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Oxford Comma posted:How well would the non-Russian members of the Soviet Union have fought against NATO forces? I'm getting the feeling a lot of Khazaks and Uzbeks wouldn't put up much of a fight. They sure as poo poo didn't refuse to fight the Nazis.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:23
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Yeah I really can't see them being any less keen than Russians.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:27
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The Germans might not have been all that keen to throw down against Other Germans but who knows?
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Mar 1, 2012 19:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:They sure as poo poo didn't refuse to fight the Nazis. I don't think they would refuse to fight NATO forces as much as they probably wouldn't fight with the same zeal and passion as ethnic Russians. You probably know this better than anyone else, Cyrano, but didn't the Ostbataillonen surrender to the allied forces rather quickly? Or am I mistaken in this.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:46
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I always heard the Asians in the Red Army were considered stone cold killaz.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:47
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Oxford Comma posted:I don't think they would refuse to fight NATO forces as much as they probably wouldn't fight with the same zeal and passion as ethnic Russians. The other Republics, as well as some of Russia's nether regions, produced some pretty amazing soldiers.
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Mar 1, 2012 19:48
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Oxford Comma posted:I don't think they would refuse to fight NATO forces as much as they probably wouldn't fight with the same zeal and passion as ethnic Russians. Rossmum's right that you can't really compare the Ostbatallionen to the various non-ethnic Russian formations in Soviet units. That said, even within the VERY broad scope of Ostbatallionen, it all depends on who you're talking about. Most of the ones that the US ran into in western europe were full of the sort of guys who the Germans considered way, WAY too untrustworthy to throw at the Soviets. A lot of those were made up of Soviet POWs (frequently Ukranians or other non-Russian, non-asiatic SSRs) who they freed as long as they signed up to fight with them. A fair number were also glorified penal battalions. Basically, the guys that they didn't trust enough not to defect to some random partisan group if they were anywhere but Western Europe, where they were good enough for occupation/police detail but culturally and linguistically stood out enough that they couldn't just walk away. Now, the guys who WERE considered trustworthy tended to be some loving psycho killers. The SS battalions raised from the various Baltic states come to mind - those guys were really goddamned good at beating back the Red Army. Then there were all of the Polish/Ukranian/Bellorussian/etc police units that they used for anti-partisan warfare, occasional frontline work, and who did a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE chunk of the trigger pulling in the Holocaust. Then there were the specifically rabid anti-communist groups, frequently made up of various ethnicities and cultural groups who had been hosed over by Stalin. The Cossacks are a great example of this, and the Germans fielded a full division of them. Those poor SOBs fought a fighting retreat all the way into Austria just to stay ahead of the Russians (who were justifiably pissed at them) only to be turned over, along with the families that they brought with them, to the Soviets by the British Army. You see a similar spectrum with the Russians, ranging from completely unreliable units that they used for throw-away attacks over minefields in advance of the real soldiers on through units like the 2nd and 3rd (Cossack) Cavalry Corps, which were two of the few units to be raised to Guard status because of their battlefield exploits and accomplishments, and all this despite a lot of bad blood over the fact that a bunch of their fellow Cossacks were running to fight for the other guys.
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Mar 1, 2012 21:02
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Oxford Comma posted:How well would the non-Russian members of the Soviet Union have fought against NATO forces? I'm getting the feeling a lot of Khazaks and Uzbeks wouldn't put up much of a fight. I've seen this theory brought up before (though I can't remember where) and I believe the conclusion was that the various -stanis and Slavs taking the opportunity of war to cast off their Russian oppressors was about as likely as the Western proletariat rising up in solidarity with their Soviet liberators against the bourgeois aggressors (i.e not very likely at all.)
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Mar 1, 2012 21:13
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For those that follow the saga of the F-35 you will find Stephen Trimble's recent blog post about Top Gun 2 to be especially delightful. http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2012/03/top-gun-2-will-rock-the-f-35-t.html quote:Maverick is becoming an F-35 test pilot. May not be funny to most people but I think this is hysterical especially if you read it while playing the top gun theme song in the background.
