Whom will win the US election?

We have lived (until now) under the dome of US security, Pine Gap being one of those reasons.

IF, a nuclear weapon is EVER launched and there is retaliation we will ALL be dead ..... do you trust Putin or Trump NOT to do it ?

Remember, Truman was the only person to approve of dropping the bomb and ALL subsequent testing has proved how dealy the current manifestation of nuclear weapons is.

The Tzar bomb even worried the Russians

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tsar-Bomba

We're a stupid/smart species

 

It was in The Australian. Almost certainly the best paper in the country and a place where you get a variety of opinions.

Re F22s, I spent a week flying Ian McLachlan around shortly after he retired as Federal Defence Minister, and I remember one night around the table we were talking about the upcoming RAAF aircraft purchase that he was involved in.
If my recollection is correct (and it was a long time ago) he was very much in favour of F-22s but there was issue with the cost and possibly the Americans being reluctant to sell them (they were absolute latest tech at the time).

Even now I’m not sure if they would sell them to anyone else.

 

There were no facts in your post, just opinions. Whenever confronted with facts, you shift the argument.

I posted the BBC report with the facts. The ATACMS missile is a current in-service US weapon, not "cast-off materiel".

 

Seriously, just don’t bother

 

The article is interesting and covers a number of valid points. I don't really want to give much credence to the idiot speech from JD Vance - lecturing about how to run democracy when Musk is going feral...

What Aus maybe should be doing is talking to the Ukranians as they have developed a lot of clever military technology in the last couple of years and would be happy to sell some on I am sure...

 

Go back to the Statista graph I posted - US and EU/UK have given about equal in actual human aid . USA pumps up their other numbers with inflated values of second hand war materiel. Which they are now trying to 'recoup' by extorting a REM contract from Ukraine...
Also take a look at
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-many-u-s-soldiers-already-in-ukraine/
But Russia has been relatively patient with the West’s involvement in the Ukraine war, considering the circumstances. Leaked documents in April 2023 revealed that a number of Western countries have special forces on the ground. At the time, the U.K. had the most special forces personnel, 50, on the ground. Latvia had 17, France 15, and the U.S. 14.

 

Rubbish - that missile might 'current' since 1991, but the FACT remains US inflates its materiel 'worth' figures.

 

Have you ever seen the cost of milspec items ?

I was looking over a C5 aircraft one day in Sacramento and saw hundreds of titanium bolts in the wing root and asked how much each bolt was .... $75,000 each

Milspec toilet paper is even dearer

 

I have a had similar experience with some of the aviation/defence jobs we have been involved with.
One in particular was the redesign of a dash for a Bell helicopter. The flight instruments were to be rearranged for a small monitor to be installed.
After a few mock ups and revisions from normal 3mm alloy 5083 grade, all were happy. The real dash blank arrived from Bell in its own little crate with paperwork, someones signature on the back etc painted primer green.
The total for all the R&D on three revisions we did with material and design and reprogramming included around $480.
Just the flat bit of alloy plate from the crate - over 5K !!!!!! then the 80 bucks for us to do the final cut.
And we think Ferrari prices on spares are eye watering!

 

My brother-in-law was in the RAAF, posted to the US to work on the F/A-18 program. One item that I recall was an Allen Key - $8,000 (US) in 1987! The RAAF didn't tick that box. There were numerous other examples.

 

Exactly...one huge scam for a very closed circle of beneficiaries.

 

Let me tell you about inertial navigation accelerometers we use to send to the US navy to get calibrated for horrendous amounts of money

A colleague I worked with (who never finished highschool) used quantum physics I taught him in an afternoon to work out how to calibrate these accelerometers with the alignment platforms in 482 sqn by the simple use of resistors costing cents and an immediate turn around as opposed to many months

I miss washing F111s

 

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/donald-trump-walks-back-volodymyr-zelensky-spray-as-analysts-claim-hes-found-a-way-to-end-the-war/news-story/1e77d910f620d6c97bbd114bc2f35cfa

 

Bait and switch

 

There are two types of weapons - submarines and targets

 

I was told by two submariners that the use of a submarine was a declaration of war

True ?

