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- Dec 20, 2024
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Gladly so 
Speaking of "technology transfer" in the US => USSR direction - used to be a Russian documentary series 15ish or so years ago - the title translated to "Strike Force" - about the history of their weapons systems. Once the patriotic garbage was removed (it wasn't worse than most of our equivalents here), and once the grains of salt were applied, there were very, very interesting tidbits of info. Interviews with the main engineers, how the idea came for this or that, etc.
One of these was about the Atoll missile, which was a copy of a Sidewinder. The source Sidewinder was acquired by the Soviets after it lodged itself in a Chinese Mig during some Taiwan straight crisis, and failed to explode.
So there was some ex-Soviet engineer in one of the episodes explaining how they got the missile, and cared mostly about reverse-engineering the electronics (however many electronics there were). They were fine with the rocket part, there was nothing on that front that they couldn't do, but the electronics were a problem.
Those were fully encased in some resin/epoxy compound, for protection agains shocks, as well as against reverse engineering. The thing was fully encapsulated in a solid, non-serviceable block.
It couldn't just be chemically dissolved, as the chemicals would have damaged the encapsulated very fine vacuum tubes and other stuff along the way.
So the Soviets ended up sequestering every single amber-carving artisan that they could find - jewlers from generation to generation, along with their tools, and put them to work. Working on amber requires very specific skills, as it's very sensitive to the wrong pressure or angle of attack - you can ruin it all in one movement. And there's a tradition in the Baltics on working on that.
These guys spent months chipping away the resin, eventually cleaning it all without breaking a thing. Using tools and skillsets hundreds of years old.
Speaking of "technology transfer" in the US => USSR direction - used to be a Russian documentary series 15ish or so years ago - the title translated to "Strike Force" - about the history of their weapons systems. Once the patriotic garbage was removed (it wasn't worse than most of our equivalents here), and once the grains of salt were applied, there were very, very interesting tidbits of info. Interviews with the main engineers, how the idea came for this or that, etc.
One of these was about the Atoll missile, which was a copy of a Sidewinder. The source Sidewinder was acquired by the Soviets after it lodged itself in a Chinese Mig during some Taiwan straight crisis, and failed to explode.
So there was some ex-Soviet engineer in one of the episodes explaining how they got the missile, and cared mostly about reverse-engineering the electronics (however many electronics there were). They were fine with the rocket part, there was nothing on that front that they couldn't do, but the electronics were a problem.
Those were fully encased in some resin/epoxy compound, for protection agains shocks, as well as against reverse engineering. The thing was fully encapsulated in a solid, non-serviceable block.
It couldn't just be chemically dissolved, as the chemicals would have damaged the encapsulated very fine vacuum tubes and other stuff along the way.
So the Soviets ended up sequestering every single amber-carving artisan that they could find - jewlers from generation to generation, along with their tools, and put them to work. Working on amber requires very specific skills, as it's very sensitive to the wrong pressure or angle of attack - you can ruin it all in one movement. And there's a tradition in the Baltics on working on that.
These guys spent months chipping away the resin, eventually cleaning it all without breaking a thing. Using tools and skillsets hundreds of years old.
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