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I'd like to remember this esteemed chamber that we don't even own Earth, we are merely guests in it, and its ludicrous to "lease" stuff to the Minervans or try to extract "reparations" from the Roswells stuck on Mars. They could be prisioners like the humans who were in the same situation, the abductors in which case we'd should start working on some interplanetary criminal code or anything in between like the cooks. Definitely a "laughing out loud" (lafalaulike the children in the internetwork say) at the idea that the Roswells were using our resources
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Aug 10, 2022 03:55
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Honestly, why are the limits of our sovereignty this Solar System? I don't see a line demarcating where our territory stops. Really they should be paying reparations for taking resources from OUR universe. ... 
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Aug 10, 2022 04:06
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Pacho posted:I'd like to remember this esteemed chamber that we don't even own Earth YET. 
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Aug 10, 2022 06:08
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Honestly at this point we're basically just humoring...what is it, Brazil and India? I think those are literally the last two countries on the planet that could pose a bare minimum of a threat to the Comintern. Barely. If they got the element of surprise. Maybe.
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Aug 10, 2022 07:30
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March 14, 1986 The laboratories freed up by the newly-finished engine design are retasked to work on more advanced TN capacitors, along with associated work on cabling, insulation, resistors, transistors, and other TN electronic components. The objective is to deliver a practical capacitor design that can satisfy the requirements of the latest defense procurement bills, and to deliver it, complete and ready for production, before the end of the year. A daunting proposition a few years ago. Another day at the office now. March 15, 1986  Ship commander Crazycryodude, who will command the ship carrying the archaeology expedition to Mars, has been closely supervising the refitting process, ensuring that everything on the ship is just right. They're learning a lot from the process, and the additional knowledge and skills they're picking up have not gone unnoticed by MOSA administration; promotion scores are updated appropriately. April 11, 1986  With the Ministry of Outer Space Affairs adding new departments at a rapid pace, it is only natural that there will be some jockeying for status and influence among those departments, and X-COM's commanding officer has been preparing a preemptive strike. The meetings she has been holding with various member-state political figures, nominally under the guise of coordinating SETI efforts, have also featured more than a little schmoozing, flattery, and gentle reminders that X-COM, as the vanguard of humanity's exploration of the stars, deserves to be given top consideration when it comes to resource allocation. She's getting pretty good at it. April 14, 1986    The refits are finished. The Cottage Point clears her slipway. She's ready. There is no time to waste. The archaeology teams finished training months ago. They're champing at the bit. Equipment and personnel are loaded onto the transport shuttles before the ship is even ready to receive them. TelsaCoil of the Interplanetary People's Army is quickly reassigned from their duty commanding an orbital defense battery, with a transport picking them up and taking them straight to Baikonur, from there to orbit; they were selected to command this expedition months ago.  Vehicles, prefab shelters, consumable supplies, and gear are loaded into the storage bays as quickly as the flights can be cycled back and forth. Personnel follow, settling into their spartan berths for the journey to Mars. Just a few years ago, the initial journey to Mars, propelled by primitive chemical rockets, took nearly a month. This expedition will reach the Red Planet in four days. April 15, 1986 The archaeology team is launched. April 16, 1986  The flight path takes them relatively close to Venus, and they exchange greetings with the small research team currently in orbit there. There remains no sign of any alien presence on Venus. The Venus mission is currently focusing its efforts on collecting climactic data and other relevant information for VENUSPLAN, to prepare the way for settlement. April 19, 1986 The archaeologists descend to Cydonia, setting down on the same concrete pad that your first team landed on. They are met by one of the Cyclops survivors who chose to remain, who guides them along the same cairn-path to the same airlock, where they meet the rest of the caretaker team. The team have been thoroughly briefed on the situation, and have mostly gotten all of their grumbling about site contamination out of their system, although not all of it. They've been told what to expect, too, but no briefings or photographs can prepare them for actually seeing it. They're awestruck. The Face alone could represent months, years, of work. Hell, the ships inside the Face might easily occupy an entire career. This is just one building. Someone in the first landing party says what everyone was already thinking: "We're going to need more archaeologists." The sentiment is relayed back to Mission Control some time later, accounting for light delay, and they concur; sending the second team, who were intended to act as an alternate to the first, straight to Mars is already being considered, and the second team is already being contacted to make ready for possible immediate deployment to the Red Planet. For now, the archaeologists will focus their efforts on getting their equipment unloaded, a base camp set up, and preliminary surveys of the site performed. The boundaries of the site will be delineated, key structures identified, priorities determined. Serious excavation and exploration will not begin for some time. April 23, 1986  The first units of the new, expanded Interplanetary People's Army finish training, and the next batch of recruits immediately begins training behind them. There are still some critical officer and NCO vacancies, and large classes of qualified candidates are being rushed through officer development programs as we speak in the hopes of filling them. The troops of the new army are all volunteers, and hail from every continent and from nearly every Comintern member. Most of the officers and NCOs you do have are military veterans with prior service in a member-state military; many of those are GRW veterans with combat experience. These old hands will provide important structure and institutional knowledge, to a rapidly expanding army that is mostly young, extremely green, ideologically committed, and highly motivated. The men and women answering this call aren't all doing it because they believe in the Comintern as an idea - some of them are doing it to see the world, or to escape their current lives, or for lack of anything else to do, or any number of other reasons - but the fact remains that all of them are joining, not a national army, but a truly international force, the army of the global revolutionary movement. No one's ever really done anything like this before - not even the IPA itself, which prior to this was limited to a few thousand personnel, most of them operating orbital defense batteries. We are building something new, and it's still not clear what it will actually look like, when it's all done. One thing is clear, though - the IPA is equipped with the finest modern technology the Comintern's colossal arms industry can produce. Their vehicles are armored with Trans-Newtonian alloys. Their anti-aircraft missiles and rocket artillery use sorium-based propellants (and sorium-based explosives). Their computers are both sophisticated and rugged, their load-bearing equipment light and comfortable. The artillery battalions that are still training will each deploy with two batteries of PLZ-87 'Blue Gemini' self-propelled railguns, lower-power and lower-velocity designs compared to your orbital defense batteries, which will be capable of indirect fire with impressive range, precision, and rate of fire; these are but one of the many new weapons systems that will serve in this new army. The newly-trained battalions, assembling in parade formation for publicity photos, are resplendent with their new-production vehicles and sky-blue uniforms. May 1, 1986 It's come around again. It's been less than twenty years since the GRW and the big global celebration every May 1 is already starting to feel almost routine. The team communicating with the Minervans sends L'Internationale. They respond with more music of their own. The team at Cydonia takes a two-hour lunch to celebrate, and then gets back to work. The base camp is ready, initial field tests of their equipment are complete, and the work proper is about to begin. Their transport will leave tomorrow to pick up the 'backup' team, who will soon join them here on Mars. The question of where to focus the initial work is still being hotly debated. The cryostorage facility is an obvious one - with the aid of medical and cryonics experts from Earth, including a direct consult from Academician Vasilyev himself, the inventor of practical cryonics technology, the team could likely begin reviving the survivors (and the living aliens) very soon - but there is the problem of not really being equipped to deal with thousands of newly-thawed cryo patients right now. Other targets include the lower levels of the Face, still largely unexplored, a few tantalizing thermal signatures in nearby structures, and the two spacecraft docked in the Face, which are of radically different design. Some have pointed out the similarity of one of the ships to the structures on the surface of Minerva, and the spacecraft that can be detected on its surface; it might provide some valuable insight into our new friends. The ground team also makes an unusual request - for a company from the Lunar Self-Defense Force to be dispatched with the next archaeology team, to provide security. The orbital scans aren't detecting anything, but the teams on the ground could swear, just swear, that there's something moving around out there, past the Face, in the kilometers of unexplored ruins that surround it.
