Whatever they are telling us the key is the Defcon levels.
Officially this is not published (anymore) but here are 2 sources which are generally considered reliable. Note 5 is the best and we are at 3 which is not good. It is easy to dismiss this as irrelevant because the news here NEVER bothered to mention this level. And I am just a guy with a history degree from the AMU and I THINK this is disconcerting. At the end of the DEFCON range is an ABC war and the A is for Atomic.
Nukes are part of the escalation levels whether we like it or not, sadly or not that is! Sure things are never mentioned.
Russian media is permanently stating that Russia is at war with NATO, but now, because Russian assets (including the German AFD) are yelling at a German, you think murdering some million Germans is what is needed to be done?
Well i haves lived under DEFCON my entire life. Not that big of a deal. Difference between peace and end of civilization is about 15 minutes. Once the missiles are launched have a beer, say a prayer and hug your family.
Conventional forces defcon is a little different but nothing to lose sleep over. We have to trust our politicians we elected. In other words we may be screwed but so far so good.
We went from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 in 1914 and 1939. Itâs just readiness levels although in 1914 readiness levels meant moving to the frontiers with massive armies.the United States got caught with its pants down in 1941. Donât want that again. When readiness is raised leaves get cancelled, troops get ready, non comms get evacuated etc.
NATO practices readiness drills every year. The US maintains forces ready to deploy in days. So some troops are always at different readiness levels.
Defcon 5 (Normal peacetime readiness) has changed in the last year in Germany and over the Baltic. A year ago the Luftwaffe Eurofighters on airpatrol had been unarmed. Since 01.03.22 all are armed.
Iâm not sure of when our fighters would go unarmed. If they are doing continental defense they are always armed. I suspect that that most navy missions are armed. In all cases the rules of engagement are pretty clearly defined and both sides will play around a bit.
More likely to go unarmed are the ground attack forces. You donât go around carrying ground ordnance unless you might use it. I doubt they even arm them until an attack is planned.
In both Canada and the US outside of training missions, static displays and air shows all fighters are kept in readiness for intercepts, patrols and missions. It is far better to have a show of force than show up with no weapons and asking the other party to play nice.
This has been the center of German politics. âWeâ are the only ones who can start wars. So if we are nice nothing can go wrong. My informations about the changes after our arrogance gone wrong:
I remember reading that on 9/11, fighters were ordered to intercept the jet that crashed in Pennsylvania. They were supposedly unarmed because it was set up so fast. I recall they were air guard so not front line Air Force units. I donât have a citation on this. But it does sound like the confusion that day.
You are correct most of the fighters ordered up on 9/11 initially were unarmed in part due to confusion, practises of the time and there was lots of misinformation. After all air traffic was stopped in Canada and the US all military aircraft regardless of configuration(air to air to air to ground, air to ship) were to be fully armed and ready to release weapons.
Since 9/11 both countries require all aircraft on patrol or intercepts are to be armed and ready to use deadly force.
Interesting video. I do find the term air policing a little odd but accurate. I thought the explanations were very good without saying how good some of our surveillance capabilities are.
Question. Why did the AWACS have a big nato - otan on it but the fighters all displayed the German cross. Not important but just wondering if some expensive aircraft are shared expenses or what.
Also I thought the questions were interesting. Warning time for fighters on the ground is kind of a hot topic considering the advent of new hypersonic missiles. And the question about using drones in Ukraine for surveillance he couldnât say that we already know every plane over Ukraine pretty much. The surveillance would be more for ground.
I wonder if we get the radar feeds from some of the advanced air defense missiles we deploy.
The cost of the AWACS are shared, the crews are mixed. The active combat units were mostly local. The story that the American defence budged was high because the US was paying for German defence was nonsence, most US military spending in Europe was the cost of military bases in all of Europe (including Turkiye?) with 100.000 military personal, closing American bases in Germany is very expensive idea for American taxpayers. Our nations and our soldiers have cooperated well, but today creating headlines about âfreebootersâ is only good for media buisness.
The Ukrainian radar has been inproved, by systems we have allredy delivered.
I agree the costs of Nato for the US are mostly bases and human costs. The military costs would be similar regardless of where they are. You still need to buy and maintain equipment and you still pay the training costs and salaries of everyone involved. Now is it nonsense? If you are a small town in the US you want that base, you want the very real money it brings. Those are why you get hard feelings and bad press.
Do we need bases in Europe? Hell yes. If you took all the US bases out of Nato you might as well add a year to effective response time. On top of that Europe bases provide one of the key logistics points to our war on Terror. We just want all of nato to live up to the 2% of military budgets that were agreed too. Every year some politician and some press will complain. It is part of the budgetary process. Nothing changes and we are committed to nato. Next year the same stories pop back up.
But thanks for explaining why some aircraft are labeled differently than others. I guess they donât have a country of registry. So I guess if an AWACS is based in Germany, the Luftwaffe controls it and in Britain the RAF or perhaps NATO is a layer on top of that.
The bases in Germany have been and are the center of US logistics to support US troops in Syria, Irak, protecting Saudia Arabia and Katar, striking in Jemen, Afghanistan and Africa. We agree that Germany has failed to support its military enough, but is was not by not spending enough. Germany should be armed enough with less then a military budget higher than Russias. Germay does not need Doomsday weapons, a defunct aircraft carrier or the biggest nuklear sub in the world. The German problems with its armed forces can not been solved by throwing more money at them. To the German press is, even after 11 month of war, the German armed forces are only good for reporting about scandals.
But beeing a optimist, I see nobody throwing money around which should not been spending. The Bundeswehr not having priority in ammunition supply is a good thing. Somebody else needs ammunition more urgent.
It is a matter of facts. And your moral values. Or lack there of.
No lack of nudjobs in the room, no need for alerts.
But if you really want to learn how conspiracy theories are used for manufacturing of your consent.
Question: What achievement were you most proud of?
Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a sensitive matter, as the dossier was dangerous looked from this angle. President Tudjman [of Croatia] was very careless in his book âWastelands of Historical Realityâ. Reading this writtings, one could accuse him of of antisemitism. In Bosnia, the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic strongly supported the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state [there] in his book âThe Islamic Declarationâ. Besides, the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeded masterfully.
At the beginning of August 1992, New York Newsday came out with the affair of [Serb] concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - Bânai Bârith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the âNew York Timesâ and to organize demonstrations outside the United Nations.
That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was situated. But by a single move we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys, which would hereafter play itself. We won by targeting Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content, such as âethnic cleansingâ, âconcentration campsâ, etc., which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could go against it.
Marlino: But when you did all of this, you had no proof that what you said was true. You only had the article in âNewsdayâ!
Harff: Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets. We did not confirm the existence of death camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that âNewsdayâ affirmed it.
Marlino: Are you aware that you took on a grave responsibility?
Harff: We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to be moral.
From the Kyiv Independet, latest news why it is Germany who is delaying help to Ukraine:
âPoland said it will deliver 14 Leopard 2s, but will need spare parts from Germany, which are out of production, according to Bloomberg.â From âwe will send tanks without German consentâ to we can not send tanks because Germany is not able to make this old and least capable Leo 2 A4s functional, in two weeks.
