The British army has admitted it is no match for Russia

[Kellhound]

The 1980s took place 50 years after the German invasion was planned too.




It went a lot better than a German invasion of the UK would have, one of Hitlers generals actually told him it would be a "reverse Dunkirk", does that sound like something good?




So only about the most important part, I see.




I think you are overvaluing it TBH, having supremacy of the skies doesn't grant invulnerability to AA fire...




They wouldn't have been needed, our defence would have been too much for the Germans to overcome, hence every competent historian and Hitlers own advisors agreeing it wasn't possible.




The American D-day forces landed numbered 73,000, the British 61,715, and the Canadians 21,400 (there were also French, Australian, Polish, etc forces). But I think you are missing a major point, those forces (and luck) were required to storm the beaches, it takes much less to defend. The British army and home guard have more than enough to deal with all the forces Germany had planned to use in an invasion.

During WWII, the UK imported no less than 23,777,000 metric tons of material, oil, and food per year. While the UK may have been able to survive on its own, it would not have been able to fight at all.

[Skroe]

Yep, I was out of date - you're right and I was wrong; when DoT&E says it's operational (with minor bugs that do not affect its field effectiveness), in strength, that's really all there is.

I was not thinking of the Raptor upgrade, but rather the last reporting on the 120-D that I recalled, which was (after doing a little digging) apparently from early 2013 (that should teach me to post without doing my due diligence first).Thank you for the exhaustively detailed rebuttal/correction.

Objectively, it is nice to see that the Air Force has realized it may need to actually be able to fight a war in the near future, and is making some solid moves in that direction (the Navy has at least somewhat had the same realization, but afaik, is not moving towards near-peer warfare capability with any particular success, though they too are making many moves in the right direction, just with marginal success to date - imho, of course).

To be fair on a few points here:

(1) The AIM-120C will be in the inventory for years to come and jets on the front line (including those F-22s and F-15Cs over Syria) are armed with it. While the AIM-120D exists in large numbers, it is almost certainly dwarfed by the huge stockpiles as the result of 20 years of AIM-120C procurement with the Air Force buying AIM-120Cs as recently as 2011. Perhaps the intent is to maintain the AIM-120C as an actual Medium-range missile, and have comparatively fewer of the long range AIM-120D. Together wi th the AIM-9x (which iirc, has some commonality with the AIM-120, though I can't recall if the AIM-120 adapted AIM-9 components or vice versa), it covers the entire spectrum.

Some interesting data:

http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/Sidewinder.html
AIM-9x Block II procurement objective: 6,000 missiles (USAF: 3,352 / NAVY: 2,648)
AIM-120 Porcurement objective: 16,427 missiles (USAF: 11,966 / NAVY: 4,461)

(most of these in the stockpile and the annual buy pre-2012 are almost certainly AIM-120Cs and leftover AIM-120B).

Fact is though, the F-35 can carry a whopping four of these internally (plus the possibility of another eight externally + 2 AIM-9s, but don't expect to ever see that). Or if it carry's couple of JDAMs, that means 2 AIM-120s + 2 JDAMs internally. And that's just the A/C. The B has different limitations.

I was thinking about this the other day: where would the F-35 be without the Small Diameter Bomb. For all the emphasis on it's role as an multirole attack aircraft over air superiority (well in contrast to the F-22A), its size and bulk would mean it would have been up the creek for that mission too except in low-threat air space, without the existence of the SDB. It's a great program that certainly makes the F-35's ground attack role viable (although SDB-II hasn't been integrated yet, hilariously enough) and it's made a host of aircraft far more capable for air support (especially the B-1B and F-15E). The Air Force has wasn'ted a missile that does for air superiority what SDB does for ground attack. It would go a long way to answering the criticisms of the F-35 in that role. But it's not like the AIM-120 is exactly a big missile (it's only somewhat larger than an AIM-9M, though the 9x got rid of the missile's bulky fins)), especially compared to the AIM-54. It's long and has big fins, but half the reason SDB worked was because it's half length compared to a 2000lb bomb. How do you have a medium to long range missile with half the length?


AIM-9X (bottom) and AIM-120C (top), Polish Air Force.


AIM-120 Diagram

Meteor's are modestly larger as well.



