Russia demands NATO guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join alliance.

Oh, my goodness, can you leave Koran alone for a second? Do you really not understand what I mean? Have you read about this concrete plan of blowing America up on the internet or has someone told you this story in a bar? If it's somewhere on the internet I would like to know more details if they exist.

 

Where you hear this?

With 175k troops....I can't see that being a successful invasion....you'd need 6-700 k....Putinka wants all of Ukraine ...not just another "portion" where you'll have an insurgency for decades....hell try for a land corridor to Konigsberg....cut off Baltics....

Don't see how that would work considering that gap is razor thin and 60 miles long....Nato would mercilessly squeeze it.

 

You can read all about in past issues of "Inside the Pentagon", a publication widely distributed through the military and defense industry. Its not classified.
Do you understand that thsi is the same conflict that started over a thousand years ago? Nothing has changed except the technology... the tools... its the SAME CONFLICT.

Without seeing their OPORD you have no idea. The country is very fractured politically and ethnically. Their goals may not include the ENTIRE country. Some of the regions within the country may actually welcome the russians. Without knowing the "Commander's Intent" and the "Concept of the Operation", we really can't tell what they are up to.
A lot of my info comes from a forum like this, open only to west Point graduates. Some are still on active duty, some are in various positions in the government and some, like me, are old retired guys still consulting for some government programs, but generally just watching and listening.

 

The country isn't "fractured" that deeply. I have contacts on the ground in Kharkiv....and it sounds stable. You can see in the DPR ...what support there is...which isn't much....and Putinka knows this....his gambit there kinda failed.

As far as Crimea is concerned it was massively bribed into defections. Along with a sham referendum.

Sounds like the Kremlin shrimp is feeling the heat....Ukraine gets stronger by the day....Crimea is dry....the new German govt is dragging its heels on NS2....stalling on activating and certifying the pipe.....the migrant crisis gambit in Belarus backfired and Russkis rumored to be moving in nukes to change some minds....and Russki southern flank is exposed to Afstan now that US left town. All this sounds like Kremlin and Co., getting nervous.

 

Yeah, uh huh. Contact in Russian speaking Kharkiv, maybe so. Crimea running dry? As I already said, I was there in August so good luck with that lie. Nordstream 2 is a done deal. Southern flank exposed to Afghanistan? Geography not your strong suit? Try Kazakhstan.

The DPR and LPR continue to hold....even with the Ukrainian military randomly peppering civilian areas with mortars and heavy arms. Straight out of the Gaza Palestinian playbook.

 

Yah...carsy....Kharkiv and area all quiet....the only $hit disturbing is Mafialand firing at Ukie positions in DPR....funny,Kharkiv,Mariupol, Russian speaking ...yet no ....ethnic cleansing...but yet in DPR ,torture,kidnapping, and other $hit that under control from the "Federashka"....

Try Kazakhstan?....looks like you flunked Geography....Yah...my geography is good...like I said Russki southern flank will have issues....thats why beefed up military base in Tajikistan....Kremlin pimp had the luxury of Nato in Afstan for 20 yrs....now the US left town and Vladio will need to ante up his own security $$$....I'll hazard a guess the Caucases will be on fire again at some point....have fun "negotiating" with the Talibs.

Crimea was bribed carsy....and a sham referendum....I think you even know it....just don't want to admit.

LDPR will hold??....for how long. "Neverussia" is an epic fail....im sure Putler even knows this ...and also the reason Strelkovka left town.

NS2 a done deal..?..ain't nothing operating yet from what I'm seeing/hearing. New German govt official for overseeing this said today NS2 is a mistake....I'll provide link if you like.

 

Muslims weren't being massacred.

You're neither Slavic nor from the Balkans, so you don't understand blood feuds. I get that.

 

You are both philosophically wrong, and historically wrong.
Historically, you ignore the Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 people, and the rape of many
more and the more general ethnic cleansing.
Philosophically what has my racial or ethnic identity got to do with knowing something? Your
mentality is similar to tribal Woke mentality which is infecting us all.

Srebrenica massacre

 

That's what the Israelis thought, right up to the time ZSU-23s downed/damaged a lot of their aircraft during the Yom Kippur War.

That was Iraq. Iraq is neither Russia nor China.

