So, during the Cold War, the US had some very direct interests in European security. The US did not want Moscow conquering Europe, then exploiting European capability and resources against the US.

That’s probably not any kind of a near-term risk in the post-Cold-War era. Even the people who are very concerned about Russia and feel that it could do very real harm in Europe don’t see Russia overrunning all of Europe in the near future. Too big for Russia’s mouth to take in one bite.

And Europe has a lot of potential, much larger economy than does Russia. I remember seeing a statistic somewhere that today, Russia is spending more on defense than all of Europe.

kagis

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/russia-overtakes-all-of-europe-on-defense-spending-in-key-metric-iiss-military-balance/

Russia overtakes all of Europe on defense spending in key metric: IISS military balance

The spending figures included in the think tank’s newly published Military Balance report also show that in real-terms, Russia’s military expenditure increased by over 40 percent in 2024.

But…Europe’s still got that much larger economy. So even if Europe is not ready and may not want to spend more on defense, it can if it has the political will to do so, and one can probably assume that Europe would, if push came to shove, spend more rather than simply watching as Russia slowly clomped across Europe.

But…I’m not sure that I’d say that the US doesn’t have some substantial interests in Atlanticism. For one, China is going to be trying to expand its influence and control in the world. China may not primarily be trying to expand its influence through hard power, even though it is certainly building out its military and power projection capabilities. It may aim to use economic and political pressures. Europe’s a more-important player there. It does have economic clout comparable to the US.

One of the points I’ve brought up before is that one of the critical capabilities feeding into both economic and probably military capabilities in the US-China situation is chipmaking. The US government paid to bring extreme ultraviolet lithography to the prototype phase…but then they dropped it. It was the Dutch who took it from there to a commercial state. The US is going to care a lot about China not having access to that technology, and the US continuing to have access to it.

When the US was pushing hard to get people not to use Huawei 5G infrastructure, they were promoting Sweden’s Ericsson or Finland’s Nokia. I don’t know how the situation has developed subsequent to that, but the reason they were doing so was because the US doesn’t have a domestic company that fills that role – we had the Senate talking about buying one of those two companies if Europe wasn’t willing to support them, because it was a strategic weakness the US had vis-a-vis China.

There are probably a bunch of others, but those are specific technologies that come to my mind.

Point is, there are capabilities that Europe has that the US does care about as regards China and wants onside. I think that it’s probably true that the US is inevitably going to focus more on China over time, and less on happenings in Europe’s neighborhood than in the past. But I’m skeptical that it’s in US interests to outright end Atlanticism. And one of the things that the US can bring to the table that does have value to Europe is a considerable amount of hard power.

Are Asia-Pacific allies next?

I would guess not. The Project 2025 stuff is full of material concerned about China. I don’t think that the US is backing out of the Pacific at all. I’d expect the opposite.

Honestly, the “Pivot to Asia” has been kind of getting talked about since…what, at least Obama? But then there’s always been something happening since then, most notably Russia hitting Ukraine. Some degree of realignment was inevitably going to happen, even if not as abruptly or impolitely as with Trump.

kagis

Looks like the phrase was associated with the Obama administration.

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

U.S. President Barack Obama’s East Asia Strategy (2009–2017), also known as the Pivot to Asia, represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States since the 2010s. It shifted the country’s focus away from the Middle Eastern and European sphere and allowed it to invest heavily and build relationships in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, especially countries which are in close proximity to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) either economically, geographically or politically to counter its rise as a rival potential superpower.[1]

Additional focus was placed on the region with the Obama administration’s 2012 “Pivot to East Asia” regional strategy,[2] whose key areas of actions are: “strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening our working relationships with emerging powers, including with China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights.”[3] A report by the Brookings Institution states that reactions to the strategy were mixed, as “different Asian states responded to American rebalancing in different ways.”[2]

Since 2017, the United States has readjusted its policy toward China through FOIP, replacing the concept of the “Pivot to Asia” or “Asia-Pacific” with the “Indo-Pacific strategy”.[4][5]

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed under the Bush administration, though, even if it didn’t rise to the level of a formally-named thing.

