Even in it’s current state, Russia is more significant on the world stage than a country like France, who’s influence in limited only to Europe.

You have obviously not been to Africa or South America lately then.:rolleyes:

Indeed a truly great machine. IIRC Massey Ferguson no longer has a UK factory.:(

Is some country threating US now?…And yet they are showing their muscles so freaquently that its considered as their normal behaiviour.
Superpowers have this nasty habbit to try and control at least their local areas. Wheter its labeled as bufferzone thinking, securing national interest or even “fighting against terrorism” doesen’t matter in the end its just normal behaiviour of countries which sees themselves too important than they actually may be.

So ofcourse Russia has now started to make rather bold acts to show its recovering strenght, how else you would send the message? At this stage the actions are merely symbolics and more directed to the people of russia to show that the new leadership is tough and don’t crawl underneath the western powers. When recovering is in further stage, only then we will start to see really important acts were Russians will really start pushing their own interest in international matters. For example in the Kosovo case Russians are merely making noise but I doupt that at this point they would go all the way with the support for Serbia and eventually they will seddle for western-favour solution. But ten years from today and things will get bit more interesting:dev2:

Dishimising the power of Russia, like Lawrence is doing is just self-deception and will hit your own angle eventually.

I never said Russia was not powerful just that it no longer has super power potential like the US, China and India do. If you want to fantasize about about Russia becoming a true super power again you will be sadly dissappointed. Oh and in ten years time there will be even less Russians in the world.

Am I sensing that the westerlingers are bit scare of the bear??:rolleyes:

I live only few hundred kilometers away from Russia and sofar I have no fear what so ever of these quite obvious actions of superpower rising back to its pedestal. Its more like “back to normal” as strong russia nearby has been the physical fact for us such a long time now.

Russia is so extreme and different nation compared to all others that its simply childish to assume that some western hypocratial and idealistic standarts could be applied to it just like that. The western idea for future russia is when stripped from all rethorical BS a huge resource warehouse of natural gas, oil and cheap labour. This type of thinking may work in practice to areas with no past history of modern civilizations but to try and attempt that in former superpower which is having a depression is just plain stubid.

So now when the natural circle of life have made moved slightly forwards and Russia has started to see some light at the end of the tunnel, all the westerlingers are yelling at one mouth “look out the big bad bear”…

And before I’m labeled some sort of demon that eats Chechens for breakfast and steals money from oligarks for lunch, let me remind you that I’m not here to justify all the actions made by Russian govenrment. I’m just trying to wake up you guys to reality. To shout out Russian wrong doings and waving the “bad com..örh…russians” banner is as usefull and fruitfull as to wave the “bad imperialistic america” banner. Superpowers have their ways and despite what most of you guys wants to belive Russia is one, perhaps not the one that it use to be but it will rise again. Personally I think that in long term its a good thing, singlepolar world is never desirable and its good to have some counterpower for US hegemony…may save some poor nations from mindless occupations if there is someone with weight behind its words to say something else.

Utter nonsense. nobody is really scared by Russia, just slightly confused as to why a country that is not threatened by anybody except internal enemies and its own looming demographic disaster feels the need to try and play ‘look at me and see how important I am’. The fact is that the Russian population is about 100 million and plummeting whereas the US is 300 million and rising its economy is massively over reliant on energy exports. Russia might be a big power in the future but it will never rival the US China or India in the future. It will be a middling power like the UK and France, nothing more.

There is much more to your question than you might realize. Firstly it is necessary to understand the guiding principle upon which Britain’s independent deterrent was based. It was to maintain a force capable of inflicting an unacceptable degree of damage upon a potential enemy in event that they attacked the UK. To put it simply, it meant the ability to effectively destroy Moscow. Other major cities would also be targeted, but Moscow would have priority.