If you're gonna fight the Chinese or Russians, you'll need to draft 500,000 to 1 Million at least.

That's true for the British and Germans. Not so much for the Danes, Norgies, miserable fat Belgian bastards, Dutch, Italians or Greeks.

Congratulations, ser.

You just vaporized your battery and everyone who happens to be in the area.

They'll be listed as MIA/BNR thanks to your incompetence.

No, you didn't have a nuclear mission and you had no nukes in your basic load.

Which part of "DIVARTY" do you not understand?

Do I need to give you a block of instruction on DS, GS and GSR?

No, it wasn't and Reagan has nothing to do with anything. You might wanna read the National Security Council directives in effect at the time.

The Fulda Gap? Obviously you drank Tom Clancy's Kool-Aid®. Absolutely nothing was gonna happen at the Fulda Gap very slowly.

Also, it seems you cannot wrap your brain around DS, GS and GSR and don't understand the mission of DIVARTY in contrast to the mission Corps Artillery.

I'm Army. I only played with BGM-109Gs because the Air Force doesn't have cargo helicopters.

I know everything about Army units and twice as much about Army units with nuclear weapons missions.

You are mistaken.

There's no such thing as the "41st Group."

It always was the 41st Field Artillery Brigade and it consisted of 1/32 FA, 2/75 FA, 2/83 FA and 4/77 FA. Each battalion had a headquarters battery, service battery and 3 batteries.

1st ID (FWD) had 1/16 INF, 1/26 INF, 4/73 AR, C Troop 1/4 CAV, D Co 1st Engineer Battalion, D Co 1st Med Battalion, E Co 701st Maintenance Battalion, 573 Support Battalion, 2/59 FA and 4/5 FA, but that was after the brigade rotation from Fort Riley.

Your knowledge of all things-science is disturbing.

The development of the EMP is shaped by the initial nuclear radiation from the explosion—specifically, the gamma radiation. High-energy electrons are produced in the environment of the explosion when gamma rays collide with air molecules (a process called the Compton effect). Positive and negative charges in the atmosphere are separated as the lighter, negatively charged electrons are swept away from the explosion point and the heavier, positively charged ionized air molecules are left behind. This charge separation produces a large electric field.

https://www.britannica.com/science/nuclear-electromagnetic-pulse

Compton Effect is also known as Compton Scattering.

It isn't limited to just hard/soft gammas. It also includes hard/soft x-rays, neutrons, protons and fission fragments.

The Carrington Event also proves you wrong.

The Carrington Event was believed to be an X-Class Flare of magnitude 17.

Basically, any X-Class Flare with a magnitude of 15 or greater and is accompanied by a proton storm where the proton energy is 30 MeV or greater will result in an EMP.

How does it do that? Compton Scattering.

No, you didn't. How is it you don't know training warheads are used?

That's because you never trained.

You don't even know where the warheads were. I do. I know where all of them were.

 

You don't understand how they work. I get that.

Your mind is damaged by the Göbbels-style propaganda from your Media and the Federation of Ass-Clown Scientists, who had people believing the Soviets would be raining neutron warhead ICBMs on the US and that is why Carter succumbed to Public Opinion and refused to deploy neutron warheads to Europe.

Soviet propaganda referred to neutron weapons as "the ultimate Capitalist dream," since they would kill people, but leave the factories standing."

Get it?

Did the Soviets win the propaganda war? Well, you tell me.

The Group of Soviet Force Germany and Group of Soviet Forces South (in what was then Czechoslovakia) had neutron weapons, but the US/NATO did not.

At least not until 1987 when Reagan authorized the secret deployment of 10 kt Lance ERWs to Germany.

Civilians have control over all things-nuclear (until one of the branch services takes receipt.)

These civilians at Sandia, JPL and LLL are playing around and discover that they can create ERWs -- Enhanced Radiation Weapons -- and using Media parlance, we'd call them "x-ray bombs," "gamma bombs" and "neutron bombs."

The Navy and Air Force had no interest in neutron bombs, but they were keen on the x-ray and gamma bombs, because they though they might be used to destroy/neutralize in-coming enemy nuclear missile warheads. It never panned out the way the Navy and Air Force hoped, so they lost interest.