Model of 4 SDB-IIs and 1 MBDA Meteor in an F-35 internal weapons bay.


So somehow, that "Next Generation Missile" will have to be roughly the size of an IRIS-T with the range and power of a AIM-120. Frankly, I'd love to see them try. How do you miniaturize a rocket or ramjet based thruster to be THAT small? The case for an "F-22C" (an F-35 in an F-22 costume) just keeps getting better and better.


(2) In defense of the Navy, they're programs just cost more and the operate on longer time scales. If the Air Force (a well as the Navy), are going to destroy other Aircraft from the air, then their weapons of choice to do it max out at $1 million for an AIM-120D (with a low end of $400,000 for an AIM-9X). So they can buy 400 of these per year as a relatively expensive part of the overall procurement budget and build a substantial inventory that way. By contrast, if the Navy wants to destroy another ship from a ship (or an aircraft from a ship), their most long range and capable option at the present / near future is the SM-6, which cost about $4 million each, are several times the size of an AIM-120, and are only procured in lots of about 150 a year (with a planned run of 1800 initially). Doing the math, the numbers work out roughly to be an equal investment, but we're dealing with a $4 million solution compared to a $1 million one. An Air Launched LRASM would be only modestly more than an AIM-120D, but a sea launched one would, with a booster, still be well over $2 million per missile.

One of the Naval procurement decisions I find myself conflicted over more than anything recently is the decision to replace the big C-2 Greyhound fleet with modified Osprey's. I hear the argument: that using an Osprey to to direct to ship (more than just a carrier) delivery has huge advantages over the hub-spoke system that the C-2 requires (for other people reading, the Osprey can delivery cargo to almost any ship, the C-2 requires landing on a carrier and having helicopters do the ferrying to the other ships in the CSG). This especially makes sense if the plan is to spread CSGs out widely to defend against ballistic missile attacks.

But at the same time, the Navy is replacing an aircraft that has a 1500 mile range with an aircraft that can travel 1320 miles, with a smaller internal volume. For something that will be of principle importance in the vast Pacific Ocean. Yeah...

It seems to me that the CMV-22B (christ that's a mouthful) would be superb asset in addition to modernized C-2s (or something else on the larger size).

Even with the "right moves", when I read what the Navy buys nowdays, the first thing I look for is the range. The F-35C's range, while better than what it is replacing, is a sham compared to what it should have been. And it looks like they want to do the same stupid thing with the MQ-25 Stingray as well. Hell that program also makes so little sense... it clearly is designed the way it is to protect the F-35 (made by a rival company), but the Navy isn't exactly in a love affair with the F-35 either.

It's really going to take an Act of Congress to order the production of a X-47B derived "MQ-47B", just like that time they ordered NASA to build the SLS after a decade of those people navel gazing to protect their favorite pet projects, isn't it?

[Deleted]

Air superiority would not have negated the Royal Navy, the Luftwaffe were not equipped to deal with fast moving boats or battleships. The Kriegsmarine did not believe they could have successfully launched an invasion even with air superiority, due to how overwhelmingly powerful the Royal Navy was.

That was because most had no understanding of how powerful air power was - it was a brutal lesson in WW2.

It would have taken Germany years and years of preparations to build up the specialised forces required to invade Britain, during which time Britain would have progressed their defences as well. Germany's best hope was a negotiated settlement with Britain that took them out of the war, it was probably the most sensible course of action for both nations, however Churchill had no interest in that and virtually singlehandedly dragged Britain into fighting on.

designing landing craft and building them is not terribly difficult - Protecting them that is the question.

This is why Churchill is virtually worshipped in Britain, in spite of him being a pretty shoddy politician outside of WWII and even during it in many instances - his greatest achievement was so great that it overshadowed his numerous flaws.

Stubbornness as an achievement - well i like him too.

After that the US implementing Lend Lease under FDR - from a British point of view, the greatest US President bar none - was the second part which allowed Britain to carry on fighting, eventually leading to D-Day and the liberation of Western Europe by the Allied forces.

there would have been supply problems with no air cover however.

- - - Updated - - -

The 1980s took place 50 years after the German invasion was planned too.

seems i was to painfully literal.
See Kellhound.