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Mar 1, 2012 21:27
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Keep in mind that during the Cold War, a lot of the Soviet forces in Europe were also there to keep the Soviet boot firmly on the necks of a lot of Warsaw Pact nations, a lot of which might have had some reliable combat units and government figures, but were of dubious overall loyalty. Poland might not have been ready to take on the rest of the Warsaw Pact and unilaterally declare independence or anything, but the Polish intelligence units and not a few military officers were actively involved in running operations against the Soviets- poo poo ranged from minor "gently caress you" handovers of intel to NATO to poo poo like shipping a bunch of SA-7's to the Afghan insurgents (through a ton of middlemen, obviously). The Soviets always had plans for invasions of nominal allies- like Hungary or the Prague Spring- but after Karol Józef Wojtyła became John Paul II and Solidarity got rolling, they really got ready for that poo poo- practicing airborne seziures of Polish airports and so on.
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Mar 1, 2012 21:28
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A lot of the Warsaw Pact armies were relatively weak and poorly trained. I don't know how much help they would have been in a real war.
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Mar 1, 2012 22:23
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daskrolator posted:For those that follow the saga of the F-35 you will find Stephen Trimble's recent blog post about Top Gun 2 to be especially delightful. The last line works for me. No Top Gun movie is a Top Gun movie without Kenny Loggins. In unrelated news I was looking up C-130s to make fun of Treyarch for Black Ops, but figured these are nice pictures. Go herky bird. I'd forgotten several were retrofitted into airborne tankers:   And this one is clearly USAF if they care about making it look good as opposed to making it function (ho ho ho):  (actually this airframe has a lot of hours over the Gulf of Mexico and salt corrosion is bad.)
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Mar 1, 2012 23:31
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I pictured some guy at the wheel of one of those Humvees, screaming his lungs out.
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Mar 1, 2012 23:33
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Psion posted:In unrelated news I was looking up C-130s to make fun of Treyarch for Black Ops, but figured these are nice pictures. Go herky bird. I'd forgotten several were retrofitted into airborne tankers: this pic works well as a reminder that ch-53s are almost as long as a c-130. longer, if you count the rotor diameter in total length, and almost the same footprint. they're gigantic. edit: the ch-53e is actually longer brains fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Mar 1, 2012 |
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Mar 1, 2012 23:40
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brains posted:this pic works well as a reminder that ch-53s are almost as long as a c-130. longer, if you count the rotor diameter in total length, and almost the same footprint. they're gigantic. Did someone say CH-53 and C-130? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO0sRWCf9k4
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Mar 2, 2012 00:04
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priznat posted:I pictured some guy at the wheel of one of those Humvees, screaming his lungs out. More like wearing aviator sunglasses and high-fiving each other
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Mar 2, 2012 00:43
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I think he means screaming with excitement
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Mar 2, 2012 00:46
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Groda posted:Did someone say CH-53 and C-130? Well I can chalk "seeing a helicopter give itself a circumcision" off my bucket list. Good lord. mikerock posted:I think he means screaming with excitement Then they'd be high fiving each other with their dicks.
