|
Space Gopher posted:It's sort of an assumption behind the people talking about the pilot defecting to Israel. It's fairly likely that he wanted to both get the hell out of Syria and stay the hell out of Israel. Yup.
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2012 23:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:19 |
|
|
Jordan is probably the most level headed and "stable" country in the region at the moment, anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2012 11:56
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:Jordan is probably the most level headed and "stable" country in the region at the moment, anyway. gently caress the moment, they've been the only level headed, stabile people there since King Hussain decided to tell the rest of the arab states to go gently caress themselves and made a separate peace with Israel.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2012 13:03
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:gently caress the moment, they've been the only level headed, stabile people there since King Hussain decided to tell the rest of the arab states to go gently caress themselves and made a separate peace with Israel. 
grover fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jun 22, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2012 14:21
|
|
|
It all depends on where he took off from, how much fuel he was given, and how much Syria's ADA are told to ensure the loyalty of the Syrian Air Force. He could have had options of Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, or Iraq. In another corner of the country, he could have had to choose between Turkey, Iraq, and hoping to glide into Jordanian airspace before hitting the silk. In the best possible case of his position, he could have been now chillin' beachside in Cyprus.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 03:20
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfELF24mvwg I was reading about the hilarious mess that was the DIVADS program, and found some pictures of some of the other proposed designs.  General Electric mockup with GAU-8 and radar systems from the Phalanx  Sperry mockup with 35mm rotary cannon based on older 37mm rotary cannon After reading up on it, I've got to know if there were any other programs that went quite as badly as this. I know there are plenty of poorly managed programs today (F-35, LCS) but none of them have done things like confuse a port-o-potty with an enemy helicopter, or nearly shoot at a a group of congressmen.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 06:45
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:Heh. A Syrian MiG-21 pilot just defected to Jordan. I guess it doesn't have the range to defect anywhere worth defecting to.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 18:36
|
|
|
Pablo Bluth posted:Reports of Syria shooting down a Turkish F-4. Yeah, the Turks are saying it accidentally crossed into Syrian air space, but was most likely a photo reconnaissance variant watching Syrian troop movements. Syria is a pretty scary place right now geopolitically, it's already spreading a bit to Lebanon and Turkey. I'd hate to see what a Yugoslavian breakup in that region would turn in to.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 18:58
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:Yeah, the Turks are saying it accidentally crossed into Syrian air space, but was most likely a photo reconnaissance variant watching Syrian troop movements. Syria is a pretty scary place right now geopolitically, it's already spreading a bit to Lebanon and Turkey. I'd hate to see what a Yugoslavian breakup in that region would turn in to. I'll loving guarantee that's why the Turks are keeping an eye on it, including (probably) photo recon. The last thing on the planet they want is one of the neighboring countries breaking up and having an actual Kurdish state on their eastern border. Just look at how clear they made it all through the last decade that an independent Kurdistan coming out of N. Iraq was NOT something they wanted to see happen.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 19:02
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:
What are the odds that if Kurdistan came into existence in, say, Northern Iraq, that the Kurds would be all, "Oh this is plenty! Thanks!" instead of "Yeah, we're also going to try to take this chunk out of Turkey, too."
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 19:23
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:What are the odds that if Kurdistan came into existence in, say, Northern Iraq, that the Kurds would be all, "Oh this is plenty! Thanks!" instead of "Yeah, we're also going to try to take this chunk out of Turkey, too." The Iraqi Kurds? hosed if I know. I'm going to hazard a guess that they'd probably be pretty content to not get into a war with a NATO ally as the first act of their brand new nation following centuries of struggle for independence and self-rule. The Kurds in Turkey, on the other hand, have been in constant state of low-simmering quasi-rebellion since loving forever. The big Turkish fear is that if there is actually a viable Kurdish state on their border that a huge chunk of the eastern part of their country will try to secede and join it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 19:38
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:Yeah I should've watched that entire video before posting. S-Tank in all its glory, but the Strv 74 was some pretty amazing use of a tank hull from the 30ies:    Cold war Tank Destroyers representin' And then there's this little game I found after clicking this picture:  "Operation Garbo" Boardgame I'm... curious. Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jun 23, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2012 22:40
|
|
|
Ahahahahah, what's up with those goddamn tinned wieners I see everywhere in Sweden? 
