how vital D-day was

The landings by the Allies led by the American and British forces on the 6th of June 1944 on the golden beaches of Normandy in northern France weren't only important because of the fact it gave the Allies a solid foot hold on Western Europe in which they could from there fight the Nazi's on a second front to that of their allies the Soviets, the Allies had a landing force of 175,000 men crossing the English Channel, by the end of the month after securing ports in northern France they had 1,600,000 men and machines on mainland Europe.

Although I may have sounded indifferent to the Allies fight in the Europe as compared to the Soviets who did the bulk of the fighting (killing 4 of every 5 German soldiers killed in the war) the landings in Normandy were vital to the timely defeat of the Germans.

Not only that but the speedy delivery of logistical support for those fighting against the Germans but also carried with it a good psychological effect on the millions of Soviets fighting on the Eastern Front.



The Soviets had suffered over 20,000,000 casualties after being lain under heavy siege by German oppression for nearly three years.

They had suffered massively and their land had been destroyed during the start of the German offensive because of their scorched earth policy which included the dissembling of factories and burning of crops for miles (that can't have been good for their economic growth of industry), to say they were weary of war would be an understatement.

But they had a fighting chance against the German forces, using massive infantry they overran the Germans where they could, eventually 80% of the German Army were sent fighting in the Eastern Front, several of these forces were pulled from Western Europe to avail in the fight to defend the Reich, the Luftwaffe had been put on the defense of Germany, therefore it would be unable to cover several other parts of Europe.

After the Atlantic Wall was formed in Europe, Hitler thought that any landing would be a failure and that if the Allies failed to spearhead a secure reinforcement zone in the north of France the Allied troops would be trapped and slaughtered by the German Army forces.

However history turned out to be much different, if this had been the case it could have seriously broke the morale of the Soviet Army and might have even prompted Stalin to except a peace treaty with Hitler bringing them back to where they started with the 1939 agreement, which would have seen Soviet forces drawing the border with Nazi Europe in eastern Poland, although Hitler didn't have anything sufficient to hit the several American bases in England with at this time, come 1945 if the D-day landings had failed the Americans would have probably hit the heart of Germany with the atomic bomb and burn the Reich from inside out. (That would be a very alternative to the history we have of two Japanese fishing cities being hit by these deadliest weapons in a vicious attempt to deter the Soviets).

However even though the tremendous sacrifice put forward by the Soviets (something that isn't properly remembered) did sufficiently strain Germany's war machine the timely injection of aid that came in the form of the Normandy landings helped the Third Reich come down before it had a chance to properly revive itself and cause more unthinkable damage and horror.

why an end to NATO is a good thing

An interesting proposal was put forward by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

A future Trans-Atlantic security pact, RT gave an interesting analysis suggesting that this will in turn end NATO once and for all:



If this came through this would mean a new peace of our time breakthrough, one we haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, however since then Russia and the west haven't exactly had the best chances of being best friends or allies against each other, and the existence of NATO in a post Warsaw Pact world is a sad reminder that the west hasn't taken off it's cold war parachute pants!



From recent times close incidents that could have brought the NATO countries and the Russian Federation close to a war, two notable incidents would be:

* An incident in 1995 where Norwegian scientists in cooperation with NASA launched a two-stage rocket. This caused a Russian nuclear alert since the rocket was launched from an area where Americans subs operated and the missile had the same launch profile as the launch of a Trident SLBM.

Boris Yeltsin had ten minutes to make the decision of whether or not to authorize a nuclear launch, this was a major screw up considering lack of communications and understanding between both parties involved

* There was also the Pristina airfield incident in Kosovo in 1999, where Russian troops occupied the airfield in the wake of the war, NATO-Saceur general Clark ordered British troops to confront them and kick them out. The British commander in charge refused and stated "I am not going to start World War III for you".



The war in South Ossetia in August of 2008 which saw Russia launching an offensive against Georgia cost 2,000 people their lives (mostly Ossetian civilians murdered by the Georgian Army), the background to Georgia's war planning are much more serious considering it was planning to join NATO (Georgia is not near the North Atlantic, neither is Afghanistan but I guess that doesn't matter), it had been supplied with military hardware by 15 countries just before that war!

From NATO countries the Georgian Army received about:

* 300 APC's from the NATO countries
* 100 tanks
* 67 artillery pieces
* 99 mortars
* 150 anti tank systems
* 200 portable anti aircraft units

* The French Air Force had been prepared to deliver four Mirage fighters
* The Americans were to supply 15 Black Hawk helicopters

The Ukraine supplied a further 90 APC's, their extremist leader Yushchenko has been opting to join NATO but has since been vetoed (from more responsible European countries), so has Georgia which is good since NATO isn't aligning itself with fascists!