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Mar 2, 2012 00:46
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fuf posted:Can anyone solve this?   Suicide Watch posted:the winningest wing commander ever: on a separate note, I think I might get one of these EDF "Nano" ready to fly planes. http://www.bananahobby.com/electric-rc-airplanes-electric-fighter-rc-jets.html This A10 has me excited http://www.bananahobby.com/2222.html
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Mar 2, 2012 02:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:No, but the Kola bay was the site of a huge concentration of soviet naval vessels, especially submarines. Being able to run ASW patrols out of Norway would have been a huge part of any kind of convoy security scheme. Also interdicting any ASM launching bombers and/or Bear search aircraft. It's not like northern Norway was absolutely essential for this (as opposed to the G-I-UK gap, which was), but operating out of Norway would get you ahead of the power curve and enable more of a defense in depth in the North Atlantic as opposed to just attempting to hold the G-I-UK line. Koesj posted:Yeah no poo poo but why wait for NATO to build up if your best forces are already garrisoned in the right places and numbers are already favoring you 2:1. That's what I was getting at. I've addressed it before in the thread, but the concern with convoys wasn't combat forces and personnel, it was consumables. There was enough equipment prepo'd in Europe at the various POMCUS sites that the REFORGER flow (assuming NATO had the expected 48 hrs or whatever of unambiguous warning that war was imminent) would rapidly build up U.S. forces in Germany once the personnel mated up with the POMCUS equipment (as well as enabling mobilization from the European states). Although replacement equipment for combat attrition would clearly be a part of the convoy flow, the largest concern was for consumables like POL and ammo. You can only preposition so much, and IIRC the amount scattered about Europe was only enough for something like 15ish days of warfighting (it definitely wouldn't be more than 30, but for some reason I feel like it was less than that), after which point the NATO forces were going to require bulk sealift resupply from the CONUS...hence why the North Atlantic was going to be such a big loving deal. By the '80s when NATO had adopted AirLand Battle and wasn't going to resort immediately to tactical nukes (in theory), the big concern wasn't immediately losing the war in the first couple of days, it was losing the war in the period after that, due in part to lack of consumables from Soviet interdiction of the convoys. daskrolator posted:For those that follow the saga of the F-35 you will find Stephen Trimble's recent blog post about Top Gun 2 to be especially delightful. Hahahahahahaha....I lost it at "Bill 'Iceman' Sweetman" and "Karlo 'Slider' Kopp." Also the ending is just loving perfect.
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Mar 2, 2012 08:12
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Snowdens Secret posted:I've seen this theory brought up before (though I can't remember where) and I believe the conclusion was that the various -stanis and Slavs taking the opportunity of war to cast off their Russian oppressors was about as likely as the Western proletariat rising up in solidarity with their Soviet liberators against the bourgeois aggressors (i.e not very likely at all.)  movie ever, I wish it was a thing.You're pretty much on the money, though, and if you look at how those nations were faring in the 1970s-80s USSR versus how they're faring now it's pretty obvious why. Say what you will about the Soviets, but people who would otherwise be living in a world of poo poo actually had a shot at getting somewhere in life. Now that everything's broken apart, a lot of the Asian SSRs are run by lunatics or mired in corruption (usually both) and living conditions vary from "pretty cushy" for the leader's flavour of the week friends to "enjoy your lovely crumbling apartment" for others. I saw a documentary a while back which caught up with kids that had been born towards the end of the USSR and where they are now compared to then, and the ones who had lived in Asian SSRs were barely getting by now.
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Mar 3, 2012 00:40
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Can any of you help me out with this picture? I've never seen that particular tail marking on a RAF Tornado before, any idea what squadron it is? Or is it just a photoshop?  edit; so it isn't a photoshop. Curious about that maple leaf though... Ruse fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 4, 2012 |
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Mar 4, 2012 05:34
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Ruse posted:Can any of you help me out with this picture? Looks like RAF 5 Squadron; their insignia is a maple leaf, and they flew Tornado ADVs.
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Mar 4, 2012 05:50
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Goodnight, sweet scrap-metal princes  quote:F-111s, C-5s, F-15s, C-130s, S-3s, A-4s, F-14s, H-53s, F-4s and C-141s being sold for scrap
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Mar 15, 2012 02:51
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movax posted:Goodnight, sweet scrap-metal princes It sucks that they can't part those out. I know that parting them out would let unsavory characters disassemble or possibly reverse engineer some of the tech, but I think it would be so boss to have an ejection seat from an A-4, or the HUD and panel of an F-14.
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Mar 15, 2012 02:56
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I would put an F-14 in my front yard.
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Mar 15, 2012 05:51
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Space Gopher posted:Looks like RAF 5 Squadron; their insignia is a maple leaf, and they flew Tornado ADVs. Holy poo poo! Mons battle honours for an aircraft squadron!
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Mar 15, 2012 07:46
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Even though it's sad about those planes going to that great bulk-metal yard in the sky, I love it when this thread makes it back on the front page. It was the third full thread I read after discovering TFR (after the newbie question thread and the Unintended Consequences thread( ), and I wish I had more to contribute to it than the 5.