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 09:46
|
|
|
Sjurygg posted:Aaaaaaahh!!! "Bullen" (Mr. "Bun", like cinna-bun) was a semi-famous actor? in the 40-50's. And He got to be a spokesman for canned sausage. I.e. George Foreman? The sausages are a FolkHems classic nowadays. And taste bad. Actually, way back when (here is the Pilsnerkorv-story), when a 1950's Folkhems bachelor/alcoholic who mainly spent their days in a Pilsner-beer-cafe drinking Pilsner (Czeck for beer = Swedish for beer)got hungry, he wanted something to eat. Something that was uncomplicated to cook. Because men in the '50s didn't do women's work. => Canned Sausage to be known as Beer-sausage. Pilsnerkorv. And that, my friend, is Mr. Bullen's own Pilsnerkorv. A classic. That taste bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 19:17
|
|
|
^ I will adore this post forever and ever.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 22:17
|
|
|
The important question is how long would those keep in a dark shelter after I have been peppered with tactical nuclear warheads? I don't normally eat sausages out of a can but desperate times, ya know?
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 22:21
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:The important question is how long would those keep in a dark shelter after I have been peppered with tactical nuclear warheads? I don't normally eat sausages out of a can but desperate times, ya know? When the shelf-life date is measured not in years, but in U235 half lifes, you're generally in good shape.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 22:29
|
|
|
I dunno, if it's good for S-tank Val Kilmer up there I suppose it's good enough for me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 22:34
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:The important question is how long would those keep in a dark shelter after I have been peppered with tactical nuclear warheads? I don't normally eat sausages out of a can but desperate times, ya know?
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 22:40
|
|
|
They taste just like hot dogs. :-/
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2012 23:08
|
|
|
Groda posted:They taste just like hot dogs. :-/ Well, raw hotdogs taste pretty gross, too. You need to at least microwave that poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 00:39
|
|
|
But most hotdogs are precooked 
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 02:10
|
|
|
Raw hot dogs in vinegars are delicious, try it sometime.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 02:21
|
|
|
priznat posted:But most hotdogs are precooked Whatever. Cold, out of that vacuum-packed bag thing, they're gross. Need to heat that poo poo up.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 02:36
|
|
|
True, uncooked you can get listeria too (that's bad)
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 02:50
|
|
|
priznat posted:True, uncooked you can get listeria too (that's bad) Ehh, in the scenario specified above, the radiation will help keep them sterile. Since they're mostly water, enough of them could be decent neutron shielding, although you'd want to be careful about activation of the iron in the cans or the phosphorus in the meat.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 04:24
|
|
|
Cold Turkey Hotdogs are pretty tasty 
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 07:17
|
|
|
Yes, exposing wieners to radioactivity will probably reduce the threat of listeria, very true!
