There _is_ a lot of arguing about the nuclear bombing of Japan to be done. I know people who lived at that time, and they claimed that the official apology for nuclear bombing of Japan was that it was necessary to save 250,000 American lives. Then this number became half million. Now one million. You see where this is…

Of course, Putin will not outlive the Republican-Democrat duopoly. Confirming this is as obvious as saying that Hemingway could not best the entire British literary tradition. But the point was that despite being vilified abroad, Putin is ridiculously popular domestically and people regard him as better Russian leader…

Why exactly should the rest of the world care what these people in this part of the world do to themselves? Oh yeah, that’s right, because they have oil.

This picture looks like a result of a modern urban warfare that involves two crazy sides who are unwilling to yield. Yes, Russians have seen a lot of this: Stalingrad, Berlin, Grozny, etc. Much of Syrian cities look like this too (Aleppo, the second biggest city is certainly in rumbles). I wonder how Syria is going to…

I have seen many videos and pictures like this. Not only suburbs of Damascus look like this, but also Aleppo, and most other Syrian cities. The thing I am wondering, let’s assume Assad’s army wins this war and pushes the ISIS (and other rebels) out of Syria. What is he going to do next? Who is going to pay to rebuild…

Berlin, Stalingrad, Grozny. Aleppo looks the same as well as other parts of Syria.

Must be Grozny. The scale of destruction in Georgia was nowhere near like that. Basically, any modern house to house, street to street sort of combat for every urban block, specially involving artillery will result in pictures like that. Stalingrad, Berlin, Grozny, Aleppo, etc.

I started wrenching when I was 30-something. There is nothing truly difficult about that.

Finger on button? Paranoid? Please.. The guy is on top of his game right now. Despite the Russian people suffering from Western and even their own sanctions, Putin remains on top of his game and by now it looks like Putin’s regime will outlive two American presidents both of whom served two terms.

The fact that not only a nuclear, but even a conventional war between NATO and USSR never happened (excluding proxy wars) confirms that MAD works. And since the current system of nuclear-deterrence works, it should remain in place, which means that all current nuclear states keep their nukes, nobody develops anti-nuke…

This argument is about as good as saying that say all Armenians deserved to be deported and slaughtered by Turks during the WWI in the Ottoman empire because there may have been only _some_ Armenians that may have fought Turks (this is the Turkish apologist argument used to this day, ignoring the fact that many…

The argument that the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan in order to avoid further deaths is largely a myth. Immediately after the war, the argument was that “we did it to save 250,000 American lives”. Decades later, the argument became 500,000 lives, then 750,000 lives, and so on. Getting bigger and bigger number in…

The nuclear plans are not entirely surprising considering the death record of the American strategic bombing strikes on Germany and Japan in the WWII. People like to think that USA was solely the force of good in WWII while the Soviet soldiers invading Germany were ass-raping sexual maniacs, at the same time ignoring…

If anything, the fact that there hasn’t been a nuclear holocaust or even a conventional war between West and Soviet block (proxy wars excluding) means that the MAD/nuclear deterrence actually works.

As the visual chart you posted the other day of the 1992 Russian Navy compared to today so clearly illustrated, Russia is a country truly limping along militarily, and also economically.

After all, the Fiat 124 wasn’t an entirely bad car.

OMG! You may have finally found the source of the infamous “lamp” picture:

And more bad news for the Russian navy. Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Gorshkov frigates both use Ukrainian turbine engines, and Ukraine’s sanctions prevent the export for military hardware to Russia. Out of six planned Gorshkov-class frigates (for the Black Sea Fleet), only three have been built, and three others…

Russian nuclear stockpile is pretty up to date. Lots of new hardware. Within the hierarchy of the Russian military forces, the nuclear forces have always received the top priority, followed by the air force, ground forces, and navy was dead last. After the 2008 conflict, the ground forces started receiving more…

They do. I believe the current plan is to gut all of the ships bigger than a frigate and replace their internals with modern systems.