Topic: Military history (Page 16)
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๐ Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down on 17 July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50ย km (31ย mi) from the UkraineโRussia border, and wreckage of the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40ย km (25ย mi) from the border. The shoot-down occurred in the War in Donbas in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
The responsibility for investigation was delegated to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and the Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT), who concluded that the airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. According to the JIT, the Buk that was used originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Federation and had been transported from Russia on the day of the crash, fired from a field in a rebel-controlled area and the launch system returned to Russia afterwards. The findings by the DSB and JIT are consistent with the earlier claims by American and German intelligence sources and claims by the Ukrainian government. On the basis of the JIT's conclusions, the governments of the Netherlands and Australia held Russia responsible for the deployment of the Buk installation and were pursuing legal routes as of Mayย 2018. The Russian government denied involvement in the shooting down of the airplane, and its account of how the aircraft was shot down has varied over time. Coverage in Russian media has also differed from that in other countries.
This was Malaysia Airlines' second aircraft loss during 2014, after the disappearance of Flight 370 on 8 March, and is the deadliest airliner shoot-down incident to date.
๐ Deep Operation
Deep operation (Russian: ะะปัะฑะพะบะฐั ะพะฟะตัะฐัะธั, glubokaya operatsiya), also known as Soviet Deep Battle, was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a tenet that emphasized destroying, suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact, but throughout the depth of the battlefield.
The term comes from Vladimir Triandafillov, an influential military writer, who worked with others to create a military strategy with its own specialized operational art and tactics. The concept of deep operations was a national strategy, tailored to the economic, cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of several failures or defeats in the Russo-Japanese War, First World War and PolishโSoviet War, the Soviet High Command (Stavka) focused on developing new methods for the conduct of war. This new approach considered military strategy and tactics, but also introduced a new intermediate level of military art: operations. The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish the third level of military thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics.
Using these templates, the Soviets developed the concept of deep battle and by 1936 it had become part of the Red Army Field Regulations. Deep operations had two phases: the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossibleโor, indeed, irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.
Discussed on
- "Deep Operation" | 2019-08-17 | 41 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (Hi-MEMS)
Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) is a project of DARPA, a unit of the United States Department of Defense. Created in 2006, the unit's goal is the creation of tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis. After implantation, the "insect cyborgs" could be controlled by sending electrical impulses to their muscles. The primary application is surveillance. The project was created with the ultimate goal of delivering an insect within 5 meters of a target located 100 meters away from its starting point. In 2008, a team from the University of Michigan demonstrated a cyborg unicorn beetle at an academic conference in Tucson, Arizona. The beetle was able to take off and land, turn left or right, and demonstrate other flight behaviors. Researchers at Cornell University demonstrated the successful implantation of electronic probes into tobacco hornworms in the pupal stage.
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- "Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (Hi-MEMS)" | 2023-07-10 | 38 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Operation Vegetarian
Operation Vegetarian was a British military plan in 1942 to disseminate linseed cakes infected with anthrax spores onto the fields of Germany. These cakes would have been eaten by the cattle, which would then be consumed by the civilian population, causing the deaths of millions of German citizens. Furthermore, it would have wiped out the majority of Germany's cattle, creating a massive food shortage for the rest of the population that remained uninfected. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. Operation Vegetarian was only to be used in the event of a German anthrax attack on the United Kingdom.
The cakes themselves were tested on Gruinard Island, just off the coast of Scotland. Because of the widespread contamination from the anthrax spores, the land remained quarantined until 1990. The five million cakes made to be disseminated in Germany were eventually destroyed in an incinerator shortly after the end of World War II.
In his novel The Impossible Dead (2011), author Ian Rankin mentions the clandestine events surrounding the removal of contaminated soils from Guinard Island by a protest group, the Dark Harvest Commando, and the island's removal from maps by the British Government. The island also features as the principal setting for the 1985 novel El aรฑo de gracia, by Cristina Fernรกndez Cubas, in which the protagonist spends a winter shipwrecked on the island.
Discussed on
- "Operation Vegetarian" | 2018-09-19 | 39 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ Opposition to and problems with neckties
A necktie, or simply a tie, is a long piece of cloth, worn, usually by men, for decorative purposes around the neck, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat.