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 07:19
|
|
|
Frozen Horse posted:This has also given me a new appreciation of exactly how suicidal things like sticky-bombs were. If you really fail, you have a large grenade glued to you. If you kind-of fail, you have a tank full of angry people with coaxial machine guns alerted to your presence. If you, through some miracle, succeed, you fail due to being right next to a tank that is exploding. A coworker years ago fought in the resistance in some eastern euro country told me he disabled a tank by pouring paint over the engine compartment. Prepop the lid, walk up to tank, pour in and run like gently caress and a few minutes later very bad things happen to the engine. Caveat being this was in a town and the Russians were being very careless with combined infantry and tanks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 07:25
|
|
|
LingcodKilla posted:A coworker years ago fought in the resistance in some eastern euro country told me he disabled a tank by pouring paint over the engine compartment. Prepop the lid, walk up to tank, pour in and run like gently caress and a few minutes later very bad things happen to the engine.  And if the paint didn't work I'd imagine he could saunter out and crush the tank with his massive brass balls.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 09:31
|
|
|
Flikken posted:Speaking of interservice dick waiving, would the US Army have NEAR the amount of Rotary wing support if instead of leaving Helicopters to the Army that the Air Force took them in 1947? That's a really interesting question. It seems like it could have gone three ways. One being that it would create an air force less divorced from operations on the ground, so maybe it wouldn't turn into jet fantasy stealth funfair. They would coordinate and things would be positively Swedish. There would even be a future for strategic airlift The second is an air force that falls so in love with its own reflection that it leaves army with no reasonable close support at all, some kind of positively greek system where the air force's planes are on the left and the army's infantry are in the middle. The debacles that that would cause, my god. Whenever a war happened and infantry and tanks were swallowed up in some easily preventable way, the army would gain massive massive public leverage. The army then would use the furor to wrest control of all close air support and even some missiles. Maybe the air force withers away as an independent entity, to the great benefit of everyone but a few jet building factories And the third being that we would have the same air force we have now, except with helicopters. Fun fun fun for everyone
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 11:31
|
|
|
AlexanderCA posted:That one is from the Transitional Federal Government apparently, from this series: http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR32MY8#a=6 . The African Union/Ugandan tanks seem in somewhat better shape: To answer these unasked questions from way back in the thread, basically Somalia's tanks all come from the big war they had with Ethiopia over the Ogaden. To pull back a bit, if you've ever read Soviet documents about Africa, there's always an almost despondent tone about how none of these guys are ready for a true marxist revolution, not even a little bit, they don't meet the necessary conditions at all!! But the USSR supported various regimes as a way of counterbalancing US and Chinese efforts. So when Ethiopia and Somalia went to war over some territorial stuff that was related to ethnic stuff, well a lot of stuff that I don't need to get into right now, they both went out and bought all the heavy equipment they could buy, and neither had much money or much new equipment, so Korea era gear was just right, simple, cheap, suited to the terrain. Ethiopia was supplied by the US, Somalia by the USSR. But then there was a shuffling of leadership in Ethiopia! And they were legit marxists, fully serious about communism and all that, the Soviets were overjoyed. If you read their documents from the time there's this giddiness that some Africans finally get it, they understand how great marxism-leninism is, and they aren't just bullshitting, for once. So USSR supplied the new ethiopian regime with a massive amount of gear, better stuff than they were giving the somalis before. In addition to this, the Cuban army, in its role of proletarian vanguard expeditionary force is deployed in the teens of thousands, along with a few thousand soviet advisors. And in return the americans send more stuff to the somalis. And they keep fighting this war until Ethiopian and Cuban troops overwhelm the Somalis. There are some great books about this war, super fun to read, and I just so happen to not remember the title of any of them. But I'll edit this when I do. And as for who has tanks now in Somalia, the "transitional government" has some. But the clans have divided up what was left and basically have them stashed away, they're ready for whenever Saudi Arabia feels like sending some money to get them going again, to inaugurate full control of the Islamic Courts union, proud landlords of Saudi owned farmland of the formerly sovereign state of Somalia. Side note: Apparently Somalis have replaced Nigerians as the transnational business class of Africa, and everyone is really happy about it because they're much easier to deal with And about the Ugandan tanks, Uganda has a very decent military, they've had a lot of US suport and have been a military dictatorship for about 25 years. Oil to protect from the horror that surrounds it Dejan Bimble fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jun 26, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 12:25
|
|
|
Cool post. I didn't really know anything about that until now, my idea of that region has always been "it's really unstable and nobody likes each other very much" and that's about the end of it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 13:53
|
|
|
WEREWAIF posted:awesome I'd love to read some more about this, do you have any specific titles to recommend?
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 14:04
|
|
|
WEREWAIF posted:Ethiopia One of the largest airpower players in Africa. Maybe the largest with Libya out of the picture. Ethiopia deployed SU-27s to great effect against Eritrea during their border war. Believed to be Russian pilots at the time, this may have changed. Also domestically, Ethiopia skipped the car phase and went to air travel. Their airlines are highly developed and they operate one of the better African carriers. Basically every village has an airport because it's easier than paving roads all over the place.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 17:20
|
|
|
movax posted:I'd love to read some more about this, do you have any specific titles to recommend? I too would like a reading list!
