China's aggression is changing the nature of sovereignty.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

30 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

No its both wars WW1 + WW2

But the WWII booklet of stamp seems to be worth nothing at all?

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

11 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

How about this definition? The hegemony is the one who projects power best? It does not have to be real power. So, there is significant danger of turning into "soft power superpower." Still vicious, but largely toothless. The best known example of that is late Austria-Hungary. There is also a very opposite result to the impression you are trying to make. For example this

A so-called

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_walk_(aeronautics)

(Though USN also does this with its ships) Are those guys for real? They probably do it on special dates, too, like the 4th of July?

For most of the "age of sail" where Britain was supposedly uncontested ruler of the seas, was it actually quite a paper tiger, due to action of teredo navalis, the naval shipworm. It doesn't like the "brackish waters" like where there is a major river estuary. Out of 5 Royal Navy bases, only one, in Glasgow, got a major river entering the sea. They never figured that one out and spent inordinate resources on trying to squire the copper sheet for "coppering" the ship bottoms. Which goes a long way to explain a good portion of your military lore, for example the necessity of capturing opponents cannons, while losing your own being as dishonorable as losing your flag. Nobody else follows that. Guns were just materiel elsewhere. I reckon the Russians easily captured more of the British cannons in Crimea than your Light Brigade or whatnot. They just don't realize how prestigious it is. (They certainly stole some to study why they are better made then theirs, only to find out that they really weren't. The story of Victoria's crosses being cast from captured Russian cannons also turns out to be BS. They are cast from something cheap. Proper gunmental your government had a use for elsewhere

You talk a lot about your opinions such as " I reckon the Russians easily captured more of the British cannons in Crimea" this is your opinion and not based in any fact whatsoever. May I remind you that Russia lost that war and Britain won it, so its unlikely that they succeeded in capturing more artillery than the British wouldnt you say? Russia suffered approx 12,000 casualties to Britains 2500. You state that only 1 out of 5 major naval bases has a major river??? Seriously?? you can never have travelled to the UK then or are trying to mislead those that havent on this site! Try Plymouth, Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth etc. What I will agree with you on is that the VC is made from captured "Russian cannons" that were in fact cannons captured from a conflict between Russia and China and that those cannons were melted down to make the VC. Anyway the metal they are made from is unimportant it is the honour of the award that means everything to any individual in the armed forces. By the way it is also the highest military honour for any commonwealth country also.

Please a history of the VC

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Victoria-Cross/

The only combatitive soldier to ever win 2 VC's was actually a Soldier from New Zealand. 2 others won 2 VC's but both were medics

https://www.history.co.uk/shows/x-company/articles/the-man-awarded-two-victoria-crosses#:~:text=That's almost superhuman.,were medics rather than soldiers.)

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

16 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

I understand you disappointment at not picking the side likely to win

Youve changed from "definitely will win" to "likely to win" big difference what odds now? still 98%

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

39 minutes ago, Wombat One said:

lol. The Turkish drones made mince meat of the S-400 system. Wait until you see what proper Western drones do to the S-500 system. India is stupid for believing in Russian technology. The Zumwalt's are coming.

No Turkish drones have encountered an S-400 in combat yet. Unlikely ever will. It's a very expensive missiles to waste on such junk.A proper setup got to have a Buk, Tor or Pansir nearby to deal with the drone instead. How many Turkish drones? It is possible to saturate the setup, of course.

The closest I am aware of is the Azeri claim of having taken out an old Armenian S-300. Which is possible if it was ever in Karabakh at all (something Armenia denies) It is well known that Azeri's used literally hundreds of old An-2 crop duster planes wired for RC to produce sufficient number of decoys for actual Turkish drones. The traditional Russian SAMs don't have a weakness against fancier, more expensive drones. Only against more numerous crappy ones. No drones armada's have any chances against conventional air power just yet.. So, we've got a rock-paper-scissors situation between cheap drones - ground SAMs - conventional airforce triangle

The S-500 is a light anti-ballistic system. Got really no business fighting drones, even if it could.

Oh dear. The Zumwalt is going to the recycling bin

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43466/the-navys-9b-stealthy-super-destroyer-is-covered-in-rust

Here is something polite to say what got to be the most expensive dud in USN's history so far (waiting for the 2nd Ford though)

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/zumwalt-let-down-why-did-stealth-destroyer-not-live-hype-176951

See, if only was the US military remotely accountable and/or sane, anybody could've told them that the thing makes no sense right away. Because instead of one Zumwalt, they could build 4-5 Ohio submarines converted to guided missiles (USGN) See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile_submarine

Those carry more missiles, require less crew and are actually certifiably stealth,  in a sense of EM radiation not propagating under water too well. That's OK, the good Uncle will print some more dollars, you will pitch in some of your little ones and it will be thrown into the corruption abyss yet again, to produce complete opposite of a useful new capability at yet greater expense. This seems to be the procurement procedure. Should have stuck with the French, perhaps? If you ever see the button that says "évier" you are probably looking for the other one. Forgot what it's called, but we should keep it simple enough for an Australian marsupial who's only ever got a single tit to focus on growing up.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

21 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

Youve changed from "definitely will win" to "likely to win" big difference what odds now? still 98%

I didn't mean it that way. The technical feasibility is 100% there. Whether this constitutes an actual win is debatable of course. Personally, I've got neither an interest nor desire to fight a conventional war. I am more interested in killing all the bad people and be done with it. Those who pick sides based on their assessment of who's got the GDP to win will be queuing up for switching sides according to the usual procedure. See Romania, Bulgaria etc.

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

6 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

I didn't mean it that way. The technical feasibility is 100% there. Whether this constitutes an actual win is debatable of course. Personally, I've got neither an interest nor desire to fight a conventional war. I am more interested in killing all the bad people and be done with it. Those who pick sides based on their assessment of who's got the GDP to win will be queuing up for switching sides according to the usual procedure. See Romania, Bulgaria etc.

Indeed Andrei!

You forgot Italy in that also lol

[Boat + 1,324]

Let’s see, there are over 600 F-35 planes that the Russians can’t see. In stealth mode they can take out 8 tanks or similar equipment in one pass shooting from 45 miles away. In non stealth mode I believe the F-35’s can carry 16 oh those missiles.  So that’s 4800 pieces of Russian equipment. No use going into other air capabilities. 

[frankfurter + 562]

5 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

So, they do. As if they were not going to try it if it wasn't in their official doctrine. They failed to do it so far, because the technical capability to implement it was never there and getting further out of reach every day.

Most Americans have no idea how bloodthirsty their government/military really is. They are innocent bystanders in all that. It would be much desired to keep the civilians out of it.

The Soviets penetrated into Germany because the Germans failed to surrender any earlier than this? Why didn't we also whack them all, just in case they relapse? The general idea was to get them to commit to neutrality, till NATO spoiled the mood by accepting them.

precisely.

 

[SUZNV + 1,197]

1 hour ago, Boat said:

Let’s see, there are over 600 F-35 planes that the Russians can’t see. In stealth mode they can take out 8 tanks or similar equipment in one pass shooting from 45 miles away. In non stealth mode I believe the F-35’s can carry 16 oh those missiles.  So that’s 4800 pieces of Russian equipment. No use going into other air capabilities. 

I don't think he means conventional warfare where technically capture the capital and declare victory. What he means the unconventional warfare for a marathon guerrilla  like in Vietnam or Afghan where take back a province doesn't have much meaning. US won all the battles in Vietnam but could not win the war. I don't think US ever lose a battle since WW2 but when withdraw the army, it means mission failed. 

The US's opponents in Afghan and Vietnam didn't have much thing to lose. They can just guerrilla in the mountains/forest and operate a propaganda about foreign occupations  and got their supporters internal cities (including children or woman) do the terrorist parts which will cause chaos and disruption as much as they can to the economy).  While US and allies throwing money to  buy democracy and simulate a normal working economy which won't reach the bottom people and corrupt their native official gov allies with USD, which make them reject responsibility to enjoy the USD they have. The worst case just immigrate to the US. The mainstream in the Western will regularly show of US killing innocent citizens for anti war propaganda. 

One side have only one goal is to kick the foreign out. The other side is talking about democracy, human right, building the economy while majority of the people in the uneducated bottom class were filled with hate, jealousy and believe the happy peaceful prosperous future from the rebel side. 

Inside US and in Europe or any third world countries  would have the protests  and politicians ask why would we kill people in foreign land in the name of democracy and waring industry and not use the people tax money to increase social welfare in the US. How do you think US can win this type of wars?

Yes the other side would break any prosperous promise or freedom and become totalitarian regime but who would care, they won the war. Gradually many of the people may even have stockholm syndrome.

More advance planes won't fix the problem , large GDP doesn't as well but weigh down the US economy much further.  Government spending is borrowing from the future tax. Even if the  government strip out all of the 1% assets, it won't have enough for 3 years spending with current speed yet I guarantee less taxation from other part as  government and public or subsidies sectors doesn't create wealth.

I disagree with the word "easy" he mentions though. 

IMHO, the biggest mistake of US in VN war was the CIA helped overthrow Diem and put US army into South Vietnam. US turned the ideology war into against foreign occupation war, after the French just had left 10 year ago, and faced all the problems I mentioned above. South Vietnam would have more chance but the country would be splited in half. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by SUZNV

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

41 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

You talk a lot about your opinions such as " I reckon the Russians easily captured more of the British cannons in Crimea" this is your opinion and not based in any fact whatsoever. May I remind you that Russia lost that war and Britain won it, so its unlikely that they succeeded in capturing more artillery than the British wouldnt you say? Russia suffered approx 12,000 casualties to Britains 2500. You state that only 1 out of 5 major naval bases has a major river??? Seriously?? you can never have travelled to the UK then or are trying to mislead those that havent on this site! Try Plymouth, Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth etc. What I will agree with you on is that the VC is made from captured "Russian cannons" that were in fact cannons captured from a conflict between Russia and China and that those cannons were melted down to make the VC. Anyway the metal they are made from is unimportant it is the honour of the award that means everything to any individual in the armed forces. By the way it is also the highest military honour for any commonwealth country also.