That being said NATO has gone too far, the arms business does make strange bed partners and the donor countries of these arms can't be blamed for the damage caused, but with extremists in power from former Soviet countries in eastern Europe could lead Russia and Europe into a dangerous hostile situation.

Russia shouldn't be viewed by Europe as a potential threat any more than any European country should be considered a potential threat, the damage caused by the South Ossetian was a failure for the international community and envisioned some horrible hypocrisy on behalf of the west.

The Russian Federation is a country that has had a lot of history in it's short life and was run into the ground after the USSR collapsed, today it matters, not only for military reasons but for it's size and influence in other parts of the world, a Trans-Atlantic security pact stretching from North America, through Europe to the Russian Far East would more than likely be a more positive change* in the long term for the future rather than trying to decide whether or not to let old Soviet republics with bitter extremists align themselves with most of the great military powers of the west, that would certainly be a disaster waiting to happen!

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seldom gets credit for promoting real change!

same difference: American Iraq and Soviet Afghanistan

As the "the Naughties" come to close one has to wonder if the world has become better, worse of indifferent, we as a people (in the west) have become used to the American occupational wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the subsequent (sometimes daily) casualties that go with them), the former one has to wonder with detailed hindsight was a wise move to any stretch of the imagination.

The policy of using direct military might to promote an ideology over a third nation was something that drove the Americans to arming the Afghan Mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Army when they intervened on behalf of the socialist Afghan government in Kabul on Christmas Eve in 1979.

Regardless of the fact that 1,000,000 Afghans were slaughtered during the Red Army's nine year presence in the country the truth is from their point of view their comrades were being slaughtered since these rural dwellers of Afghanistan where being armed with high-tech portable anti-tank and anti aircraft guns, something that one their position couldn't take lightly.

Now lets look at Iraq since 2003:

The US had it's fair share in the killings of millions in Central America the same time the Soviets were doing their deeds with the Afghans, but when a third party arms insurgents (in this case Iran to insurgents in the Shia south of Iraq) the Americans don't take this too kindly when they feel the hurt it can cause:



What is different in this case however is the fact that the United States invading Iraq and the Soviets intervening in Afghanistan was that the US went in with the ideals of promoting freedom and democracy, however ended up bogged down in a bloody war with thousands of Iraqis fighting an occupational power for their own freedom instead of having their country transformed into a geopolitical platform for the countless cooperation's to promote their free market ideals.

Well over a million Iraqis have been killed in the past ten years, and probably a million more from the ten years before following the sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

The Iraq War has proven over the years that the US Army isn't fit for what it's doing there and most Iraqis resent them for what they have done, the same as the rural Afghans did with the Soviets back in the 1980's, making it okay (in one sense for the Americans) to arm the Taliban of its day, of which Ronald Reagan called:

"the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers"

The dissidents of which American forces in Afghanistan are saying is the main threat to eventual peace and democracy spreading across the region!

The Solution:

The western world should adopt a limited government when looking at countries such as Iraq (and Iran) and under the United Nations if necessary the powers of west (and east) should intervene unilaterally to secure regions directly threatened by these so called rogue states, instead of empires from both sides of the world competing on spreading ideals into indifferent countries and in turn ending up being hypocrites in their own modern history.

the bulk of the fighting

The most familiar image relating to the turning point of World War II in the Western world is the iconic image of American and British forces landing at the beaches in Normandy as they proceeded to liberate France from Nazi oppression, however what they fought through was an already war ravaged Europe, it took them six months to conquer what the German Army did in six weeks!

Not only was that because they had unchallenged air space for most of the way but it was also because only 20% of the German Army was all that was left behind to defend that space, not until the Battle of the Bulge which saw the Germans launch a massive offensive against a larger force of Americans using their big artillery guns.

The bulk of the fighting that had slowly eroded the solidity of the German military might was the war on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, which saw the Russians not only fighting back the invading Nazi Army but also Finns and several other states seeking independence from Stalin's Soviet Russia (most notably Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).



But what the Soviets did do was break the back of the German Army after being besieged in their major cities of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad (which saw 20,000,000 people slaughtered), the Soviet counter offensives broke the back of the German Army which had broken into three divisions (Army Group North, South, Centre) which ended up too widely stretched to defend Germany itself.



Emptying the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland and several other smaller states in Eastern Europe of German forces the Soviets eventually entered Germany itself and captured Berlin meeting the Allies at the Elbe River not long afterwords, they were the biggest single party to contribute to the war effort of ridding Europe of the Nazi's.

Even though they received American equipment from the Lend Lease they gave the manpower logistical support and the practical elements of winning such a huge war, right down to the guns, boots and uniforms that made up their large infantry groups.

While the American effort did help Britain fight out a hefty amount of the war in the European Theater, in the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force cut down hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters and from 1941 on had proceeded to fly bombing raids against Germany and the occupied countries in Western Europe, this accelerated into the devastating firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg near the closing stages of the war.

