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OT: Hey Jazzad thumbs up for your country bro! The French saved the day in Benghazi.


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I know a lot of times there is back and forth picking on these forums between Americans and our NATO pals across the pond. This weekend our NATO brothers in France launched the first air strikes into Libya smashing a Armored Column of Tanks, APC's, fuel and supply trucks. This juggernaut of Gaddafi's had been spear heading the dictators terror campaign across Eastern Libya. Those forces were on the verge of destroying what was left of Libyan freedom fighters. Minutes were ticking away, and then the French arrived and smashed it. With tanks charred and their torrents blown to pieces. Our French allies just gave new life to freedom in Libya. Viva La France!!:cool:

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This.


Anyone who ridicules the armed forces of France should consider the last century of their history. While often misguided by their government, French troops have served with courage and professionalism.

 

 

Well said.

 

Tim

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I know a lot of times there is back and forth picking on these forums between Americans and our NATO pals across the pond. This weekend our NATO brothers in France launched the first air strikes into Libya smashing a Armored Column of Tanks, APC's, fuel and supply trucks. This juggernaut of Gaddafi's had been spear heading the dictators terror campaign across Eastern Libya. Those forces were on the verge of destroying what was left of Libyan freedom fighters. Minutes were ticking away, and then the French arrived and smashed it. With tanks charred and their torrents blown to pieces. Our French allies just gave new life to freedom in Libya. Viva La France!!
:cool:

 

I applaud France for jumpin in there and kickin some ass, but they are not a part of NATO. They left NATO in 1966 when NATO wouldn't send troops to Viet Nam.

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I applaud France for jumpin in there and kickin some ass, but they are not a part of NATO. They left NATO in 1966 when NATO wouldn't send troops to Viet Nam.

 

 

France never left NATO. President De Gaulle ordered the removal of all French forces from the NATO command structure, and also ordered the departure of non-French NATO troops from French soil in 1966.

 

 

In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. Troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:

 

"Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!"

 

That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.

 

So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldier buried in France from World War I and World War II.

 

DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered.

 

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France never left NATO. President De Gaulle ordered the removal of all French forces from the NATO command structure, and also ordered the departure of non-French NATO troops from French soil in 1966.




I served with French troops under UN command in the Spanish Sahara in 1993, and in Bosnia in 1998-99 under NATO command. They're first-rate troops.


Jazz Ad served as a combat engineer in Bosnia under the UN, IIRC. That took balls...


*salutes Jazzy*

 

 

my bad. I didn't mean to demean Jazz or any other Frenchman. I lived in France when they booted all the Americans out. I was 4 at the time. I think my father actually told me that they had left NATO. I just assumed it so.....

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my bad. I didn't mean to demean Jazz or any other Frenchman. I lived in France when they booted all the Americans out. I was 4 at the time. I think my father actually told me that they had left NATO. I just assumed it so.....

 

No worries. The UK military has been described as lions led by lambs. I think the comparison works with France, too.

 

I spent a week with two platoons of Foreign Legion and Metro paras in Sarajevo in spring 1999---all great guys, good troops. They all know how to cook, too, and had a ready supply of red wine and beer to boot. :D

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No worries. The UK military has been described as lions led by lambs. I think the comparison works with France, too.


I spent a week with two platoons of Foreign Legion and Metro paras in Sarajevo in spring 1999---all great guys, good troops. They all know how to cook, too, and had a ready supply of red wine and beer to boot.
:D

I had a chance to spend 10 days in diego garcia stranded with the British Royal Marines in 93. I don't remember much of it........

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France never left NATO. President De Gaulle ordered the removal of all French forces from the NATO command structure, and also ordered the departure of non-French NATO troops from French soil in 1966.

That's right. France has been back into the command structure since 2009.

Jazz Ad served as a combat engineer in Bosnia under the UN, IIRC.

That's right too.

 

Don't get fooled though. Sarkozy has a lot of problems with internal politics so he needs to draw attention elsewhere. He received Khadafi with honors 3 years ago.

And France gets quite a lot of its oil from Lybia. If the country opened, Total would get great opportunities.

We have also been criticized a lot because we didn't do {censored} for Tunisia so something needed to be done to get a better image in Maghreb.