• I thought I read somewhere that vertical tails aren’t very good from a stealth design standpoint. I would imagine that something similar would apply to gargantuan circular saws.

• Landing that thing has got to be a bitch.

• I have some supply-chain security questions regarding the “Made in China” label on the blade.

The direct effects on the world of a nuclear war between the US and Russia isn’t going to include killing 90% of the world’s population.

https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Winter

Even using the most conservative numbers here, an all-out exchange between the US and Russia would produce a nuclear winter that would at most resemble the one that Robock and Toon predict for a regional nuclear conflict, although it would likely end much sooner given empirical data about stratospheric soot lifetimes. Some of the errors are long-running, most notably assumptions about the amount of soot that will persist in the atmosphere, while others seem to have crept in more recently, contributing to a strange stability of their soot estimates in the face of cuts to the nuclear arsenal. All of this suggests that their work is driven more by an anti-nuclear agenda than the highest standards of science. While a large nuclear war would undoubtedly have some climatic impact, all available data suggests it would be dwarfed by the direct (and very bad) impacts of the nuclear war itself.

Russia can’t defeat the US in conventional warfare, but is much-more-comparable from a nuclear aspect. So Russia has a significant incentive to use nuclear weapons.

I’d guess that the US probably has a shot at actually getting a first strike off versus Russia. So the US has a significant incentive to use nuclear weapons.

Anyone intending to make serious use of nuclear weapons has very little reason to hold back if they expect a high likelihood of the other side responding massively. So they’ve got a significant incentive to go all-in.

I think that there’s a pretty good probability that a major war between Russia and the US of the “only one of us is walking away from this” sort goes very nuclear very quickly.

Uniform/Camouflage

I think there’s some room for potential iteration here.

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

The Presidential Guard (Greek: Προεδρική Φρουρά, romanized: Proedrikí Frourá) is a ceremonial infantry unit that guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Presidential Mansion in Athens, Greece.

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

The King’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard is a bodyguard of the British monarch. The oldest British military corps still in existence, it was created by King Henry VII in 1485 after the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Issue one of those as battle dress.

Originally I misremembered and thought that San Marino’s Crossbow Corps were Luxembourg’s. San Marino isn’t in NATO, so unfortunately, I think that crossbows are out as primary issue weapon:

EDIT: Oh, yes. There’s no land mine covered. Let’s do the chicken-warmed nuclear landmine. I’m fairly sure that the potential for a complete mess here is pretty good.

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

Blue Peacock, renamed from Blue Bunny and originally Brown Bunny, was a British tactical nuclear weapon project in the 1950s.

The project’s goal was to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear land mines in Germany.

Chicken-powered nuclear bomb

A technical problem is that during winter, the temperature of buried devices can drop quickly, creating a possibility that the mechanisms of the mine will cease working due to low temperatures in the winter.[5] Various methods were studied to solve this problem, such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets.

One proposal suggested that live chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water.[6] They would remain alive for approximately a week. Their body heat would apparently have been sufficient to keep the mine’s components at a working temperature.

Not current, but:

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

The United States Camel Corps was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. Although the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, the Army declined to adopt them for military use. The Civil War interfered with the experiment, which was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.

Beale wrote very favorably about the camels’ endurance and packing abilities. Among his comments was that he would rather have one camel than four mules.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force,_North_Russia

Also, same time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force,_Siberia

I guess you could maybe make an argument that it wasn’t fighting the Russian state, insofar as there wasn’t much of a Russian state at that point, or that the US wasn’t specifically looking to fight Russian forces. Or maybe that Imperial Russia wasn’t the Russian Federation.

But then, you could probably also take issue with the Battle of Khasham insofar as Wager technically wasn’t Russian military and as far as I know wasn’t openly acting for Russia.

And you probably also gotta consider Soviet forces acting covertly in the Korean War.

