World War 3

General Chat
3671

What do you think the chances are of us making a similar “air space” mistake?

3672

I’m not quite sure what you’re driving at Gregg but from a position of no real knowledge I’d guess

  1. We know precisely where international borders are and precisely where our aircraft are at all times. Maybe unexpected weather might blow a plane or two a couple of hundred metres off course ? But if we’re more than, say, 500m into foreign airspace then, except for some very rare equipment malfunction, that is because we have chosen to be in their airspace. I have seen the Red Arrows and not even Hawks (1970s aircraft) are a hundred metres away from where they mean to be.

  2. If the Russians are massing troops/equipment within 20km of their border then it might suit us to fly over those troops for surveillance purposes. At 250 metres/sec (i.e. subsonic) we could get 20km into foreign airspace in 80 secs, we could spend a couple of minutes taking pictures then head back over the border, the whole exercise taking 5 mins if we allow a few extra seconds for manoeuvres. That’d be too quick for Russian fighters to get airborne and then intercept us.

  3. We might want to pretend at the UN that this was ‘inadvertent’ or that actually we never even did it (the Russians’ latest excuse) when in fact both sides know full well that it wasn’t and that we did.

  4. We’d prefer not to be shot down by SAMs while doing this and the Russians would prefer not to be shot down either when they do something similar. So there’s an informal agreement for both sides to keep their SAMs out of the game.

  5. More than 15 minutes though, or any sign of bombs or missiles, and that’d be taking the piss. We should expect to become balls of flame with zero warning.

I have, of course, just made all that up.

3673

I would say tell that to the MH17 passengers but there’s nobody left of that flight :roll_eyes:

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3674

Or indeed Iran Air flight 655 if we’re going to be balanced.

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3675
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3676

There’s no need for overflights, between satellites and winged ELINT ops it’s covered. Russia does this stuff almost out of habit, and as a way of probing defence responses. Our responses are habitually weak, UA is currently paying the (very high) price for that. When they’re eventually overrun, Moldova (halfway there anyway), and more-importantly, the Baltic states will be next, rest assured.

I’ve no appetite for war, and luckily it’s not my decision, but we need to react strongly, decisively and quickly, because once Farage is running the cuntry in 2028, Putin’s will have an ally here to help him further undermine Europe.

3677

Sorry, I should have been clearer. When I said ‘game’ I was thinking of the response to relatively brief incursions by obviously military aircraft, not scheduled commercial aircraft with we’re-not-intending-to-turn-back flight plans.

3678

Russian casualties exceed 1.1m since invasion says Britain

I just cannot get my head around that number - 1.1m people is impossible to meaningfully visualise, it’s just far too many, and yet Putin is happy to sacrifice so many of his own people to serve his own vanity…

Do the Russian people never learn from their own history?

3679

3680

Which general was it who said that the amount of Finland that they took might just about be big enough to bury the bodies that it cost to take it?

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3681

I believe it was a Russian who said that one desth was a tragedy, a million was a statistic.
Good old Uncle Joe.

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3682

It was indeed Stalin.

3683

They do seem to end up with complete cunts in charge :unamused_face:

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3684

One death is a tragedy but one desth is a typo :+1:

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3685

The good news is I’d stopped drinking the wine.
The bad news is I’d started drinking the port…
(That’s my excuse) :grinning_face:
Good job you didnt see the several other typos i corrected.

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3686

That’s beyond mental. I’m actually struggling to believe that figure.

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3687

The whole fucking thing is beyond dystopian. Surely the collective western world can just arrange for his entire government to be plasmarised.

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3688

When it comes to the feeding it’s people into a meat grinder Russia is in a league of it’s own.

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3689

I don’t know, we did pretty well in WW1.

3690

Absolutely but you’re looking at the same level of Russian losses in Ukraine that we suffered in the whole of WWI.

When you consider US casualties in Vietnam were approx 360,000 dead & wounded it’s truly mind-bending.