Please a history of the VC

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Victoria-Cross/

The only combatitive soldier to ever win 2 VC's was actually a Soldier from New Zealand. 2 others won 2 VC's but both were medics

https://www.history.co.uk/shows/x-company/articles/the-man-awarded-two-victoria-crosses#:~:text=That's almost superhuman.,were medics rather than soldiers.)

I don't really know how much they captured. It pops up here and there. See, this is an entirely insignificant accounting detail nobody in Russia cared that much about. They were supposed to nick cannons to study the best practices, not to procure valuable bronze alloys like you did. OK, found one randomly searching

https://novochgrad.ru/texts/history/id/25628.html

Old photos of Don Museum in the town of Novocherkassk, supposedly taken from a Royal Navy gunboat called Jasper that beached itself. Let's see. Got that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Jasper

Ran aground during the siege of Taganrog, 4x different cannons to be had. All crap muzzle loaded smooth bores, which is why they were kept in one piece for so long. Actually, I am seeing a lot of Russian cannons I haven't heard about before all over the world. Is that true they got some 4000 total and the French got 213? In that case, no, we haven't got that many. I was thinking like 20-ish. 4000 seems overdone though. One cannon for every three dead Russians? Seems odd.

Why would I travel to some British backwoods to see something I can find on a map anyway. Out of three extant bases RN got, two (Portsmouth and Devon) got a major river and one (Clyde) does not. Correspondence to the original five bases I found for age of Sail last time I looked into the issue is not immediately obvious. So, lets start at the end? Are the stories of teredo navalis wrecking your ships not true? The critter is know to dislike water of too low a salinity. Some parts of the Baltic qualify, and some do not. Specifically the Russian bases around St. Pete were entirely teredo-free, due to the very voluminous river Neva dumping there.

I am not trying to mislead anybody yet. I just know to never take any British stories at face value. They are usually the exact opposite of what they say. Not always true for Yankees. They've got a bunch of priorities not related to propaganda goals at all.

Here, an expert boffin in some kind of fancy fluorometry? delivers the expert opinion

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2020/05/victoriacross/

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/03/show-your-mettle-victoria-cross-not-made-of-captured-russian-guns-after-all

Does not appear to be much of an metallurgical expert as such or does not care enough. Without the original research being visible we've got one useful observable - the different period pieces have significantly different composition. This already contradicts the backup official story that they all come from the official piece which came from the 1860 Anglo-Chinese War. So, the Russians are decidedly out of it. See the skilled ass covering? Today, it sounds similarly historical-like, being just another campaign you won just a couple year after the Crimean war. With the part in question being Chinese (of whose period cannon nobody has any opinion at all. The part in question is fairly optional, bulk and is not exposed to any particular strain, so there is no particular requirements as to how to make it. This part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascabel_(artillery)

Look, we actually learn something new.. Turns out, the naval-derived guns would not have a solid blob like this, but have a large loop instead, into which they attach a fat rope to prevent the gun from sliding on deck. Lets check. Most Russian guns we see at historical Crimean batteries do, in fact, have a hoop instead of the blob. No particular reason for them to be ship guns, but they appear to be that. That significantly narrows the list of applicable materials. What happens if the British Queen orders the military to do some obviously bullshit, on the account of being a chick? Does some special James Bond correct her privately? Does everybody pretend everything is A-OK and do whatever, or do they try to implement as is? See, it says that Vicky actually ordered to use bronze, she was wrong. Technically, the guns are made of brass, not bronze. Being naval guns, a specific gunmetal / naval brass alloy would be used. Which could mean two different things in British and American English. To you, is it the grey coloredalloy which looks like Victoria cross or darker. The American version would look more cheerfully plumbing-appliance like and be sometime known as "red brass". So does the Chinese blob. In lieu of a useful period classification of Russian brass alloys (Russian Wiki is very exhaustive, but based on the Soviet GOST) am I inclined to guess that the Russian guns are imitation of yours. That is, bound to structurally deteriorate over long enough time due to leaching zinc. This can be established by analogy with plumbing pipes. A bit of lead or tin helps, but zinc is actually domestically sourced! Very rare occurrence. This is confirmed by a 2017 attempt to fire a Sebastopol cannon and having it blew up into everybody's face. Suggests a composition most similar to yours.

I beg to differ on materials mattering not. This is where all zinc-rich alloys are going sooner or later. Including Victoria's crosses, should they actually be made of Russian naval bras modeled after yours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest

Note that regular structural bronze like Vicky wanted would be already gone, due to the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_disease

That's why they had special navalized versions of brass to start with. My bet is on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombac

which is a collection of techniques the Dutch brought from Indonesia that allows to optimize various decorative properties of copperware. Like make it look like Olympic bronze or captive Russian guns. This is how the rest of your buttons and medals were most likely made. In this case, they are OK. Now, how difficult was it to actually put some meat behind such a beautiful motivational story and actually allocate a chunk of actual Russian guns, of which you may have hundreds laying around? In which case they would, of course, eventually rot. Damn if you do, damn if you don't. I am pretty certain that corrosion due to leaching out zinc was not known in advance. It is a very gradual process. Now, lets look at the numismatic residual, shall we?

http://www.victoriacross.org.uk/aaauctio.htm

Couple of hundred quid? Not too impressed for an award only ever award less than 1500 times. The various General Admiral Mountbattain clowns never failed to make the bling they award to themselves out of precious gemstone and gold. Let see somebody put their money where the money is, shall we? Behold the Soviet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Glory

awarded nearly a million times, exclusively to enlisted ranks (or jr. lieutenants in airforce, who had nobody less) Made from real silver, gold or combination based on the grade. Common enough for EBay even, for $175 for a silver one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/123505913376

EUR 9,500 for a full set

https://sovietorders.com/orders/order-of-glory/

In general, the authentic Soviet award lists are suddenly online, which makes all the difference. Captured a Nazi bunker using only hand grenades, killing 7 and taking 30 POW. I don't believe this shit.

If you want the numismatic value alone, try this

https://www.collectrussia.com/showcat.htm?cat=redbanner

https://sovietorders.com/orders/order-of-the-red-banner/

This is the only award USSR had for long-ass time, and than the highest one. Given to semi important-people, overall half a mil. Made out of total junk. I see EUR 6,900 given to an NKVD colonel who was with the political department of their artillery branch. Do you believe this shit? So, while the 1st level NKVD barrier troops were shooting our own in the back ala "Enemy at the Gates", a 2nd layer barrier was shooting  at those with artillery guns while this guy was preaching to them to watch their ammo use, or what?

OK, back to Crimean war. You casualty accounts are significantly off  It is into hundreds of thousands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

You had almost half of your troops return, largely wounded. The Turks lost every single one of thieir people and all their ships. (a recurring occurrence when providing cannon fodder for the West) The French had 1/4 return largely wounded. Only the couple of thousand Sardinians all died of a disease (or otherwise disappeared) Somebody apprehended near the town of Balaclava wearing a sock on their head sold the story to the British that this be a local tribal outfit. Ever since, the British people wear it too to signify when they are up to no good. Also works for Putin's "green man" in unmarked uniforms, BTW. What do you mean? The hats obviously give them away as local Balaclava militiamen

You also tossed a rather pathetic Pacific campaign I bet you didn't know the Crimean war had

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petropavlovsk

So, the question was how well you established your beach-head. One secret weapon you had was the

https://eTen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minié_ball

Technically, they made their first appearance in American Civil War. First the South, than the North. The American rednecks dug some up and found out that they didn't really work too well, without a special Minie rifle at least. The newly made ones work as advertised though. Fixed in time for the Crimean war? See how far it got you? The Russians responded with exploding bullets, the British squealed and there was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Declaration_of_1868

Why is that? Because the minie ball was a short-term stunt. It actually reduced the muzzle energy of the projectile. More damaged to soft targets, but defeated by most trivial body armor. Which allegedly didn't work anymore, same as they tell you today. Self-serving interests - GI stuff got to be cheap. In the British Imperial case - complete and utter junk. Now, all the important members of nobility had the best body armor the money could buy, of course. Explosive bullets put their asses on the line, for the first time.

Didn't help. The South Africans, who nobody invited to any conventions of war, proceeded to invent the same for your precious Maxim gun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_1-pounder_pom-pom

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

Or really? For how long. You've got yourself a Vickers gun. Not the same thing, IMHO. You tell me. The British Crown has a rich history of swindling various inventors and entrepreneurs out of their share and giving the business to the cronies. Here is the Maxim in Russian Imperial service. Easy to tell by the larger opening so you can shove snow and ice in without melting it first (tends to be wrongfully attributed to the Finns)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PM_M1910

I reckon that the Russian Maxim is a principally different device on the account of sharing the same 7.62x 54mmR caliber that iconic Mosin-Nagant rifle (and the SVD (Dragunov) sniper rifle still in service with Russia to this day) Is there any original 0.303 British ammo for the Maxim left? I haven't seen any, must have all rotten away. The Russian Imperial overstock is still match grade. 21 thousand made in 18-20 alone. Other Slavic people took a liking to them too. (This be Czechoslovak legion taking the scenic route home)

Just the living quotes, of course. The working end of the train had some collectable battleship parts from the Russo Japanese war.

Here is another take at the special Maxim gun gun

This is the greeting party the Tsar commissioned after Crimean war. delievered 1912-ish

http://www.allworldwars.com/The History of Maxim Gorky-I Naval Battery.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky_Fortresses

https://ludwigheinrichdyck.wordpress.com/tag/siege-of-sevastopol/

Interesting story. The affiliation with Gorky, a Soviet writer enterily dubious. Nobody really called them anything important before WWII. What took the British people so long to return? The Nazis had to pick up the slack. These things effectively turned the various Nazi rail-mounted mega-guns like Karl-Geraet and Schwerer Gustav impotent. Beutiful plan. The Nazis never found them from the air, because they were sitting inside of a significantly sized forest, except made from wrought iron. Also fired onto pre-trained coordinates. Got blown up running out of barrel spares. You missed some great pedagogical collectables?