The Army didn't give a damn about the x-ray bomb or the gamma bomb, but they were hot for the neutron bomb and ultimately ended up with a 1 kt warhead for the 8"/203mm field artillery and a 10 kt warhead for the Lance short-range missile system.

That sounds scary, but the blast effect of a 1 kt neutron warhead is about the same as a couple of 2,000-3,000 pound conventional gravity bombs, and the blast effect for the 10 kt is roughly 1 kt to 2 kt equivalent.

Why? It's the way they work.

You cannot make neutron bombs with Uranium-235. You can only use Plutonium-239.

To understand why, U-235 has a spontaneous fission rate of 30 fissions per second per kilogram.

On the other hand, Pu-239 has a spontaneous fission rate of 20,000 fissions per second per kilogram.

Spontaneous Fission ≠ Half-life/Decay

Those are two totally separate different concepts. Half-life/Decay is one element transforming into another element. Fission is one element splitting into two elements.

Half-life/Decay is how you get Pu-239. You load a reactor with Uranium-238 then bombard it with neutrons. The U-238 absorbs a neutron and transforms into Neptunium-239:

U-238 + n ---> Np-239

Np-239 has a short Half-life and decays by beta emission into Pu-239:

Np-239 > e --> Pu-239

When Pu-239 fissions spontaneously or undergoes coerced fission, 93% of the time you get Zirconium and Xenon.

Zirconium is what people use as jewelry, since it looks like diamonds. Xenon is a Noble gas. The concentration of Xenon in your upper atmosphere was created almost exclusively from the spontaneous fission of Pu-239 that existed when Earth was formed, and of course from nuclear weapons testing.

The fact that Pu-239 spontaneously fissions at such a high rate is the reason it can only be stored as tablets or pellets with a volume not greater than 1 cubic centimeter.

What if you picked up a handful of Pu-239 pellets?

You'd get the Big Bang? Nope.

But you would get a helluva lotta heat, a few 1,000°F, and a few 100 boat-loads of neutrons.

Now you know how neutron bombs work.

This nonsense by the Media and Federation of Ass-Clown Scientists that the Soviets would be raining 5 megaton neutron warheads on the US and MIRV buses would be cruising across US skies dumping 900 kt to 1 mt neutron warheads on everyone was nothing short of a fantastical lie.

In the first place, neutron warheads are strictly fission-only.

Anything above 200 kt has to be fission-fusion because of the Laws of Physics, and in reality, only France was the only State that had a fission warhead over 100 kt and that was a 140 kt gravity bomb used by the Etendards and Super-Etendards before it was retired in the mid-1970s.

Also, for a typical nuke, you want as many fissions as possible within the first 6 nanoseconds. For a neutron warhead, you want to extend the fission process into the milliseconds.

That's one reason you don't get the Big Bang.

The 1 kt 8"/203mm and 10 kt Lance both used a linear implosion device. It's like a football with lamented fast and slowing PBX. You collapse the ends of the football into a sphere, and then partially collapse the sphere into a "quasi-critical mass" for lack of a better term.

That's different than the 10 kt Lance warheads used by NATO allies and the 20 kt warheads used reserved exclusively for US and British units where the sphere is totally collapsed.

In our Universe, there is no such thing as 100% efficiency. If there was, you wouldn't need hydrocarbon engines for your cars, trucks and planes.

The radiological danger from Pu-239-based weapons is that part of the Pu-239 which does not undergo fission.

In fission-fusion weapons, a greater percentage of Pu-239 undergoes fission, because the fusion process yields neutrons which fission even more Pu-239, so the danger is only the Pu-239 in the fission-trigger that does not fission.

In a normal fission weapon, a lesser percentage of Pu-239 undergoes fission.

But in a neutron design, about 96% of the Pu-239 is fissioned (and there's cryotons -- glass tubes filled with a certain gas that sheds neutrons when you run electric current through it-- to help the fission process.)

So, what pollution?

There's negligible blast/heat damage; only a small amount of un-fissioned Pu-239, and the neutrons go away.

That's why the Soviets called it the "ultimate Capitalist weapon."

But, before the neutrons go away, they'll interact with lots of things that absorb neutrons, like Aluminum.

