continue to be used to this day.
1998-2000 Badme war
This one is a bit tricky and very rare. It's an airfield generator on ZiL-130E chassis, either APA-30 or APA-50. Russian sources sources can't seem to agree on this but both might be correct for a different generator, as there are two slightly different ones.