Notable British people harboring impure thoughts while visiting Crimea are still great fun. Like when you send a dinghy of yours, called Duncan or Defender to represent, say claiming that they will redirect all the 25MW available to the radar and start swatting the Russian planes out of the sky by frying their electronics. The problem with that view is that electronics got to exist, not to speak of the plane..Interestingly enough, the redirection of power claim feasibly does work for Defender. (not for Duncan, which is broke anyway) After the Yankees (GE) fixed the electrical conversion scheme by means of a legendary artifact. Not sure there are more then one of them, anyway. So, lets run with the thought. What if, Russians got a bigger radar on land? Or more precise? Or both?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevpatoria_RT-70_radio_telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluton_(complex)

No longer the most powerful deep space communications facility it may be, but still good for tightbeam communication with a Venus landing craft. I reckon manifesting a coronal discharge on the British captains cap would be an interesting challenge to produce.

Alternative viewpoint is that this facility exists to kill an important British astronomer Sir with radiation. Or wipe his memory.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190122012419/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5362829/Sir-Bernard-Lovell-claims-Russians-tried-to-kill-him-with-radiation.html

Did the British government actually bankrolled a radio telescope to track the Sputnik and gave this guy a Sir for being first? (Highly contestable, IMHO, as it was deliberately setup to be trackable by any amateur ham operator

Next, you've got to work on this

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6429859/Fleet-17-Russian-fighter-jets-swarmed-Royal-Navy-warship-Black-Sea.html

20+ now, according to serious journalist

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57583363

I always had a soft spot for Daily Mail, I must say. BTW, is it normal to take tabloid journos onto supposed combat missions? Why don't they bring a whole bunch at once?

See, there is only ever one or two jets. Yankees see one or two.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-flyby-uss-donald-cook-baltic-sea-alarms-experts-n555921

Try to find any conflicting report. Or actually identify more than 2 jets in the British vid? A jet does a really close flyby so that you can see that it is unarmed, short of an EW pod. It is unlikely has any electronics itself. Su-24 is a frontline bomber, a very crude device.

So, it is due to the British people made out of meat shitting their pants so much on the account of knowing they shouldn't probably be there and do what they do , or your PAMMS software successfully glitched by the pod? Could be a bit of both too. The software is made out of Windows 2000, BTW, which is way too new and complex. You should possibly buy the Yankee Aegis stuff, which uses an IBM machine out of the 60-ties. On one hand, nobody who understood how it worked is around anymore. On the other hand, it doesn't really break.

I don't know what to think, having lost my Daily Mail guiding light and golden benchmark for maximum amount of hogwash to an article. Now there is BBC muscling in their game. Why could they make a nature documentary, commented by Sr. Attenborough of course on the swarming habits of imaginary Russian jets endemic to Crimea?

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

12 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

I don't really know how much they captured. It pops up here and there. See, this is an entirely insignificant accounting detail nobody in Russia cared that much about. They were supposed to nick cannons to study the best practices, not to procure valuable bronze alloys like you did. OK, found one randomly searching

https://novochgrad.ru/texts/history/id/25628.html

Old photos of Don Museum in the town of Novocherkassk, supposedly taken from a Royal Navy gunboat called Jasper that beached itself. Let's see. Got that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Jasper

Ran aground during the siege of Taganrog, 4x different cannons to be had. All crap muzzle loaded smooth bores, which is why they were kept in one piece for so long. Actually, I am seeing a lot of Russian cannons I haven't heard about before all over the world. Is that true they got some 4000 total and the French got 213? In that case, no, we haven't got that many. I was thinking like 20-ish. 4000 seems overdone though. One cannon for every three dead Russians? Seems odd.

Why would I travel to some British backwoods to see something I can find on a map anyway. Out of three extant bases RN got, two (Portsmouth and Devon) got a major river and one (Clyde) does not. Correspondence to the original five bases I found for age of Sail last time I looked into the issue is not immediately obvious. So, lets start at the end? Are the stories of teredo navalis wrecking your ships not true? The critter is know to dislike water of too low a salinity. Some parts of the Baltic qualify, and some do not. Specifically the Russian bases around St. Pete were entirely teredo-free, due to the very voluminous river Neva dumping there.

I am not trying to mislead anybody yet. I just know to never take any British stories at face value. They are usually the exact opposite of what they say. Not always true for Yankees. They've got a bunch of priorities not related to propaganda goals at all.

Here, an expert boffin in some kind of fancy fluorometry? delivers the expert opinion

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2020/05/victoriacross/

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/03/show-your-mettle-victoria-cross-not-made-of-captured-russian-guns-after-all

Does not appear to be much of an metallurgical expert as such or does not care enough. Without the original research being visible we've got one useful observable - the different period pieces have significantly different composition. This already contradicts the backup official story that they all come from the official piece which came from the 1860 Anglo-Chinese War. So, the Russians are decidedly out of it. See the skilled ass covering? Today, it sounds similarly historical-like, being just another campaign you won just a couple year after the Crimean war. With the part in question being Chinese (of whose period cannon nobody has any opinion at all. The part in question is fairly optional, bulk and is not exposed to any particular strain, so there is no particular requirements as to how to make it. This part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascabel_(artillery)

Look, we actually learn something new.. Turns out, the naval-derived guns would not have a solid blob like this, but have a large loop instead, into which they attach a fat rope to prevent the gun from sliding on deck. Lets check. Most Russian guns we see at historical Crimean batteries do, in fact, have a hoop instead of the blob. No particular reason for them to be ship guns, but they appear to be that. That significantly narrows the list of applicable materials. What happens if the British Queen orders the military to do some obviously bullshit, on the account of being a chick? Does some special James Bond correct her privately? Does everybody pretend everything is A-OK and do whatever, or do they try to implement as is? See, it says that Vicky actually ordered to use bronze, she was wrong. Technically, the guns are made of brass, not bronze. Being naval guns, a specific gunmetal / naval brass alloy would be used. Which could mean two different things in British and American English. To you, is it the grey coloredalloy which looks like Victoria cross or darker. The American version would look more cheerfully plumbing-appliance like and be sometime known as "red brass". So does the Chinese blob. In lieu of a useful period classification of Russian brass alloys (Russian Wiki is very exhaustive, but based on the Soviet GOST) am I inclined to guess that the Russian guns are imitation of yours. That is, bound to structurally deteriorate over long enough time due to leaching zinc. This can be established by analogy with plumbing pipes. A bit of lead or tin helps, but zinc is actually domestically sourced! Very rare occurrence. This is confirmed by a 2017 attempt to fire a Sebastopol cannon and having it blew up into everybody's face. Suggests a composition most similar to yours.

I beg to differ on materials mattering not. This is where all zinc-rich alloys are going sooner or later. Including Victoria's crosses, should they actually be made of Russian naval bras modeled after yours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest

Note that regular structural bronze like Vicky wanted would be already gone, due to the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_disease

That's why they had special navalized versions of brass to start with. My bet is on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombac

which is a collection of techniques the Dutch brought from Indonesia that allows to optimize various decorative properties of copperware. Like make it look like Olympic bronze or captive Russian guns. This is how the rest of your buttons and medals were most likely made. In this case, they are OK. Now, how difficult was it to actually put some meat behind such a beautiful motivational story and actually allocate a chunk of actual Russian guns, of which you may have hundreds laying around? In which case they would, of course, eventually rot. Damn if you do, damn if you don't. I am pretty certain that corrosion due to leaching out zinc was not known in advance. It is a very gradual process. Now, lets look at the numismatic residual, shall we?

http://www.victoriacross.org.uk/aaauctio.htm

Couple of hundred quid? Not too impressed for an award only ever award less than 1500 times. The various General Admiral Mountbattain clowns never failed to make the bling they award to themselves out of precious gemstone and gold. Let see somebody put their money where the money is, shall we? Behold the Soviet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Glory

awarded nearly a million times, exclusively to enlisted ranks (or jr. lieutenants in airforce, who had nobody less) Made from real silver, gold or combination based on the grade. Common enough for EBay even, for $175 for a silver one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/123505913376

EUR 9,500 for a full set

https://sovietorders.com/orders/order-of-glory/

In general, the authentic Soviet award lists are suddenly online, which makes all the difference. Captured a Nazi bunker using only hand grenades, killing 7 and taking 30 POW. I don't believe this shit.

If you want the numismatic value alone, try this

https://www.collectrussia.com/showcat.htm?cat=redbanner

https://sovietorders.com/orders/order-of-the-red-banner/

This is the only award USSR had for long-ass time, and than the highest one. Given to semi important-people, overall half a mil. Made out of total junk. I see EUR 6,900 given to an NKVD colonel who was with the political department of their artillery branch. Do you believe this shit? So, while the 1st level NKVD barrier troops were shooting our own in the back ala "Enemy at the Gates", a 2nd layer barrier was shooting  at those with artillery guns while this guy was preaching to them to watch their ammo use, or what?

OK, back to Crimean war. You casualty accounts are significantly off  It is into hundreds of thousands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

You had almost half of your troops return, largely wounded. The Turks lost every single one of thieir people and all their ships. (a recurring occurrence when providing cannon fodder for the West) The French had 1/4 return largely wounded. Only the couple of thousand Sardinians all died of a disease (or otherwise disappeared) Somebody apprehended near the town of Balaclava wearing a sock on their head sold the story to the British that this be a local tribal outfit. Ever since, the British people wear it too to signify when they are up to no good. Also works for Putin's "green man" in unmarked uniforms, BTW. What do you mean? The hats obviously give them away as local Balaclava militiamen

You also tossed a rather pathetic Pacific campaign I bet you didn't know the Crimean war had

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petropavlovsk

So, the question was how well you established your beach-head. One secret weapon you had was the

https://eTen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minié_ball

Technically, they made their first appearance in American Civil War. First the South, than the North. The American rednecks dug some up and found out that they didn't really work too well, without a special Minie rifle at least. The newly made ones work as advertised though. Fixed in time for the Crimean war? See how far it got you? The Russians responded with exploding bullets, the British squealed and there was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Declaration_of_1868

Why is that? Because the minie ball was a short-term stunt. It actually reduced the muzzle energy of the projectile. More damaged to soft targets, but defeated by most trivial body armor. Which allegedly didn't work anymore, same as they tell you today. Self-serving interests - GI stuff got to be cheap. In the British Imperial case - complete and utter junk. Now, all the important members of nobility had the best body armor the money could buy, of course. Explosive bullets put their asses on the line, for the first time.