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

Soviet pilots were active in Korea from November 1950. In order to hide this direct Soviet intervention, precautions were taken to disguise their involvement, open knowledge of which would have been a major diplomatic embarrassment for the USSR.

Soviet pilots wore Chinese uniforms when flying, whilst rules were prescribed to stop Soviet pilots flying near the coast or front lines (where they might be captured if shot down) and from speaking Russian on the aircraft radio. All aircraft flown carried Chinese or North Korean markings.[16] When not flying, for reasons of ethnicity, on the ground Soviet pilots ‘played’ the roles of Soviet commercial travellers rather than Chinese or North Korean soldiers.

Soviet pilots flying MiG-15 jets participated in battles around the Yalu River Valley on the Chinese-Korean border in the area known as “Mig Alley” and in operations against UN “trainbusting” attacks in Northern Korea, with considerable success.

The lack of a shared language between Soviet, Chinese and North Korean pilots frequently led to friendly fire as other MiG fighters were mistaken for American F-86 Sabre jets and shot down.[17]

The physics of a strategic atmospheric bomber hasn’t changed. The B52 is close to optimal in shape for the task.

I mean, the B-1 and the B-21 are also strategic bombers, came out later, are still in the US inventory, and they look pretty different. I don’t know if I’d agree with an argument that the natural convergence is towards the B-52.

I think that a better argument is that the B-52 still effectively fills a desired role better than other options in 2025, but I don’t know if I’d say that that encompasses all strategic bombing.

EDIT: I guess I should really use the B-2 rather than the B-21 for the flying wing example. The B-21 is flying, but not yet in USAF service. I was just kinda happy that I could find flying B-21 photographs.

Igor Kirillov, head of Vladimir Putin’s Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops, claimed in a video (pictured) that America is planning to use drones to infect his troops with malaria to incapacitate Russian troops

Hmm.

That sounded kind of bizarre – why malaria? – but it sounds like “American malaria biowarfare in Russia/Ukraine” is actually just an offshoot from a recent Russian psyop aimed at Africa. That makes more sense – malaria is a major issue there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/africa/russia-africa-disinformation-malaria-.html

Russia’s Latest Target in Africa: U.S.-Funded Anti-Malaria Programs

Scientists fighting the spread of infectious diseases on the continent have been targeted online by pro-Russian activists, part of an effort to spread fear and mistrust of the West.

But in the pro-Russian propaganda telling of their work, the scientists, helped by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, were not protecting local people against malaria, they were infecting them.

“Since these mosquitoes have arrived in Burkina, we’ve noticed an increase of malaria and dengue fever,” Egountchi Behanzin, a French-Togolese activist who often posts pro-Russian content, said in an interview.

Mr. Behanzin could not cite any scientific evidence, and researchers say there are no grounds for such a claim. But his anti-Western messages, and his praise for Russia in Africa, are shared daily among his more than 600,000 followers on social media.

His posts are seen as only one element in a recent pro-Russian disinformation operation that is targeting U.S.-funded health care programs in Africa.

The Kremlin did the same thing when AIDS showed up in Africa:

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

Operation Denver[3][4][5] (sometimes referred to as “Operation INFEKTION”) was an active measure disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS[6][7] as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The telegram, which referred indirectly back to the Patriot article (“facts … in the press of the developing countries, in particular India”), provided guidance to Bulgarian State Security regarding how to couch their AIDS disinformation:

Facts have already been cited in the press of the developing countries, in particular India, that testify to the involvement of the special services of the United States and the Pentagon in the appearance and rapid spread of the AIDS disease in the United States, as well as other countries. Judging by these reports, along with the interest shown by the U.S. military in the symptoms of AIDS and the rate and geography of its spread, the most likely assumption is that this most dangerous disease is the result of yet another Pentagon experiment with a new type of biological weapon. This is confirmed by the fact that the disease affected initially only certain groups of people: homosexuals, drug addicts, immigrants from Latin America.[13]

To explain how AIDS outbreaks in Africa occurred simultaneously, the Moscow World Service announced a discovery by Soviet correspondent Aleksandr Zhukov, who claimed that in the early 1970s, a Pentagon-controlled West German lab in Zaire “succeeded in modifying the non-lethal Green Monkey virus into the deadly AIDS virus”. Radio Moscow also claimed that instead of testing a cholera vaccine, American scientists were actually infecting unwitting Zairians, thus spreading AIDS throughout the continent.