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Mar 15, 2012 11:59
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Memento1979 posted:Even though it's sad about those planes going to that great bulk-metal yard in the sky, I love it when this thread makes it back on the front page. It was the third full thread I read after discovering TFR (after the newbie question thread and the Unintended Consequences thread( I was honestly shocked it went more than a few days without any posts, it had to be revived. I had some articles from Alert 5 I was going to link to spawn discussion but I never got around to it. Now, everyone should read this. Pretty eye-opening about how the "simplest" things can go bad, very quickly.
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Mar 15, 2012 16:17
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movax posted:I was honestly shocked it went more than a few days without any posts, it had to be revived. I had some articles from Alert 5 I was going to link to spawn discussion but I never got around to it. Added sadnote, the guy that wrote that was killed in a Kfir crash at Fallon last week.
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Mar 15, 2012 17:01
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rossmum posted:You're pretty much on the money, though, and if you look at how those nations were faring in the 1970s-80s USSR versus how they're faring now it's pretty obvious why. Say what you will about the Soviets, but people who would otherwise be living in a world of poo poo actually had a shot at getting somewhere in life. Now that everything's broken apart, a lot of the Asian SSRs are run by lunatics or mired in corruption (usually both) and living conditions vary from "pretty cushy" for the leader's flavour of the week friends to "enjoy your lovely crumbling apartment" for others. I saw a documentary a while back which caught up with kids that had been born towards the end of the USSR and where they are now compared to then, and the ones who had lived in Asian SSRs were barely getting by now. Rodric Braithwaite talks a little bit about this in his book Afgantsy (which is very good btw - not done yet, but I never knew how nuts from a planning and execution perspective the Soviet coup against Amin really was until I read this book). He lightly argues that the Soviet could purport to have a kind of legitimate claim in Afghanistan that they knew how to raise your typical Central Asian -stan out of complete poverty into a comparatively less impoverished, more modern and more literate nation. The potential long-term consequences we see now are of course terrible, but at the time it made some sense.
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Mar 15, 2012 17:02
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The Proc posted:Added sadnote, the guy that wrote that was killed in a Kfir crash at Fallon last week. That's how I found his blog 
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Mar 15, 2012 18:03
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movax posted:That's how I found his blog Yeah, I posted about that in the AI thread a couple days after it happened but I forgot to post it here...really sad news and quite a loss. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that his skills in writing about aviation were right up there with Ernest Gann, which I think is probably the highest praise I could give somebody who writes about flying.
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Mar 15, 2012 22:54
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On the "would the non ethnic russian 'stanis fight for the soviets in ww3" question, Its important to note that the series of protests that spiraled into the dissolution of the soviet union were highly accelrated by events in the southern soviet satellite states. The wiki on the fall of the soviet union can explain it better than i can, but the polish/baltic uprisings were only half the game, the 'stans uprisings required the soviets to litterally invade and lock down cities in kazakstan with brutality they couldnt get away with in europe. The result was the 'stanis giving a big gently caress you to moscow, and helping the snowball reach its ultimate conlusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Soviet_Union Its a huge read but well worth it for those of us who were pants shitters when it all went down. On another note, there are some awesome sci-fi near future books written in the 70's about what the manned presence in space wouldve been had the soviets continued full steam, the shuttle had worked as promised, and both governments took the cold war into space full tilt. I cant remember names but just look in any used book store for old paperbacks with space shuttles and hammer+sickles on the cover. Theyre comedic but entertaining what-ifs. The scifi classic "the mote in gods eye" is set in a world where the Soviets and USA decided it was best to just rule the world together, and keep those "developing nations" underfoot, so they established a "co-dominium" whos flag was a soviet/american overlay, outlawed all armies but their own, and banned scientific research into weapons or anything weaponizable, to maintan a permanent status quo of western-soviet domination. Sorry for my derail into fantasy in a thread full of stranger than fiction true stories. Raw_Beef fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 02:52
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Raw_Beef posted:On the "would the non ethnic russian 'stanis fight for the soviets in ww3" question, Its important to note that the series of protests that spiraled into the dissolution of the soviet union were highly accelrated by events in the southern soviet satellite states. I think I was the one who opened that original can of worms. Some of the Asian -stans in the USSR could probably be persuaded to fight, but I have a hard time seeing the Baltic states cooperating with the USSR for long.
