A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

"To date, he says, the US has conducted tests on this type of missile system but to his knowledge none have been successful, flying for just a few seconds. "

Basically, Putin made a laughable claim that Russia already has a mach 10 missile, so China and the USA jumped down the rabbit hole.

Kind of like when Reagan started up the SDI star wars BS. Which some people believe led to the USSR dramatically boosting their defense spending, nigh bankrupting themselves and breaking up as a country.

Heh I can understand why you think so. No I was talking Truman. Granted he wasn't as completely unaware as Trump was when he was elected. But he'd only served in the senate for two years before he was pushed in as VP. Note that the VP selection process was really different even though it was only ~70 years ago.

Once he got selected he became president that same year. Instead of working along Roosevelt's post-war plan and he refused to be a part of the grand alliance (meetings between the leaders of the big 3 powers that came out of that war).

Instead he started threatening the USSR with nuclear war if they worked toward developing nuclear weapons or expanded their territory... the so called Truman Doctrine.

He also played a fairly big roll in starting the whole middle eastern mess we're still dealing with to this day. Though that obviously goes back to the political failures after the Great War.

Guy was a dumb-ass who by reports of those around him didn't know WTF he was doing half the time.

British weren't the only ones. USSR did that to countless soldiers.

We have a treaty with the Ukraine.
In exchange for them giving up their nuclear arsenal left over from being part of the USSR, we, and Russia, agreed to guarantee their borders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances

It's because Russia was secure in thinking we would not honor our promises to defend them that they invaded Crimea, a Ukrainian territory at the time, and later the Ukraine itself.

It should be noted that, in effect, Israel declared war against Russia days ago by attacking Syria, a Russian ally, and likely killing Russian troops in the process. Be prepared for that to get messy fast.

This business will get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it.

The USSR is gone. No one is trying to guard western industry against communist overthrow anymore. That time is long gone.




Imagine person A pushing person B, and person B pushes back, and the news runs around screaming that B pushed A. That's basically our simplistic news coverage about Ukraine.

Feel free to read about the 2014 coup : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
I take no issue with Ukrainians giving their old government a swift kick out the door (and for understandable reason - such as corruption). However, with that comes the usual scapegoating of the undesirables. Would it have been better that Russia let groups like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector ravage ethnic Russians just across their border?

Crimea has been Russia from 1779 till ~1990, when it happened to end up under Ukrainian control after the USSR broke up. People living there are also Russian citizens, born either while it was still Russia, or to Russian parents.
Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Then ask yourself, considering the right wing neo nazi anti-ethnic-Russian shitstorm in Ukraine, where would the Crimeans rather be?

Russia isn't a saint. It's acting in self interest. It's also not a villain. Things happen for reasons.

The treaty you refer to is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The link explains how it can be read to fault either the U.S. (for coup involvement) or Russia (for subsequent conflict involvement).

Just to put things in perspective :
Imagine Russia getting involved in a coup in Mexico or Canada. Or imagine Russia placing missile launchers in Cuba. Do you think that we would be as cordial to Russia as Russia has been to us?
So Russia tries to help a candidate who prefers friendly relations, that's hardly the sign of a committed adversary.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I shouldn't think and analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with consideration for circumstance and motivation, and instead I should just accept what the news has on 24/7 repeat. /s





Collusion is not a crime because /literally/ it is not a crime. You will not find the word "collusion" mentioned as an offense in any criminal code. It's only on TV because people started using that phrase to assert that the campaign and Russia were acting independently (which is irrelevant, they don't need to coordinate to break the law).


-scheherazde

Not the *only* thing.

We also don't invade if you don't have anything we want, or if you can't be exploited as a pawn in a proxy war.

N. Korea doesn't have anything we want, so they would generally be safe on that account. On the other hand, the Korean War (particularly support from China, Russia, and the US) was very much tied into early and continuing Capitalism vs Communism proxy wars wherein those major players downplayed direct confrontation (why the Cold War was cold) but were quite happy to ramp things up indirectly.

