A boat blessed with a skilled, aggressive commander like Mush Morton or Eugene Fluckey is an effective boat. A sub not so blessed is apt to run afoul of hard luck or worse.
Even China Wonders if It Can Avoid a Great Power War With America
Great power competition is back and it may not result in a major war, but it has got leaders in Washington and Beijing a bit nervous.
Key point: The Cold War was full of accidents and miscommunications that nearly ended in bloodshed. Can America and China avoid a terrible fate?
It has become quite common to use historical analogies to describe the complex Sino-American relationship. At the centenary of the First World War, the comparison between China’s rise and that of Wilhelmine Germany has been widely made. However, a path-breaking 2012
What a drag.
Top Gun was about the best of the best flitting around the skies, kept aloft by a lonely impulse of delight. This list of History s Worst 5 Submarines catalogues the worst of the worst lumbering around in the briny deep. Such a vessel is a millstone dragging down the fortunes of its navy, its parent military, or the society that puts it to sea.
Call it
Bottom Gun.
Now, it s possible to rank hardware, including submersibles and their armament, purely by technical characteristics. The crummiest piece of kit condemned by shoddy design, faulty construction work, or premature obsolescence is the bottom-feeder on such a list. In the case of submarines, then, tallying up speed, submerged endurance, acoustic properties, and kindred statistics offers a reputable way to proceed. But it tells only part of the story.
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Recently India alleged a series of ceasefire violations in the form of automatic weapons fire by Pakistan on the border between the two countries. According to India, it was the sixth attack in just five days. Such events are a reminder that tension remains high on the Indian subcontinent.
The nuclear arsenals of both sides and the red lines that would trigger their use have made conventional war much more risky to conduct. The 1999 Kargil War is considered the closest the world has come to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. If India were to use its superiority in ground forces to seize a sizable amount of Pakistani territory, Pakistan could respond with nuclear weapons.