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Mar 16, 2012 04:35
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I remember some "hypothetical WW III" books from the 70s/80s having a good amount of theorizing on whether any of the Soviet or US allies would actually go along for the ride in a hot/nuclear war. Neither are all that realistic, but Hackett's The Third World War had the whole of the Warsaw Pact rise up in arms against the Soviets once Russia launched the first nuke, and Strieber's War Day had the NATO countries physically capture and disarm all the American nuclear arsenals in Europe (under some secret protocol with the WP) to keep the nuclear exchange strictly between the US and the Soviet Union.
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Mar 17, 2012 05:02
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Disabling the American stockpile in Europe most likely would have resulted in the second and third strikes targeting Europe, so that sounds a bit far-fetched. If a full on exchange happened under those circumstances, it's not like the US and Soviets would throw up their hands and say "welp, Europe is neutral now".
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Mar 17, 2012 20:37
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VikingSkull posted:Disabling the American stockpile in Europe most likely would have resulted in the second and third strikes targeting Europe, so that sounds a bit far-fetched. If a full on exchange happened under those circumstances, it's not like the US and Soviets would throw up their hands and say "welp, Europe is neutral now". Yeah, nowadays Streiber is best buds with Art Bell, which should tell you how much stock to put into his ideas. Although the book did do a decent job of showing the US as a disintegrating third-world nation occupied by foreign peacekeepers from what I remember. Post-apocalyptic literature is a guilty pleasure but in order for the plot to be something other than 'everyone dies a horrible death' they have to take a lot of liberties.
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Mar 17, 2012 21:54
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Does any one have any more information about the UK RAF in the cold war? Or about Spains situation, how would things have gone down if the cold war went hot when they were under Franco?
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Mar 18, 2012 00:09
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VikingSkull posted:Disabling the American stockpile in Europe most likely would have resulted in the second and third strikes targeting Europe, so that sounds a bit far-fetched. If a full on exchange happened under those circumstances, it's not like the US and Soviets would throw up their hands and say "welp, Europe is neutral now". Europe would still have been hosed over, simply because an about-to-be-nuked-the-poo poo-out-of Soviet Union wouldn't allow its smoldering ruins to be steamrolled by intact Western European powers on the lookout for an easy catch. Now, it might be argued that Western Europe would see little to no use in spending vast resources in securing a huge, extremely difficult to hold territory that's been irradiated, blasted and is filled with desperate survivors. But I don't know if Soviet generals and core politburo members, battle-hardened in the meatgrinders of the Eastern fronts during WW2, would consider such trivialities in an acute situation. Europe probably would be nuked, and under any circumstance would be in deep poo poo as well as soon as the tidal waves of refugees and the fallout began to hit. Always keep in mind just how destructive nuclear war actually is. It's not like WW2 times ten. It's a logarithmic step, not linear. Dumbdog posted:Does any one have any more information about the UK RAF in the cold war? Or about Spains situation, how would things have gone down if the cold war went hot when they were under Franco? The RAF? Huge, powerful air force? Well, where to start really? Spain was initially viewed as a pariah in Europe and the West following WW2 due to their overt support of the Axis powers, even participating with troops on the Eastern front. How they ever managed to keep calling themselves neutral is something I'll never fully understand. Since they hated commies even after the war was over, the US started thawing up to dear old Franco and from the late fifties and on, they were with the Good Guys. The economy began to open up and diversify, and stuff generally went better all over right up until Franco finally croaked and the ETA killed off his designated heir in a spectacular car bombing. Following which normalcy began to return bit by bit over a period of, say, ten years. After a stable democracy was secured (there was a nasty coup attempt which the King himself played a big role in defeating), EU membership awaited, and from then on it's steady progress up until...well, right about now, in fact. Spain had a relatively big military, as would befit a militaristic dictatorship, so they were useful in addition to the extremely strategic position of Spain and her maritime provinces in the Atlantic and Africa, but there was a lot of Paper Tiger Syndrome as well as a generally low level of military technological sophistication due to the sheer economic hardships of the fifties and sixties. But a good source for an infantry division or ten (with CETMEs!)
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Mar 18, 2012 00:34
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