 

Not sure about the truth of that statement but I do know that Submarines have a significant offensive capability with the weapons that they carry, and the mere potential for a submarine to be operating in a theatre of conflict impacts on all assets operating in that area.

In naval warfare, a "fleet in being" is a naval force that extends a controlling influence without ever leaving port. Were the fleet to leave port and face the enemy, it might lose in battle and no longer influence the enemy's actions, but while it remains safely in port, the enemy is forced to continually deploy forces to guard against it. A "fleet in being" can be part of a sea denial doctrine, but not one of sea control.

 

Thanks, these told me lots of things and pre internet hard to verify

How did Pearl Harbor affect this doctrine ?

 

In a world of ballistic missiles (not to mention nukes) do you really think there will ever be another war fought at sea??? Has anyone has ever hit a target with a sub launched ballistic missile, even in unarmed practice?
Do you really think submarines can 'hide' given the global satellite coverage of the world? Not to mention new technologies like magnetic anomaly and hydro-acoustic sensors.
Can subs even be positioned accurately enough to fire at a land based target.
This is an interesting read: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/october/navigate-stars-beneath-waves#:~:text=Submarines%20typically%20use%20inertial%20navigation,accurately%20determine%20the%20ship's%20position.

 

Answers: Yes - 2027 in South China Sea
Yes - numerous times in anger in the Middle East and on practice ranges near Hawaii and San Diego. I am certain that your Chinese and Russian friends have also hit targets hundreds of times with their SSBNs.
Yes - submarines are operating covertly every time they leave port.
Fun fact - Naval ships have numbers painted on their hulls but submarines have no markings, so you have no idea if the boat that departs a port one day is the same one that returns to the same port a few days later.
Yes - missiles these days have their own navigation system.

 

There’s always 2 sides to every story…

https://www.news.com.au/world/live-updates-grim-fallout-from-donald-trump-and-jd-vances-confrontation-with-volodymyr-zelensky-in-the-oval-office/live-coverage/42af5dce29c5c6a2d8a1fda834a7f8a6


I want to bring you a few remarks, from folks who aren’t actually elected Republican officials, defending Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. There’s of course some stuff from guys like Elon Musk, who is more red-pilled troll than man at this point, but also some quite reasonable critiques of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Richard Hanania is head of a thinktank, the Centre for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. (It has no shortage of things to study these days, does it?) He writes pretty cogently here and I don’t want to clip it, so apologies for the length.

“I watched the entire press conference with Zelensky. There was 40 minutes of discussion up to the argument. Most people saw at most the last ten minutes. The whole video gives the proper context,” Mr Hanania said.

“When I first watched the argument without the proper context, I thought it was possible that Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky or were even trying to humiliate him. That’s not what happened. You had 40 minutes of calm conversation. Vance made a point that didn’t attack Zelensky and wasn’t even addressed to him, and Zelensky clearly started the argument.

“In the first 40 minutes, Zelensky kept trying to go beyond what was negotiated in the deal. When Trump was asked a question, it was always ‘we’ll see’. Zelensky made blanket assertions that there would be no negotiating with Putin, and that Russia would pay for the war. When Trump said that it was a tragedy that people on both sides were dying, Zelensky interjected that the Russians were the invaders.

“For his part, Trump made clear that the US would continue delivering military aid. All Zelensky had to do was remain calm for a few more minutes and they would’ve signed a deal. The argument started when Trump pointed out that it would be hard to make a deal if you talk about Putin the way Zelensky does.

“Vance interjects to make the reasonable point that Biden called Putin names and that didn’t get us anywhere. The Zelensky/Trump dynamic was calm and stable. It was when Vance spoke that Zelensky started to interrogate him. Throughout the press conference to that point, everyone was making their arguments directly to the audience. Zelensky decided to challenge Vance and ask him hostile questions.