It went a lot better than a German invasion of the UK would have, one of Hitlers generals actually told him it would be a "reverse Dunkirk", does that sound like something good?

One of Hitler's generals was psychic?

So only about the most important part, I see.

Landing craft is not terribly difficult to make -

I think you are overvaluing it TBH, having supremacy of the skies doesn't grant invulnerability to AA fire...

Its very had to have AA embankments on the sea.
or are you suggesting ship borne AA would have done the trick ? (hint, that was tested very brutally in the pacific)

They wouldn't have been needed, our defence would have been too much for the Germans to overcome, hence every competent historian and Hitlers own advisors agreeing it wasn't possible.

Oh really? - weird, because i have read a few saying otherwise.

The American D-day forces landed numbered 73,000, the British 61,715, and the Canadians 21,400 (there were also French, Australian, Polish, etc forces). But I think you are missing a major point, those forces (and luck) were required to storm the beaches, it takes much less to defend. The British army and home guard have more than enough to deal with all the forces Germany had planned to use in an invasion.

You do get that at this point Hitler could also muster those numbers for an invasion?

[Skroe]

Sometimes I feel that Foreign Policy reads MMO-Champ OT. They have a new article which basically calls out the Putinista miscreants here, especially Ulmita. For the rest of us, it's a good read. Pretty much confirms everything Kellhound and myself have said.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/22/...ar-propaganda/

Russia’s Nuclear Paranoia Fuels Its Nuclear Propaganda
A classic disinformation campaign about U.S. nukes reveals a lot about Moscow's military anxieties.

Twitter has been aflame with reports that the United States is moving the few dozen nuclear weapons stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Deveselu military base in Romania. I am calling bullshit on this one — but it’s bullshit in a telling way.

It’s most likely Russian propaganda, all part of an elaborate strategy to build opposition to U.S. missile defense efforts and deflect criticism of Moscow for violating arms control treaties. This is a particularly irritating manifestation of the bullshit asymmetry principle: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

The evidence to suggest that there are U.S. bombs in Romania is pretty thin. An anonymous person blindsided a former Romanian president with a “sources say” question that he was dumb enough to answer — allowing Romanian media to cover it as though sources actually say — and then an obscure EU-focused website called EurActiv stated the outrageous rumor as outright fact, citing nothing more than “independent sources.”

The Romanian government has already denied it — and, come on, the story never made much sense to begin with. For one thing, there are no storage facilities at Deveselu for the nuclear bombs. The United States has specific security requirements for its nuclear weapons, and Deveselu does not meet them. For example, B61s in Europe are stored in specially designed vaults called the Weapons Storage and Security System, or WS3. There are none at Deveselu or anywhere in Romania. I even checked some recent satellite images supplied by Planet. I found nothing remotely looking like new construction, let alone nuclear weapons storage.

For another thing, the NATO-Russia Founding Act contains a political commitment by NATO not to store nuclear weapons in former Warsaw Pact states. The United States and its allies could renege on this commitment, of course, but that is the sort of thing that would require consultation among NATO members. Consultation means talking, which NATO is really good at. That process would take months, if not years, and would be bound to leak.

No, if the United States withdraws its nuclear weapons from Turkey as it did from Greece in 2001, those weapons will go to another location in Europe with appropriate storage facilities, like Italy’s Aviano Air Base, or simply come back to the United States.

So why is an obscure news outlet like EurActiv reporting that nuclear weapons are to be stored at Deveselu? Let’s just say EurActiv Measures is more like it.

Here’s some important context: Deveselu is an “Aegis Ashore” site for U.S. missile defense interceptors — that is to say, it is a land-based version of the ship-based missile defense system. (It even kind of looks like a ship on land.) The Russians have always hated the idea of U.S. missile defenses being stationed in the territories of their erstwhile Warsaw Pact allies and have said so repeatedly. Claiming that U.S. nuclear weapons are going to be stored at Deveselu is a surefire way to stir up local European populations against a given military site. You don’t need to be an arms control wonk to connect the dots here.

Moreover, the Russians, including President Vladimir Putin himself, have repeatedly asserted that U.S. missile defenses are a pretext for stationing offensive, nuclear-armed missiles in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It is impossible to know how sincere the Russians are about this fear, but they say it a lot. And it certainly helps raise concern about what might be going on at Deveselu, which makes Putin happy.

