History, Politics And Current Affairs

There's considerable advantages to the USSR in keeping the conflict simmering in the Pacific. It entirely ties up the Japanese and South Koreans in economic terms (both are major producers of GWEO and less exquisite munitions), ties down their entire militaries and forces the USA to retain in the Pa...

Clemenceau might be easier to restore to limited service than you think, because the French still have a nuclear industry (= ample skilled people and infrastructure for high pressure steam turbines) and coal fired power stations (= ample skilled people and infrastructure for high pressure steam boil...

Solid work, James!

Cheers: Mark

Very nice, Jan! And I really like the interweaving of the pre-conflict Australian stories with the main storyline here. It's very well done. I especially like the IAF Bear quietly passing information on. We are back in Brisbane after finally retiring from full-time service with the RAN, my wife and ...

Johnny, I work in Navy HQ at the moment and have studied our acquisition ... aah... "policies" over the last few decades. Speaking purely historically (and I mean that very, very seriously, this is in no way a comment on post-2000 policy let alone current policy) the general trend is that ...

Might have been but I have some doubts. They were built to a specific standard and cost, and the USN ones seemed to have the same issues as ours. I suspect it was just built-to-price and the yards were under cost pressures. Certainly USN QC methods are good. So I think they were built for a life of ...

Hmm. James, what you are pointing out is a series of cultural issues . Deeply valid, obviously and this really has to be thought through and integrated into the 'TLW solution', which also has to include strategic necessity, that wonderful human ability to screw things up, and logical path analysis. ...

Jotun, sure. The monohull LCS are 2,600 tons and are a decent corvette can certainly be built on less than that tonnage. 1200-1500 tons. Two matters of note are that a corvette is a littoral vessel which focusses on one main role. So an ASW corvette is most certainly do-able. The favourite ship I ev...

heh. Yep. Over here in the RAN we've been looking with disbelief at how badly WE messed up ship acquisitions over the last 20-30 years. Now to be fair, government shilly-shallying paid a huge role in that... I can say that now that I'm retiring in 4 days. Then we look at the USN's ship acquisition p...

USN FRIGATES IN TLW Current Canon: Frigates 1989-2005 The Reagan administration intended to maintain a force of 101 frigates. This goal was actually realized for a time; by 1987 there were 115 frigates on hand. These number soon shrank; the 19 ships of the Bronstein, Garcia, Glover, and Brooke class...

Very interesting video on how the elderly low-tech Spartan APC is far more effective in Ukraine than you might think. (No, I'm not a treadhead but I found it very interesting) Might have implications for TLW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2vtpN-4MRc Title "Ukraine Turned UK’s Junkyard Armor I...

Hi James Won't be D*14, be more like D+5 when they are staffing this. And almost certainly a couple will be available. The South American offshore oil and gas industry is building up at his date. (#2 son's PhD is in this field so I asked him) I have to explain a bit. Within 15 years from its establi...

Gral: As for M Parnaíba, big problem with sending her: there is no connection between the Paraguay Basin and the Amazon Basin. She would have to go down all the way to the River Plate, then go up the coast to get to the Orinoco. Simply not a problem in any way, shape or form. Just use a flo-flo to c...

James, yes the logistics here are 95% of the issue. A thrust up T-10 ca only be light, fast and wheeled, with helicoptered small units jumping ahead to take the bridges. The mainstream logistics have to go by sea. There's no choice. So what's the Venezuelan garrison in Georgetown? Can the Brazilians...

Heh. We used these types of dockside automatic steam boilers quite a lot when we had steamships like my old frigate, the Charles F Adams class etc. I do agree with the old carriers, the crew sizes are ridiculous and they'd be in poor condition, needing massive remedial work. But the option has to be...

Agree overall. I fully recognise that the F-5A is not an option by 2005. The important thing is to get to 2005 with any kind of PAF capability at all . In TLW-verse, Them arriving at 2005 with a basic capability based as described and a project for F-16 (or even a few actually in-country) would be s...

Thanks James. I 'get' that A-6 is going to be needed. Have you considered that the A-4 fleet might be suitable for use in secondary theatres to take some of the low-end land-based and even sea-based missions? I am thinking here of two options. Firstly, there's still a handful of Essex class still ar...

What chapter was USS America sunk in? I have not read that one.

CHeers: Mark

Once things between Indonesia and Australia go to hell in 1999, just how does Malaysia respond? We've got Singapore going on an arms buying binge, but they have the money to do it. From prior conversations with Mark, Malaysia doesn't have the money to embark on a crash arms buying binge and force s...

Hi James ASEAN It's complicated, and ASEAN is very complicated. IT IS NOT COMPARABLE TO EUROPEAN TYPE ORGANISATIONS. It's not a multilateral organisation (although it has multilateral outcomes ). It's better thought of as a web of bilateral arrangements made within a multilateral-adjacent system whe...