Friday, January 14, 2011

The UK being able to do a Falklands doesn't matter anymore.


The discussion on an earlier post turned to me asking this question.  Can the UK repeat the Falklands if it happened today?

Some took the question as being a direct repeat of the events that led to that war, but I was asking it in a larger context.

If British territory was seized, could they retake it?  Not necessarily the Falklands but anywhere in the world.

After talking with friends, I realize that isn't the right question.

The right question is this...Is the European Union, as its currently organized, capable of mustering the forces of its member nations to be able to come to the defense of any of its members to regain territory.

The answer that we arrived at was maybe.  It would all depend on if the territory was a colonial holdover, if the territory's people wanted to remain part of the member countries sphere of influence etc...

Two elements of the EU's military bear watching.

The Rapid Deployment Force (information is hard to come by...does it even exist)

The Anti-Piracy Task Force

More to come.

Whoa! USNI hits hard!


USNI Blogsite is back in the fight.

Want to read something that will be thought provoking and piss you off at the same time?  Then go here.

Wow.

 UltimatRatioReg ---great article guy!

Clarification.


I keep hearing from individuals that their comments have been deleted.

I don't do that.

I have forwarded the issue to Blogger and as soon as I know, you will too.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Chinese citizens react to the J-20.


I subscribe to ChinaSmack blogsite.  While I don't know how widely held the comments are, heck I don't even know if they're translated accurately---they're still interesting as hell.  Here are a few, follow the link to read the whole thing.

红玛瑙:
Does the country/government’s strength and power have anything to do with us?

織田信長:
The more advanced the PLA’s weapons are, just means the more people that can be suppressed on Changan Avenue.

红玛瑙:
No wonder everyone says it is easy to be a [government] leader. I’d rather see the price of cabbage fall 5 mao.

正宗张江男:
Slaves cheering the slave-master for researching and developing an even more powerful killing machine? What kind of reasoning is this?
腾讯上海市网友:
Not bad not bad…I’m happy for the test flight’s success, though China normally only reports the things that are basically guaranteed to succeed. Since they said it was a test flight, then it is certain that they’ve done secret training exercises already…hehe

C-130J for India.

The Flyer II Advanced Light Strike Vehicle.






The Flyer Brochure 2010 - Final for Web                                                                    

The Flyer II Advanced Light Strike Vehicle is in competition to be the USAF's Para-rescue (and by extension I would assume SOCOM's) internally carried vehicle for operations from the CV-22.

They also make a larger version for carriage inside the CH-53 and CH-47.

More info here.

UPDATE!

I failed to thank Jonathan for sending me a link to the article featuring this vehicle.  Thanks Jonathan.

Is the Royal Air Force in a death spiral?


This from the Guardian...
It has also emerged that the RAF is to scrap more than 50 Eurofighter/Typhoon jets which became operational only three years ago at a cost of more than £4.5bn because it cannot afford to update them.
Wow.

They just put into service and now are going to have to scrap them?

Tough times in the UK.