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Aug 22, 2022 07:54
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Hmmm...
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Aug 22, 2022 08:09
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So are we sure that's just a face? Are we sure it's not an entire buried giant or something?
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Aug 22, 2022 08:28
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Huh, I bet the other heat sources are something neat.
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Aug 22, 2022 08:46
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If the LSDF is willing to send a team I don't see why they can't go along with the second team shipping out when they can.
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Aug 22, 2022 09:03
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Yeah these reports are *way* too consistent. Send the requested forces.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:45
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Good to see new faces on Mars. Would be good to see a few more, hint hint.
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Aug 22, 2022 12:45
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Wooo doing thangs
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Aug 22, 2022 13:35
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Yeah I'm not gonna ignore the concerns of experts that say there's something spooky out there, probably automated Martian base defense drones or God knows what. If they're up for it, let's send some LSDF boys up there as armed security, I bet they're itching to see some action.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:10
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Aug 22, 2022 15:58
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Do we have any other formations equipped for vacuum combat? Now that we have relatively short-term logistics to Mars might as well send a somewhat larger formation on exercises.
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Aug 22, 2022 16:12
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CyberSyn Archive Fragment Conversation Preserved on Request for Historical Record; Personal Contact Information Censored for Public Access Data Creation Window: Ongoing [Archivist note: fill in later] = = = = From: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr [Bruno Schmidt, Manager, Howaldswerke-Deutsche Werfe Manufaktur-Kollektiv Yard 4] To: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr [Friede Kramer, Deputy for IG Metall, Volksrat] Just got back from Sylt. Is this plan on my desk serious? I thought it was an April Fool’s joke at first. I know we’re almost done with the Goeben but the thought was that we would get back to building actual navy ships, not more weird vanity projects. Especially ones like this! = = = = From: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr Very serious. The orders came down from the top of the Comintern PLAF. We – and specifically you – were selected over Leningrad Admiralty specifically because of our work on Goeben. The North Carolina is more modern but still effectively from the same era. I can tell you think this is a bad idea, Smitti, but I started in forging. What’s the problem? = = = = From: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr To: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr Where do I begin? Firstly, North Carolina may have been an operating warship under the Shoestring Fleet, but she was still approaching twenty years of constant service, most of that without proper maintenance. Just repairing her is going to be a massive project. That part isn’t the problem. Secondly, this idea of refitting her to use modern TNE weapons is insane. For one thing, the crews are going to hate it. North Carolina may not be a German ship but she is still an historical ship. Making her modern-combat-functional will destroy most of her historical value by dramatically altering her structure and equipment. And I do mean dramatically, which is the third problem. This kind of thing goes beyond even the American plans to refit World War II cruisers into missile boats – and they abandoned those due to cost and practicality concerns. We would basically be constructing a new ship, here. I don’t think the project is viable from a foundational perspective, basically. I can provide more details if it would help convince people; I don’t want us to get started in and our name attached to some destructive boondoggle. = = = = From: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr I see. I’ll talk to some people. You are the shipworking expert here, can you give me a full list? = = = = From: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr To: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr Just to go down the list, while we can absolutely mount railguns in turrets the size of North Carolina’s and get modern ammo feeds run up through the barbettes, the way the magazine spaces are designed is not built for automatic feed the way, say, the Des Moines-class heavy cruisers were. This goes beyond simple layout, the way they are located in the ship is all wrong for it. Packing them into the space would require elaborate arrangements or rearranging the internal structure. The same is true for the secondary mounts, if less so -- replacing the five-inch turrets and 40mm Bofors with modern CIWS systems like the Goalkeepers the Dutch make would be much simpler, though not without issue. The weapons aren’t the real problem, though. Powering and protecting them is. If we want them to work at all, they need modern fusion reactors, probably the Sorbonne-types the French are still pretending aren't going into their new Indigné cruisers. North Carolina is an oil-powered ship with boilers and a traditional generator. It physically cannot provide enough energy to power even one railgun, let alone nine and the rest of the ship. The electrical network also isn’t set up for that kind of load. We would have to tear out the entire guts of the ship – power plant, engines, generator, wiring, hydraulics – and replace them. That is a very difficult prospect, since we’d either have to go in through the side or take off most of the superstructure for it. That's an enormous amount of time, man-hours, and work. This would be easier with nulgrav to make sure the ship doesn’t collapse under its own weight when we’re cutting through support beams and things, but we don’t have that at HDW 4. This is part of why Goeben has taken so long, we had to remove and replace all the internals -- and in Goeben's case we were just replacing them with new copies the Turks hadn't spent sixty years beating to pieces. As for protecting them, you can forget it. North Carolina’s belt armor will absolutely stop even a modern antiship missile, but only if it hits on the thickest part, and her all-or-nothing scheme means most of the ship isn’t armored like that. Replacing the Krupp cemented armor with Ushanov-Liang duranium is actually not the problem, either, or at least not the one most people would think it is. Duranium is much lighter than equivalent-weight steel, which is usually a good thing for warships, since armor is historically most of their weight. But warships are carefully designed for weight balance because that armor is so heavy. North Carolina was built for her armor to be where it is. Lighten that armor by replacing it with modern materials, or shift around where it is on the ship, you change how her balance sits in the water. In particular, with how light duranium is she’ll ride much higher, making her less stable or even prone to capsize, unless we stick a ton of hard ballast in the bottom. And by a ton, I mean probably more like ten thousand tons. That’s also just if we’re addressing the outermost plating. If we want to rework the armored citadel, including moving the magazines around (see point about the turrets), then we’re basically completely gutting the ship -- and if we're not reworking the citadel then any other changes to the protection scheme are half-gestures. Between gutting it and changing up the hull, it would be basically building a new one anyway. That’s not to say I don’t get why they went with this idea – we’ve been working on the Goeben for ten years, it’s a symbolic thing. But it would be a disaster, in my