Well, I guess the '80s are back. I was hoping for stuff like denim jackets and the original The Terminator, but I guess instead it’s rehashing Cold War psyops.

Not really a roast, but thanks for all the work, verity_kindle!

I imagine that what’s going on here is focusing specifically on fringe areas, like tiltrotors or rotor kites or something, rather than on all aircraft.

I’m not sure that the Bob Semple tank deserves the flak it gets, if you consider the context.

When was it produced?

kagis

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/11/bob-semples-tank-new-zealands-homegrown.html

Work began on a prototype at the Temuka PWD Depot in June 1940.

By March 1941, a second tank was finished, and both took part in a parade in Christchurch. One was then sent to Wellington and then on to Auckland to promote the war effort.

So they started June 1940, and while they don’t say when the first one was done, but we’re into 1941 to get something else out.

So, here’s the situation that the Kiwis are facing, because I think it’s maybe easy to forget that.

The UK has been badly-beaten in Europe, and may well be conquered in short order.

The UK, the major security provider for New Zealand, has just been overwhelmingly defeated on land in Europe. While many people in the British Expeditionary Force were pulled off in a desperate operation, the British land warfare equipment has been lost, and is largely in the Reich’s hands. It is not at all clear that the UK will not surrender or be defeated in short order. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had just given his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.[10]

So he’s just raised the likelihood that the UK is about to be invaded. He has raised the possibility that the UK may fall, and that in that scenario, the “Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle”, which probably means that land warfare is up to them, along with the remnants of the Royal Navy. That means New Zealand, a tiny country with a then-population of about 1.6 million and not a whole lot by way of heavy industry, much less defense industry. He’s telling them to hang on and hope that the New World – that’d be the US – intervenes.

Also, keep in mind that even if that happened, while the US had a decent navy, it had a tiny army by European standards then. Germany, while not possessing much by way of a surface navy, had a much larger land army than the US. The US was not going to be doing a great deal on land in the near term, even if it became involved.

That’s a pretty heavy burden for a nation with a population a seventh the size of London that was mostly a bunch of farmers.

That’s the context in which they’re starting work on what makeshift armor they have the ability to produce out of what hardware and industry they have available.

The US will not enter the war for another year-and-a-half. Over 1940, the UK is being bombed in the Battle of Britain, and suffering major shipping losses.

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/second-world-war-at-home/challenges

From early in 1940, New Zealanders began to live in fear of attack or invasion, first by the Germans and later by the Japanese.

By May 1940 the Germans occupied Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and Britain faced the direct threat of invasion. Although appalled by events on the other side of the world, New Zealanders still felt far from the danger zone. But the sense of security was short-lived. German raiders, or armed merchant cruisers, were active in New Zealand waters, laying mines and attacking Allied ships. Their targets were the vessels that sailed to or from the country, transporting troops, freight and passengers. The raiders had some success: in the second half of 1940 they sank four ships in the seas around New Zealand, with the loss of more than 50 lives.

The Germans had other targets in the Pacific. The tiny island of Nauru, a British Commonwealth territory north of the Solomons, exported thousands of tons of phosphate each year to New Zealand, Australia and Britain. The chemical was essential to fertilise farms and grow much-needed food. But German raiders had the phosphate ships in their sights, sinking five of them in early December. The prisoners they took brought the total captured in the Pacific to nearly 700 in the space of six months.

