Be nice...

or I'll attack you with my bulava! To be fair given it's only about 10cm long, I couldn't do you much damage, but those pointy ends are pretty sharp! A bit of history - the bulava was a weapon used in old Russia, Rus, and entered the arsenal in around the 11th century, borrowed from neighbours to the south east (Central Asia I think). Booky, I suspect you will have seen these before in Ukraine, where they are a standard tourist souvenir.

There is a modern day ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) named after it, and you really don't want to be hit with one of them, particularly if it happens to be carrying a nuclear warhead! Bulava is Russia's most expensive piece of weapons technology, and is launched from submarines. Bulava was first tested in 2004, and was due to go into full production in 2007, but due to test launch failures blamed on poor component manufacture and the poor state of the Russian defence industry that was delayed until earlier this year, after completion of a number of successful tests. It's always interesting what random info you find out when doing a little research. These missiles will normally be carried by Borei class submarines, which are the Russian Navy's most modern class of submarine, but one of the older Typhoon class was converted and used in a lot of the tests.

That is to say that it is, in NATO speak, a Typhoon class submarine. In Russian it's an Akula, or Shark class submarine, but NATO was already using that name for another class of submarine named after a fish (no, not a shark!). Wikipedia gives you a handy list of NATO reporting names for Russian and Soviet submarines, most of which are just letter designations, but some are hilarious, I particularly liked Improved Kilo, Whiskey Long Bin and Yankee Sidecar! And in amongst those are the ones where they just use the Russian, not sure if the members of staff on duty when those came out had no imagination or just thought they'd keep it simple! Blip does give you laughs you never expected!

Tomorrow's blip will probably end up a back blip as I'm off across the border for the night, though not very far. I'm involved with an organisation called Partnership UK, see here to find out more, and the council is meeting in Newcastle tomorrow night and Saturday morning. I'm off early to try and do some sightseeing, (or maybe better sightphotographing?) in town, so will probably have difficulty choosing (I hope, if not I'll be very disappointed with my poor quality shots) and may well not have internet access tomorrow night, so will catch up late on Saturday.

Have a lovely weekend folks!

PS Thanks for the good wishes, my head is indeed better today!

PPS yes, it was a rainy grotty evening, hence a random object blip, but who knew where it would go!