alternate history

I don't usually post what-if scenarios but we've had a few what-ifs for smaller nations like Italy etc. So I was thinking the other day, what if Japan had been able to constitutionally export weapons in the post-war period? General Hackett in his The Third World War has Japan by the 1970s...

In 1918, German Empire actually considered the possibility of zeppelin's raid against United States. Technically, it was possible. The L-59 (LZ-104) )Africa expedition demonstrated the impressive endurance of big airships; zeppelin stayed in air for 95 hours, traveling about 6800 km, and after...

So we know some time in the early 80s, France split with the UK, West Germany, Italy and Spain, and developed the ACX into the Rafale, and the others made the Typhoon. the disagreement stemmed from a carrier variant. What if in this scenario, France never left and somehow the five of them...

Back in the 1960s it was feared that by the 1970s up to 30 States would acquire nuclear weapons. The 1968 Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons is rightly regarded as having helped avoid this happening. Britain and...

In the 70s, India worked hard to acquire the Viggen, which was ultimately blocked by the US, due to distrust of India's relations with the USSR. In the end India went with the UK-French SPACECAT Jaguar. Lets say in this alternative history, the US did not block the sale, and it went through...

In this scenario the Vietnam War follows the same path as the Korean war, and after years of intense fighting the two sides agree to a long term cease fire (but no peace deal, like the Koreas). splitting the two countries along the 17th parallel How would this change - the aircraft composition...

So in the same vein as others....what if Sweden turned more of it's projects into reality and which would they be? The big one has to be a Swedish Nuclear Weapons program... Presumably with A36 Strike Aircraft. Would this have a ballistic missile companion? Such Nuclear production could make...

One of the designs for the Tomcat replaced the swing wings with a fixed wing. Such as the 303F What if, in this alternate history.. Grumman decided to go with a fixed wing instead of a swing wing. Then the question becomes How would its performance characteristics be like with a fixed wing...

West Germany in our timeline has since 1951 been a constant pillar in the Western Alliance and a key partner or customer for modern weapons and other secret projects. What if things had been different and other forms had occured. German unification along Austrian or Finnish lines as a member...

I am looking for some "professional" advice on an alternate history scenario that has been running around my mind for years: Given the political will to do something immediately about Hitler's 1 Sept 1939 invasion of Poland, did the British and French military have the resources and the assets...

Boeing and Lockheed beat out McDs, GD, and some other companies to become the two finalists for JSF. Boeing went with a somewhat more conventional engine arrangement, but an unconventional shape Lockheed was opposite and chose a more novel engine arrangement, but had a shape more similar to the...

As the Tartar-derived Standard family continues to thrive https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/standard-missile-projects.7671/unread I am going to re-visit another Hobbyhorse of mine. The Dutch took close look at CF299/Seadart and dropped it in favour of Tartar/Standard for its two Tromp...

The subject which perhaps has been kicked around on this website more than any other is whether the UK could have designed and built a two seater fighter-bomber in the 1960s to replace RAF Lightnings and RN Sea Vixens and replace RAF Hunters (The RN already had Buccaneer). The Hawker P1154 was...

As said in the tin. When you think about it, it would avoid an immense amount of suffering and money waste. Kind of - screw the Tigers - screw CVA-01 - screw Spey Phantoms do we agree all three above were expensive boondoggles ? so good riddance (sorry, that's the radical in me... !) Also...

the Falklands war occurred in 82 Ark Royal (or another ship of the same class?) was decommissioned in 79 What if they had opted to delay the decommissioning by a few years but then the Falkland war occurred anyways Would the Ark Royal have been sent? would it have contributed differently than...

As said in the tin. I've worked on this huge thing since February 2008 when I joined, first, NASAspaceflight.com and AH.com. Took me a decade and 2019 to get a stronger focus and backstory. Now the POD is clearer. In August 1967 at a crucial juncture in NASA history the last Lunar Orbiter...

This concept is from my AH project "Savioe Cross". In short - in 1943, Mussolini was a bit quicker, and managed to broker peace with Allies before the Victor Emmanuel III. Italy managed to came out of Axis more orderly, and successfully repel (with Allied help, of course), German invasion. But...

How useful would it have been if the Royal Navy had grasped the nettle in 1947 and decided to scrap its battleships? Admittedly this is much easier with the benefit of hindsight. But the lessons of the war and the success of air and submarine attacks on battleships were already well known. The...

If the Vickers Valiants had been transfered from strike to tankers earlier could the fatigue problems have been avoided. Their strike role could have been taken on by Vulcan or Victor B1s. With the Valiants serving into the 1970s the Victors could have continued in the recce and conventional...

Given that WWI had a fairly random trigger, it is not particularly strange (in alt history terms) to explore the alternative. So WWI does not happen, while a steady stream of bush wars still does. What happens to military technology? When will the following things be invented and adapted...