north atlantic treaty organisation

Nothing in military history has given the RAF such a hold on the public imagination as the gallant Spitfire and Hurricane pilots of the Battle of Britain. Sadly in the postwar nuclear world their successors have only been tasked with wartime defence of key military infrastructure in the UK. It...

The fledgling Lufftwaffe and Marineflieger appeared to be interesting in buying British in their earliest days. Of course this was the worst possible time to deal with the British, so every effort fell over. Wiki referencing Wood. The German Defence Ministry first expressed interest in the...

Currently, the Italian Carrier Strike Group "Gruppo Navale 31" after a short stop in Singapore is participating to the "Pitch Black" exercise with the Australian Navy. The CSG 31 is composed by the aircraft carirer (and flagship) ITS Count of Cavour and by the FREMM Alpino, the Cavour has a...

Stumbled across some early 1950s NATO documents concerning the defensive arming and equipping of Merchant Ships. SGS.1 and the 4" Mk 25 are briefly mentioned, although unsurprisingly the vast majority of equipment intended for DEMS was supposed to come from US stocks. There are more documents...

https://www.twz.com/land/norways-nomads-short-range-air-defense-system-unveiled

The time has come for Europeans to look into the abyss. (US Friends forgive this, but we in Europe have to plan for whatever you decide. We know its your call not ours) In the next year or so the US may decide to withdraw from NATO. Since only France has nuclear weapons which do not depend on US...

When the UK gave up carriers in the 60s the alternative was supposed to be a family of helicopter, ship and sub launched missiles. In the event while Wasp helicopters did get AS12s it took nearly a decade before Exocet equipped some destroyers and frigates. Sea Skua for Lynx did not arrive...

In 1960 some 64 Canberra B2 & B6 in 4 sqns based in Britain and assigned to SACEUR were replaced by 24 Valiants in 3 sqns. Despite the significant decrease in numbers this was considered a net benefit because of the Valiant's all weather capabilities. By 1964 the RAF still had 9 sqns of Canberra...

Anybody know anything about this?

A few days ago I stumbled across this ASROC training video from Periscope Films and I was surprised when I checked the board that no specific thread for the ASROC has been posted so hear goes: Now for some stats from the RUR-5 ASROC wikipedia page: Detonation of W44 warhead launched by an...

As we have had some interesting 50s and 60s what-ifs I thought it would be fun to go for a big one. Put yourself in the chair of Sandys, McNamara or any other key Defence Minister of your choice. Now put together a better balance of options than they did.

There have been several discussions about the British aircraft of the 60s since I started here a few weeks ago, apparently it's a never ending topic. They appear to start out technically and end financially and politically in a viscous circle of failure. In the process some interesting and...

https://www.japcc.org/articles/leveraging-the-alliances-effort-in-fighter-aircraft-design/

Perhaps the most ambitious NATO programme of the 1980s was an attempt to design a common escort ship platform for NATO navies: NATO Frigate 90. https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/nfr-90-and-other-pre-horizon-aaw-projects.923/ The project foundered as it became too expensive and failed to...

The US Huey Cobra was a formidable gunship helicopter. Unlike the later Apache which has found widespread use.with NATO, the Cobra did not get much NATO use. West Germany should have been a major user. TOW equipped Cobras would have added much to Bundeswehr units. Instead the Boelkow B105...

According to McNab (2012), the Stabilimento Militare Armi Leggere Terni or SMALT had produced a conversion kit to adapt the MG 42/59 GPMG (Italy's license-produced version of the MG 42 / MG 3) to 5.56×45mm NATO ammunition (p. 25). Uncited entries on Wikipedia claimed that the conversion kit...

LCAW was a NATO program for an small torpedo, cheap/expendable enough to be use against unidentified/unverified sonar contacts. It was supposed to have both rocket-launched and helicopter-dropped version. At first it was a trilateral US, German Norwegian project, but some point ~1990 The US...

A few months ago, I posted a thread on a briefing with several more or less obscure frigate concepts for the USN. One of the designs included in that brief is the PXM, which I described at the time as a rabbit hole. This thread is my attempt to chase that rabbit as far as I can go, starting from...

This is great. I'm not a fan of the Eurocopter Tiger, and I wished that Germany had picked the Apache or Cobra.