The whole thing reads like a pretty classic Russian disinformation operation. A few anonymous sources make a claim in an obscure foreign newspaper. That allows Russia’s state media to “cover” the allegations without quite taking responsibility for them. The story gets redistributed by the usual nitwits — looking at you, Breitbart! — and useful idiots connect the dots for Moscow. And, thanks to the geniuses in the Defense Department’s press shop who “neither confirm nor deny” any story about the location of U.S. nuclear weapons, Russian media are having a ball.

The Soviets used to do this all the time. One of my favorite examples is the claim that HIV is a U.S. bioweapon gone rogue. In the early 1980s, the KGB planted the story in an obscure newspaper in India. Thomas Boghardt tells the story expertly in an article for the journal Studies in Intelligence. They let the story fester for bit, before having Soviet media kick it into high gear. That was followed by a campaign by an East German “doctor.” It would all be very funny, except these views are prevalent in Africa and complicate efforts to fight HIV infection. Many important African figures have flirted with AIDS denialism, something that, in part, seems to have been strengthened by the circulation of such conspiracy theories (and which conspiracy theorists then recycle as further support). These sort of stories become impossible to beat back once they go, if you’ll forgive the pun, viral. “Once the AIDS conspiracy theory was lodged in the global [subconscious],” Boghardt wrote, “it became a pandemic in its own right.”

There are literally dozens of other examples of Soviet propaganda like this. I strongly suspect the same thing is happening here. The Russians are using the concern about nuclear weapons located at Incirlik to push the idea that those weapons might come to Romania, largely in an effort to stir up local opposition to missile defense.The Russians are using the concern about nuclear weapons located at Incirlik to push the idea that those weapons might come to Romania, largely in an effort to stir up local opposition to missile defense.

There is, however, another disturbing possibility. Even if the Russians — or some Russians — know that the EurActiv story is hokum, they may genuinely be worried about the idea that the United States would convert missile defense interceptors into INF-like weapons that could kill the Russian leadership with little or no warning. Although it is ridiculous from an American perspective, I have long argued that the Russian General Staff is genuinely terrified about the threat of decapitation — the ability of the United States to use nuclear weapons and precision munitions to kill the Russian leadership in a surprise attack. I’ve written about this before:

“It is a funny sort of paranoid fantasy, the notion that the United States might place nuclear weapons on missile defense interceptors and use them to decapitate the Russian leadership in Moscow. But I suspect this is the rub. The simplest explanation for Russia’s overwhelming concern with missile defense is that the General Staff fears that Russia is much, much more vulnerable to an attack against the country’s command-and-control infrastructure — what used to be called decapitation — than we realize. Part of this is a fear that missile defense interceptors could be armed as offensive missiles, part of it is that missile defenses could mop up a disorganized Russian retaliation. Most of it, however, is probably sheer terror at the persistent technological advantage held by the United States in light of Russian vulnerabilities.”

I know it seems absurd, but I think the Russians do believe it. Moscow was unmoving during the New START negotiations at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s administration on the issue of missile defense interceptors and offensive missiles using the same silos. That’s why it insisted on an obscure and politically troublesome provision prohibiting the placement of missile defense interceptors in silos built for intercontinental ballistic missiles and vice versa. Then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates also mentioned that Moscow expressed concern that “ground-based interceptors in Poland could be fitted with nuclear weapons and become an offensive weapon like a Pershing and a weapon for which they would have virtually no warning time.” A senior official later told me he was surprised to see that remark in an unclassified setting. And this year, Putin made precisely the same claim in public. I know it is weird. But it just may be that the Russians think some weird things.

Even if Russia is paranoid, the increasing performance of missile defense interceptors means that the missiles could also be used to attack ground targets. I asked my friend David Wright to model an SM-3 Block IIB interceptor based in Poland converted to a nuclear weapon, and, sure enough, it would violate the 1987 INF Treaty and pose a threat to Moscow.