The war plans fell into 2 categories, National and SACEUR. The National plan was a go it alone scenario, unlikely I know but it was the justification for the independent UK nuclear capability. The SACEUR Plan was a fully integrated plan that involved coordination of all strike forces. Obviously the latter plan was much larger and the range and type of target more varied. Crews were allocated targets under both plans. You only knew your own targets and no others but it would seem reasonable that there was some degree of duplication to ensure that priority targets were covered. Both plans were subject to regular review and revision and the targets allocated to individual crews would change. In addition there were the QRA targets which for obvious reasons had to be common to at least a number of crews. These targets would have to be constantly covered by the QRA force.

Targeting and tactics obviously evolved in response to improvements in air defence capability. The switch from high level to low level penetration is a prime example of this process. As I mentioned above, the plans were constantly reviewed and when you were allocated a new target you did not know the reason for this. Possibly the target had ceased to justify a strike mission because a unit had moved or maybe the defences had been strengthened and it was now judged necessary to change the delivery platform to retain a sufficient degree of assuredness of success. You were not told because you did not need to know. The situation during my time on the V Force was that from a UK base we could make a high level transit outside EW radar cover and descend to low level to make an offensive penetration to the target at any point on the Soviet perimeter from East of North Cape to the Black Sea. We were then planned to recover to an allied airfield. I am told that this recovery plan was not always in place in later years as targets became more distant.

With a little imagination, a few line-of-sight calculations and some rough figures for Vulcan range and fuel consumption it is not difficult to arrive at the conclusion that most of the targets must have been in the Western Soviet Union. It is now widely known that most of the routes were planned to penetrate in the Baltic region many having transited Swedish airspace with the prior knowledge of the Swedish authorities. The attack planned was quite unlike anything that had ever happened before. It was no longer a massed raid on a single target but individual aircraft proceeding to separate targets. There was however a very high degree of coordination involved. As crews you were not aware of the details, but you were very strongly aware of the need to follow your planned route and adhere to the timings, if only to ensure that you were not caught by a “friendly” weapon detonation. What was also apparent when you examined your “war” flight plans was the stress laid upon the timing element because this was central to the penetration plan. What follows was told to me many years later by someone closely involved in the operational planning, for obvious reasons the crews were not made aware of these details. The planning hinged upon passing most of the force through one or two fairly small areas in a very short period of time. From this it could be deduced that some form of defence suppression would have occurred shortly prior to our arrival. As a USAF pilot once said to me “The most effective ECM is measured in Kilotons”. Once through the defended area, aircraft would proceed to their individual targets along a number of loosely defined corridors, leaving and joining them at various points along the route. The use of ECM in this phase would be reactive to any threats, reliance being placed upon remaining undetected in the general confusion and mayhem. Would the ECM equipment have been effective? Who really knows, we certainly felt it would help, but thank goodness never had to find out. Following weapon release the aircraft would climb to high level at the latest possible point to make the briefed recovery airfield. During this phase the ECM would be switched on in a supportive jamming role. After all having just released a nuclear weapon is hardly conducive to disguising your presence. We would then have landed at an allied airfield to await further orders. Would that airfield still be in existence? I have my doubts. Would there have been anywhere left to go home to? probably not. I am very glad that we never had to find out.

So there it is; that is the best I can do to answer your questions. The final one I suppose is “Was it all rational?” and the answer really must be “No it wasn’t”. However we would have gone, we would have done as we were ordered so maybe we bought some time for sense to prevail between the protagonists.

exmpa

Thank you very much for the reply, it was far more detailed than I could ever have hoped for, thank you again.:)

All a bit strange, I wonder what its all about?:confused:

Tu-160 not drop this bomb! Really droped from Il-76, or other transport aircraft (check video). This is Russian propaganda 😉

I watched the video, it sHowed a Tu-160. The bit with the transport plane in it was of a US aircraft dropping a US bomb.:p

However having said that the video does not show the bomb leaving the bomb bay. The first time we see the bomb there is no indication of what plane it was dropped from. Until we get confirmation either way I will go with it being a blackjack.