Didn't help. The South Africans, who nobody invited to any conventions of war, proceeded to invent the same for your precious Maxim gun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_1-pounder_pom-pom

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

Or really? For how long. You've got yourself a Vickers gun. Not the same thing, IMHO. You tell me. The British Crown has a rich history of swindling various inventors and entrepreneurs out of their share and giving the business to the cronies. Here is the Maxim in Russian Imperial service. Easy to tell by the larger opening so you can shove snow and ice in without melting it first (tends to be wrongfully attributed to the Finns)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PM_M1910

I reckon that the Russian Maxim is a principally different device on the account of sharing the same 7.62x 54mmR caliber that iconic Mosin-Nagant rifle (and the SVD (Dragunov) sniper rifle still in service with Russia to this day) Is there any original 0.303 British ammo for the Maxim left? I haven't seen any, must have all rotten away. The Russian Imperial overstock is still match grade. 21 thousand made in 18-20 alone. Other Slavic people took a liking to them too. (This be Czechoslovak legion taking the scenic route home)

Just the living quotes, of course. The working end of the train had some collectable battleship parts from the Russo Japanese war.

Here is another take at the special Maxim gun gun

This is the greeting party the Tsar commissioned after Crimean war. delievered 1912-ish

http://www.allworldwars.com/The History of Maxim Gorky-I Naval Battery.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky_Fortresses

https://ludwigheinrichdyck.wordpress.com/tag/siege-of-sevastopol/

Interesting story. The affiliation with Gorky, a Soviet writer enterily dubious. Nobody really called them anything important before WWII. What took the British people so long to return? The Nazis had to pick up the slack. These things effectively turned the various Nazi rail-mounted mega-guns like Karl-Geraet and Schwerer Gustav impotent. Beutiful plan. The Nazis never found them from the air, because they were sitting inside of a significantly sized forest, except made from wrought iron. Also fired onto pre-trained coordinates. Got blown up running out of barrel spares. You missed some great pedagogical collectables?

Notable British people harboring impure thoughts while visiting Crimea are still great fun. Like when you send a dinghy of yours, called Duncan or Defender to represent, say claiming that they will redirect all the 25MW available to the radar and start swatting the Russian planes out of the sky by frying their electronics. The problem with that view is that electronics got to exist, not to speak of the plane..Interestingly enough, the redirection of power claim feasibly does work for Defender. (not for Duncan, which is broke anyway) After the Yankees (GE) fixed the electrical conversion scheme by means of a legendary artifact. Not sure there are more then one of them, anyway. So, lets run with the thought. What if, Russians got a bigger radar on land? Or more precise? Or both?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevpatoria_RT-70_radio_telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluton_(complex)

No longer the most powerful deep space communications facility it may be, but still good for tightbeam communication with a Venus landing craft. I reckon manifesting a coronal discharge on the British captains cap would be an interesting challenge to produce.

Alternative viewpoint is that this facility exists to kill an important British astronomer Sir with radiation. Or wipe his memory.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190122012419/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5362829/Sir-Bernard-Lovell-claims-Russians-tried-to-kill-him-with-radiation.html

Did the British government actually bankrolled a radio telescope to track the Sputnik and gave this guy a Sir for being first? (Highly contestable, IMHO, as it was deliberately setup to be trackable by any amateur ham operator

Next, you've got to work on this

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6429859/Fleet-17-Russian-fighter-jets-swarmed-Royal-Navy-warship-Black-Sea.html

20+ now, according to serious journalist

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57583363

I always had a soft spot for Daily Mail, I must say. BTW, is it normal to take tabloid journos onto supposed combat missions? Why don't they bring a whole bunch at once?

See, there is only ever one or two jets. Yankees see one or two.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-flyby-uss-donald-cook-baltic-sea-alarms-experts-n555921

Try to find any conflicting report. Or actually identify more than 2 jets in the British vid? A jet does a really close flyby so that you can see that it is unarmed, short of an EW pod. It is unlikely has any electronics itself. Su-24 is a frontline bomber, a very crude device.

So, it is due to the British people made out of meat shitting their pants so much on the account of knowing they shouldn't probably be there and do what they do , or your PAMMS software successfully glitched by the pod? Could be a bit of both too. The software is made out of Windows 2000, BTW, which is way too new and complex. You should possibly buy the Yankee Aegis stuff, which uses an IBM machine out of the 60-ties. On one hand, nobody who understood how it worked is around anymore. On the other hand, it doesn't really break.

I don't know what to think, having lost my Daily Mail guiding light and golden benchmark for maximum amount of hogwash to an article. Now there is BBC muscling in their game. Why could they make a nature documentary, commented by Sr. Attenborough of course on the swarming habits of imaginary Russian jets endemic to Crimea?

Andrei do you live in a fantasy land where Wiki is your God?

You do know that pretty much everything on their is BS dont you???

If you say all the British inventions, people cities etc etc etc are all shit then fine thats your opinion, we still kicked your ass in the Crimea whichever way you want to call it!

 

 

[Boat + 1,324]

2 hours ago, SUZNV said:

I don't think he means conventional warfare where technically capture the capital and declare victory. What he means the unconventional warfare for a marathon guerrilla  like in Vietnam or Afghan where take back a province doesn't have much meaning. US won all the battles in Vietnam but could not win the war. I don't think US ever lose a battle since WW2 but when withdraw the army, it means mission failed. 

The US's opponents in Afghan and Vietnam didn't have much thing to lose. They can just guerrilla in the mountains/forest and operate a propaganda about foreign occupations  and got their supporters internal cities (including children or woman) do the terrorist parts which will cause chaos and disruption as much as they can to the economy).  While US and allies throwing money to  buy democracy and simulate a normal working economy which won't reach the bottom people and corrupt their native official gov allies with USD, which make them reject responsibility to enjoy the USD they have. The worst case just immigrate to the US. The mainstream in the Western will regularly show of US killing innocent citizens for anti war propaganda. 

One side have only one goal is to kick the foreign out. The other side is talking about democracy, human right, building the economy while majority of the people in the uneducated bottom class were filled with hate, jealousy and believe the happy peaceful prosperous future from the rebel side. 

Inside US and in Europe or any third world countries  would have the protests  and politicians ask why would we kill people in foreign land in the name of democracy and waring industry and not use the people tax money to increase social welfare in the US. How do you think US can win this type of wars?

Yes the other side would break any prosperous promise or freedom and become totalitarian regime but who would care, they won the war. Gradually many of the people may even have stockholm syndrome.

More advance planes won't fix the problem , large GDP doesn't as well but weigh down the US economy much further.  Government spending is borrowing from the future tax. Even if the  government strip out all of the 1% assets, it won't have enough for 3 years spending with current speed yet I guarantee less taxation from other part as  government and public or subsidies sectors doesn't create wealth.

I disagree with the word "easy" he mentions though. 

IMHO, the biggest mistake of US in VN war was the CIA helped overthrow Diem and put US army into South Vietnam. US turned the ideology war into against foreign occupation war, after the French just had left 10 year ago, and faced all the problems I mentioned above. South Vietnam would have more chance but the country would be splited in half. 

I don’t think ground troops have a place in future wars but who knows. I think missiles from a distance is safer and cheaper. Like that entire border could be dead within hours if the desire is there. You call Vietnam and Afghanistan failures. I would call it a choice to control those countries for a period of time vrs elimination of their populations. Those enemies had yet to achieve Axis of evil status who were bent on world domination. There is a difference, at least we used to think that way. Putin is like the birthday candle you can’t blow out. He may have to be trampled to keep from relighting. Lol I do think Putin is all blow. The US and Europe are no threat to Russia. All these demands are ridiculous. If he went home and shut up it would all blow over to be forgotten.

[Boat + 1,324]

Let’s go to Putin needing to be in a political mess to be relevant. He’s like Trump in that respect. Obama and Hillary tried an olive branch or a reset button. Because Putins predecessor had warmed ties. Even offered supply access through Russia to Afghanistan. We’ll then Putin came along and reignited the Cold War. China did the same thing to Obama. Obama calmed down the action in the Middle East and refocused attention back to China and Russia seeing them as the bigger threats. Remember, the Middle East wars were primarily a Republican thing. So here we are today with Russia and China banging on the Dems door. Lol They will find nothing but the middle finger so to speak. Biden will end up tougher to deal with than any previous prez since WWII. Sorry, right or wrong, good or bad, just the way it is. The childish politics of Putin and XI will haunt them. They kinda dumb like Trump.

[SUZNV + 1,197]

1 hour ago, Boat said:

I don’t think ground troops have a place in future wars but who knows. I think missiles from a distance is safer and cheaper. Like that entire border could be dead within hours if the desire is there. You call Vietnam and Afghanistan failures. I would call it a choice to control those countries for a period of time vrs elimination of their populations. Those enemies had yet to achieve Axis of evil status who were bent on world domination. There is a difference, at least we used to think that way. Putin is like the birthday candle you can’t blow out. He may have to be trampled to keep from relighting. Lol I do think Putin is all blow. The US and Europe are no threat to Russia. All these demands are ridiculous. If he went home and shut up it would all blow over to be forgotten.

Serious you have no idea about cost of war. Air bombing is much much more efficient than missiles and cheaper in the effect because they won't get in the same MPV and run on road for missle to strike one by 1.  In guerilla warfare the groups are much much more decentralized, spreading out and a few million dollar cost missile hit a tent cost nothing and kill a group of "cheap" lives, US gain no strategic advantage after that.

Secondly you seriously have entitlement and privileges issues:

1 We are all born equals. You earn nothing when you were born in a powerful country compares to anyone were born in a poor country yet you think you deserve the choice to eliminate or control others? Vietnam strived for independent since colonial time, no different from your ancestors  strive for Independent from the Great Britain (assuming you have British origin). 

Anyone who risks their life for their believes/ideologies are respectable, no matter which sides they are on, except for war crimes which including killing innocents. 

Being born in richer country also doesn't guarantee you are smarter, study or work harder, have more working ethics, more productivity, understand more about warfare or economics. It requires tremendous investment from leisure time, away from entertaining activities such as watching TV, movies, dating, drinking, hunting, read mainstream to find ideologies etc. It even does not make you a better person. 

