Russia's Biggest Question: Floating Airfields

Russia, perhaps will get a few carriers. In any case, the representatives of the United Shipbuilding Corporation have repeatedly asserted that the design of a new heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser must begin.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Cold War 2000: Saudi Counter-Revolution

Late at night on Sunday, August 7, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia delivered an unusual televised rebuke to Syria’s Bashar al-Asad calling on him to “stop the killing machine” and immediately begin reforms.  The Saudi move against Damascus was only the latest twist in Riyadh’s newly energetic foreign policy. Since March, Saudi Arabia has been in the forefront of a regional counter-offensive designed to blunt the momentum of the Arab uprisings and shape the new regional order to its liking. After a decade of a regional order defined by an alliance of “moderate” autocracies aligned with the United States and Israel against a “Resistance” axis, the Saudis have responded to an age of revolution by leading what many now call a regional counter-revolution. This has placed them at odds with the Obama administration in key theaters, disrupted long-standing alliances, and brought Riyadh to the forefront of regional diplomacy.

Why Is The West So Nervous About Ahmadinejad?

Boris Volkhonsky, senior research fellow, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, as usual, sparked a mass walkout. 30 delegations including those of the U.S. and all European Union members left the audience in a demonstration of protest. This has not been the first incident of the kind – last year the U.S. delegation also left the General Assembly during Ahmadinejad’s speech. And taking into account that his presidential term ends in two years this is likely not to be the last occasion of the kind.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Veresk and its German Analogue

Let us take a look at a more special feature of small machine pistols, which engaged sufficiently durable positions in the contemporary small arms system of law-enforcement agencies and special-purpose formings.

A Shot in the Back

The CIA's fake vaccination program in Abbottabad is an outrage. But what's important to remember is that even Osama bin Laden wanted to vaccinate his kids.

It was bound to come out sooner or later. The CIA/Navy SEAL raid that took out Osama bin Laden was just too good, just too clean. But the news that the CIA created a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan -- an effort to capture DNA from Osama bin Laden's children and plant a recording device in the bin Laden compound -- is an ugly smear on the high-water-mark mission of the U.S. fight against terrorism. To be fair, there's much that is still murky: We don't know for sure whether the CIA actually gathered any DNA, and we don't know whether it managed to plant the listening bug. We do know, however, that it paid a Pakistani doctor to start a fake vaccination program, administered the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine to poor children in Abbottabad, and hired an apparently unsuspecting nurse to enter the bin Laden compound.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Is Pakistan's Army as Islamist as We Think?

BY C. CHRISTINE FAIR

The preeminent concern among Americans -- and increasingly among many Pakistanis too -- is that some personnel may support Islamist terrorism in the region and beyond or that perhaps a radical, rogue Islamist column may split off within the Army, endangering Pakistan's stability and the security of its nuclear weapons. Others fear that radical personnel might even give nuclear devices or technology to terrorists. Equally important is that some U.S. observers equate greater Islamization with deepening anti-Americanism within the Army.

Curiosity 9/11

As the world marks the tenth anniversary of the tragic events in the United States on September 11, 2001, the Russian segment of the online community is also very much involved in the discussion, both in terms of analyzing the changes that have taken place in the world in the past ten years and in plumbing the circumstances surrounding the terrorist acts themselves.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Engineering Britain SuperWeapons

So when it comes down to prove that Britain can & would compete with the Americans & Russians on any possible technical grounds British scientists & engineers came up with gigantic machines termed as British SuperWeapons. But little do they know that the limped British economy after WWII does no good in developing weapons of their own, rather they will ‘rent’ American made weapons to safeguard their territory, though gone are the days when this British territory was ‘completely’ independent!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Heat-Changing Pixels Camouflage Tanks From Infrared Sensors

[Photo: BAE Systems]

Camouflage has been around for a quite a while. And though our current camouflage might seem adequate, the one thing we can’t camouflage through any practical means is the infrared radiation our bodies give off. Hotter objects give off more energy on the infrared spectrum than cooler ones  This makes it easy to pick out things like tanks or helicopters when using infrared sensors.

Monday, September 12, 2011

A Killing Machine Called CIA

In an interview for an article about the machinations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) one of the Washington Post’s sources described it as “one helluva killing machine”.

Then, according to the reporter, he “blanched” at his words and altered them to “one hell of an operational tool”. I think we’ll stick with the ‘killing machine’ depiction. The CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan have killed a lot more innocent people than it does in more mundane day-to-day butchery, but the plain fact is that it has always been in the business of killing, and always will be. The double murder in Lahore by the CIA employee Raymond Davis was bizarre and outrageous but only a minor indication of its embrace of criminality.

Ukraine: Russian Liberal’s Standpoint

Lilia Shevtsova, a well-known political scientist, felt quite at ease as she began to grant an interview at Den/The Day’s editorial office. Without waiting for an introductory word and first questions, Shevtsova started speaking out and, so to say, putting us into the picture. Those present – journalists and students of Den Summer School of Journalism – learned a lot of things even though they know Shevtsova very well not only as a regular expert for our publication but also as one of those Russian academicians who share Den/The Day’s values and philosophy. This atmosphere immediately made the participants feel free to discuss.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Russian Aviation School

In the academic buildings of the former Air Force Engineering Academy named after Professor NE Zhukovsky (Moscow), located in the Petrovsky Park, began dismantling the equipment and to send them to Voronezh, where a single military training Air Force Research Center.

Lock 'N Load with R. Lee Ermey–13 Episodes

Viewers this is a season every weapon lover must see. The best part is that it contains 3D animations to let the viewers understand the basic working of each weapon, something that usually is missing in contemporary programs. Bit a little biased, in all of the programs Le Jeremy pays no equal homage to Russian or even European based weapons & in the episodes of Guns, Rocket & artillery this biased is much prominent; but what can you expect from a retired US army Colonel!!Green with envy

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Fall of the Soviet Union—The Inside Story

The fall of the Soviet Union and end of communism in Russia caught the world by surprise twenty years ago. In a  Q&A, Ambassador James F. Collins, the most senior American diplomat in Russia at the time, describes how the United States responded as history unfolded and reflects on the personal diplomacy between the Cold War foes as an August  1991 coup ultimately led to the breakup of the Soviet Union in December.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Rocket and Space Corporation Energia The Legacy of S.P.Korolev

Viewers just want to share this amazing book that I  just had finished reading.

When the world's first artificial satellite sped across the night skies the impact was far-reaching and profound. Not only was this clearly one of the great scientific achievements of the modern age but it was also a catalyst which would propel the United States out of its post-War lethargy. The Political significance of the lift-capability of the R-7 rocket aroused the attentions of the West while irrevocably altering the face of human history. The Space Age had begun. The story of the R-7 rocket and its many offspring is one which still remains a mystery in the West. Now in the post-Cold war era the remarkable accomplishments of the engineers of Rocket & Space Corporation Energia are finally reaching eager readers in the West.

The pages within contain a pictorial record encompassing the entire history of the Russian space programme, from its inception at the end of World War II to the present day.

The sheer wealth of original and durable technology is a testament to the ingenuity of a remarkable people and gives a unique glimpse a the future of the historic partnership between East and West.

Published for the first time completely in English, Rocket & Space Corporation Energia features rare pictures and diagrams including:

Sputnik - Yuri Gagarin's Vostok capsule - the world's first Space Stations - the enormous lunar rocket N1 - Russia's interplanetary probes and the Buran shuttle.

Two Stealth Aviation Articles