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It will be interesting to find out what kind of planes, and weapons were used to crush that armored column. From the pictures I have seen it looks like burnt rubble. Once again the T-72 design is proven flawed from the get go. You can look at some of the photos and tell where the fuel tanks detonated which was a common flaw with that tank. Also Libya has Zsu-23's and Stela stage 2 and 3 SAM's, along with S-200 SAM systems. Seems all of those things were futile, against the French Rafale.

 

I wonder if the Russians and Chinese have any faith in any or their updated systems?(which are not a whole lot better than what Libya has).

 

Western Air Supremacy trumps Eastern designed Air Defenses again. :cool:

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I wonder if the Russians and Chinese have any faith in any or their updated systems?(which are not a whole lot better than what Libya has).

 

That's interesting, seeing as China is one of only 3 countries on this planet that have demonstrated the capability to destroy a satellite from a ground based missile.

 

I have a very hard time believing a regime in possession of such advanced guidance capability can't make a viable SAM.

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That's interesting, seeing as China is one of only 3 countries on this planet that have demonstrated the capability to destroy a satellite from a ground based missile.


I have a very hard time believing a regime in possession of such advanced guidance capability can't make a viable SAM.

 

 

The Russians and Chinese have had a long history of over projecting their weapons capabilities for years. It always looks better on paper. A lot of the metallurgy in China was questionable for years. Most of their designs are based off older Soviet designs such as tank, and mobile artillery chassis, their aircraft are usually a cheaper knock off of a MiG, or Su-Type plane. Their blue water navy capabilities are lacking. Also this so called "Carrier Destroying Missile" that made the news last month is nothing more than a cheaper version of the Russian Klub.

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watch out for that new chinese stealth plane!!!
:D

 

Probably made out of pop metal. Remember when the Soviet MiG-25 was all the rave?!? Until we got our hands on it and we found out it was a stainless frame with a control panel running off vacuum tubes, like you would use in a SVT! LOL

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The Russians and Chinese have had a long history of over projecting their weapons capabilities for years. It always looks better on paper. A lot of the metallurgy in China was questionable for years. Most of their designs are based off older Soviet designs such as tank, and mobile artillery chassis, their aircraft are usually a cheaper knock off of a MiG, or Su-Type plane. Their blue water navy capabilities are lacking. Also this so called "Carrier Destroying Missile" that made the news last month is nothing more than a cheaper version of the Russian Klub.

 

But that doesn't speak whatsoever to their advanced guidance capability. Shooting a satellite out of orbit is an incredible feat. Clearly some of our secrets have made it into Chinese hands.

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Probably made out of pop metal. Remember when the Soviet MiG-25 was all the rave?!? Until we got our hands on it and we found out it was a stainless frame with a control panel running off vacuum tubes, like you would use in a SVT! LOL

 

Is that a bad thing? Those tubes will still function in the presence of intense electro magnetic fields. We could laugh at the sapphire core i386 arch used on the space shuttle as well, but there is a reason for using that "old tech" in that application. Dense CPU's and radiation don't mix. Tubes are damn near immune to radiation.

 

Wiki agrees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25

 

The majority of the on-board avionics were based on vacuum-tube technology, not solid-state electronics. Although they represented aging technology,
vacuum tubes were more tolerant of temperature extremes, thereby removing the need for providing complex environmental controls inside the avionics bays.

 

In addition, the vacuum tubes were easy to replace in remote northern airfields where sophisticated transistor parts might not have been readily available.
Thanks to the use of vacuum tubes, the MiG-25P's original Smerch-A (Tornado, NATO reporting name "Foxfire") radar had enormous power

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But that doesn't speak whatsoever to their advanced guidance capability. Shooting a satellite out of orbit is an incredible feat. Clearly some of our secrets have made it into Chinese hands.

 

 

We and the Soviets did the same thing in the 1980's. Yet, we still had hit and miss problems shooting down SCUDS in the 1990's. With aircraft unlike a satellite you have the issue of shooting at something that can jam the radars, maneuver, and counter with other defense mechanisms. If shooting down aircraft was a simple as shooting down a satellite then the Russians wouldn't be breaking their back 30 years later to develop the S-500 SAM system.

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. With aircraft unlike a satellite you have the issue of shooting at something that can jam the radars, maneuver, and counter with other defense mechanisms. If shooting down aircraft was a simple as shooting down a satellite then the Russians wouldn't be breaking their back 30 years later to develop the S-500 SAM system.

 

 

Dude, the patriot missile system was not designed to shoot down ICBM's. It was just what they had in theatre at the time....

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