Russia - threadbanned users in OP

South Africa are still a bit dodgie, joint naval exercises between themselves, Russian and China are planned I believe.

South Africa's naval exercise with Russia, China raises Western alarm | Reuters

Both sides are limited by time.

Ukraine by how long the good will of the West can sustain it's war effort.

Russia by how long the population will cope with the war losses and sanctions.

The interesting factor is that the weaker the Russian situation, the stronger the West will apply pressure, and vice versa.

Who would have thought 6 months ago that we could soon see Abrams tanks tearing through Ukrainian countryside?

I've just discovered who you are, and am kicking myself as I regularly watch your shorts. I'm enjoying your engaging posts very much.

By the way, if you happen to know any of the chaps who run the little Museum in the Curragh, ( with the tanks lined up outside), would you mind asking them to open weekends? It's incredible that they only open an odd day during the week but won't open on the busiest day for museums, Saturday!

You may, just may, know one of the CO's involved. Long shot, if you excuse the pun!

Russia have stated numerous times whether fantasy or not that their ultimate goal is to bring war to the entire continent and ultimately reach the western edges of Europe.

Before 24th February 2022 that was a more plausible and threatening and realistic prospect. They were on paper the worlds second army. That it is now an absurd and fantastical prospect is thanks to the tenacity and sacrifice of the Ukrainians who have defended their land and died in huge numbers to keep the Russian advance bogged down in far distant in eastern Ukraine.

For people living far removed in comfort to be now dismissing this war as a distant Eastern European conflict with no relevance when it was anything but prior to 24th frebruary 2022 is grotesque. Ask yourself what information you are consuming and where it is coming from to bring you to the conclusion that this war is distant and irrelevant and why we shouldn’t be bothered supporting it. Who does that help? Who wants that outcome?

There is no guarantee that the next country Russia invade will fight like the Ukrainians or that some development will switch the fortune of war in the Russians favour and they will rapidly advance much closer to the heart of Europe. What will you say then? Will the war just be some Eastern European conflict then?

Most people in this thread and outside it want Ukraine to prevail. Ukraine has chosen to defend itself, Europe has chosen to defend itself.

You haven't even made it through 2 sentences - it's not THEIR war.

Never mind the stupid, comfort-obsessed public, the intelligent people in charge understand what's at stake.

" Let's just give Putin the 2nd biggest country in Europe and hope he dies before he wants another one "

Maybe this episode in history will become known as "The Stand".

Ukrainians are bravely dying in their thousands and you're more concerned with holidays and makeovers.

This endless nonsense of hi-tech secrets in US equipment falling into enemy hands as an excuse to not field systems in this conflict is tiresome. There aren't a lot of secrets the Chinese, and one should probably include the Orcs here, don't already have.

Lets start with the big one's, the ultra secret F-35 and F-22: A Chinese businessman was arrested in Canada for running a hacking operation that penetrated Boeing's computer network and accessed a lot, including the entire plans for the C-17, F-35 and F-22, and one should suspect a lot more than just those. As a result, the Chinese Y-20 is basically a C-17 Globemaster.

Chinese hackers have also broken into BAE systems and compromised a vast amount of their systems; they have hacked US naval contractors, gaining access to super secret underwater warfare secrets that haven't even been fielded or announced yet.

After the Iranian revolution, the Iranians ended up with multiple F-14s and of course their radars and the very capable Phoenix missiles.

So no secrets left on those.

The RQ-170 stealth drone is thought to contain advanced IR optics as well as an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. The Iranian's managed to spoof the GPS of one and landed it intact. No more secrets there.

Possibly worse, the Iranians shot down am RQ-4 Global Hawk, which has very advanced radars and these have been used almost non-stop to observe the entire region of this conflict. And having shot it down they recovered the wreckage. It would be wise to conclude there are no secrets left on that and it's radars and IR sensors.

In addition to this, the US has lost several other ground attack drones.

And to top it all off, the Chinese hacked the crown jewels of US and global cybersecurity - RSA - allowing them to access so much I'm not going to attempt to go into it, aside from just mentioning Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

There are no secrets left, basically.

The US uses secrets as an excuse to not do things, like supplying un neutered Gay Eagles, but it's just a game - having lost the RQ-170, RQ-4, RQ-9 drones and others, the bottom tier RQ-1 Gay Eagle doesn't have any secrets.

I can guarantee you that worrying about 'secrets' in the 30-40 year old radars on US fighter jets that have been mentioned for possible supply to Ukraine is risible, a complete joke, in light of seemingly every major US and Uk defence contractors being comprehensively infiltrated and compromised to the gills.

Well that was a little different. The Americans didn't leave Vietnam for a number of years after Tet, which was tactically a disaster for the communists, but strategically a victory because it turned public opinion in the US against the war. There was a peace deal when the Americans left but the North broke it and rolled down south to collect the win a couple of years earlier than agreed. Washington had threatened renewed bombing if that happened, but when push came to shove there was no stomach for it.

I'll second that. My brother lives nearby in Newbridge and we've gone a couple of times when visiting at the weekend to find the place closed.

I got up close to an Su-25 Frogfoot at Farnborough and was almost shocked at the poor finish. Some of the skin sections near the tail were riveted in such a way that their edges actually formed an angle relative to each other instead of the parallel lines one would expect. Princess Leia's line on first sighting the Millenium Falcom came to mind. Despite the lack of finish, however, the other impression it gave was of great toughness - an aircraft that could soak up a fair bit of punishment.

It gave a very agricultural impression and you sould readily believe that this was from the same country that gave the world the An-2 which is what you would get if a biplane and a bus had a baby together. Another aircraft known for it's toughness, the emergency landing procure for the "Annushka" goes something like this:

1. Pull pack on the stick and keep it there.
2. You will crash more or less level at about 30 knots and stand a good chance of surviving.
3. Er...
4. ..that's it.

As some character in a Tom Clancy novel said, "The Russians have their own way of doing things."