Members of the EPS practise first aid

Then, on 27 December 1940, the German raider Komet bombarded Nauru Island itself, destroying the phosphate plant. The attack provoked a stir in New Zealand. The Defence Force galvanised the Home Guard into action, and civilian authorities also prepared for the worst. Before the war began, the government had devised the Emergency Precautions Scheme (EPS), the forerunner of Civil Defence, to cope with disasters. ‘Enemy action’ was one of the possible dangers listed in a 1939 EPS booklet, sent out to local authorities. Now, it was decided, the time had come to confront that menace.

The blackout began in coastal areas of New Zealand in February 1941. Black curtains, paper, or even paint, covered windows in most homes. Street lighting was dimmed, making life difficult through the winter nights that followed.

The US would not become involved until the end of 1941, and at that time, its Pacific Fleet suffered a tremendous blow at Pearl Harbor, with many of its major fleet units knocked out of action. Japanese forces were successfully invading and occupying British, Dutch, and American territories all over the Pacific. That’s a dangerous neighborhood to be in.

This is the Pacific Theater.

In Europe, open areas and road and rail infrastructure meant that much heavier tanks were in use. In the Pacific Theater, often far lighter tanks were made use of; light tanks and tankettes could make a major difference where they weren’t facing heavier vehicles. The US benefited significantly from the amtrac in amphibious assaults, which had even lighter armor than the Bob Semple tank.

https://www.battleforaustralia.asn.au/Tanks_Guadalcanal.php

The ground, and in particular the tank battle was fought by US Marines. Guadalcanal was possibly the first deployment of allied tanks in the jungle (the Japanese had effectively used light and medium tanks in Malaya), in the course of the action in the Solomon Islands the Marines learned the need to protect tanks (particularly light ones) in close country. The lesson was costly but when applied the Stuart (only one made it to the point of battle) was the bunker buster essential to victory in the last major incident of the campaign.

That is a single light tank being used there.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to move over open ground against, say, a machine gun, even a slow, lightly-armored, lightly-armed tank sure beats a WWI-style trench warfare massed charge. And that’s the kind of alternative that the Kiwis might have had available to them, not loads of Shermans or whatever.

in every possible scenario

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

The conical mine body was 11.6 inches (29 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter at its base, weighing 11 pounds (5.0 kg) including the 6.6 pounds (3.0 kg) of crude TNT filling. The three metal legs welded to it were 6 inches (15 cm) long, intended to ensure the proper stand-off distance for the shaped charge to achieve maximum penetration. The 1.25-inch (3.2 cm) diameter handle was 59 inches (150 cm) long and weighed 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg), for an overall length of 78 inches (200 cm) (including the three legs) and weight of 14.3 pounds (6.5 kg).

https://gitnux.org/average-arm-length/

The average arm length of adult males is around 25.4 inches.

So you’ve got a weapon that has a range of roughly 100 inches, counting arm length and lunge mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Hull length: 26.02 ft

Width: 12 ft

The furthest extent from the tank center that the tank hull will extend is sqrt((12÷2)²+(26÷2)²)=14.3 ft, or about 171 in. So being generous as to angle of impact and weak points, this means that the attacker needs to get within about 272 inches of the center of the tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M256_(tank_gun)

The M256 is an American 120 mm smoothbore tank gun. It is a licensed-built German-designed Rheinmetall Rh-120 L44 gun tube and combustible cartridges with an American-designed mount, cradle and recoil mechanism. It is primarily used by the M1 Abrams main battle tank.

Length: 5,593 mm (220.20 in) (overall)

It looks like, from the gun-forward length of the M1A2 at 32.04 ft, the turret has the gun mounted maybe four feet forward of the center of the tank, so that’s another 48 inches.

Thus the tank gun reaches about 268 in from the center of the tank. This is about four inches short of the lunge mine operator’s total range, assuming full arm extension.

This is the 1862 US Navy saber bayonet. It has a 25 inch blade:

I don’t think that it’s too hard to see which era of cavalry forces come out on top here.

That looks like it has some kind of extreme chromatic aberration going on.