However the Lend Lease from the United States which resupplied Britain during the war cost the equivalent of $500 billion today, a loan that literally bankrupted Britain after the war and was only paid off in 2006!

a small combat record for a big jet

The Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker is an impressive Russian air superiority fighter, first flown in 1983 it was designated to compete with the American teen series fighter such as the F-15, even today it is still well up there (along with it's variants and later models of similar design) and boosts a long 3,530 km range, heavy armament, sophisticated avionics and high agility.

The Su-27 in a sense is similar to the MiG-29, the weapon systems are basically the same, but the Su-27 was designed with a different mission from the start, while the MiG-29 stayed within 100 miles of it's own front lines the Su-27 would penetrate deep into enemy airspace!

But what it lacks (probably for a good reason) of that it's American F-15 counterpart doesn't is combat experience, the only incident where the Su-27 was successfully used in aerial combat was in 1999 during the latter stages of the Ethiopian Eritrean War.

In December 1998 and January 1999 Ethiopia received six ex-Russian Air Force Su-27S and two Su-27US'.



The sad fact was the Eritrean Air Force had MiG-29's which they were using in an attempt to gain their air superiority over the battlefield, shortly after they begun fly CAPs along the embattled border to Eritrea an Eritrean MiG-29 was downed, the following day a second one was downed, both by Su-27's none of which were shot down in the entire war.

That being the only war in which the Su-27 was used in combat as short as it was the war in itself (which saw a lot of other Russian equipment used) was surprising considering these extremely poor African nations had acquired such high-tech equipment and used them in tactically and strategically feasible manners.

In the 2008 South Ossetian War Russian Air Force Su-27's helped gain control of the air space over the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

In the end the Flanker proved it's worth and will surely do so in any future combat in whatever circumstances it will arise from!

the consequences of an attack on Iran

Iran has recently rejected the IAEA-backed proposal regarding it's nuclear program, with the major failure of nuclear talks (that started last October) from both sides.

Along with this Israel has been the biggest hypocrite of all time calling for the disablement of Iran's nuclear program by force "if required", whilst ignoring the fact that they themselves illegally possess nuclear weapons of their own.

A preemptive long range strike (probably primarily against the Nantanz enrichment facility) by the Israeli Air Force sadly still isn't a far cry from reality.



Which most likely will be in the former of an Operation Opera style attack primarily using Israeli F-15's and F-16's.

However regardless of how serious this attack is on the Iranian public (even if the attack is only meant to knock out a few compounds) I somehow doubt the current regime in Iran will treat it like the Syrians did on a recent Israeli air strike against them.

Iran geographically lies on in western Southeast Asia and most of it's eastern border is on the oil rich Persian Gulf, it is right in the centre of Eurasia which is as put by Dick Cheney "the fertile choke point of civilization."

If attacked for stupid and arrogant reasons by Israel, if Iran then chooses to prevail (rightfully so) this could result (very likely) in disastrous consequences.

The first response would probably be a retaliatory missile strike against Israel using Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missiles.



These will probably be launched at neither Israeli air force bases where the attacking planes originated from or at Dimona where Israel's own nuclear weapons are stored rather than at major Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa, however this could change regarding the circumstances of the Israeli attack.

However one has doubts that Iran will repeat recent history, such as the Scud strikes from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991, which saw 32 missiles launched mainly at Tel Aviv and Haifa, two people were killed in these strikes, several were wounded and quite a lot of property was damaged, but in the end it was nothing compared to what it was built up to be.



The days following an Israeli attack (regarding what voices are speaking in Tehran) would probably see increased attacks from groups such as Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon against Israeli forces in the Shebba Farms.

Major attacks against British and American soldiers in their bases in the south of Iraq from Shia sympathizers (some 13,000,000 of them in the south of Iraq), several of whom are in underground groups just waiting for their moment to strike, this could see the American and British soldiers in the regions dying after fighting against unbelievable odds from the masses directly backed by their neighboring Iran.

And last but far from least.



If Iran feels continually threatened after a first strike and if the United States continually backs Israel after it's preemptive attack Iran will probably to the best of it's ability close off and burn the oil reserves in the Persian Gulf, along with devastating attacks that could destroy oil refineries in the Emirate countries, attacks against Saudi Arabia could be very likely if they turn a blind eye to Israeli F-16's flying through their air space to strike Iran!

Following such attacks oil at $100 a barrel would look like an unbelievable bargain!

At the end of the day western hypocrisy and one sided support for Israel will be to blame for the acts Iran will be forced to carry out to ensure it's self defence!

Chamberlain "appeasement" rhetoric is getting blunt

Neville Chamberlain Prime Minister of Britain 1937 to 1940 is known almost entirely in today's world for appeasing Adolf Hitler and letting the Nazi's have Czechoslovakia, before they went on to crush the rest of Western Europe, but what exactly was it that Chamberlain did wrong?