opinion, and it would also take years. = = = = From: fleetadmactual@plan.com [Adm. Josef Radetsky, Commanding Officer, Comintern People’s Liberation Armed-forces Navy] To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr [Bruno Schmidt, Manager, Howaldswerke-Deutsche Werfe Manufaktur-Kollektiv Yard 4] CC: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr [Friede Kramer, Deputy for IG Metall, Volksrat]; RepDVR@congress.com [Eckhart Fletcher, Comintern Congress representative for the Deutsche Volksrepublik]; gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov [Georgy Telegin, chief manager, Leningrad Admiralty Yards] Comrade Schmidt, this is Admiral Radetsky of the People’s Liberation Navy. Your message was bounced up to me as a result of being involved in the Showboat Project. I am certain I do not have to tell you how important this project is, due to the height from which its plans have fallen on your desk and the fact that I am contacting you at all. It is a political necessity that something be produced from this overall operation. Which is to say, there WILL be a railgun battleship as a centerpiece of the PLAN at the end of it. However, I would be a fool and a poor materialist besides to disregard the engineering considerations you have presented. The North Carolina was selected for this project due to the intense symbolic value, you are correct, and we would like to retain this if at all possible, but the project must be successful in the first place to retain such value. As the man on the ground with the most immediate experience with ships of this era, what would your recommendation be? No bullshit, comrade. = = = = From: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr To: fleetadmactual@plan.com, depigmetall@volksrat.dvr, RepDVR@congress.com, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov Well, I nearly had a heart attack seeing this in my inbox. Also, hello, Georgy, how’s the wife? From a shipbuilding perspective, sir, these problems are going to be there with any kind of major retrofit. As I mentioned, the Americans ran into the same problem when trying to take Cleveland, Baltimore, and Alaska-class cruisers at the end of World War II and convert them into missile-armed ships. I don’t believe any kind of refit in this style is plausible. But if the symbolic value is so important – and I do understand that it is, believe me – then my recommendation might be to use the North Carolina schematics to construct a new ship reorganized internally to fit the modern power plant and weapons schematics. It would not be as well-adapted for the modern combat environment in terms of, say, radar stealthing, but it would retain the distinctive “fast battleship” silhouette, its hydrodynamics aren't that outdated, and the raw capabilities benefits of TNE power and materials would still make it the most heavily armed, armored, and possibly fastest warship ever seen. We actually don’t have North Carolina's schematics on file, but multiple copies of her blueprints were distributed all across the United States. I think the Shoestring Navy had a copy to send us along with her, or at least I hope so. = = = = From: fleetadmactual@plan.com To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov CC: depigmetall@volksrat.dvr, RepDVR@congress.com, shoestringnavyinbox.naf [Inbox of the Shoestring Navy, hosted out of the shared city of Charleston] An interesting proposition. Comrade Telegin, I would ask your opinion of this. As for the plans, they came along with North Carolina when she was transferred to the PLAN. My office will ensure you get a copy, and also get you in touch with the Shoestring Navy to keep track of what has been done to North Carolina since they took her over. = = = = From: gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, fleetadmactual@plan.com I think what Comrade Schmidt is proposing sounds highly plausible. His assessment on the rebuild is also correct – costwise, building a new ship would actually be about the same. The whole thing is something of a boondoggle, however, what with our space-based weaponry. = = = = From: fleetadmactual@plan.com To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov You are at risk of dismissing your entire job and also my position as a boondoggle, Comrade. The cost of a battleship was near deleterious to the Soviet Union in the 1940s, but that was a much weaker Soviet Union, and we are much more than the Soviet Union today. Whatever this costs will be nearly a rounding error on the global scale. Our primary considerations are not cost, but combat effectiveness and speed of build. The "cheap" point of the triangle is the short one here. = = = = From: gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, fleetadmactual@plan.com Of course, Comrade Admiral. My sincere apologies. A new build would beat out the refit on both of those, as well. Combat effectiveness explains itself – being built to the job will always surpass even the best retrofit, barring outrageous failures of design. That would not be a problem with a new-built modified North Carolina – while the design would have to undergo fairly extensive revision to adjust for the armor scheme change and new overall load balancing, fundamentally it has not only been model-tested already, but built and actively battle-tested for survivability and functionality. We have returned to armor being relevant on ships just as fast as we thought missiles had obsoleted it, and the American all-or-nothing protection scheme was extremely effective. That doesn't eliminate the design phase of construction, but it should shorten it. We should be able to, at worst, get a new ship out in the span of time it took to build the original North Carolina. With modern shipbuilding techniques and technology, possibly even faster -- the orbital yards can produce spaceships faster than that. = = = = From: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr To: fleetadmactual@plan.com, depigmetall@volksrat.dvr, RepDVR@congress.com, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov I would note that HDW-MK Yard 4 doesn’t have facilities of that sophistication. I believe only Comrade Telegin’s Admiralty Yards are currently so equipped. = = = = From: fleetadmactual@plan.com To: bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov Indeed, Comrade Schmidt, so it must be done there. Do not be concerned. This plan seems sound, but I would not intend to pull work out of your workers’ hands. North Carolina is in dire need of a refit regardless, and that will be done at Yard 4. In addition, I would request you to send select engineers to advise the process, as whether new build or not, you do have the most experienced crew for working on battleships currently in the modern world. I think such an adjustment should be able to be sold to the Comintern Congress, based on the arguments presented. It may not even come up for a vote, since this process was not part of any legislation. It does present the problem of not being able to call the ship North Carolina, however. The ship name was to be carried over, as a specific American naming convention would not have passed through the Congress otherwise, likely. But without the name it loses some of the symbolic benefits. This may unfortunately mean I have to present this to the Congress for debate -- they are very picky about such matters. = = = = From: RepFNM@congress.com [Bill Nichols, Comintern Congress representative for the Five Nations of Manhattan] To: fleetadmactual@plan.com, bschmidty4@hdwmk.dvr, gtelegin@leningradadmiralty.sov, Congress eMail Group NAF Hello all, Bill Nichols here, Five Nations of Manhattan. Comrade Fletcher brought this one to my attention, and I may have a suggestion. North Carolina wasn't the only ship in her class – the USA scrapped her sister ship, which was more combat-storied than her, while she was preserved thanks to good luck. Plenty of potential symbolic hay to be made from that – short-sighted capitalism, resurrection story, et cetera. That ship’s name may be controversial, but it WAS named after the state… = = = = Working Title: “Construction of the Comintern War Ship [C.W.S.] Washington” Archival note: wait on Congress reaction to ship name before finalizing entry title
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Aug 23, 2022 01:01
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That was incredibly well done.
