Thanks for all the suggestion. Money donated.

And the Intelligence Corps museam, Chicksands.

Major Nicholson's murder was long after my time, I left in 1981. The traffic accidents were a regular occurrence, mostly either getting tail gated or side-swiped at junctions. The drivers became adept at both avoiding them, and losing their tails, who were often intent on ramming them from behind. Some of those drivers could have had careers as rally drivers.

There were signifiant differences between the Brits and the Americans. For whatever reason the Brits always seemed to get away with more, and the parties were very real. Some of the parties were little more than attempts to obtain intelligence, but a lot were far more social, and formed part of a sort of cultural programme. I always felt that the Soviet contingent, at least some of them, genuinely believed that there was a benefit in encouraging us to see their culture and ideology. Romantic liaisons between the various groups (especially the French) were fairly commonplace, even if severely frowned upon.

The Four-Power Berlin Air Safety Centre came under my orbit. A very interesting Staff Visit ensued. The comparison between the RAF OC’s limo and the rusting, devoid of hubcaps, Russian OC’s told volumes. Although the social events were very impressive, with rotating hosts. I believe the French were regular winners by popular acclaim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Air_Safety_Center

Back in the usual program the air raid sirens in Engels airbase are sounding. Another Ukrainian drone attack?

Good BDR thread on the Engels attack with high definition photos. Obviously clear skies…

Wounded Ukrainian pilot

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And the AGM88 is fired at a SAM site... sited in the middle of the same civilian population, which is itself a war crime by the Russians. And they would give the evidence out of the Russians war crime.

Is there an outbreak of stupidity in Russia that all of the classical great Russians would be rolling over in their grave over? Seems that the breakdown of the education system since the fall of the USSR in the Rodina has consequences...

About time we changed Karaya's ride to an F-16. The UAF has shown they are prepared to do the job in spite of the limitations of their equipment. The west has a simple choice, give Kara here a better ride so he can evict the home invaders, or end up with callsigns like "Goose", "DeadMeat", "Crash" etc or British, German, Italian and French accents going out to mess up Vlads imperial ambitions.

Under the current regime, Russia has no interest in negotiation to actually cease their war of aggression, it continues to concentrate on saving the face of Vlad, and his sidekicks Piggie'zin and Benny'dict Kadyrov make a simple apology improbable. Zed, the leader of Ukraine would get impeached if he lets Vlad have an R&R to continue Vlads attempt at extermination of Ukraine at a later date. If Russia isn't given an adequate hint to amend their plans to return to civilisation, "Goose" & co will eventually get to spend a fair amount of time on the margins of this show.

I am a bit puzzled by these recent drone attacks, considering that the Russkies aren't lying about what they found on site

The TU-141 has a cross section next to a F16 (well, not quite, but not that far out either, it is a big mot..., the Soviet missile that crashed to lake Inari in 1984 was much smaller yet lit the radar and the Finnish Air Force made to it)
the Soviet SAM crews trained against these slow, subsonic reconnaissance drones, so they should have no issues in detecting those with their old Soviet era kits
Engel 2 is supposed be one of the best defended AFB's in Russia
The thing flew 600km's across the most dense Russian troop formations.

How on earth did that happen? I've seen the phrase "What air defence doing?" to exhaustion but now I really am wondering that myself.

Furthermore, since the russkies did let that through their network, how on earth would they be able to do anything about the likes of F22/B2/F35 entering their territory in case of escalation by Vlad the Mad?

Well D-ECJB made it all the way to Lenin's Tomb when things were hotter than they are today ...........................

I see your point but I reckon the situation in eastern Ukraine being a bit hotter today than the situation on the Finnish/Soviet border in 1987. I can't recall any cross border ammunition exchange back then.

That is the same air defense that let a Cessna land in Red Square!

Mathias Rust was tracked successfully, Soviet AD assumed it was one of theirs for a time, apparently. The aircraft that intercepted him were never given orders to shoot him down, due, it seems, to some cock-ups within the Soviet command structure. Several officers were sacked or disciplined afterwards, according to the Wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

I think there is probably a valid point regarding the command structure and competence of Russian forces in general, though. One stand out feature of this war has been poor decision making, coupled with poor intelligence, compounded by poor training and equipment. I can't help but wonder if Russia (and the former Soviet Union) has always had this issue. We saw signs of less than stellar performance and tactics by them in Afghanistan, and a few other skirmishes in recent years. They certainly play dirty by modern Western standards, but there often seems to be an absence of joined up tactical thinking by senior commanders.

To be fair, one of those things also flew over NATO territory recently, and was not shot down:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Zagreb_Tu-141_crash

True, however there is no war going on across those borders.
We can pick up as many peace time examples as we like (Zagreb, Matthias Rust, Kortrijk crash, lake Inari etc) but those were not across a front and all of those were tracked on radar and many intercepted/escorted. But this is not the case with the Engel strike.

To compare with the Engel strike: I trust the air defence in NATO countries would be in a more alert posture if there was an actual war they were involved in and missiles would be coming in from the opposite side, especially if it would be something slowish flying 900km/h for over 600km in essence good 40min in hostile airspace. We are not talking of hypersonic wunderwaffe here.

Zelensky visiting the wounded soldiers in hospital and handing out awards, the third one is an English speaking guy, (Derek?) nice to see Zelensky addressing him in English and by his name too.

Not many of our leaders act with the dignity, courage, leadership that Zelenskyy exhibits every day. The Baltic countries seem to be bestowed with some fine leaders at present, but for our own, and the rest of the UN, what on earth did we all do to deserve such a lack of fortitude? Here is a true leader, and war fighters prepared to defend their country against blatant aggression by a brutal neighbour, and we continue to vacillate on giving them the tools to defend themselves. Ukrainians are dying because of our leaders lack of moral fortitude, and our concerns on the price of a gallon of gas. As a consequence of the half hearted response that has been given, more Russian cannon fodder will also be turned into fertiliser.

Bomb disposal visiting Chernobaivka, you can see the captured Russian Hind that the guy was swinging on the rotors of, and also the recaptured Ukrainian Mil-17 that looks like it has been used as a spares ship.