Home siding, window frames, doors, cars, and a host of other things are made of Aluminum, specifically Al-27.

Al-27 will readily absorb neutrons and change into Al-28 which is an highly unstable radioactive isotope with a Half-life of 2.5 minutes.

Then it kicks of a big ass friggin' gamma ray that will damn near knock you on your ass (one of the most powerful gammas known.)

Here's the thing. Two people, one expose to 3,000 REMs of neutron radiation and the other exposed to 3,000 REMs of gamma radiation. What happens to them?

The one exposed to neutrons will function normally for about 3 days before keeling over dead.

The one exposed to gammas will be almost immediately incapacitated and lay around in agony for a week or two or three before dying.

Anyway, using neutron warheads only poses a brief hazard for the Russians.

Remember, it's Russia and not Bikini Atoll.

 

Since when are declassified US government documents propaganda?

The US murdered Schemarke for the same reason FDR was about to invade Mexico in 1940, illegally overthrow the government, install a puppet government and seize the oil and natural gas fields.

That's not propaganda, but it is declassified US government documents, specifically it is discussions by FDR, his Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff of the branch services.

 

That's because the focus is solely on low-intensity localized conflicts.

A conflict with Russia or China would neither be low-intensity nor localized.

Your baseless over-confidence is amusing.

I don't consider Restricted, Confidential or Secret to be "highly classified."

 

ZSU's are ancient history. We dropped Vulcan too.There are no gun systems in the Army's Air Defense arsenal anymore.
No one wants a draft... neither civilians nor the military. Its gone. And we don't need it anymore anyway.

I was in 41st FA Group, headquartered in Babenhausen. 41st and 42d Groups made up "CORPS ARTILLERY" for V Corps. I had six nuke "ready rounds" available immediately in the ammo storage area in Munster, just down the road from us... on the way to Darmstadt. Six more rounds were ready for us on call.
Here's the homepage for 41st FA Group... https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?
https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/FieldArtillery/USAREUR_41st%20Arty%20Group.htm...
Take a look... you will find that 41st Group consisted of 2/5 FA, 1/32 FA, 2/75th FA, and 2/83d FA. Group headquarters along with 2/82 and 2/5 was in Babenhausen. The other two battalions were in Giessen.

As I said,41st Group and 42d Group were V Corps Artillery. NOT DIVARTY (DIVISION ARTILLERY is a DIVISION ASSET... We were a Corps asset... although as the battle was projected to develop, as things stabilized we were ready to become attached to 8ID (which is gone from Germany now too).

DS/GS/GSR has to do with MISSIONS... not organizations.

Vaporize the battery? What? What are you talking about?

My mission, under Carter, was to move to the Fulda Gap and prepare to fire nukes at the Russians we hoped to trap there. Under Reagan that changed. The mission was to move to the IZB and drop some nukes into East Germany, then fall back, resupply and await further orders. And yes, we trained to build nukes on a regular basis. Yes, we used training rounds. Training devices are used in the Army for everything from vehicles to weapons to just about everything.

"I know everything about Army units and twice as much about Army units with nuclear weapons missions." Lloyd Austin is a classmate of mine. With four stars and as Secretary of Defense he would never be so self absorbed as to make a statement like that.

There were no BGM's around when I had Battery Command.They came later.

EMP effects are caused by magnetism, not radiation. Radiation is made of particles. EMP effects are caused by expanding and collapsing magnetic fields which induce current in ferrous materials. In miniature components, like printed circuit boards, this induced current melts the material like an old fashioned fuze you would find in the fuze box in grandma's basement.Radiation is particles. EMP is not particles, its radiation. That's why lead and other shielding materials won't shield against EMP. Heck, the entire earth cannot shield against magnetic effects. That's why a compass works.

You believe that the national "intent" on a global scale is only classified at the SECRET level? Really? LOL

A good example of how we handle manpower can be found in our armor policy. Russia decided to overwhelm enemies with massive amounts of tanks. We decided to build Apaches which can do much more damage. It takes fewer assets... including personnel. That's just one example of why we don't need the tremendous numbers of troops we used to need. The three pickup truck loads of JAVELIN's in the hands of three guys that destroyed an Iraqi tank battalion is another such example. We aren't lining up in droves like we did in the Civil war anymore.