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Aug 23, 2022 08:03
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Something something reactionary symbols of oppression and slavery
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Aug 23, 2022 09:15
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Excerpt from “The CyberJournal of Rebecca Morris”, a British water treatment expert from Milton Keynes attached to the German 1st Mountain Division as part of the German deployment to Appalachia. Morris’ journal of her time in Appalachia was among the first online journals on record, and has been preserved by the Free University of Berlin (with permission) since the original was taken down in 2002. Journals like this would lead to the creation of CyberJournal in 1993. “The Dead Hills” Entry for April 29, 1986 Place: Pittsburgh, PA Mood: Pensive :/ Music: “Red Fox Hunting” by the Iodide Kids [Note: the lone hit of a punk band from Bath who disbanded in 1989 due to infighting, about the fear of growing up in the chunks of Britain still controlled at the time by the “loyalists” under MI6] Got off the ferry in Calais, took the TGV from Calais to Paris and then the COMRAIL to Berlin to get on the shuttle. It took less time to get from Calais to Berlin than it did from Milton Keynes to Kent. Really shows how far we have to go on fixing everything back home. Yet here we are, flying off to go help across the world. Very strange to be “attached” to the military. Heard the Germans used to be very military. Regimented people, running things like clocks. Well, you wouldn’t know it from watching them run around and pack things together. Looked just as chaotic as at home. As part of the “experts”, sent up front in one of the shuttles to sit with the diplomats and top brass officers, so I didn’t get quite the experience of the regular mountain troops in the back. Shuttle travel was unbelievable. Heard jet planes used to be like this, but less extreme. You strap in, they winch it up, and then one minute you’re on the ground at Tempelhof, and the next, WHAM! You’re fifteen thousand feet in the air! A big huge arc above the world. The pilot knew his business and spun a big slow roll once we got into low-gravity, gave us a gorgeous slow view of the planet several times before he straightened out for the landing. I think he was showing off for the Appalachians along with us. Something they don’t mention is that you can see Agent Blue from orbit. Sure, Agent Blue is a chemical, invisible in water, but on the last roll we got a glimpse of the American continent coming into view. A vast spread of spring green rising out of the water, with little splotches of gray and lights where the big cities are and rising into mountains behind them. And then, right in the middle, just at the edge of my view before it slipped out of sight, was just this big brown patch. It looked tiny from up here, but it had to be dozens of miles long – the green Appalachian mountains looking like someone had sucked the life out of them. The whole of the mountains doesn’t look so healthy, but part of it is just dead. That’s where we’re going. That’s what we’re fighting – something you can see from space. Even if it’s just a chemical, it’s a scary thought. This is the biggest water table anyone on the team has ever tried to tackle. But that makes it all the more important, right? We couldn’t land in Appalachia itself – none of the old airports there are able to take shuttles, at least not to also be able to launch them again. We landed at Pittsburgh, to the north, which is NOT part of the Comintern. I don’t think. The whole place looks tired – right after the snow melts is the ugliest part of the year. I heard they’re having an election this year – we’ve been getting a lot of people hanging around the barracks they put us in on the south side, trying to get a look at the big collection of Europeans and their mystery trucks full of mystery stuff. Maybe some of them are worried we’ve come to take over? Can’t see Appalachia from here – the hills south of Pittsburgh block the view. In a few days, we head off down the old roads and up into their mountains. It all looks so typical from here. = = = Volkswehr Internal Communique From: Generalmajor Max Arndt, commanding officer, 1. Gebirgsdivision To: Generalleutnant Johannes Neu, commanding officer, II Corps Touchdown in Pittsburgh successful. All members of 1. Gebirgsdivision reported present or accounted for. Still waiting on news from medical for the condition of B-243 and C-243 Panzergrenadiers from that flu outbreak. Have had significant onlookers and rubberneckers from the Pittsburghers, more than expected. Has something changed in the local situation? I recognize moving an entire military division through a major city is never a typical situation, but it feels like entire neighborhoods are showing up to gawk. Fortunately no protestors or people telling us to go home. Last thing I want is to get into a scuffle with supposedly friendly locals. Appalachians are sweeping the roads south, which means we’re stuck here for the time being. They haven’t needed to use those roads to this scale for years, so the condition of them is completely unknown. The AVDA assures us the roads on their side of the border are clear, but there’s no reason to start out from Pittsburgh until we can go all the way at once, rather than have to camp somewhere along the road if a problem comes up. We’re not exactly in a rush, or at least I hope not. Will provide a more extensive update on the military situation by 1500 tomorrow. -Arndt = = = = = Information entry: Tranquility-class hospital ship The Tranquility-class hospital ships are the first ships designed for the Comintern People’s International Liberation Navy, rather than for Comintern member navies, and fall under the joint jurisdiction of the Comintern Ministry of Health. Designed for the purpose of “international brotherhood and welfare”, the six Tranquilitys are intended to form the core of modern international disaster response, with a proposal for more being drafted for presentation to the Comintern Congress. As part of the process of restabilizing Britain, a Comintern restoration initiative placed an order with the new Republic for a vast series of civilian vessels to be built by Britain’s veteran shipbuilding industry, or what was left of it. This included six hospital ships, which upon consultation with Tyne Yards Collective (formed from several longstanding shipyards including the Vickers-Armstrong yard at High Walker and the Swan Hunter yards at Wallsend) were laid down and launched in succession from the Tyne yards over the course of four years from 1983 to 1986 (with Respite slated for launch later this year due to delays). While named after classical concepts of mercy and care, the decision to name the class Tranquility specifically was chosen as a nod to the new space era. These ships – Tranquility, Mercy, Comfort, Solace, Respite, and Peace – are built on a modified version of Swan Hunter’s prewar