Russia would have had a fair shot if history repeated identically until the instant before d-day. Germany had had its supply lines crumble and their men were approaching child soldier levels of experience. Not to mention Hitler going partway down the path of the god complex and fully down the path of the meth addict after cancer ravaged his system. Not a historian but Russia would have had a fair shot if they were alone. Coin flip or better.
There's a reason Stalin demanded a western front be opened, and it wasn't because he wanted to share credit for the victory over Nazi Germany with the Western Allies. Without D-Day or a similar opening of a western front, the Soviet advance would have been much slower, much bloodier, and the final outcome of their offensives much more dubious.
Italy was in a civil war from 43 on so there was already a foothold for Allies into mainland Europe.
But D-Day was a part of the Tehran agreements that also had USSR joining the war versus Japan after a German defeat. So the failures and victories of the Soviets and Allies cannot really be severed or separated… (credibly).
While you’re correct the advance would have been slower, bloodier, and with a more dubious outcome, we CAN surmise that the Allies failing to secure more of mainland Europe would have easily meant more area for the Soviets to have occupied in the vacuum inevitably left by the collapse of Nazi Germany.
Might’ve had a North and South France instead of an East and West Germany.
AR and derivatives are undeniably the best platform in almost every category. Ambi/left support is kinda a cludge, and STANAG is an okay magazine. That’s about the limits of the platform’s problems nowadays, the rest have been fixed
All the big advancements in the small arms arena are in electro-optics. Firearms have plateaued long enough that quibbling over a better gun isn’t the best place to throw R&D (or for that matter, procurement) money at. Buy all your troops RDS/LPVO for everyone, then Vis/IR laser.
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re having a stroke and can’t form a sentence, or are making some smartass comment about .300 BLK/9x39/etc
There’s a lot of physics that make ‘pistol bullet what goes heckin fast’ incredibly hard, if not pointless. Metallurgy, internal & external ballistics, case web separation, a valid reason why…
US Sailor here. Iran is actually pretty scary. They have diesel submarines. They can sit silently in that sea and kill a carrier faster than any battle group could respond.
Diesel subs use snorkles when using their engines and batteries for silent running. They work a lot like diesel/electric trains, in that the diesel engine is acting more like a generator for an electrical engine.
I don't know anything about Iran's subs, but Sweden's famously stealthy diesel subs keep a big tank of liquid oxygen on board and mix the exhaust with seawater before releasing it
Diesel-electric. They cruise around just under the surface on diesel, with snorkels to bring in air and expel exhaust. But, then they can shut down those diesel engines, fully submerge, and maneuver on batteries for a few days and maybe a hundred miles.
While they are on diesel engines, they are loud, and stuck to the surface. While they are on batteries, they are silent. For the few days that they are submerged, they are quieter than our nuclear subs.
Yeah, they pose a potential threat to a carrier group, but the “proportional response” to attacking a carrier would be the destruction of every naval facility they have, so not exactly a serious threat.
The short answer is “it’s complicated but yes, and practically no.” Nuclear submarines have the operation range to obfuscate their location orders of magnitude better than diesel. Diesel is quieter but their range makes tracking infinitely more feasible. “A needle in a haystack vs a splinter in pail of hay.” Nuclear is better at power projection, diesel is better at short range defense/offense.
Look at it this way: When a diesel sub is endangered, they can turn off everything and I mean EVERYTHING. Quiet as a mouse that doesn’t exist. However, it will have to resurface eventually. A nuclear sub cannot do that. The cooling pumps have to keep running. But they can stay under water pretty much indefinitely (until they run out of food).
Nuclear is quieter than diesel, but louder than electric. Diesel subs are on diesel for transit to/from their patrol area, and on battery for their short-range patrol. Nuclear subs are much quieter during transit, but slightly louder during a long-range patrol.
Nuclear subs have to continuously pump cooling water; diesel-electrics can shut down pretty much everything that makes noise.
Worth noting nuclear submarines have a sort of minimum-practical-size determined by the need for a functional nuclear reactor on board. Combined with the plain expense of nuclear reactors means that states can build way more ssk’s than ssn’s for a given budget. It’s often better to have three 25% chances of sinking the other guy than one 50% chance.
It’s often better to have three 25% chances of sinking the other guy than one 50% chance.
Three 25% of sinking is the same as three 75% chance of not sinking. Which is (3/4) * (3/4) * (3/4) chance of not sinking, which is approximately a 42% chance of not sinking, which is a 58% chance of sinking. 58% > 50%, the math checks out.
Nuclear subs have cooling systems that need to be working constantly. This creates additional vibrations/noise on top of the propulsion system.s that would be pretty similar between both subs. As well as nuclear subs needing to be much bigger, so require propulsion that produce more noise
Diesel submarines can literally turn off every system and just drift in the ocean currents silently, or loiter on the sea floor where they are indistinguishable from a rock.
I dont think so. Because of Nukes I think the threshold for foreign countries to declare for either side is going to be much higher, ie a direct strike on their own soil. So at most they get nuked back by whichever big boy they thought they could take.