Oh, and by the way... the first "Major's List" for Officer Year Group 1975 was published in 1985, with actual promotion coming later. Promotion times vary according to personnel needs, not any set times. I was right with my Class and year group.

 

You did claim otherwise. You said that in a war with Russia our troops would run for the hills.

Everything that I have said is correct.

It is more that I disagree with whatever is wrong.

Everything that I have said is correct.

Not really. Nothing in the article supported the claim in the headline.

I've yet to see any serious criticism of the F-35's ground attack ability from either Sprey or that article (or from any other source).

No it isn't. It is an outstanding ground attack aircraft.

KGB propaganda is not evidence of anything.

 

So far the US has no plans to put any such weapons in Ukraine.

If such plans emerge in the future it will be because of Russia's aggression, and Russia will only have themselves to blame.

How do you define Eastern Europe?

We certainly have business defending EU territory. That includes Poland, Romania, and the Baltics.

 

We have plenty of adequate force. The US Navy is more than capable of sweeping Chinese shipping from the world's oceans. The US Air Force will soon have the ability to bomb China as much as they want to. The US Marines are more than able to seize China's little artificial Islands. The US Army is more than able to invade Taiwan and dislodge any Chinese force that is occupying it.

No, Poland begged us to come in.

It's close enough. It will prevent our bombers from being attacked as they fly over China and bomb it with impunity.

Sure we do. The US Air Force will soon be capable of bombing China until there is nothing there left to bomb. The US Navy can control the oceans indefinitely. It would not take long for a US counter-invasion of Taiwan to dislodge a Chinese occupation.

Who knows. But we will respond in kind if they do.

I do want to test it.

It's not that I am hoping for war, but the F-35's stealth will work just fine.

There is no such plan. But what republics do you think we would want to occupy?

That is not when Kosovo was taken from Serbia.

The media reports it because Poland actually was asking us to come in.

Difficult enough to detect to allow our bombers to fly over enemy territory with impunity.

I understand just fine.

 

An X-ray or gamma bomb would just be a normal nuclear weapon.

You can use either.

That isn't how neutron bombs work. A neutron bomb uses a small fission explosion to compress fusion fuel. That fusion fuel produces lots of extremely energetic neutrons, which are then allowed to escape the bomb and irradiate the area.

No. The neutrons are produced by fusion.

The US made some 500kt fission bombs.

No. It's from the fragments of the atoms that did fission.

Not exactly negligible. Any civilian structures in the neutron kill zone will also be flattened by the blast.

 

The arguments here totally miss the boat on America's true comparative advantages and strengths, while engaging in ridiculous, play-station like, comments about the strategic and tactical efficacy (and even relevance) of various weapons, platforms and systems.

One of America's biggest real world advantage is that it controls the larger socio-economic and political global environment where most of the leaders and officers of its adversaries live and wish to live. From the outset, that factor limits the maneuverability, options, and responses by its adversaries to events leading up to any potential conflict or war. It makes it harder for them to adequately preempt and prepare for situations where often the side that goes second, will probably finish last.

Another American advantage is its the near total impunity recruiting agents and influencers within the ranks of its adversaries, being able to paint responses to such actions as evidence of violations of "democratic rights" and "human rights" abuses, all the while being able to shield itself of even, comparatively, the least egregious attempts by its adversaries doing the same. The hue and cry over "Russian meddling" in its elections compared to persistent, heavily funded, interference by the US et al in other countries political systems is a small example of this larger phenomenon.

America's biggest weakness, on the other hand, is that it has no stomach for a real fight, at least not when it comes to paying a huge price based on often ridiculous propaganda pretexts it uses effectively to put pressure on its adversaries. This weakness means that -- as long as an adversary is somehow able to offset the two inter-related American advantages I listed above, and is able to project a credible image of being crazy enough to go first (and hit hard) if there is any pretext for doing so -- it will be America that would be eating crow and backing down each time if that adversary can pack a punch that would hurt. That is unless the point at issue isn't merely dear just to special interest groups trying to earn their buck and more from hysteria and propaganda, but involves a genuine threat to America.