Bridge-class OBO cargo ship design, making them some of the largest hospital ships ever built at 900 feet long and nearly 90,000 gross tons each. Each has a capacity of 1,200 hospital beds and a fully-equipped surgical ward, along with a top speed of nearly 20 knots thanks to modern TNE power plants. Two helicopter pads give them significant rapid-admittance capability, though they cannot store or maintain craft of their own, and the twin pads give them a distinct "camelback" profile, forming two "humps" on the broad top deck. According to the Minister for Health, barring another complete revolution in technology, the lifespan of the class is estimated at around forty years at minimum. While spaceborne response can get to locations far faster than the Tranquilitys, no spacecraft yet built can match their size and carrying capacity while being capable of landing on the planetary surface, thus making them invaluable for being able to, effectively, deliver a modern hospital on-site to any coastline in the world. SHIPS OF THE CLASS Tranquility | HS-001 | Launched 7 November 1983, Wallsend Yard | Commissioned 4 May 1984 Mercy | HS-002 | Launched 13 February 1984, High Walker Yard | Commissioned 28 August 1984 Comfort | HS-003 | Launched 6 July 1984, Wallsend Yard | Commissioned 11 March 1985 Solace | HS-004 | Launched 11 December 1984, High Walker Yard | Commissioned 4 July 1985 Peace | HS-005 | Launched 10 December 1985, High Walker Yard | Expected commission date 1 August 1986 Respite | HS-006 | Est. launch date 7 July 1986, Wallsend Yard Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Sep 7, 2022 |
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Sep 7, 2022 04:13
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[Excerpt from] INTERVIEW WITH DR. XIE YING ON CHINESE SPACE PROGRAM Collected by SPECTRE on request of MOSA as part of 1986-1991 Space Maintenance Rationalization Plan To be retained until 1991 under GIPPER standards Subject: Dr. Xie Ying, Chinese sociologist working with the PRC Ministry of Health EXCERPT BEGINS So, it may take a moment to get to your answer, because I don’t think the rest of the world has a great understanding of the thinking in this situation, and it’s extremely important to understanding why China is so hellbent on the space race right now. Yes, you’ve heard plenty from various sources about China wanting to “get back to space,” but I really do need to emphasize the point. This is not just a personal directive from the Chairman and the Central Committee. It’s not even just a provincial directive – you’re hearing county-level committees in Yunnan and Sichuan talk about this. These places are about as far from urbanized and vanguardist as you can get, and these people are unlikely ever to see even the pieces that go into making rocket parts, but it’s on their mind how they can contribute, somewhere along the chain. I really don’t think most of the Comintern appreciates just how much that admin vote shook up China – not the Chinese leadership, China. All of it. There’s a growing tendency to minimize old international relationships in our thinking as we make strides towards a greater global socialism. To be fair, that is the objective of socialism, so to do so makes sense, but at this point in time it is dangerous, I think. Certainly for this specific example, it might make you miss the important details. China has dominated East Asia simply by existing for about as long as humans have lived there. Its relationships with the other countries have always come, ultimately, from a point of strength – even when China was going through turmoil and crisis, such as in the Warlord Era, it was understood that China as an entity would reassert itself and could not, ultimately, be dominated by its neighbors or peers. You can criticize things other countries might consider fundamental – the New Culture movement and the Doubting Antiquity movement in the 1910s and 20s struck very deep with critique of the foundations of Chinese culture – but it doesn’t ever threaten that self-assurance. While outside forces absolutely influence and change Chinese society, they ultimately can’t alter the geography, geology, and population of the land in a way significant enough that it prevents “China Proper” from reconstituting itself. However, then you inject the admin arcology into this system, and it causes a bunch of reactions. Firstly, that China didn’t even make the final list is concerning enough. Jiuquan was at least on the candidacy list back when MOSA’s initial setup location was being chosen. That was offset a little by the Soviet Union not making the final set either, you know, peers not making it as well, clearly not wanting to favor the established countries. France being on the list, however, swings it a little back in the other direction – a France site is really more of an all-Europe site, no matter what the French are saying when complaining about the votes, and France has had to be seriously rebuilt so it’s much less of a peer than the Soviets, but, still. But to have the Asia option be Vietnam over China is far more concerning. Up until the vote was placed on the table, the perception was still that the Asia option was still Singapore. China and Vietnam, as I’m sure you know, do not get along. China is the biggest threat to Vietnam’s independence, historically – the countries have been fighting each other for over two thousand years, and Vietnam has been forcibly subjugated to China no less than four times, one of which lasted five hundred years. Now, that was to Imperial China, which is not Communist China, but whether there’s an Emperor or a Chairman in charge of the entity that is China doesn’t change the dynamic of China being a very large, powerful entity that is directly adjacent to much smaller Vietnam. The features that make China large and powerful don’t change, so the relationship doesn’t. So even considering that the admin sites were ultimately picked to favor middle-range countries in the Comintern over the biggest countries, Vietnam being picked over China by the rest of the world is deeply concerning. In the most chauvinist view, it’s a province being nominated for a prize over a country. But for the province to actually win the prize is infinitely worse. Take everything I just said and multiply it by five. This is a huge recognition of global importance and value being awarded to a country that China, to some extent, inherently sees as an inferior. Uh, to be clear, that word is a little bit harsh for the context; we’re not talking subhumans or lower classes here. But as I said, China is bigger than Vietnam in just about every measurable category, so China can outperform it – that’s what I mean by inferior. The Soviets, French, Californians – they can be peers on their own merits, because of their physical capabilities. Vietnam really can’t. Add in the historical relationship and it makes the whole thing even worse, more of a bitter pill to swallow. If you’d told the old United States that the global capital