Things frequently don't go real well for countries tied up in that history. We arm Afghanistan to indirectly prod the USSR, decades later that comes back to bite us and we hit them back with a rather disproportionate degree of destruction. The USSR sets Cuba up as a potential proxy Communist threat to the US, which pushes us pretty close to nuclear war. Fortunately we avoided that, but the fallout for Cuba in trade sanctions etc. persists to this day. And on and on.

So I concur, N. Korea has plenty of reasons to see the US as the bad guys. Personally, I think Obama's strategy of patience was probably the best. Either they are full of hot air and won't ever actually do anything, or they'll eventually do something so provocative that China will have no choice but to withdraw that lifeline. In the meantime, N. Korean people are the ones suffering the most. Not much to be done about that, because the US has an even worse track record when it comes to interfering "to save the people of {wherever} from their terrible leaders"...

Derp.....more cherry picking history to support an agenda.

Probably the same people telling Bob that the Republicans are champions of civil rights and democrats support slavery...as if the 50's and 60's didn't happen.

Did Trump produce this?

Tsarist Russia was a very different place. They have not been our allies for around 70 years now.
Perhaps Russia isn't exactly the USSR any more, but they will be soon if Putin has his way...and Trump seems ok with that. Remember, Putin is a hard core Soviet KGB agent, he wants his satellite countries back.

It's not a joke. It's hypocritical, but quite serious. Because they focus on the fact that he appears to be under Putin's control does not mean they ignore his myriad of other faults....proven by the near weekly protests against his policies.

Jesus Christ...they aren't upset the he wants to normalize relations with Russia, they're upset that he seems to be a Russian agent, as do many of his cabinet, and they fear he'll do things to benefit them instead of actually working for America.
People are upset at his people illegally, treasonously 'talking' to the Russians about removing sanctions and other subversions of established federal policy and law before they were in power and bold faced lying about it under oath and publicly uncountable times, not for having normal or legal diplomatic discussions. They won't accept it when the next president takes control on Nov. 8 and reverses their policies before taking office.

The emails themselves had no new information, it was the implication that they did, and that the investigation was still actively under way that hurt her. The media absolutely covered that, what are they talking about?

It's not about escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia, it's about abandoning normal policy and giving Russia what they want, carte Blanche to expand and reform the USSR.

I guess they forgot that Russia is building it's military on it's borders and expanding it's territories into our allies countries, and that's why NATO moved, to protect our allies, not to provoke poor little innocent Russia. Just fucking duh.

They aren't necessarily shills for Russia, they are, however, being shills for Trump, and Chomsky now seems to be moving in that direction based on this video. This is the most idiotic thing I've heard from Chomsky, as it completely ignores reality and reason to lambast people for being worried their president may be (as all evidence indicates he is) an agent for one of our worst enemies.

Sorry Chomsky, big fail.

Pretty much interview scripted by Putin personally.

Why the drama about US - russian relations if the russians supposedly are not dangerous and Putin is not evil.

Building a case to sell Poland and the Baltic countries to Putin. Worked like a charm with Hitler and Czechoslovakia before WWII. Poland these days does not even have a border with Russia proper, only with what used to be Koenigsberg. Poland is part of NATO and if Abby and her friend the professor want to give that up then it is them who are pushing us all closer to a war (cold or not).

Ukraine has already exploded. Putin has already taken 1/3 of the country breaking bilateral treaties. Cant get much worse, hard to imagine how the US can get involved, Trump notwithstanding.

Syria - its basically over, except for the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe. Putins ally won - a slightly pyrrhic victory perhaps, but for the meantime Assad stays. Did they level cities or liberate them? Hard to tell the difference. Probably both. That said US involvement in the middle east is a grave shitstorm.

This awesome "analysis" somehow misses the biggest current problem of NATO - Turkey - possibly because Putin does not have a good handle on Turkey yet so its off-limits. Also Pakistan/India and North Korea does not get a mention for the same reason - no chance to push Putins agenda.

