Don't forget this: when Walker was spying for the USSR, his info may have been shared with North Vietnam.

That's right, the secrets he shared may have been part of the immense technical aid package the USSR gave the North. His actions more than likely lead to US deaths in The Vietnam War.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

NATO plans a new high-readiness force to counter Russian aggression

It's rather shocking of how much has NATO changed since The '90s after only a period of two decades; the downgrading of its military forces from their previous 1980's readiness levels has gotten to the point where even basic high-readiness forces capable of being deployed at a moment's notice have to be reformed from scratch. The generals of the Cold War must be rolling in their graves, and if not, reading the newspaper with a palm on their face.

To be fair to NATO, it's not like countering Russian aggression was ever something NATO had been designed to do.

Err, wasn't that what the organization was designed to do in the first place? My point was that the days of having entire army groups in central Europe put on stand-by at the news of any major Warsaw Pact activity are of a bygone era when it was generally feared that the Soviets would try and steamroll over Europe any day they'd liked. That being said, it'd be interesting to see how the old NATO from The '80s would tackle the current conflict in Ukraine and the Crimea.

Shh... Don't Explain the Joke.

Psst. I think he was being sarcastic.

It's a long ways from the days when NATO had a clear purpose in staring down the Eighth Guards Army across the Inner German Border, so NATO is going to need to relearn some lessons, particularly as countries like France and Germany are much more reluctant about things than, say, Poland or the Baltic States.

It seems to me that Poland would be the one to assume the role that West Germany had formerly played back in the day, what with the former bordering Russia and being on the immediate frontier of an armed conflict if the worst case scenario, not to mention having the only decently powerful military with reliable allies in the region capable of going toe-to-toe with the Russians.

I wouldn't say toe to toe so much as that they wouldn't fall within a week but Poland is definately going to be a big buffer zone and player this time around.

Or the 3rd Shock Army further North.

They’d certainly stand up to the Russians much better than the Georgians, while their army is so damningly huge◊ compared to the Ukrainians◊ that I actually had to use MS Paint and edit two images together to post that order of battle of theirs.

Among the Europeans, Poland is one of the bigger spenders (in terms of percentage of GDP) on their military. Many of Poland's most-admired generals made their names fighting the Russians, after all.

That said, no matter how much Putin boosts military spending, the Russian Army is never going to be murdertrain-sans-brakes that the Soviet Army was, mainly because Russia isn't going to, and no cannot, dedicate 30% of its GNP to upkeeping it. Plus, the Warsaw Pact forces made up a good third or so of the overall force structure: those are in the NATO orbat now. Soviet calculations were that troublemakers like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland would toe the line as long as the Soviets were clearly winning...which hardly applies now.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/377271/news/nation/phl-military-chief-wants-undof-commander-probed-for-white-flag-order

edited 2nd Sep '14 2:42:07 AM by entropy13

Summat else:

Any of you guys heard of the Yoh Company? Seems like a run-of-the-mill human resources and staffing firm right? Website makes a brief mention of "engineering" work in the 60s-70s. Turns out, that engineering work included designing tanks and submitting proposals to the US Army. Of course, H.L Yoh Company aren't exactly a big name - not Continental, Lockheed, GDLS, or such like - so some of their thinking was a little...outside the box.

Yes, they did just propose putting a tank's engine in the turret and giving it a backup walker system in case the track breaks.

Ah paper panzers. Gotta love 'em.

edited 2nd Sep '14 10:51:56 AM by Achaemenid

This is how Knightmare Frames are born

I'm down for that.

The Yoh Company proposed an autoloader so large that its benefit over having a human loader is no longer there. How does the auto-loader look like? It looks like a revolver. But yeah, at least someone could still "manually change" shell types even if it's loaded, I guess. LOL

re: Yoh tanks: oh. Oh my.

They're only missing one thing, and that's the long-barreled 152mm that was supposed to be mounted on the MBT-70. Then they can lay claim to having the craziest tank design ever.

The Korean War in nutshell.◊

Well, there was also UK, China, and Soviet Union, along with dozens of other countries, but hey.

Should've had Yao Ming intervene by tossing an armful of cereal boxes into the South Korean cart. A race between the U.S and China over who can destroy and replace the most cereal boxes ensues to a stalemate, while the North Korean kid gets out of dodge fast.

edited 2nd Sep '14 8:17:09 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Yeah tiny problem. The F-35 will never become a workhorse. It simply can't meet the hype and it can't be made in numbers that would make it a work horse craft.

Cross-posting this from several other threads:

The Russians have recently announced their discontent at NATO's plans for a new 5,000-strong high-readiness force in reponse to the deteroriating relations regarding Ukraine. Although such a move would effectively disregard the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act in which “in which the Western alliance agreed to not permanently station a substantial number of combat troops in Eastern Europe”, the BBC article on the subject states that “NATO insists that while there will be pre-positioned supplies and more exercises in Poland for example, these will not be permanent new bases.” Obviously, “. . . that is not going to cut much ice in Moscow.”

The Moscow Times reports that “a Russian general has called for Russia to revamp its military doctrine, last updated in 2010, to clearly identify the U.S. and its NATO allies as Moscow's enemy number one and spell out the conditions under which Russia would launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the 28-member military alliance.”

I’ve got a feeling that the wind just got a lot colder in Europe don’t you think?

edited 3rd Sep '14 9:37:13 PM by FluffyMcChicken

The Moscow Times reports that "a Russian general has called for Russia to revamp its military doctrine, last updated in 2010, to clearly identify the U.S. and its NATO allies as Moscow's enemy number one and spell out the conditions under which Russia would launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the 28-member military alliance."

Good luck with launching nukes that may not even make it out of their silos...

(page topper context)

edited 3rd Sep '14 9:35:57 PM by Nohbody

Like ours are in better shape. I'd be more worried about their subs than their land based silos.

^ NATO as a whole hasn't had the budget woes to the degree that has severely restricted Soviet/Russian ICBM maintenance.

In any case, it's just bloviating from a general trying to score political points with Putin. I'm exceedingly doubtful that Putin is willing to risk a) Russian nukes being shown as a paper tiger, or b) the west actually deciding to become genuinely hostile to Russia (vice Russian propaganda merely painting them as such).