was being set in the Philippines or Puerto Rico, or told the Soviets it was being set in Poland, it might have had the same kind of effect. Mortifying stuff from a perspective of national pride. What makes it a threat beyond national pride, what makes it such a spur to the entire country, is what kind of facility we’re talking about here. The Comintern may not actually have a fixed capital, but we’ve committed to building a major administrative center that will be there presumably forever, or as close as makes no difference. We have the backing and grunt of the entire global alliance to make it happen. We are, effectively, creating a city out of nothing, albeit all but on top of an existing city. That’s a permanent, or very very long-term, alteration to the physical character of East Asia, and it’s one that will shift a lot of the center of gravity southward to Vietnam. That is a serious problem to China on a conceptual level. Everything I said about China Proper and the geography before? This kind of permanent construction is a threat to that understanding. It doesn’t take anything away from China, but it’s a big enough addition on the other side of the scale that you can see it move. Now, when I say threat, I don’t mean there’s going to be a war over it – China as a country isn’t stupid, and neither are the Chinese. Starting a war over a beneficial piece of their own global alliance not being given to them would be asinine and completely counterproductive. But it gives Vietnam a piece to become less of a province and more of a peer, in a direction that China hasn’t had a peer or near-peer to worry about from in a very, very long time. And especially not THAT particular peer. So the entire country, as a reaction, has to reassert itself and come up with a way to counteract that shift in gravity. Which, finally, gets us to the space program. I’d expect China to be lobbying much more heavily to get its share of the Comintern’s global projects going forward, for the record, as another facet of dragging that gravity back to China. However, ultimately you can only do so much on Earth. As Sun-Ra once said, space is the place – the future potential and expansion up there is virtually limitless, and up to this point it’s been almost completely dominated by the Soviets, influence-wise. We still launch the vast majority of our space hardware from Baikonur, the space academy is still based out of Soviet facilities and with Soviet teachers, et cetera. There are very sound reasons for that, materially – the Soviets had the experience and hardware in place, inertia, et cetera, but it doesn’t change the overall end result. The Soviets are already number one on Earth, China is determined to not be stuck as a number two or three in space as well – California got to host the Cydonia conference, after all, and all the weapons testing has been going on at China Lake. The most direct result of that is the huge expansion and modernization project they just passed for Jiuquan. That project is so big that some of its funding is going to have to come from shrinking the military budget, which would have been a lot harder to finesse – certainly to finesse this quickly – without this kind of kick in the rear end. This is a big contributor to why the sudden shift against the Red Guard not only happened, but was able to happen at all – you wouldn’t have seen that without some kind of major unifying-factor jolt at the lower level, to get the populace moving along with the Central Committee. It’s also a factor in Chairman Hua stepping down in favor of Chairman Hu – Hu Yaobeng is a master of local reform and getting things moving at a much lower level than the Maoists are used to operating at. He’s also a leader in the movement to learn from others – a lot of what Hu was doing with local councils under Hua to defang the Red Guard, he learned from the local-government reforms the Yugoslavs enacted in 1980. China loves to ballyhoo about everything it’s invented and done first and itself, and it’s done a lot, but China as a country and as a society is very used to picking up ideas and innovations from elsewhere and has no regrets about doing so. It’s almost a tradition at this point – “Western learning for application” was a well-established idea even when Zhang Zidong wrote about it in 1898. You’ve had people wondering how the hell Deng Xiaoping survived and got back to being in a position of power? That’s part of why. Comrade Deng is a survivor like no other, but he’s back in power because this is his specialty – going through what can be learned from the rest of the world and making it work for China. He’s been touring the world nonstop since January studying education systems, scientific infrastructure, advanced fabrication, all the things China needs to become smarter and savvier, and he’s going to go back home and pore over it with Chairman Hu and the experts and roll out policy changes to make it happen. China’s government knows drat well it’s not at a position right now to compete with the Soviets on a pure knowledge basis, but it knows that if it gets started right now, it could be soon. Thus the gigantic education initiatives going on – major funding increases to schools and universities, the literacy program has been shoved to the forefront, and you’ve got all the low-level propaganda and organizing organs that were once directing the Red Guard after teachers and “capitalist-roaders” now going the other direction and calling for the population to learn, to discover how much it knows and can know. All of this is the kind of thing that could come across as a threat in the past, but the view from inside the bureaucracy is that if we handle this correctly, it’s going to be a gigantic global shot in the arm. China has always had the potential to be the most powerful country in the world, held back by any number of factors that limited its technological advancement at exactly the wrong time for that to happen. This drive for self-betterment in pursuit of Chinese pride can absolutely be channeled into a massive booster for MOSA, first and foremost, and just about everything else we do along with it. It’s just very important to make it clear to Chairman Hu, and the rest of the Chinese, that we really do value it as part of the Comintern, so that it doesn’t burn so hot that it makes cracks in the casing – because no matter what we do, I guarantee you it’s going to burn hot. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Sep 11, 2022 |
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Sep 11, 2022 09:57
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I've been reading this thread over the past couple of weeks and found I've caught up, just in time for us to meet our new tentacled comrades from another star system! This is an excellent alternate history story so far, and I'll be sure to continue following along. I think one of my favourite little details was the description of the 'Indian Jones' movie, an excellent divergent point from our timeline. I'd watch it!