As far as I can tell, no one in the United States is planning to do this, but one reason the Russians may be suspicious is that they may be thinking about it themselves. John Krempasky likes to say the easiest way to figure out what the Russians are up to is to look at what they are accusing the United States of doing. He has a point. Many countries have adapted surface-to-air missiles to have surface-to-surface roles, including Russia and the United States. Some foreign observers are already warning that it is Russia that is planning on converting its most advanced air defense missiles into intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

I have long pressed the Obama administration to try to talk to the Russians about dealing with this problem. In particular, I have proposed that the United States and Russia agree to a ban on nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors.

The United States, after all, doesn’t use nuclear weapons on its missile defenses. In fact, a 2002 bipartisan amendment put forward by Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) prohibits the Defense Department from spending money on the “research, development, test, evaluation, procurement or deployment of nuclear-armed interceptors of a missile defense system.” That’s because after the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board indicated that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was “interested in looking at” nuclear-armed missile defenses, Stevens freaked out.

On the other hand, Russia’s missile defense system, at least the one around Moscow, may still be armed with nuclear warheads. Russia is reportedly moving toward a conventional missile defense of the city, something we should hasten along if at all possible. And if Putin intends to keep the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system armed with nuclear warheads, that is a sufficiently terrible idea to make this proposal all the more important.

So why not agree to prohibit nuclear-armed ballistic missile defenses? Everyone bangs on about reducing the massive stockpile of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Well, a lot of those nuclear weapons are thought to be air defense warheads. Let’s do it!

Banning nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors would help shore up the INF Treaty at a time when it looks to be faltering. There are any number of challenges facing the treaty. Addressing one of them would be a step in the right direction.

Perhaps most importantly, a ban would require verification, in the form of confidence-building measures, that demonstrates that neither side is converting missile defenses into nuclear-armed offensive missiles. That would probably involve visits to missile defense sites to examine the interceptor warheads and ensure nothing worrisome is stored at the base. Imagine if we had such an agreement today. It would be a simple thing to demonstrate to the Russians, as well as to the rest of the world, that there are no nuclear weapons at Deveselu and that the story — whether it was hatched in Moscow or not — is bunk.

Jeffrey Lewis is director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Some historic background, with respect to "Nuclear Armed Missile Defense", especially with regards to those around Moscow. While modern missile defense that most people are familiar with involves hitting a missile or a warheads with a kill vehicle (and involves no nuclear explosion), the first generation of missile defense in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s used massive nuclear explosions in the edge of space to protect cities and critical sites from incoming warheads, ether through an EMP or through destroying the warhead itself. The idea is a controlled explosion high over a critical site would be preferrible to an enemy detonation.

The USSR and the US (in particular) planned some incredibly elaborate and lavish missile defense systems utilizing nuclear warheads, all of which proved incredibly expensive and infeasible. If you're interested, read about these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program

Historically speaking, the very famous Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's Star Wars, was the conceptual and budgetary successor to Safeguard. And of course, SDI was renamed to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, then the Missile Defense Agency, in 1993 and 2002 respectively.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty (ABM Treaty) was designed principally with these first generation Nuclearized Missile Defense systems in mind, as the technology to use a non-nuclear kill vehicle or lasers became practical 20,30, 40 and 50 years after the first attempts at missile defense.

Safeguard, and the concept of using nuclear weapons in controlled explosions to defend against incoming warheads hasn't been operational in the US for 40 years. However with Russia, the system lived on for many years, and may still live on. The ABM Treaty allowed ONE site to be protected with missile defense systems. Russia chose Moscow. The US chose, ingeniuosly, the Safeguard Complex in North Dakota (which is kind of like the last request of an condemned prisoner to be not executed, and it be granted).

[The Professional]

I beg to differ.

[caervek]

seems i was to painfully literal.

No you just used a post-dated reference, being wrong makes it difficult to find correct ones.

One of Hitler's generals was psychic?

No they were just good at pointing out the obvious, not that Hitler was much of a fan of it.

Its very had to have AA embankments on the sea.

True but it didn't stop us doing it, by the time the German invasion was indefinitely postponed we were constructing offshore AA/artillery platforms (ever heard of Sealand?), we also installed AA and artillery on our Victorian sea forts (artificial islands designed to defend the country from enemy armadas).

Oh really? - weird, because i have read a few saying otherwise.

Can you link any? Until you I had never seen anyone dispute the status quo.