“He went back to his point that Putin never sticks to ceasefires, once again implying that negotiations are pointless. Why on Earth would you do this? Then came the fight we all saw. Zelensky was minutes away from being home free, and he would have had the deal and new commitments from the Trump administration. The point Vance made was directed against Biden and the media, taking them to task for speaking in moralistic terms. This offended Zelensky, and that began the argument.

“I’ve been a fan of Zelensky up to this point, but this showed so much incompetence, if not emotional instability, that I don’t see how he recovers from this. The relationship with the administration is broken. Ukraine should probably go with new leadership at this point.”

There’s not a heck of a lot there I would quibble with, apart from his characterisation of Mr Zelensky’s questions, to Mr Vance, as “hostile”.

Mr Zelensky made the point – an understandable one, given Vladimir Putin’s history of breaking supposedly ironclad agreements – that the Russian President’s word cannot be trusted. He is clearly concerned that Mr Trump is being taken for a fool by Putin.

He asked Mr Vance to justify the US government’s position, which he – again, quite clearly – thinks is too credulous. You could say that he challenged Mr Vance. Calling it “hostile” is a stretch.

Here’s another example, from podcaster Lex Fridman.

“The amount of disrespect President Zelensky showed to Donald Trump and the American people today was insane. This was a mistake,” he said.

“I have tremendous respect for President Zelensky for the heroic actions he took in the early days of the war. But diplomacy at this stage obviously required showing respect to world leaders, even more so during tense difficult peace negotiations.

“I did everything I could to help in my small way to build bridges. This was the opposite of that. It was a big step backwards. All of this breaks my heart. I pray for peace.”

 

And the other side from the same string of articles

Now for the opposite view. The following comes from Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, a quite recently founded publication which is run by conservatives critical of Donald Trump.

“It made me want to throw up,” he said of the scenes in the Oval Office.

“The most shameful moment in American history of my lifetime, I think. And a sign that America is ruled by an autocrat.

“Nobody seems to remember this. At the close of the Cold War, Ukraine was in possession of 1900 nuclear warheads. They had one of the largest stockpiles in the entire world … that’s a pretty f***ing valuable card to have, if we’re talking about cards.”

(He was alluding to Mr Trump’s remarks today telling Volodymyr Zelensky he had “no cards” to play.)

“They chose to give them up. Why did Ukraine choose to give up these warheads? Because in 1994, the United States of America signed a guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty and security against aggression. We had a deal. We had a f***ing deal with these people already!” said a palpably angry Mr Last. I do mean palpably. He was shouting at this point.

“We convinced them to give up their nuclear warheads. And now, all of a sudden, that’s just gone.

“The idea that Volodymyr Zelensky has not expressed gratitude. He came to America. He stood in the Senate and spoke to the entire nation, and expressed to every individual American the gratitude that coursed through the heart of every single Ukrainian.

“This obsession, from Vance and Trump, with gratitude, it betrays an absolute confusion over what the state is. The state, to them, is Trump. And so what needs to be expressed is gratitude not to the American people, not to Congress, not to whoever happened to be president in 2023, but to Donald Trump himself.

“Zelensky having expressed gratitude to Congress when Trump was not president is worse than not counting. (Trump) views that as a betrayal.

“That we are led by this man, who does all this in our names, is shameful. It makes me feel deep, deep shame to be an American. Because we own this. It doesn’t matter how much we disagree with it, or how angry it makes us. We own this. And it’s horrible.”

 

That’s an opinion of Trump by a Trump hater and not of what actually happened in that meeting

 

It's certainly been a bizarre week - amazing foreign policy pivot sees the US joining Russia to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine. The US is now at odds with its longtime European allies and soon to impose trade sanctions on its neighbours and (I assume eventually) other longtime allies such as Australia.

It's no surprise that Trump is withdrawing US influence in Europe and NATO, but I am astounded to hear him quoting Putin's propaganda and acquiescing to Putin's demands from Ukraine.

Will Trump eventually walk away from this with a Nobel Peace Prize?