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Sep 22, 2022 17:13
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May 2, 1986 The transport turns around and returns to Earth to pick up the reserve team, which will be followed by a brief stopover on the Moon to pick up some security troops. The LSDF, limited though it is, is the only unit in the Comintern trained for combat in low gravity or vac. May 7, 1986  Another day, another ship. Out in the outer solar system, a discussion of basic anatomy is underway, namely the circulatory and respiratory systems. Through this we are able to confirm that our new friends have both gills and lungs and are quite capable of respiration in air or water - 'WATER OXYGEN' indeed. 'WATER PRIMARY', they say. May 11, 1986 Debates that started all the way back on May 1st conclude, and the French government votes to formally turn over its entire nuclear arsenal to the Comintern in compliance with resolution A-151, and sets out a clear timetable for doing so, the first member with a substantial nuclear arsenal to actually make a practical commitment. May 13, 1986 Following the French example, the Great Britain polities, after some arm-twisting of holdouts, also agree to nuclear disarmament and turning their remaining arsenal over to the Comintern. The Republic of Ireland releases a statement that they will also turn over the single Royal Navy SLBM they acquired somehow, followed immediately after by a public admission that they have secretly been a nuclear power this whole time. Though they admit, they do not apologize. May 19, 1986 Shipboard hangar bays have been a difficult engineering challenge; you are in effect making a gigantic, room-sized airlock, which must be able to be evacuated quickly and repressurized quickly, armored against potential debris strikes or weapons fire, and spacious enough to contain both the spacecraft and the equipment and personnel needed to maintain it. After some work, a serviceable design is ready. It's modular and larger hangar bays can be made by simply adding more, although this will be quite space-inefficient due to the substantial structural reinforcement. Larger, more efficient modules are theoretically possible but will require further work. May 22, 1986 The Cottage Point returns to Mars with more archaeologists and an armed security detail, who are brought down to the now quite well established camp. The work will be slow and methodical, and the teams will be escorted by soldiers of the LSDF the whole time. The LSDF team are nearly all veterans of the Battle of Lunagrad or the assault on the secret reactionary base on the Moon; with a whole thirty minutes of vacuum combat experience, this makes them the elite of our space military. June 1, 1986  Ren Mining Cooperative, an AAA-affiliated mining syndicate, lands a crew on comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, a Halley-type comet which has picked up substantial deposits of vendarite on its long journey through the solar system. The Hawaiians provided transport out and will also provide periodic crew rotation services and resupply flights. A TN mass driver facility, heavily based on military gauss cannon prototypes but demilitarized, is being constructed and deployed to send mineral 'packets' back to receiving facilities on Earth. June 3rd, 1986  The Japanese have held up their end of the bargain. The design they have presented - designed with much help from our own engineers, of course - is absolutely enormous when fully deployed and assembled. Even one of these will dwarf our shipyard complexes to become the largest offworld structure ever built by human hands, and they're designed to be modular. The design itself is a honeycomb web of thousands of individual cells that make an enormous 'mat' of aerostats, each hanging beneath its own balloon, and is designed to connect to other honeycombs. Specialized 'cells' are set aside for various purposes, ranging from maintenance to light manufacturing to spacecraft landing/launch facilities. Each assembly can be launched in a relatively compact form and 'unfurled' at Venus, and each is designed to house 200,000 people. Almost as impressive as the engineering is the life science. With assistance from veterans of the early settlement of Luna and Comintern environmental remediation teams, along with thousands of scientists around the world, a new paradigm for space colonization will be developed and tested on Venus. The life support in the aerostats will rely as much on biological processes as possible. A network of artificial ecosystems with live soil, plants, and diverse species of animals will be included as an integral part of the design. There are multiple 'wilderness park' cells in the design that are also integral parts of the life support system, green walls and water features everywhere they could cram them, fish farms that are part of the life support system in addition to the food supply, hydroponics bays connected to the waste recycling and life support systems, the works. The aerostat designs themselves are unique to Venus, but these systems should be usable nearly anywhere there is Earth-approximate gravity. June 14, 1986 We successfully explain our circulatory system to the Minervans and they respond in kind. They have six heart-analogue organs scattered throughout their body and a highly redundant circulatory system. This is apparently not atypical among animals on their world. June 22, 1986  Incremental progress is made in research, and labs are reassigned accordingly.  Specifically, they are reassigned to the final piece of the VENUSPLAN puzzle - the very first operational Orion drive, which will harness the power of nuclear explosions for peaceful ends. It has been in development for months based on designs that we have been refining and testing for years, all that is needed are the final operational checks before it can be approved for production. July 3, 1986 Anatomy discussion with our new friends continue, with the latest revelation being that, although they can make sounds, they communicate primarily using bioluminescence, color, gesture, and chemical signals, and lack vocal chords or an equivalent. This leads to questions about language, and they reply that they have many, including written languages and simplified audio-based languages for communication over long distances with individuals you cannot see. This would explain why they picked up our universal language so easily - they have done this before, they had a frame of reference for it. Some of our linguists are a little bit sad to learn this; they had allowed themselves to think that maybe they were just that good. July 7, 1986  The newest Hawaiian freighter designs could comfortably make a round trip to Jupiter and back without having to worry about fuel - they're of course still almost exclusively used on the Earth/Luna run, but Hughes and his team are nothing if not ambitious. July 10, 1986  A spacecraft capable of carrying the Venus aerostats is designed and ready to be laid down. It seems absurd to call this insane thing a 'tug'. The command/crew module, engineering section, and 'fuel' tanks, a tiny little assembly of modules, seem almost an afterthought, stuck onto the big bulky tractor beam array, the power plant for that, its radiator assembly, and, behind that, dwarfing it, the 14 enormous pusher plates for the fourteen nuclear pulse engines. This 'tug' can, unladen, propel itself to over 1% of the speed of light, and it does so by launching and detonating dozens of nuclear warheads. Even carrying a VENUSPLAN aerostat, the ship will still be able to make it to Venus in a reasonable amount of time. It just barely fits into your existing shipyard complexes and will be laid down immediately. It should be finished before the end of the year. July 15, 1986 With initial work on the main chamber of the Face...not even close to complete, but complete enough for now, a team is detailed to gain access to the presumed-Minervan ship docked there and begin systematically pulling it apart. They will spend the next several weeks studying it from the outside before attempting to gain access; nobody wants to get killed by a decades-old security system or damage an important component or contaminate everything. July 16, 1986  The People's Army now has artillery ready for service, one battalion for each of the first four brigades. The training facilities receive new students before the old ones have finished packing up their belongings. July 19, 1986  X-COM's commander continues to accrue influence in the halls of power, this time by paying an official visit to the construction site of the still-unfinished but already-colossal headquarters arcology project, in full dress uniform, to commend the workers there on behalf of the Ministry. July 25, 1986  The African orbital defense batteries record exemplary results on a full-alert drill. August 4, 1986  Four battalions of modern TN tanks are ready for service. More tankers are already being trained. August 9, 1986  SPECTRE presents a report on the data collected by your space surveillance and ELINT efforts, plus more traditional intelligence-gathering, on the current state of reactionary forces in the Americas. The report will follow this post. There are many important pieces of information contained therein. The three of most immediate concern are as follows: - a near-100% confirmation that Acting President for Life Agnew is in fact dead, that the Joint Chiefs are aware of this, and that there are backroom negotiations in progress to attempt to reunite the GiE and FedGov. Both factions are trying to keep this secret until the process has been concluded, to keep the transition as orderly as possible. - the Chiefs themselves are scattered throughout the former United States, on the move constantly and never all meeting in one place at the same time. They have been here for some time and brought substantial troops and materiel back from Japan with them, aided by local supporters. - they have extremely limited Trans-Newtonian construction capability, limited mostly to cottage-industry-scale production and very basic manufacturing. They have, however, managed to steal and copy an obsolete Comintern nuclear thermal engine design, and there is a recently-constructed orbit-capable two-person shuttle being concealed at Leavenworth, with several additional shuttles under construction, though they are stalled by a lack of TNEs. We also have evidence that they may be manufacturing and distributing small quantities of some sort of TNE-based infantry weapon to their troops. August 19, 1986  More troops, more trainees. August 24, 1986    Four brigades of modern, Trans-Newtonian troops are now ready for action, with more on the way. August 29, 1986 One of the LSDF security teams on Mars is standing post at a dig site outside the Face, another boring day on a boring planet with nothing much to see or do, when a pile of rubble nearby suddenly collapses, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. The team, eager for something to do, moves to investigate. A suited figure is lying on its back amid the broken chunks of ferroconcrete and metal. The suit is rust-red and mottled - camouflage, nearly invisible against the Martian surface from a distance - and is extremely dusty; the life support equipment, if that's what the backpack and chest piece are, is dull, dented, and pitted. The face is turned away from them, but the proportions are all wrong, too thin, way too thin - this can't be a human. The figure scrambles to a half-crouch, keeping low, as if afraid of being spotted, and starts to scurry away - and glances over its shoulder, opaque reddish visor turning to look directly at the Lunar troops standing nearby. The figure startles, loses its footing, collapses onto the ground on its back. It kicks its feet on the ground to back away, hands raised in submission. Shaking. Terrified. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 3, 2022 07:03
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big things are afoot! most good, some worrying. wondering about the implications of the aliens reaction.. does it not know what humans are? or does it Very Much Know
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Oct 3, 2022 07:12
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Time to stress-test our newly acquired xenolinguistic skills.