2 Among US tax usages, you was growing up when public debt was low, nothing compares to now, got cheap student loan (assume you went to college), have a high income job compares to house price and didn't need to compete to the outsourcing workers at least for your earlier career. You can save more, pay  little social security but get back more in the value  (Anyone understand macro economics know  this it is a giant Ponzi scheme that is running out soon, if you don't know google it  and find an article on mainstream).  

And you support more spending on current and future debt that you are not the one who pay back? You have the previous generation pay all the debt for 2 World Wars  and younger generations to ensure your retirements. The entry point for a good career for youngsters nowadays is higher and higher,  with larger student loan and have more debt in their shoulders. They didn't have much chance to vote for these, previous generations did. How many missles could you contribute with your whole life tax, inflation adjusted? Nothing is free. 

Nothing wrong with being born in a good time in a good place, but at least acknowledge that and have some appreciation. If previous generations all had the entitlement attitude, US would not become the super power. They were brave and  shouldered responsibility in much tough time so you can have your good time and feel entitled to things. 

How about all the youngsters who feel entitlement take the excuses that previous generation eat all their cakes and they don't want   to be exploited, they don't want to work yet because they were born in the US, the US government have to pay for them? Do you think we can have good retirement with that attitude?

No wonder you got affected by mainstream so bad. In term of ideology, I am more American than you.

Edited January 12, 2022 by SUZNV

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

2 hours ago, Boat said:

Let’s see, there are over 600 F-35 planes that the Russians can’t see. In stealth mode they can take out 8 tanks or similar equipment in one pass shooting from 45 miles away. In non stealth mode I believe the F-35’s can carry 16 oh those missiles.  So that’s 4800 pieces of Russian equipment. No use going into other air capabilities. 

Why are you overselling the Lockheed equipment anymore than they already do?

Nobody claims the stealth jets as being completely invisible. Only "reduced visibility" If you read even smaller print, you would find that stealth does not work against decimeter and meter band radar. That is, no problem in seeing stealth aircraft at all. The disputed point (from US side) remains.whether those bands are of any use for weapon guidance. Are you with me on this line of inquiry so far?

Having 600 F-35s somewhere is not the same as deploying them all at once. If you mean the SDBs, the actual number is likely 4-24 (not sure they were able to upgrade the weapons bay for the VTOL one, 8 inside + 16 outside are possible at once)

You are entirely wrong to think of the SDB as anything remotely close to one-shot, one-kill weapon. Very far from it. It is a very small glide bomblet, that is is slow and has limited ability to steer. I am not actually convinced of it being any good against mobile targets. You could claim a 100% hit probability against a tank if you've got a good old anti-tank missile like Hellfire. But, there isn't one for the F-35. The British are working on something like that, in the form of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEAR_3

which appears to be a compactified Brimstone. 130 km is plenty, so the ability to deliver depends solely on the quality of fire and forget.  SDB - not so much. First, you've got to decide, whether you try a sneak attack or saturation. From Israeli activities in Syria, sneak does not work that well. They go for saturation using F-15s, as obviously much better platform for overt payloads than F-35. How many SDBs they lose, they don't tell, but it is a significant number.

As a rule of thumb, using an aircraft to engage a ground target without having an advantage to your standoff range is a dubious exercise. That is, you have to come to within 45 miles to the Russians first, without having any magical stealth claims? How are going to do that? An F-35 overloaded to the brim got to be about as snappy of strike fighter as a flying brick. Also note, that max 45 miles are also specified for maximum altitude. That is, the further you want any passive munition to fly, the higher you need to release it. Which is not going to be exactly contributive to your aircraft being low observable. What would prevent the Russian to send a faster missile to great you from the ground while you are trying to release SDBs?

OK, first line of defense all the Russian tanks got. Even ancient ones. The tank injects some diesel into the end of its exhaust pipe and produces a huge cloud of noxious fumes from incompletely combusted soot. Let's see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-53/B_StormBreaker

Semi-active laser - no, IR - no, GPS - no. Leaving us with inertial and X-band radar. Inertial is really the primary I assume, being a glorified form of a PID controller from a household fridge.See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_control

That is, at any given time, you assume that your target is somewhere very close to where it was before. You identify it, you converge the differential to min. Same as fridge trying to hit a preset target temperature. Very cheap. Fairly effective. Cannot recover from completely losing the track of the target for a short time.

Which leaves the X-band. Requires a suspension of disbelief. So far, US has not been able to demonstrate a radar which sees jack under 200m. Official minimal engagement altitude for the Patriot, BTW, so it is officially not suitable against skimming missiles.Only natural, with the radar derived from those on fighter jets. You tell me, how does your radar tell a tank from railroad locomotive that is nearby, for example? There is a lot of oddly shaped metal cans on the ground. The official mission is some kind of area denial for ground vehicles (no-drive-zone) now.

Oh, and for the purposes of argument the cloud o'noxious fumes that is not permeable to radar also exists, though I haven't seen a tank doing that. More like protecting a fixed site against aerial observation. Probably mixes it some metallic particulates.

Indeed, why go into air capabilities when ground AA suffices. Exhibit A: Latest

Pantsir-SM upgrade.

https://www.defenseworld.net/news/30322/Drone_Destruction_Range_of_Russian_Pantsir_SM_Air_Defense_System_Increased_by_30_#.Yd8U5lko__U

Now, the engagement range is up to 40-ish km, detection from 75km. There are also ER missiles to target the aerial platform. The obvious intention is to avoid a Syrian style slugfest where Israel F-15s make a timely escape and there are only the actual projectiles to shoot down. Which is unpleasant because we are exchanging projectiles of equatable cost. The sure do see them, despite such a small thinkg having an obviously smallish radar footprint. How do you intend to make a timely escape on an overloaded F-35 flying way too high for everybody to see? The little missiles are about Mach 5 fast.

And, special bonuses for a point defense scenario. That is, I have a CIWS placed exactly where you want to attack. Then I can use cheap bullets and shells

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/2s38.htm

(This thing is potentially available as just the robot turret fitting various APC, not a whole BTR 3, but there is preciously little evidence of that in English) So, you basically ought to be able to take out something like a drone at up to 12km range within two rounds with timed fuze. Hm, this seems to be fairly BS.

Here, just the turret CIWS

http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product5170.html

the vehicle remains a regular APC or whatever it was. Not much novelty with a human operator. Here it is the previous iteration of same as radar guided flak gun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZP_S-60

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZSU-57-2

and WWII anti-tank gun

As well as their Western relatives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_mm_anti-tank_gun_M1943_(ZiS-2)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_57_mm_Naval_Automatic_Gun_L/70

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_6-pounder

OK, I decidedly lost count of this family. These are the primaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_6-pounder_Nordenfelt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_6-pounder_Hotchkiss

They are all 57mm rimmed cartridges called "Fixed QF" which just means rifle-like, only large. All got somewhat different nominal lengths.. Since we reduced this to about two arms of the happy Rothchild clan imitating competition / trying to sell to all the sides in an upcoming war, some 200 years ago, we can safely assume that the rounds are intended to telescope.

(chamber != bore, or more rim) Also happening in connection with "cased telescoping ammo"

US military are psyched and bankrolling much dough for what is essentially a plastic shotgun shell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoped_ammunition

So are those thing 200 years past their prime or the latest stealthiest square shaped Swedish warships? Much potential for freebie ammo anybody could share. I am psyched.

This sort of stuff renders mass attacks by SDBs not very effective in point defense context. Instead of 4800 Russian systems you intend to hit at once, you gonna meet about 9600 bullets. Previously, these sorts of AA systems got removed out of circulation because the B-52 started to fly too high for gun based flack. But, making them easier to pick up with SAMs in the end. How high or low your hundreds of F-35s loaded with SDBs intend to fly?

I immediately thought of a few obvious improvements. One is switching to tank-like smoothbores firing projectiles that are fin-stabilized in the back but keep the fragmentation timed fuze in front. Think of the whole plastic shotgun shell above as a discarding sabot that is per-discarded. This ought to allow for much higher projectile speeds compared to rifled guns.

A secondary observation appears to be my own. The basic idea is to allow some of the gases to expand in some forward direction, which is a problem most proposed ceaseless and ceaselessness plastic cartridge share. Inability to get a very good seal on the forward lip made out of fluff. So, you get some of your fast expanding gases to expand and fill a largish volume, like a piston, for example winding out a return spring only in front, not back. After some point, with you projectile already leaving you starting to return, compressing the pre-expanded volume again. Here, you use a largish size of the engaged part to compensate for not having much speed, by forcing the gas back through narrow passage it came through. Basically, you can save up the explosive forces, applying them more gradually over time while you projectile is is still in the barrel.  Say, you shoot for a constant pressure behind your projectile for the duration of the barrell, despite the volume you leave behind getting larger! Sorry, no picture. I may have just invented this one. Looked around at various recoil compensation systems various advanced Russian rifles spot. They all seem to counterbalance some reciprocating components by clever mechanical means. This is operated by gas. Much simpler. I found no gas-operated recoil balancing system so far, which is odd. You simply pre-recoil a sufficiently large part into forward direction to compensate for regular recoils. Allows for higher rate of fire and better aimed shot, with larger propellant loads. You are welcome to correct me on any of this. The basic idea is to extend the range of conventional and cheap computer-aided artillery to supersonic engagements at so called visual range or just beyond (BVR) Rather dubiously, this is around 40km right now, which is like really at the limit of what the latest IRST or hypothetical Hawkeye with a vision like bird of pray can optically resolve. Personally, I don't get that. Ought to be maximum engagement range.for radar. But since you did not want to hear about air-to-air, I don't have to look for the nifty applet that computes it between two aircraft at attitude. For ground-to-air, and visa-versa, it is simple. An aircraft flying in 12 km altitude will be just rising over horizon as seen from the ground when it is about 400km away. The converse is also true. This is the hint in S-400. We know where you keep your AWACS jumbo highlighting the scene for everybody "stealth". It and S-400 will see each other about simultaneously. Not a survivable engagement for an unwieldy AWACS, which got nothing to protect it but this largish range. Therefore, all the stealth jets must revert to using the radar in active mode. Therefore, they are toast. No longer stealth. What else have you got?