Is this rhetoric used by those against Obama or any other politician for that matter factual correct?



The interesting thing is that even after opting for peace before declaring war on Germany after the invasion of Poland in 1939 Chamberlain had this to say:

"We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany's rulers could be trusted, and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become intolerable ... Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail."

After declaring war along with France the French Army dug in in the Maginot Line, Chamberlain ordered the Royal Navy to form a blockade to keep economic pressure on Germany, Chamberlain was reluctant to alter the British economy fearing that the emergency war budget would bankrupt the country.

When Germany attacked the Low Countries Chamberlain was soon replaced by Winston Churchill, he then stated they needed to stand united behind their new leader and fight the Nazi war machine, however one has to wonder if the Lend Lease given to Britain by the United States was too much, for ever cent worth of aid given by the United States was surely paid for, the equivalent of $500 billion in today's money was what the UK paid for it's war effort to eventually help to defeat the Nazi's (with help from several other major Allied powers), this hefty bill was only sorted out between Britain and the US in 2006!

Of course no cost is too great to be the pivotal defence against fascist expansion but in comparison to the geopolitical climate of today's wars there is truly no comparison to calling a British or American politician an appeaser like Chamberlain:



An interesting (if not so recent event) was George HW. Bush being called a wimp, before Saudi Arabia was directly bordered by (wasn't threatened by) Saddam Hussein's army after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Persian Gulf War that followed saw the entire country being disseminated by aerial bombardment, even though there was no proven plans that the Iraqi Army (who had dug in around Kuwait City) had planned to preemptively attack Saudi Arabia yet alone invade it!

So when the same is being said that the west should preemptively attack Iran before things "get out of hand" people have to ask themselves the question of whether or not a nuclear Iran merely justifies a major war fought 7,000 miles overseas!

if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!

one over the top assassination attempt

On September 30th of 2002 an Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) Soviet made MiG-23 Flogger flown by an unknown pilot broke it's course from it's bombing mission and turned towards the Tharthar lake, there Saddam and his entourage were staying in the luxurious al-Tharthat Palace.

As he went for an attack run hoping to kill Saddam the pilots sturdy airplane was hit by a MANPAD fired by one of the palace guards, his luck had really run out, after ejecting his plane crashed, it's bombs still attached to their racks.

After being arrested he was bought to Saddam who interrogated him personally for quite some time, his originating air base was closed down and all the commanding officers arrested, the nameless pilot was burned alive in front of them before they were to be later executed.

This is a virtually unknown event up until the run up of the invasion of Iraq which would take place in March of 2003 less than a year later, and one has to admire the pilot for his brave if not over the top attempt of ridding the country of that piece of scum, if he had succeeded not only would history be very different but we would know his name and of his courage!

unnecessary future carriers

Since hearing that Britain will build two supercarriers by at least 2018 about two years ago I haven't since figured out a proper reason for them.



Planned to have a deck configuration of 36 F-35 Lightning II STOVL fighters, costing nearly £4 billion.

You could certainly argue that even though there is no war for them today maybe in the mere future Britain could have another war like the Falklands or might need to conduct air operations in a region without land bases, but it's still a stretch considering the Royal Navy still have a handful of their ASW carriers such as the HMS Ocean and Invincible.

The French are putting forward a similar ambitious program for two carriers around the same size, these of which are to consist of the excellent Dassault Rafale fighters.



Nice!

My first thoughts of this was these would be perfect for protecting French supply ships or merchant navies against hostile navies far overseas, since the Rafale could fire the deadly Exocet missile, a fleet of them would surely destroy any attacking forces!



But this just isn't a plausible way to go, not only would the carrier have to be in that particular region, wouldn't it not be smarter to develop a STOVL jet that could serve as an Exocet platform, a couple of those put on container ships that may have to operate near states at war or hostile towards France would probably be enough of a defense instead of dashing out over two billion for a ship that can only be in one place at any one time!



So what about our American friends?

America has the largest carrier fleet in the world, the Russians are only operating the Admiral Kuznetsov while the US are operating over 11 Nimitz carriers, on top of these massive naval logistics is a further two ordered 'CVN-21' carriers.



They will be the largest warships ever built!

Like the Nimitz class carriers the CVN-21 carriers will have a variety of fixed wing aircraft, more than most countries would have in their entire air forces in its inventory.

They are unnecessary considering how the Nimitz class carriers have pretty much come unmatched in the past 30 years.

Both in quality and quantity!


Related:

Jeff Head: CVN-21 specs

Defence and Freedom: The Cost of Carrier Aviation

Gizmodo: Britain Building Next-Generation Aircraft Carriers for F-35 Fighters