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Oct 3, 2022 07:15
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Mars Admin is quietly pleased that their crew weren't cracking up under stress, and there really was a mysterious observer present! Sure, there are disturbing implications for colonial security, but there was nothing wrong with my management of human resources!
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Oct 3, 2022 07:53
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Jesus, it's a good thing we got those fast attack craft designed and built.
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Oct 3, 2022 08:06
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quote:They have, however, managed to steal and copy an obsolete Comintern nuclear thermal engine design, and there is a recently-constructed orbit-capable two-person shuttle being concealed at Leavenworth, with several additional shuttles under construction, though they are stalled by a lack of TNEs. We also have evidence that they may be manufacturing and distributing small quantities of some sort of TNE-based infantry weapon to their troops. They're going to be stalled a bit further when that shuttle goes "poot" from a railgun. Meanwhile, that fedgov / gie reunion looks nice. Sure would be a shame if it dissolved into internicine power struggles since Agnew is dead. Meanwhile, looks like our rifle battalions are ready to go brr.
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Oct 3, 2022 08:13
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Holy poo poo we got a live one! I mean, automated drone defenses we expected, but I'm not sure who had "still-living Roswell Commandos" on their bingo card. Wonder what the poor bastard's even doing here. Have they been camping out in some bunker somewhere in the unexplored portions of the Cydonia complex since the 40s? Or were they among the cryopreserved Martians in the Face? Maybe the system periodically defrosts a small number of them to act as a guard for the rest of them to keep lookout for rescue or possible enemies hunting them down or whatnot.
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Oct 3, 2022 14:58
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we need to sabotage the reuniting of the USA under reactionary forces and make sure these fucks never get out of earthgrav. No reactionaries to space! The sin of capitalism must be contained and extinguished on earth (please ignore japan and hawaii and other such) !! oh yeah also more xeno, time to chat up the stay-behind remnants of some fascist space empire ThatBasqueGuy fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 3, 2022 15:07
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Asterite34 posted:Holy poo poo we got a live one! I mean, automated drone defenses we expected, but I'm not sure who had "still-living Roswell Commandos" on their bingo card. Dudeling was out camping in the great red expanse when this all went down, but he's an ever-stoned fail child in the Collector faction that got wiped out here, so he's got absolutely no clue how to unfreeze anyone. When he saw signs of spacecraft he retreated to the wilds and has been scavenging space slurry ever since. Looking forward to capture and chat, along with suggestions from our watery comrades on basic languages to try when meeting new species.
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Oct 3, 2022 18:03
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Oh man, I'm excited.
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Oct 4, 2022 05:54
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Finally caught up on this thread, and oh boy am I looking forward to seeing where things go next.
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Oct 4, 2022 13:28
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Can't say we can blame the Irish for being secretly nuclear armed. Probably it'll pay off to not be upset at any secret nuclear power who're willing to disarm. Encourage some of the other inevitable secret nuclear states to do the same
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Oct 5, 2022 09:44
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I prefer the IRA sniping a nuke sub than having it been part of the occulted queen's hidden floatilla thats for sure
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Oct 5, 2022 14:03
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We did not need another goddamn nuke sub and now we don't have another goddamn nuke sub.
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Oct 5, 2022 14:18
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Aye, give em a a tsk tsk but no more than that, given the sociopolitical climate the past few decades I don't think you can really fault anyone for pinching a strategic nuclear sub here and there.
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Oct 5, 2022 15:22
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I won't begrudge them having a nuke lying around, but it does raise an eyebrow that they had a secret nuke. The point of a nuclear deterrent is that it only works if everyone knows about it. Keeping a nuke as your secret ace in the whole is like terrorist poo poo.
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Oct 5, 2022 15:48
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They had one missile, a single SLBM, not even an entire sub's worth. That's not enough to be a credible standing deterrent, especially if your enemy knows about it and can reasonably expect to decapitate 100% of your nuclear arsenal with a single air strike or commando raid. Keeping it secret makes perfect sense, if they ever had to use it they would presumably reveal it as a "hey back the gently caress off" last minute wildcard if anybody was imminently threatening invasion. Telling the whole planet about it ahead of time just lets anybody who wants to invade you know that they need to snipe this one glowing weak point, with all the time in the world to plan/prepare, and then they're golden.
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Oct 5, 2022 16:16
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Raise them up as a positive example if anything.
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Oct 5, 2022 19:48
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Yeah, this is a clear "backroom bollocking, public praise for handing it over" situation imo
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Oct 5, 2022 19:55
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