NATO might have reassured Gorby it had no intention to spread. It is important to understand that Warsaw pact countries generally accepted Russians as saviours from German occupation, by the 1970s this had changed firmly to perceiving Russians as occupants, political persecutors and economic idiots.

After the economic collapse of the USSR (supposedly somehow caused by Ronald Reagan :-) all these countries needed reassurance that the Russians were not coming back. The only possible reassurance was joining NATO. If that meant breaking a promise made to an ex-representative of a no longer existing country, that is fine by me. If NATO had promised not to spread to Mother Theresa I would be more concerned.

The problem with the Ukraine is that we (EU) made an offer that put them in danger (from Putin) and we could not back that up with real economic or military assistance. Dumb move. But also Ukrainian politics is an incredible mess and simply too many ethnic russians live there giving Putin a strong nationalist base.

There is no negotiating with climate change. You can't outspend it developing space-based lasers (USSR), and you can't fix the problem by shooting at it (1942), so yes, it is more precarious.

1) Yes, Königsberg, where a sizeable branch of my family had to escape from in '44.

2) Too late for that. Gorbachev only supported the Two Plus Four Agreement because he was given assurances that NATO would not be expanded eastward beyond a reunified Germany. Even Germany's membership in NATO was up for discussion. Looking at a map, I see 12 countries to the east of us that subsequently joined NATO.

And that's not even touching on the application of the shock doctrine on both Poland and Russia by Jeffrey Sachs and his boys in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.

As far as I am concerned, I'd like to see Putin's administration replaced by less militaristic, authoritarian and nationalistic folks, but that's for the Russians to decide, not me. And after all the shit they were put through, a desire to have a strong figure in charge should not come as a surprise to anyone.

As for Ukraine: I'm not touching that.

Oh, you mean the small area between Poland and Lithuania? The one that Russia is pouring troops and weapons, -- including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, into at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places?

Moscow is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory."

I mean, it's only scaring the piss out of two of our friendly countries in the region. Well, more if you consider that Russia's military buildup in the region allows them direct coverage of Sweden, Germany, and other nations that really don't trust the former USSR.

So, to use your example, I would absolutely expect Russia to get antsy and not sit by idly if we suddenly moved a LARGE portion of our active military forces to the Florida Keys. All of this is more posturing and sword rattling by Putin, a direct throwback to the USSR leaders of old. If he thought he could get away with it without open warfare, he would be rolling tanks into all the old USSR satellite states.

It isn't just this incident alone, either, as Russia has been steadily stepping up calculated shows of force and close encounters with our forces well away from anything close to their territory. Primarily, if you ask me, because the world outcry over the Ukraine situation stifled their little miniature coup attempt from taking over the entire country.

***Edit***

I just wanted to add, I don't want to go to war with Russia. I agree that many of the things that we are doing, such as considering adding former Soviet states to NATO, are antagonizing them. But I feel that in some cases our hands are tied by the fact that Putin, directly or indirectly, is making a lot of those former states think that he is planning on re-absorbing them under the umbrella of a new USSR. If he would keep his nose out of their internal affairs, I am pretty sure we wouldn't be building up in response.

Very, very interesting -- thanks for the sift!

I'd love to see more, specifically about the US / Cuba talks and the Pope's involvement. As an atheist, I tend to think of Catholicism / the Pope / organized religion in general as generally having a primarily negative influence on world affairs (Crusades, Inquisition, birth control, anti-condoms, molestation, homophobia, etc.), but negotiating peace and better relations between the US and Cuba is a pretty undeniably positive thing.

I knew Latin American countries were highly Catholic, but I kinda figured that some of the USSR anti-religious stance would have rubbed off on Cuba. I guess maybe it did, but the missile crisis and fall of the Berlin wall / end of the cold war was long enough ago that Cuba has greater freedom to make up their own minds on this sort of thing.

Enough so that perhaps the Pope's involvement was necessary, or at least very helpful, to act as a mediator between the two sides. Props where props are due.

Anyway, all quite interesting.