Well Croatia is buyng few of our Helsinki class which altough being older than the Kralj petar they were certainly in better condition. If this claim is true (which I doupt) then it would mean that the ex-finnish ships would be the primary FAC force of Croatia an propably going to field RBS-15 after all.

most of the destroyed Georgian tanks seem to show turrets that have been knocked right off the chassis.

Given the loation of the spare ammoes in the turrent ring, that is what usually happens with T-64/72/80/90 series of tanks when they get knocked out. If the muntion which hits the tank ignates the powder of the spare ammoes, the turret pops up like a corq.

Well sofar we have done better than many expected, 3 medals (one for each colours) sofar is far better than we did in last games.

I’m specially pleased that two of the medals were from shooting, my own sport. I’ve woken up early before my work started to watch the finals. Also I’ve now personally met three olympic medalist:)

I don’t expect many more medals to us, only the from the men’s javelin throw (which is the most expected event in the whole games in here!) in which we if all gods are mercifull upon us we may even take douple victory…

Well as a worker in powerplant which has both, normal steamboilers and gasturbines I can also say that the gasturbine certainly fits better to engine something big which needs to move fast…

Everyone seems to be pretty certain that DDGs will indeed be pursued and instead of spreading my ususal cynicism, I’m infact blutly resting on these claims as I’m eager to see what the next DDG from china will be like.

I once asked interesting question, packed with my usual cynicism however at that time about the chinese ability to design gas turbine powered DDGs with satisfactory performance. By that I ment the small and cauntious quantativical ammount of the 052 series. First two then back to old steamers and then two again and back to old steam-powered ships again.
I was, like ususally mainly claimed to be just ranting with the tag that “I just hate china”, but in the mist some slight reasonable arguments did rose. Many belived that the reason why only two seccond batch 052s (052b/C) were build was that the production facilities were shifted to another shipyard. I my inturperation was that chinese were not satisfied with the performance of the CODAG propulsion build around the Ukrainian Gas turbines. IMO it’s too small for the ships of that size. So to me it seemed as there still weren’t no proper domestical large size marine gas turbines availble and thus the production of these ships were halted.

Now since then (this being about year ago or so) there have been optimistic reports about chinese procediings in gas turbine field so thus these new DDGs are really a bench mark: Will they be fitted with domestic or imported (Urkainian) gas turbines? Will they still be CODAG or peraps COGAG/GOG?
What if the DDGs are like someone said, “051Ds” eg. steam powered? Or perhaps all diesel powered (not so unlikely as it may first sound)

Like I said I’m eagerly waiting to see what will come up with this. At this time I promise to be far more optimistic than usual;):cool:

Might be interesting to find out which warships the Russians have deployed to lay off Poti and precisely when they sortied!.

At least The Moskva (pr.1164) and Smetlivy (pr.61A) were mentioned in YLE news this morning.

Russia was forced to intervene…Super power cannot watch its intrest to be trampled down
So By all means if leadership of small nation bordering a superpower doesen’t realise that and takes its own actions even beyond provocation, one can only wonder the stubidity of Georgian leadership…

…thougth beeing fin and following closely some obinion of our own rigth wingers past and present, as well vitnessing very closely Estonian ramblings, I dont wonder at all. To some people it seems to be more important to keep the morale stance that “we were rigth and we had the rigth to do…” is more important than the price that the pride will cost.

But:

what do you gentlemen think was behind Georgia’s decision to take action now?

I think hard-bit gamble to “force” West, USA and NATO spesifically to give Georgia the support it needs to get rid of the rebel province proplem. Its like: “Look, now they are kicking our ass off…come to rescue us, quikcly!!”

Was Russia wrong to intervene?

Yeas and no. Depends are you Russian or not I guess;)
In the other hand Russia needs good relations to Europe and USA, and if it ever wants to get rid of the “enemy” tag, these sort of stunts are not doing any good.
But then again, if you give singal that every Former imperial russian province can get away from any sort of action, Its not long when all sort of revansist fractions with equal need for opportunism as Saakashvili has, starts to
exploid the fact that Russia would allow such deeds.

The russian power has shown some sings of life in past two years and it has taken all of its former hegemony ideology back to use, and that is a fact we just have to live with. For nations inside that hegemony sphere, a way of living it is not to go militarily against rebel provinces that has staunt Russian support…

You cannot bypass the fact that Russia is superpower, if globally bit rusty one, regionally it still has the biggest helmet of the village and so on…
There are Russian intrest in Georgia, both regional and strategical geopolitical ones, plus the international prestige of not letting some minor former historical border province to dictate the name of the game. For Russia, it would have just been humilating one.
Offcourse us westeners can rant how unfair and bad and evil and bla bla bla…that is.
But superpower hegemonies have been custome to follow those great ethics have they:rolleyes:

So when geopolitical fundamentals remains as they have remained pretty much ten thousand years, the sole one to be blamed for the situation is Georgia, and Saakashvili.
The Georgian actions to provocate a hostile superpower into these sort of response is one of the sillyest opportunism that gnat-level nations have conducted in few decades…Georgians want to act cocky and stubborn to their former opressor, but knows that they cannot do it without NATO hardware on their back (same way as the mentioned Estonians have conducted)…so in order to continue their kindegarden level of diplomacy, they desperatly need to get into the NATO.
Only that west with bit more mature sense of geopolitics has allready bit too many foots on Russian toes, and doesn’t nesserically want to push more, makes the rigth decission and keeps Georgia out of NATO at this point.

So Saakashvili gets slaps on his face and thougth propaply all Georgians hate Russians and wants to be in NATO, many starts to wonder wheter Saakashvili is the rigth man to take Georgia inside the loving care of US marines and co.

And there you have the classic internal tension, backed with the rebel provinces increased own stubbourness due the same reasons…what was there really left for Saakashvili?

Attack Russia and then on the edge of total catashrope hope that their self-imposed missery would force NATO to take Georgia under their care:diablo::diablo:

Crazy…but thats how it goes….