Finland was first created some time during the Cold War between Russia and the West.
Japan-Soviet relations had always been shaky at best, but also incredibly secretive. Even as early as 1925 Japan and the Soviet Union had secret deals with each other regarding fishing rights between the two countries, with the Soviet Union giving up much of it’s fishing rights to Japan with seemingly no explanation as to why.
These secretive treaties and alliances continued right up until just before the fall of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev made trips to Japan months before the fall of the Soviet Union stating the entire time how the relations between them were improving, even when Soviet relations with the rest of the world were worsening.
In fact the entire past 100 years of Japanese-Russian relations bring up many unanswered questioned.
Why at the height of WW2, were the battles between these two countries minimal despite being on opposing sides?
Why did Japan sign a peace treaty with Russia in 1941, just months before their allies, Germany, went to war with Russia?
Why were relations between Japan and Russia always good throughout the Cold War, despite the major geopolitical differences between the countries, and close geographical positions that you think would cause tensions?
The answer is simple, they shared a common secret. A common asset that worked in both of their favours. And that asset was Finland.
It’s unclear when Finland was first thought up, some say it was during the Cold War, and others say it was as far back as the 1920’s, but the necessity of Finland is quite simple.
Japan can fish in the region of ocean between Sweden and Russia without worry for environmental repercussions, after all, nobody’s going to expect fishing regulations to be broken in a place where everyone thinks there’s a landmass will they? And in return Russia get a percentage of the fish to distribute amongst their populace.
It’s a simple case of fishing the Finnish Sea, transporting it across Russia, (that was the real reason for the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway by the way), and then shipping it from the Eastern Russian coast to Japan under the disguise of ‘Nokia’ products.
This is why Nokia is the largest ‘Finnish’ company, and it is also why Japan is the largest importer of Nokia products, despite the fact that very few people own Nokia phones in the country.
There are clearly some unanswered questions to this conspiracy that I’ll try and address below.
1- What about Finnish people? Are they all in on the conspiracy?
A. No. People from Finland genuinely believe they’re from Finland. In reality they are from small towns on either the Eastern part of Sweden, the Western part of Russia, or the Northern part of Estonia.
2- What about all of Finland’s other exports other than Nokia?
A. Finland’s three biggest, and three most well known areas of industry are Oil, Tech, and Software. The oil is gathered in offshore platforms where the rest of us believe the landmass of Finland is, (again the Japanese get to avoid rigging regulations in this respect), the Tech companies have already been explained above with the Nokia post, and Software companies can easily redirect their IP Address through the Finnish sea. As for other Finnish exports, well, claiming Santa comes from your country isn’t a viable way to get people to believe in it.
3- What about Helsinki? That is an enormous city on the world stage.
A. Helsinki is located in Eastern Sweden. It’s not like the people flying there would notice.
4- What about everywhere else in Finland? There’s a lot to it and it couldn’t all be made up.
A. 99% of Finland is forest. A lot of it doesn’t need to be accounted for when addressing Finnish geography.
5- Why do other countries go along with it?
A. At first it was a sign of goodwill between Western Countries and the Soviet Union. A bargaining chip that could be played. But Finland has since evolved to something much more. An idealistic placeholder for what countries should aspire to. No real country could so consistently place first in Education, Healthcare, Gender Equality, Literacy Rates, National Stability, The least corrupt government in the world, Freedom of the press. It’s a concept for countries and people to aspire to. But that’s where the problems about Finland’s existence is disputed. no country in the world can possibly be that good.
6- Why the name Finland?
A. The country was originally made for fishing. What do fish have? Fins. Thus Finland.
8- I’m Finnish and your attack on my people and culture is insulting.
A. I’m not insulting Finnish people or culture. I don’t even deny that there is Finnish culture. When you have a collective of a few million people identifying as Finnish then of course a culture will be built around it. I’m simply saying that that the landmass of Finland isn’t actually there. It doesn’t mean there can’t be a culture or identity of being Finnish however.
9- This is an enormous conspiracy to keep secret, how could nobody else of realized it?
A. Other people have realized it. But imagine the ridiculousness of the statement ‘I don’t believe Finland exists’. Even if we did have undeniable proof of something put in front of us we would still hold the opinion that most of our friends, family, and acquaintances hold to not disrupt social convention. It’s part of the human condition.
10- What about GPS and Satellite Images?
A. It’s manipulated and forged. In the parts of Estonia, Sweden, and Russia that are allocated as ‘Finnish zones’ the GPS locations are changed to match that of Finland. Satellite images are forged. This is how that part of the world really looks.
Theoretically, that coalition should mainly consist of countries like Malta, Panama, Liberia, Bolivia, and Mongolia. The safety of ships is duty of the country under which flag they sail. I doubt any freighter down there is registered in the US or any EU state (except Malta).
Greece has more tonnage under its flag than three of those. It also has four of those huge Soviet armoured hovercraft. I think we now know whose job this will have to be.
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