Next, the high money option. Don't want air-to-air, we put it on the ground vehicle.  It is supposed to be small enough.. 400 km is good enough for now, though up to 1.500km! are potentially possible. Behold, the Gremlin

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/gremlin-gzur.htm

Which is a sufficiently small hypersonic scramjet to attach to a fighter aircraft and be usable for AA (or to some light vehicle on the ground) Is that BVR enough for you? You better be stealthy, because the minute you are seen, you are dead. Literally. A Mach 9 missile covers 114 miles in a minute. When you are only half-way towards your perfect waypoint 45 miles away. Why the bomblet train? Might as well be bringing hand-grenades! Ought to start feeling stupid just about now at the latest. 600? Bring it on.

 

 

 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

First of all, in the West, especially in the USA, you currently have the highest inflation in January in last 40 years.

So I  suggest encircling Russia even more, surrounding it with NATO bases and put more sanctions.

This way  you will definitely have lower inflation this year and Europe will have natural gas and crude oil as well as coal at an extremely promotional price for allies.

Anyway, this is such a wonderful strategy to force Russia into an alliance with China.

Is Ukraine really worth the resources of all of Siberia working for the benefit of the Chinese economy?

[Tomasz + 1,608]

The Bne Intellinews business magazine recently summarized in a online recording that with oil prices of almost $ 100 and gas prices of about $ 1,000, Russia earned over $ 120 billion on raw materials in the last year more than initially assumed, and is said to have one of the largest reserves of financial resources in the world  so is rather "bullet proof" for further anti-Russian sanctions, so  is pressing West because why not when the winds are blowing on the Russian sails?

Translating this into plain language, Russia has sanctions against NS II in quite deep respect.

If the West really prefers to pay $ 500 or even $ 1,000 for 1,000 m3 of gas, this is probably not a Russia's problem.

The end of NS II saga  will be exactly like that - at the end of 2024, Russia will tell Germany and the Greens in the West. Transit through Ukraine is  no longer possible because there is no  transit contract.

On the other hand, Energiewiendie and green madness in Europe will be at full speed and  nuclear power plants were  closed long time  ago.

Maybe you will have a new ones after at least 15 years and only if everything goes well.

 Well then you will have to decide - either gas through NS I and NS II or no NG  at all.

This is how the editor in Kommersant summs it up (in a nice literary language, of course) 

Both sides looses.  Russia and the West. Only China is gaining.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

And in fact, as I mentioned earlier this is a  brotherly aid not  for Europe, but only for China, which recently launched conserved coal-fired power plants at an express pace putting a clear and deep fuck on the green dreams of eliminating coal as an energy resource.

This way Chinese buy less gas so the JKM  in Asia goes down

Anyway, the price of NG around 1000 $ for 1000 m3 in Europe  only a year ago seemed impossible, and if someone would give such price forecast for NG he would be considered crazy.

And today the price about 1000 dollars is considered to be very low, so Russophobes jump with clear joy - the Russians got a defeat because its only 800 not 1200 or 2.000 like week ago.

And they don't get who gets paycheck for gas like that recently.

In recent memory Poland cried wolf because we paid a scandalous price about 500 - this was highest level in Europe for only one year at hight of energy boom in 2011.

So it was unimaginable price and this week I read a sober article that Gazprom is loosing infuence because its lo longer 2000 $ but "only" about 1000.

So 1.000 is now cheap NG. But 500 some years ago was unacceptable.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

What was required to trade.  Russia wins important concessions from the US and NATO, but not on key issues

Elena Chernenko https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5158345?from=top_main_2

The United States and its European allies declared their readiness to meet Russia halfway on a number of issues that they had refused to even discuss for many years. This is the result of a multi-day diplomatic marathon at the level of Russia-USA and Russia-NATO. We are talking, among other things, about limiting the deployment of missile systems, reducing the scale of exercises, and resuming contacts between the military. At the same time, NATO does not intend to abandon its "open door" policy and is not ready to withdraw forces and infrastructure to the 1997 positions, as Moscow demands. The situation in relations between Russia and the West is still tense and unpredictable.

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (right), only Ukraine and 30 member countries of the alliance have the right to decide when Kiev is ready to become a member of the alliance. To which Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko said that such an approach categorically does not suit Russia

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (right), only Ukraine and 30 member countries of the alliance have the right to decide when Kiev is ready to become a member of the alliance. To which Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko said that such an approach categorically does not suit Russia

Negotiations between Russia and the United States in Geneva and within the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels ended with mixed results. On the one hand, Washington and its allies expressed their readiness to start substantive negotiations on a whole range of issues that Moscow has been unsuccessfully promoting over the past years. This, in particular, is about the proposal of Russian President Vladimir Putin to introduce a moratorium on the deployment in Europe of systems previously banned under the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles. The President launched this initiative in September 2019, shortly after the treaty ceased to exist. A year later, Vladimir Putin submitted to Western countries an updated proposal for a moratorium. However, neither the first nor the second version of the document interested the United States and its allies (only France expressed its readiness to at least discuss them publicly, however, there was no substantive discussion). Both American officials and, for example, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have repeatedly called the Russian initiative "not credible" and "unpromising."

After Russia went on a military and diplomatic offensive, pulling troops to the border with Ukraine and presenting a number of ultimatum demands to the United States and NATO, formalized in the form of draft two treaties, the position of Western countries on this issue changed.

At the talks in Geneva and Brussels, representatives of the United States and the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance declared, including publicly, their readiness to discuss substantively with Russia - on conditions of reciprocity - the issue of refusing to deploy ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles on European territory.

In addition, both the United States and other NATO countries have expressed their readiness to start negotiations with Russia on de-escalation measures. Among the proposals announced by Western diplomats, many intersect with ideas that Moscow has unsuccessfully promoted since 2014, when NATO almost completely curtailed cooperation with Russia. We are talking, in particular, about limiting the scale and intensity of military exercises in certain areas, improving mechanisms for preventing dangerous incidents, and resuming military communication channels.

Russia and the United States did not agree on anything in particular, but at least they did not quarrel at all

During the meeting of the Russia-NATO Council, the Russian delegation was also asked to restore the work of its mission at the headquarters of the alliance (provided that NATO would also be able to return its mission to Moscow). Recall that Russia suspended the work of its permanent mission to NATO after eight people from the few employees who remained there after the previous two rounds of restrictions were expelled from there on charges of espionage. It is possible that in the current situation, NATO will also agree to consider the possibility of raising the maximum number of Russian mission personnel to some levels more acceptable to Moscow.

On the whole, however, representatives of the alliance member countries both behind closed doors and publicly repeated the word “dialogue” most often, talking about how they would like to see relations with Russia.

“I believe in NATO's approach towards Russia, which we call ambivalent. We must show determination, strength and unity. But at the same time, we are always ready to interact through a meaningful dialogue with Russia,” Jens Stoltenberg said. “Russia is our neighbor, we must address common security concerns together. We've done this before, it's possible."

However, it is still unclear whether Russia will be ready to resume a meaningful dialogue with the West, given the fact that the United States and NATO categorically refused to discuss two points of fundamental importance for it: on the alliance’s refusal to further expand to the east and on the withdrawal of troops and infrastructure from the territory of countries, became members of NATO after 1997. In Brussels, US First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, using virtually the same expressions, made it clear that in these two areas a compromise with Russia is impossible.

The West intensifies the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine

This also applies to Moscow's priority issue of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. “All allies are united in regard to the main principle of the alliance: each country is free to choose its own path. Only Ukraine and 30 NATO members can decide when Kiev is ready to become a member of the alliance. Russia does not have veto power over whether Ukraine can join the organization. The allies are ready to support Kiev on the path to NATO membership,” Jens Stoltenberg said on this occasion.

The head of the Russian delegation at the talks with NATO, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko, in turn, said that this categorically does not suit Russia. “NATO understands the principle of indivisibility and security selectively. In the eyes of NATO, it exists only for the members of the alliance, and NATO is not going to take into account the security interests of others. We firmly believe that attempts to build security against Russia without Russia's participation are doomed to failure. We will not allow this to be done,” he warned. “If NATO switches to a policy of deterrence, then it will be counter-deterrence on our part. If it is intimidation, then there will be counterintimidation. If this is a search for vulnerabilities in the Russian defense system, then there will be a search for vulnerabilities in NATO. This is not our choice, but there will be no other way, if we fail to reverse the current very dangerous course of events.” According to him, Russia will take all necessary measures to ensure that the threat from NATO "is countered by military means, if diplomatic means fail." “There is no other way,” the deputy minister noted, without specifying what kind of military means they might be talking about.

It follows from his comments that Russia will insist on consideration of all its proposals and demands as a whole.

“If we talk about safety, this is not the Chuguev Philharmonic, we play here, we don’t play here, we wrap herring here. All the elements of our proposal are interconnected,” Alexander Grushko said. “Our proposals cannot be viewed as a bun from which you can peck out something, some raisins.”

At the same time, the diplomat made it clear that, despite the contradictory positions on a number of issues of principle for Moscow, the Russian side does not intend to slam the door and is ready to continue negotiations. He urged NATO to also put its vision of the future security architecture in Europe in writing, as Russia did in December. NATO also expressed the hope that Russia would agree to holding new meetings for a more detailed analysis of issues on which the parties have the same interests. At the same time, representatives of the United States and the alliance once again threatened Russia with serious consequences if it decides to "aggression", for example, against Ukraine.

On Thursday, Russian proposals and demands will be considered at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna. The discussion promises to be heated - both Ukraine and Georgia are members of the OSCE. However, the OSCE, unlike the US and NATO, does not solve anything.

Elena Chernenko

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Russia knows perfectly well that the West is carefully calculating.

Henry IV wondered if Paris was worth another conversion to Catholicism.

The West is wondering, however, whether Ukraine is really worth the fact that Russia, pressed to the wall,would widely and directly, not only through only Russian companies, allowed the hungry Chinese economy to access the raw material resources of the entire Russian Siberia and the Russian Arctic.

IMHO I guess the West is not that suicidal though because it looks like GAME OVER.

Of course it is not. So that is why he constantly calculates, as if he would not harm himself more than Russia by imposing sanctions on her.