You do get that at this point Hitler could also muster those numbers for an invasion?

Doesn't matter, he didn't have as good equipment and was facing a much stronger defence.

[Deleted]

No you just used a post-dated reference, being wrong makes it difficult to find correct ones.

There were two different claims, A, the UK is capable of feeding it self now (no)
B, the UK did not need imports during the war - also no.

No they were just good at pointing out the obvious, not that Hitler was much of a fan of it.

They were against most of what he did, and he was right, alot in the start.

True but it didn't stop us doing it, by the time the German invasion was indefinitely postponed we were constructing offshore AA/artillery platforms (ever heard of Sealand?), we also installed AA and artillery on our Victorian sea forts (artificial islands designed to defend the country from enemy armadas).

That is not comparable to to mobile ground based AA, those sea forts are fixed points.

Can you link any? Until you I had never seen anyone dispute the status quo.

I'm guessing you are referencing sea lion - Or Want me to link an historian who think that Germany could have won the war against the UK?
anyway most of what I said here was drawn froma Swedish book about air power and this from the 80's so - And note the suggested plan of action was not wait one week, have air superiority, and then invade - it was continue with the successful degradation of the British war effort - most especially the RAF, then an invasion would have been feasible.

Doesn't matter, he didn't have as good equipment and was facing a much stronger defence.

No, the German army had better equipment, and the defences would have been worse.
The logistics would be the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

Sometimes I feel that Foreign Policy reads MMO-Champ OT. They have a new article which basically calls out the Putinista miscreants here, especially Ulmita. For the rest of us, it's a good read. Pretty much confirms everything Kellhound and myself have said.

Russia’s Nuclear Paranoia Fuels Its Nuclear Propaganda
A classic disinformation campaign about U.S. nukes reveals a lot about Moscow's military anxieties.

Isn't this an insight about soviet propaganda?

[Skroe]

Isn't this an insight about soviet propaganda?

Heh. From an American perspective... the Russian Empire... the Soviet Union... the Russian Federation... it's the same terrible idea, the same dangerous monstrosity with a different name, different management, but many of the same institutions and largely the same motivations, even though the justifications may be different. The tactics, the approach, the ambitions... all in many ways the exact same. The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are all exactly the same thing - three different manifestations of Russian imperialism.

Tsars are not the Bolshiveks (and their successors), and neither are Putin's Criminal Empire, but all have envisioned the submission of Europe under Russian hegemony against the rival power, and in order to achieve that goal, draw from a common tool set, a common history and a common approach.


Few people are as captive of their history as the Russians.... Putin's reign of terror being the living embodiment of their utter surrender to it. Is it really so surprising that a regime whose leadership idolizes the glory days of the USSR at it's peak would seek to emulate the Soviet approach? Or perhaps Soviet is the wrong word. Perhaps it's really always just been the Russian approach, that the Soviets simply made use of.

Anyway I hope you read it despite it's length. It's pretty much a big old punch to the jaw to the Putinistas and shreds most of their claims about missile defense.

[Corvus]

In 1974 they wargamed Operation Sea Lion with both British and German participants who had fought in the war and the conclusion of all involved that it was a complete disaster for the Germans.

The Germans had no specialised landing craft and had collected inland river barges to use. In the channel even a gentle swell was enough to sink them - you wouldn't even need to shoot at them. The wake from a high speed run from a destroyer would cause them to get swamped.

[Deleted]

In 1974 they wargamed Operation Sea Lion with both British and German participants who had fought in the war and the conclusion of all involved that it was a complete disaster for the Germans.

Maybe i should have made this clear, i never suggested that sea lion was feasible - I said that if Hitler had let the Luftwaffe do its thing, an invasion (not sea lion) would have been.

The Germans had no specialised landing craft and had collected inland river barges to use. In the channel even a gentle swell was enough to sink them - you wouldn't even need to shoot at them. The wake from a high speed run from a destroyer would cause them to get swamped.

yeah and they were commissioning better craft -

[Deleted]

Heh. From an American perspective... the Russian Empire... the Soviet Union... the Russian Federation... it's the same terrible idea, the same dangerous monstrosity with a different name, different management, but many of the same institutions and largely the same motivations, even though the justifications may be different. The tactics, the approach, the ambitions... all in many ways the exact same. The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are all exactly the same thing - three different manifestations of Russian imperialism.