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2012 19:18
|
|
|
movax posted:I'd love to read some more about this, do you have any specific titles to recommend? I'm not sure that there's a good single book to recommend, the most interesting bits are from memoirs of commanders and individual soldiers. I wish I had my books here, my memory is betraying me. The easiest memoir to find is probably "Struggle and Conspiracy: A Memoir" by Abduallahi Yusuf Ahmed, who was a high ranking Somali commander during the war. The second easiest and maybe the best is "From the Hyena's Belly" by Nega Mezlekia, who was a born in a mixed Amharic/Somali area in Ethiopia and was a regular soldier for Ethiopia. It's a fantastic book on its own and his stories about growing up are as compelling as the war stuff. Here's a pdf by a kenyan brigadier general that's a simple overview, not a fun read though http://www.resolveogadencoalition.org/PDF/GetTRDoc.pdf Here's another pdf that's a bit more compelling https://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/5500026900.pdf There's a lot of Soviet stuff online but it's scatterered The coolest part of the Ogaden war was that it was basically WW2 played out again later in time, pincer actions and massive tank battles, sort of like one of the Indian-Pakistani wars with less massive hubris and incompetence. The ethiopians were also engaged in fighting with rebels, specifically the Eritreans. There have been several Ethiopia Eritrean conflicts, but the last one was the most interesting. WW2 technology and tactics against ww1 tactics. The Ethiopians spent their money on tanks, and the Eritreans spent theirs building a massive trench system. Tons of bloodshed, nationalistic fervor, teary eyed newspaper reports about the boys on the front lines, really warm old fashioned stuff. The Ethiopians ultimately won using a massive pincers movement to envelope the Eritrean trenches, an other echo of the past. rossmum posted:Cool post. I didn't really know anything about that until now, my idea of that region has always been "it's really unstable and nobody likes each other very much" and that's about the end of it. There's so much to learn about Africa, the problem is that the stories really aren't told. The simplest explanation of "everything is unstable and everyone hates each other" that colonial states weren't set up to be governments like we think of them, they were just frameworks for extraction economies with big military forces to make sure the extracting went on smoothly. After the end of colonialism, a lot of states lacked an internal capacity to deploy essential bit of force, which is what led to the rise of the mercenaries. Africa is a really beautiful amazing place, but there are so many powerful countries and non state bodies that are committed to the status quo that it's going to take a lot to change things. I think the best thing for Africa would be to get rid of all debt obligations, stop enforcing borders as is, and block all weapon imports and mineral exports. Let the rentier states and corrupt elites fall, let the borders dematerialize and come back in much more rational forms. We could end up with a much more harmonious, more prosperous, and self sufficient continent. That probably sounds like a hellish totalitarian vision, but I don't know how Africa at large will be sorted out with the constant sabotage and lures toward corruption from both foreign states and foreign business interests Flanker posted:One of the largest airpower players in Africa. Maybe the largest with Libya out of the picture. Ethiopia deployed SU-27s to great effect against Eritrea during their border war. Believed to be Russian pilots at the time, this may have changed.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 05:38
|
|
|
I have a book around here somewhere that I picked up in a sale about 5 years ago called "The Originals". It was basically a series of interviews with the original... 13, I think, members of the SAS. It was a really good read, and towards the end of the book it went into some detail as to what happened during the ten years or so where the SAS was officially disbanded after WWII and before its reactivation during the Malayan Emergency. Most of the guys went hunting for the German officers responsible for torturing and killing compromised SOE agents, and David Stirling himself apparently had plans to head down to Africa and sort that place out in a similar way to what you're saying, letting the borders reform along logical ethnic/political lines instead of arbitrary land divisions drawn up by Europeans. Of course, this didn't end up happening as he was just about the only person who gave a single gently caress and the British Government said no. Well, we can all see for ourselves just how well the alternative worked out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 09:56
|
|
|
rossmum posted:logical ethnic/political lines This would surely work well, as it's been a smashing success letting this happen in places such as
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 10:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:19 |
|
|
As opposed to all the places where putting two groups who absolutely hate each other on the same piece of land worked out, right?
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2012 10:38
|
|