The Afghanistan-Pakistan War at the End of 2011

Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)?

The US faces hard decisions in the Afghanistan/Pakistan War that are growing steadily harder as the time before transition runs out, the US faces growing budget pressures, and the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan becomes more unstable. The Burke Chair has prepared a report that assesses the chances for strategic success based on new US government, UN, and NGO reporting.

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King of the Bombs

The explosion as seen from Durnovtsev's Tu-95.

It was called Tsar Bomba, king of the bombs, but it also went by the name “Big Ivan.” With a yield of 58 megatons, the hydrogen bomb detonated on October 30, 1961, over the Soviet Arctic test site at Novya Zemlya remains the biggest manmade explosion in history (see the video below).

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The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn

There is an intriguing story to tell about the lives and times of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, two remarkable scientists whose extraordinary collaboration culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, turning Einstein's "theory" into atomic science. Not only did these two revolutionize the history of science and the role of women in physics and chemistry, their tale also parallels the social changes and turbulent history of their times. It involves the war against memory, Nazi intimidation, forced exile, betrayal, and a Nobel Prize awarded only in chemistry that to this day distorts science history.

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T-80 Better Than M1-Abrams…Really? (Featured post)

Nowadays its easy to generate people’s believe in something. For example, if a daily report on television states that the moon is shaped like a suitcase, as we observed in the night sky is actually nothing more than an optical illusion, then after a while millions of people believe it. And believe it against all odds.

Russians as opposed to West follows a 40-ton class as MBT basis, which leads to many shortcomings...

Country of origin	Name of MBT	Image of MBT	Weight (tonnes)
UK	Challenger 2	click me	62.5
USA	M1 Abrams	click me	61.3
Germany	Leopard 2	click me	62.3
France	AMX-56 Lecrec	click me	54.5
Israel	Merkava Mark IV	click me	65
Ukraine/Pakistan	T-84/Al-khalid	click me	48
Russia	T-80U	click me	46
Russia	T-90	click me	47.5
India	Arjun	click me	58.5

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Protector of Chinese Kingdom: Missile Technology

Over the past few years, Russian statesmen, politicians and pundits have plagued many tons of paper,uttered hundreds of thousands of words  about the deployment of U.S. missile defense system. Meanwhile, developments in BMD were active (and perhaps also under way), not only in the United States but in China, moreover it is not quite unproductive.

45years ago - February 23, 1966 the Government Commission on Defence Science, Technology and Industry of the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) adopted a step by step detailed program of a national missile defense, which was given the code name Project 640. Prone to conspiracy Chinese proceeded in this case of the so-called Directive 640 - governing the wishes expressed in a couple of years earlier by Mao Zedong in his conversation with Qian Syuesenem - the founder of the missile and space programs of China.

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Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2003-2010

This report is prepared annually to provide Congress with official, unclassified, quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries for the preceding eight calendar years for use in its policy oversight functions.

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