Another cool ship exploration video

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There are few Youtube videos that I will both focus my entire attention to, and watch to the end, and this is one of them. I've seen this guy's exploration videos before and some are pretty cool. This has to be the coolest. It's a covert mission to document the Minsk, a former Soviet aircraft carrier currently anchored in China. It had been converted at some point to a tourist attraction but there are a lot of areas that are still original, and very telling as to the state of Soviet naval technology. I'm surprised by the amount of western electronics one finds on it.

I have made a thread on a similar exploration before in the California Suisun Bay. The mothball fleet is no longer there but in its heyday it boasted probably about a hundred ships. The following is a link to the covert photo documentary. I'm glad the history was preserved. I find these things fascinating.
http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/mothball-fleet-ghost-ships/

If you haven't figured it out yet, I love cool old stuff, preferably unrestored.

 

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It had been converted at some point to a tourist attraction but there are a lot of areas that are still original, and very telling as to the state of Soviet naval technology. I'm surprised by the amount of western electronics one finds on it.

Having been in the television industry since the 70's, I heard much about Russian TV technology being American or imitations they tried building themselves.

 

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Having been in the television industry since the 70's, I heard much about Russian TV technology being American or imitations they tried building themselves.

That's the case with much of their technology, particularly with military hardware, e.g. "Da, Ivan want one too." The SU 27 was their response to the F15. When the M1 Abrams came out, they decided they needed to have one as well, which they called the T80, which was more or less a T72 with a turbine engine. They didn't make very many of them. The GAZ Chaika series of luxury cars were basically copies of 50's Chevy sedans. The Zil 114 was their version of a 60's Lincoln Continental except extra clunky.

The AK 74 came about during the Vietnamese war era. The Soviets took a look at the AR15/M16 and agreed with the concept that a round larger than that needed to kill a deer was overkill in an assault rifle, and that more rounds of an adequate caliber was better than fewer rounds of a more than adequate caliber, and by the way you get a lighter gun as well. For whatever reason they chose to develop a bastard 5.45 mm round that was ballistically similar to the 5.56 NATO - probably so that they could ensure they sold the ammunition to the countries they exported the guns to, like they did with the AKM.