 

I'm not sure what "controlling the larger socio-economic environment does. Sure, we have Marriott's and great steakhouses... but how does that win wars? And what is your point 2? We can recruit spies? Your third point is true today, but its temporary.America has always been willing to fight the good fight, from Europe to the Pacific to Korea and more. Today, with the cowardly debacle in Afghanistan it certainly isn't true, but that's a temporary condition that will return to normal when the coward Biden disappears.

 

Point 1 refers to America's ability to paint individual leaders, officers and figures in whatever propaganda light it wishes, black-listing and sanctioning those who it finds convenient for its purposes. It refers to a world where, as one example, the daughter of one China's top leaders, and the CEO one of China's biggest tech companies, can be nabbed visiting Canada because of failing to perfectly comport itself in relation to sanctions on Iran.

Point 2 is about the comparative ease with which the playing field allows the US to recruit spies, agents and influencers. The US, for instance, was able to march into Baghdad without a fight or any real urban warfare in 2003 because the generals put up by Saddam to guard his capital had already been contacted on their cellphones and bribed beforehand, leaving their posts. It refers to a situation where the US has even a "publicly advertised" program (never mind the myriad of covert and semi-covert ones) offering $16 million (and family relocation) to Iranian military officers, scientists, and state oil company executives and experts, to act as its agents.

Point 3 has little to do with who is in charge in America. Who is in charge might influence the risk adverseness or recklessness of its leadership, but propaganda portraits and bogus excuses aren't enough to drag the US into a truly costly war if the adversary has the will and resolve to pack and deliver a strong punch.

 

OK.. as to point one... you attempt to address American power by referring to some obviously biased account of Chinese "nabbed" due to improprieties that had something to do with Iran? This adds a whole new dimension to the word S-T-R-E-T-C-H.

As to point 2... bribed Iraqis? Sorry,I was in on that war. Whole divisions surrendered after a single volley of ATACMS. The "steel rain" hit and they surrendered en masse. Did you not hear of the thousands of Iraqi soldiers that attempted to surrender to a single American Marine Cobra attack helicopter? Sorry... your story of cel phones and bribes is very poorly veiled propaganda... nothing more.

As to point 3... without any specifics in your posting all I can say is that this additional propaganda is pretty thin too. Ask our adversaries if we can fight. From Germany to Japan. Leave out Afghanistan, it serves to show clearly that the guy in the White House can set the stage for defeat.

 

I was explaining to you the larger environment I was referring to, which includes the US deterring its adversaries from pursuing interests and relationships they might otherwise fully develop. The example I gave to simply illustrate that environment referred to this case:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46490053
Huawei: Meng Wanzhou faces Iran fraud charges, court hears

I didn't say anything meant to negate "Iraqis surrendering en masse" -- or the story about "thousands of Iraqi soldiers that attempted to surrender to a single American Marine Cobra attack helicopter". The example I gave relates both to reports like the one below as well as others from the NYT etc specifically about the role of Iyad Allawi (who became interim Iraqi PM afterwards) recruiting Iraqi generals before the invasion. I will see if I can still find those reports, but the point wasn't about these examples but but about comparative US advantages...
https://taskandpurpose.com/history/cia-iraq-invasion/

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-offers-reward-for-intel-on-irans-paramilitary-force/1573216
US offers reward for intel on Iran's paramilitary force
https://www.rferl.org/a/us-blacklists-iran-oil-shipping-network/30146604.html

 

I didn't. Can you tell us more about this incident so we can google it?

I thought you can't surrender to an aircraft. For some reason.

 

Sorry, I didn't read about it anywhere. I was in the war at the time and when the incident occurred, it instantly was of interest to us all. It was due to the effects of MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System). The system fires multiple rockets at a time. Each rocket is capable of placing a piece of shrapnel in every square inch of a football field. The M442 "bomblets" it contains (600 per round as I remember) are conical and land flat side down. A downward shaped charge penetrates armor while the rest of the round "splays" to the sides for anti-personnel effects. The Iraqis referred to it as "steel rain". The effects were devastating. If personnel were not casualties, they often lost the will to fight. In te incident with the helicopter, it was not their fear of the helicopter that caused their surrender, it was the desire to just quit and go home after a dose of "steel rain".

 

How is it possible that thousands of Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to a single chopper but there is not a single article about it? And what do you mean when you say tried? Was their offer of surrender rejected?