Tsars are not the Bolshiveks (and their successors), and neither are Putin's Criminal Empire, but all have envisioned the submission of Europe under Russian hegemony against the rival power, and in order to achieve that goal, draw from a common tool set, a common history and a common approach.


Few people are as captive of their history as the Russians.... Putin's reign of terror being the living embodiment of their utter surrender to it. Is it really so surprising that a regime whose leadership idolizes the glory days of the USSR at it's peak would seek to emulate the Soviet approach? Or perhaps Soviet is the wrong word. Perhaps it's really always just been the Russian approach, that the Soviets simply made use of.

Anyway I hope you read it despite it's length. It's pretty much a big old punch to the jaw to the Putinistas and shreds most of their claims about missile defense.

Take your medicine, you butthurt wanker.

[Kellhound]

Take your medicine, you butthurt wanker.

That seems to be a better description of yourself....

[Deleted]

Heh. From an American perspective... the Russian Empire... the Soviet Union... the Russian Federation...

1709 - 1989
Its all the same really, paranoid fears and insecurities.
The empire must be maintained to prevent being invaded by Swedish, French, British, Germans, Americans.
You would be the same if you had a long land border to a vibrant and dynamic region producing imperialistic ideas.

[Kallisto]

Maybe i should have made this clear, i never suggested that sea lion was feasible - I said that if Hitler had let the Luftwaffe do its thing, an invasion (not sea lion) would have been.

yeah and they were commissioning better craft -

There was no way any kind of invasion would have worked in the 1940s or maybe even the 50s. If the southern airfields were destroyed then the RAF would have just moved the airforce north. Yes the bombers could have made it north but they would have been out of escort support and been sitting ducks. Germany was always without both Air and Naval tech to have been able during the war to invade Britain. Anything the Germans made the Brits were building better or mass producing cheaper.

Sure German tanks 1v1 would have destroyed a British/American tank. But the British and American tanks were being produced in such numbers that I think the saying was "One Tiger could take out 9 Shermans, But the allies always came out with 10.". It was the same with the airforce. Just that the RAF produced equal or better fighters and interceptors than the Germans were producing.

[Ulmita]

On other news. MKO's from George Soros paid 6 news outlets and a bunch of internet media companies in Greece, to take Ukraine's side in 2014 according to DCLeaks . There are big news in Greece atm.

Thanks America!! We love you even more now!!! <3

http://www.protothema.gr/politics/ar...hesi-me-soros/
http://www.pronews.gr/portal/2016082...os-agorastikan

This is epic

[Marcellus1986]

On other news. MKO's from George Soros paid 6 news outlets and a bunch of internet media companies in Greece, to take Ukraine's side in 2014 according to DCLeaks . There are big news in Greece atm.

Thanks America!! We love you even more now!!! <3

http://www.protothema.gr/politics/ar...hesi-me-soros/
http://www.pronews.gr/portal/2016082...os-agorastikan

This is epic

Why are you linking Greek news sources that no one can read?

Also, no one cares what Greece thinks. Pay your debt back to the EU and then maybe someone will care.

[Deleted]

There was no way any kind of invasion would have worked in the 1940s or maybe even the 50s. If the southern airfields were destroyed then the RAF would have just moved the airforce north.

I don't think you understand, at this point the UK was running out of aircraft and pilots.

[Deleted]

NATO would crush Russia easily, that´s all that matters.

[Deleted]

NATO would crush Russia easily, that´s all that matters.

Generation hashtag willing to die en masse n wouldn't shit themselves against someone who can shoot back?

Add that ur enemy is hardcore tough east Europeans who are men n not boys who think war is a computergame.

Go back to intimidate the 3rd world countries like the chicken hawks that you are.

[Deleted]

Generation hashtag willing to die en masse n wouldn't shit themselves against someone who can shoot back?

Add that ur enemy is hardcore tough east Europeans who are men n not boys who think war is a computergame.

Go back to intimidate the 3rd world countries like the chicken hawks that you are.

STRONK EASTERN EUROPEANS

Anyway you're right in correcting the gentleman you quoted.
There is no "easy" in that scenario at all.