Only that this method of operation seems to be exhausting its usefulness in the context of the ongoing commodity boom.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Tomasz

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 1/11/2022 at 3:10 AM, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Except it was the other way around - USSR saved the rest of the world.

The USSR deserves no such credit because it was no better than Hitler and only one of his opponents. The USSR was a disaster for the formerly free nations. 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

3 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Andrei do you live in a fantasy land where Wiki is your God?

You do know that pretty much everything on their is BS dont you???

If you say all the British inventions, people cities etc etc etc are all shit then fine thats your opinion, we still kicked your ass in the Crimea whichever way you want to call it!

 

 

Wiki is not perfect, but sure better than Daily Mail, don't you think? Sorry, who is "their" in this case, come again? Yes, pretty much everything the British tabloids write is fantasy if you mean them.

Sure you did. A tactical win. Not as much by yourself, but by everybody else. The best forces had to be kept at the Western border where the Germans and the Austrians were also contemplating jumping in. There was also a simultaneous war in Caucasus, with (or between) some new customers of us

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_War

Where did I say the British inventions are not real? There is obvious distinction between scientific or engineering inventions published through appropriate venues and universally understood and fictional narratives. Which are also, quite often, perpetuated by academic establishment for political benefit. Most are current affairs, but specifically the British are very busy recreating narratives about historical events long gone. This is why there ought not be any kind of science based on "scientific consensus" There is right and there is wrong. Not following your own self-professed axiomatic base is certainly wrong.

Lets take the Darwinian evolution, Survival of the fittest thing. A theory that is not really wrong, but in the dire need of the overhaul. I am increasingly the opinion that it was invented to justify social Darwinism first and foremost. Lets compare to these guys, shall we?

The priest says "Stand up and walk, son of man" (A Bible quote)

How is a dolphin supposed to walk? Well, presumably using hoofs. Being a cetacean, which is a kind of even-toed undulate. Some kind of pig. Still borderline feasible, by introducing the hippo as the missing link. But now get this. They are all herbivore? Dunno if it is an order, or what anymore, but a respected British boffin had officially discovered that you can entirely determine what an animal ate while it was alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore#Etymology

Thus, it is so. I have a better idea. Specifically orcas obviously eat ice cream! Because all of their teeth arei uniformerly conically shaped and thus perfect for keeping spare scones! See, in any serious science, this means that the British boffins work is falsified by counterexample.. Teeth tell us jack about marine mammals. Moreover, the provisioning attributes have no business to be so high up the taxonomical tree. For example, is great panda some kind racoon or bear, whose teeth and digestion setup suggest it eats meat. Therefore, it must be the evil CCP regime who forces it to eat bamboo!

Yet, somewhere nearby, there is a walrus. Who is a pinniped (seal), and thus of canieformia (critters that are shaped similarly to dogs) of order carnivora (who only eat meat) What a bunch of bunk. In what way is a seal dog-like? Here, an example how a suggestion from an unapproved source is being treated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

Even though it is up to the highest standard possible for sorta-natural sorta-science that anthropology is.It forms a falsifiable hypothesis first. Can they falsify any of it? Nope. Ignore and call bunk science. Some of it satisfies a stricter criteria I use.Is there a better explanation of any of this. For example, it turns out that  humans got an adaptation called descended larynx, which is possibly the diving bell formed by internals of our nose, which is what allows us to dip under water without flooding the nostrils. I am not sure there is any other land mammal who does that. Most actually have no capability to voluntarily hold their breath whatsoever. and can only swim with head above waer. Most other great apes are actually significantly denser than water and cannot swim. Only walk on the ground. (which they've just about seen silverback gorillas do and only up to a neck. After that, they'll flood their nostrils) The chims have a pathological fear of water and won't go anywhere near even if their life depending on it. Ain't it beautiful? But you must first earn special academic hat to become a minor member of the cult. Than, you spend next 20 years collecting tassels and writing papers on coprolites (fossilized turds) working on your citation index. And only when you become a patriarch, may you deviate on the metaphysical. Like what if, the entire universe is made out of a single electron? (Feyman, being an idiot. Err, being autistic. My bad, because I am no patriarch)

Now, behold the modest power of falsifiable hypothesis. Behold, the infamous "Surgeon's photograph" which put the Daily Mail on the map.

Supposedly, some special effects boffins conclusively proved it to be a forgery as late as 1994 using their tools. Which, as I happen to know involve knowing where the current fashionable dogma in the field of paleontology comes from. From the exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to dinosaurs. Say, what if, the dinosaurs had feathers? They go and redecorate accordingly without much ado. Lo and behold, and the paleontology community gets a whiff. Papers are written, citations are made. Soon enough and BBC bankrolls a posh animated feature on feathered dinosaurs.

Now, the hypothesis. What if Nessie is a proverbial black swan? Very large and very early. Harbinger of unexpected news as per Taleb. Unless she was a goose. Which is kinda more of the same. Once upon a time, somebody at the Smithsonian failed to arrange the fossils into kinematically meaningful arrangement and now they are helpless. Suppose that there were once gigantic pterodactyls that we a lot alike our aquatic fawl, only feeding on giant sharks instead of tadpoles. We also see two similar but distinct kinds. A kind with a longer, but thinner neck, and a kind with a sturdier, shorter neck. One occupies a very similar niche to a swan, and another one to a goose, only scaled up. Therefore, should Nessie be one of the kind with the longer neck, as she's is usually drawn, must she necessarily be forming it into a hook shape, like a swan. Because, it allows a swan to quickly extend its reach, to pick up something from the bottom of Loch Nessa or to pinch someone. Than, quickly retract into safe position. Because the longer neck is fragile. See how this works? This makes all depictions of Nessie who supposedly held its neck maximally extended upward (sometimes forward) as if she was a floating giraffe, strictly a period piece. Which lasts for as long as somebody at the Smithsonian does not redecorate it accordingly. They usually do.

Ah, I can do it all day. Watching birds, I mean. Starting with the Urvogel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

who is so deformed that could only down head first like a brick. It happens to still be with us, as the Arctic owl.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flookaside.fbsbx.com%2Flookaside%2Fcrawler%2Fmedia%2F%3Fmedia_id%3D5236780183002367&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Favantgardens.org%2Fphotos%2F-landing-print-in-the-snow-by-an-owl-photo-umokona05-on-reddit%2F5236780183002367%2F&tbnid=HgvTKSFF4WAMBM&vet=12ahUKEwjI4KSora31AhWLG-wKHSvgDnoQMygAegUIARDHAQ..i&docid=jtwxYI7WsjiCUM&w=720&h=537&q=arctic owl imprint in snow&ved=2ahUKEwjI4KSora31AhWLG-wKHSvgDnoQMygAegUIARDHAQ

(a lot of times they simply fluff up and drop face forward into the snow where they stand. Instead of actually trying to fly with any amount of dignity or grace. Bird very low on formalism)

Anyhow, this is all fun and games. Anything to keep yourself in the limelight, right? Who else have Daily Mail been framing other than hypothetically swan-like dinosaurs of note? Russians, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter

Also, flushing a government of your own in the process, by co-implicating them of collusion with hypothetical Commies. Which interests me not really, You are welcome to believe in there being any merit in being governed by tabloids inventing vicious shit. But I refuse for any of that crap having anything to do with us. You need to get out of my and my people's life ASAP, while you still can. No, too late for you. I think I am getting a hang of it. How to become a more degenerate and vicious bastards then you are. You are my #1 officially designated enemy nation now. Still learning the ropes. Didn't realize such a depravity even existed till fairly recently.

For now, let us get back to the relatively innocuous  subject of the Crimean War, specifically the minor naval  campaign of the Sea of Azov / aka Siege of Taganrog. Which you, of course, won. Which is the correct storyline. I am getting an impression the reports were written by competing rowing teams from Hogwarts and Cambridge or some such? All protecting family jewels of their own Exhibit A:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Azov_naval_campaign_(1855)

I quote:

Except for Rostov-on-Don and Azov, no town, depot, building or fortification was immune from attack and Russian naval power ceased to exist almost overnight. Contrary to established images of the Russian War, here was a campaign which was well-planned, dynamically led and overwhelmingly successful.

The unauthorised French clasp, reading Mer d'Azoff , was worn by sailors of the French Navy

Short, modest, unclouded by conscious thought. Does have a visual taste, on the account of including the prettiest boats. Which happen to be French. Not very large, but proper warships with full square rig and a deck or two of guns. Why is the French one unauthorized? At stake seem be some British Crimean War awards. No big deal. Nonetheless, in the interest of preservation of metadata am I interested in populating the award lists with the unusually sick, dishonorable and squalid too.

Exhibit B. Different team, going for academic presentation style of excessive length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Taganrog

Which is like the main amphibious assault part of the campaign. Includes an odd group photo? or some other imaging artifact, which I suppose shows something similar to a group photo with a few.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapper-class_gunboat

I just learned about today. Can't tell. Now, the interesting bits. How exactly did they get the barges with pretentious names like HMS Agamemnon into Azov? Those were some of your largest warships (ships of the line), with 3-4 decks of guns and 6+ meter draft. Even if they were to get those into Azov somehow, each would require a local pilot to get around at all times. Since nobody actually seen them in the Azov, I presume they parked the dreadnoughts outside of Azov, released the  "launches" (lifeboats) and went  for a little gentlemanly regata using paddleboats. Russian sources do corroborate exactly 20 armed paddle boats. Except I kinda expected them to be the same time, not all out of whack. Just two French (why not zero or half?), one tug, etc. So does a Russian engraving depict them. Alas, not a photograph. Fun fact. The two of the most senior officers got the first two Victoria Crosses for torching all the storages of stuff in Taganrog. Nothing inherently wrong with that. On the other hand, not much of an achievement either. I reckon Russia should be more encouraging of our people randomly torching your stuff, too. OK, lets say I believe in the British collegiate rowing being that good. Here comes the best part

Following into early successes of those steam gunboats, were 98!!!  of successor class

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albacore-class_gunboat_(1855)

ordered, built within two years and sent to Crimea. Barely any records of those in the Wiki. Also, in 1856 20 more of the version light and 12 final ones when the war was over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerful-class_gunboat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown-class_gunboat

Now, I find no record whatsoever of any of these additional gunboats ever being to Azov (or Baltics, for that matter) The rest of the waters around Crimea are not shallow and don't really need special ship, So, how much of that really got embezzled?