Variants include the ascot, bow, bolo, zipper, cravat, and knit. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neckties are generally unsized, but may be available in a longer size. In some cultures men and boys wear neckties as part of regular office attire or formal wear. Some women wear them as well but usually not as often as men. Neckties can also be worn as part of a uniform (e.g. military, school, waitstaff), whereas some choose to wear them as everyday clothing attire. Neckties are traditionally worn with the top shirt button fastened, and the tie knot resting between the collar points.
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- "Opposition to and problems with neckties" | 2009-06-01 | 13 Upvotes 31 Comments
๐ British spy had governments on both sides of the war paying for his girlfriends
Edward Arnold Chapman (16 November 1914 โ 11 December 1997) was an English criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers codenamed him Agent Zigzag in acknowledgement of his erratic personal history.
He had a number of criminal aliases known by the British police, amongst them Edward Edwards, Arnold Thompson and Edward Simpson. His German codename was Fritz or, later, after endearing himself to his German contacts, its diminutive form of Fritzchen.
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- "British spy had governments on both sides of the war paying for his girlfriends" | 2024-03-14 | 39 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Boirault Machine
The Boirault machine (French: Appareil Boirault), was an early French experimental landship, designed in 1914 and built in early 1915. It has been considered as "another interesting ancestor of the tank", and described as a "rhomboid-shaped skeleton tank without armour, with single overhead track". Ultimately, the machine was deemed impractical and was nicknamed Diplodocus militaris. It preceded the design and development of the English Little Willie tank by six months.
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- "Boirault Machine" | 2021-04-25 | 40 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Suwaลki Gap
The Suwaลki Gap, also known as the Suwaลki corridor ([suหvawkสฒi] (listen)), is a sparsely populated area immediately southwest of the border between Lithuania and Poland, between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. Named after the Polish town of Suwaลki, this choke point has become of great strategic and military importance since Poland and the Baltic states joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The border between Poland and Lithuania was formed after the Suwaลki Agreement of 1920; but it carried little importance in the interwar period as at the time, the Polish lands stretched farther northeast, while during the Cold War, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union and communist Poland belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact alliance. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact created borders that cut through the shortest land route between Kaliningrad (Russian territory isolated from the mainland) and Belarus (Russia's ally). As the Baltic states and Poland eventually joined NATO, this narrow border stretch between Poland and Lithuania became a vulnerability for the military bloc because, if a hypothetical military conflict were to erupt between Russia and Belarus on one side and NATO on the other, the capture of the 65ย km (40ย mi)-long strip of land between Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus would likely jeopardise NATO's attempts to defend the Baltic states. NATO's fears about the Suwaลki Gap intensified after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and launched the war in Donbas, and further increased after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. These worries prompted the alliance to increase its military presence in the area, and an arms race was triggered by these events.
Both Russia and the European Union countries also saw great interest in civilian uses of the gap. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia attempted to negotiate an extraterritorial corridor to connect its exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast with Grodno in Belarus, but Poland, Lithuania and the EU did not consent. Movement of goods through the gap was disrupted in summer 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Lithuania and the European Union introduced transit restrictions on Russian vehicles as part of their sanctions. The Via Baltica road, a vital link connecting Finland and the Baltic states with the rest of the European Union, goes through the area and, as of November 2022, is under construction in Poland as expressway S61.
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- "Suwaลki Gap" | 2023-07-25 | 28 Upvotes 15 Comments
๐ The Great Emu War
The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War, was a nuisance wildlife management military operation undertaken in Australia over the latter part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok in the Campion district of Western Australia. The unsuccessful attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed soldiers armed with Lewis gunsโleading the media to adopt the name "Emu War" when referring to the incident. While a number of the birds were killed, the emu population persisted and continued to cause crop destruction.
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- "Emu War" | 2024-01-15 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
- "The Great Emu War" | 2014-11-09 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Graphite Bomb
A graphite bomb is intended to be a non-lethal weapon used to disable an electrical grid. The bomb works by spreading a dense cloud of extremely fine, chemically treated carbon filaments over air-insulated high voltage installations like transformers and power lines, causing short-circuits and subsequent disruption of the electricity supply in an area, a region or even an entire small country. The weapon is sometimes referred to as blackout bomb or as soft bomb because its direct effects are largely confined to the targeted electrical power facility, with minimal risk of immediate collateral damage. However, since water supply systems and sewage treatment systems depend on electricity, widespread outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases, causing large numbers of civilian deaths, have in the past been the direct consequence of this bomb's use.
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- "Graphite Bomb" | 2023-12-05 | 27 Upvotes 3 Comments