Ultimately, I couldn't care less which of your bases had a river or not. I really am interested in the teredo worm itself. which is badly documented. It is an anaerobic digester of cellulose, a treasure trove of potential environmental-like tech.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

5 hours ago, Tomasz said:

First of all, in the West, especially in the USA, you currently have the highest inflation in January in last 40 years.

So I  suggest encircling Russia even more, surrounding it with NATO bases and put more sanctions.

This way  you will definitely have lower inflation this year and Europe will have natural gas and crude oil as well as coal at an extremely promotional price for allies.

Anyway, this is such a wonderful strategy to force Russia into an alliance with China.

Is Ukraine really worth the resources of all of Siberia working for the benefit of the Chinese economy?

There is no rationality in raw hate.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

19 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Crude oil costs less than bottled water still. If you reckon it is getting expensive, you might try switching to a normally oversized American car instead of a V8 pickup truck you obviously must have? I mean, being a card-carrying red-blooded Republican and despoiler of all things Marxism. You must have one, right? Because what other vehicle comes with a proper rack, capable of properly storing a man's personal shotgun (for grizzlies), a collection of MAGA hats of any color as long as it is red (as fashionable as ever) and a few favorite essays by Romanian gypsy Wurmbrand (bound to look like Lutheran Study Bible

 

Andrei, you are showing your true demonic self. I posted an article about a very inexpensive $20,000 Ford truck which is available in two different FOUR cylinder engines. One of which gets (purportedly) 40 mpg around town. Maybe they are talking about it being available in a hybrid version. 

You are showing a bit of racism by calling Reverend Wurmbrand a gypsy. Anyway he was never a "traveler". What do you have against Romanians? He always prayed for the Russian tormentors that beat him. He was a great man. Not a communist atheist functionary. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

19 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

You are against Marxism because you don't know what it is. You have simply been conditioned to reflexively treat some kind of Marxism as the enemy. In all actuality is it an important economic theory that has been largely overhauled by now. In the same sense as Einstein has been with his famous quip of "most powerful force in the universe being continuously compounded interest" That was before the effective interest rates went negative, for example.

Marxism is not a political formation, contrary to popular belief.

The "Austrian school of economics" is not really. Give individuals more economic freedoms and they will succeeds amounts to having no economic program at all. Not like it hasn't been trying before. Usually leads to some unusually empowered individuals selling some others for organs and the like.

You labor movement was destroyed before it started by the government letting the mob run it. Having said that, the best union rep I ever had was my personal agent and that was in US (he was with the Swiss temp staffing agency Adecco)

You Constitution and Bill of Rights are trivial documents by today's standards. I am sure Uganda got an even prettier version these days. In theory. Look, ancient Iran had more 2.500 years ago

https://www.youthforhumanrights.org/course/lesson/background-of-human-rights/the-background-of-human-rights.html

Specifically, there is an explicit prohibition on owning people for slaves. Which was a source of significant disagreements  with the Ancient Greeks, from whom most of our current information on the Persians comes. Alas, being the forefathers of the Western civilization as we know it, the Greeks were quite skillfull to preemptively blaming their worst failing on the others.  Those are the same Persians we see attacking in human waves in "300" Fairly truthful to the Greek propagandist originals though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Cylinder#Human_rights (more extensive, but badly doctored by the Brits, who need an explanation why it is still in the British museum and not in Tehran)

Fun fact - the old Cyrus is the only gentile the Old Testament has a favorable opinion on, on the account of freeing the Jews from Babylonian captivity and even offering to restore their precious Temple on his account. He ruled that his religion, Zoroastrianism, is more of a same than different to Judaism on the account of both being monotheistic. Obviously a great candidate for Jewish Messiah who already was.

Again, there is no point in undermining a document which does nothing much, beyond having ceremonial significance. It's got nothing unusual with possible exception of the right to bear arms and using them to revolt against the government. (which I dare anyone to really try) Neither had the religious fruitcakes founding some of the states as their private not-Islamic caliphates any real intention to actually follow through with the freedom of religion thing. Goes without saying that none of it somehow magically not applying to blacks didn't disturb anyone at all for a very old time. Look at some iconic old Supreme Court cases, like say Dartmouth vs. Delaware. (Decided 2:1 in favor of Dartmouth on the account of them doing charitable work of teaching letters to savages, with dissenting opinion based on the claim that British King George was a bastard, therefore are all titles issued in his name bunk) What does have any of this BS have to do with the issue at hand, which is ex-post-facto (retroactive) application of the law. Mind you, ex-post-facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 (not that it ever deterred Uncle Sam from making them once in a while, anyway)

How could the Commies have underlined something which wasn't there anyway? Incidentally, the Soviet Constitution was, in theory, a lot more extensive than yours. With implementation debatable, as usual. Nonetheless, it granted all citizens the right to have a job. (When it turned out that some people simply don't want to work no matter what, they made it a crime to not work. A fairly petty one, in  the practice though. The Soviet constitution also granted everyone a right to have a home. Which they kinda sorta followed through on, eventually. With the caveat of Soviet block housing being nothing much. Look at it now though. The rate of property ownership in Russia is higher than even in US (81% vs 65%) Certainly more than Western Europe. Like Germany got 51% The EU average is 70% but also thanks to former Eastern Block

https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-ownership-rate-in-europe/

Hungary and Croatia got 91% each, also obviously thanks to free apartment people inherited from the awfully oppressive Commie regimes. Those apartments were nothing much, but they were free. If it is an apartment in Bratsk, it probably still is nothing much. People who inherited a similar apartment at a swanky address in Moscow are fucking millionaires. Just for location's sake.A discredit old Soviet 1-bedroom appartment at a proper address is easily worth more than a 6-bedrom villa in Florida.

Check out this funny chart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_GDP_per_capita

apparently, is Russian average closest to Romania or Costa Rico.The poorest region are where Papua New Guinea is (where most folks wear nothing but a penis gourd for cloth, if I remember right) Moscow corresponds to Czech Republic, while the 4 primary oil producing locales correspond to Luxenburg, Macau, UK and EU average respectively. 3 are fucking heck frozen over, but 4th is actually nice. (isle of Sakhalin, which is a lot like Japan) 2 thus bench above any US state or major city average. How would you like a crappy, but free apartment in Luxembourg? It is worth millions, no matter what.  I know for a fact that the government of Moscow will eventually buy you out at book value. There are no "iconic"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka

block housing left in Moscow at all. Invest in Kievan ones, while they are still around?

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2019/2/25/life-inside-a-kiev-khrushchyovka-soviet-architecture-in-ukraine

My understanding of American Communist Party was that it was used as a grossly commercial proxy by USSR, running complicated business errands with great profit. Trying to undermine your precious values was just the cover story. Look at the founder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Browder

And his grandson, still in the family's Russian trade as of 2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder

the guy responsible for Magnitsky Act? Which I don't need to explain to you is vicious bullshit. Notably happening before there was Ukraine, but in 2012. So, it was about Russia starting to fight back ripping off. Or do you care to explain how do you run the world's most profitable hedge fund raking in 239% return in 1997 Moscow, in a country which was about to default and people made something like $5 a month?

If you want the Constitution to be a living document, you may try to do like the Swiss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgenossenschaft

fame. That's 14th century. Of the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy

fame. Dunno if it was an inspiration, but they were also 13 cantons. Unlike you, they haven't declared much, but started making legal contracts with each other directly. Except of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfaffenbrief

a document saying the "mullahs" got no say in lay affairs. Which is like separation of Church and state, way ahead of its time. Ever since, is a significant amount of important intergovernment work of the Reich (lately, the EU) outsourced to regular contracts in Switzerland. For example, is the very

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg

 not really, but a hint in the direction of Switzerld. Possibly explaining how somebody named Habsburg always won the elections for Holy Roman Emperor after a while? See that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg,_Switzerland

It's never been a nobility title, cause Switzerland hasn't got any. The place has been under municipal administration for as long as anybody remembers. The suitable castle and coat-of-arms with a picture thereof are courtesy of local municipal administration in search of tourist attractions.

Note that gradma Liz used a similar trick for her "Windsor" plot. The Castle of Windsor is a property originally purchased by William the Conqueror on the open real estate market and intended to be legacy free. Never been a feudal fief issued by some previous king, as far as anybody could tell. He actually had a second "poison pill" against dynastic takeover installed in Winchester, Cornwall, but that one is only open to dudes. Involves re-enacting the Arthurian legend, possibly pulling some kind of Excalibur from a stone.

Austrian law prohibits the existence of nobility titles and Habsburgs explicitly, yet they do have one who's a parliamentary deputy. They didn't know what to do with him, following the argument that he's got no other name as (von) Austria or Habsburg (which was never a von) and no passport other than Spanish diplomatic one. I think they let him be called "Austria" which is the boring option. That makes him a markgrave in employ of Bavarian duke. Not really a royalty. Military administration in charge of frontier region, like Sheriff of Nottingham or Ukrainian hetman in employ of the Polish king.

The important hereditary property would be the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Este

which somehow belonged to the Emperor's bro, Franz-Ferdinand. Who is best known for getting himself whacked in Sarajevo causing the WWI. Possibly that was so important about him?

Anyhow, the modern Austrian Constitution is also in the form of a contract, called Staatsvertrag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_State_Treaty

largely with USSR. Austria commits to treating the Soviet war graves and gigantic ugly monument to the Soviet Liberator-Soldier nicely and commits to neutrality and watching over potential Nazi revival activities. Pretty much it. Or else.

There has never been a more enthusiastic nation liberated by the Soviets. Because, if the Soviets liberated the Austrians, the Austrians are among the victims of Nazism. As opposed to Nazis as such. Which would put them into the same category as Germany and Japan. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Enemy_State_Clause

Which de jure means that they have no sovereign right to integrity of their borders other states may claim. Logically, it is actually de jure legal for anybody to wage war on them and annex their pieces

 

Hitler was an Austrian. Maybe they were ashamed of what he did.