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Michael “DSM” Smith of the Times reports some detail on the recent action in Afghanistan in which two UKSF members were killed. Worth reading. How would your answer change, though, if you knew that the two companies of 3 Para involved equal roughly 50% of the total infantry force available to the British Army in…

For some reason, otherwise sensible people go flappy around the edges about the UK nuclear deterrent. Critics of the force often like to talk about how independent, or otherwise it is. This is a good point: after all, the rockets are leased from the US. But for some reason, from this starting point they rapidly…

If this post worried or angered you, fear not. Our best man is on the case. Defence Procurement Minister Lord Drayson, no less, is heading the negotiations on F-35 technology transfer and RR workshare. That’s the Lord Drayson who gave Labour £100,000 and got a huge government contract, then a peerage, and then gave Labour…

A Saab Viggen-shaped dinosaur.

The comments spammers are backarooni! After the last time I did this they disappeared for several weeks, so maybe time for another dose. The links point to http://2ee.us/shitetheyreadvertising.html, so let’s play WHOIS whack-a-mole! Domain Name: 2EE.USDomain ID: D9234416-USSponsoring Registrar: MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, LLCDomain Status: clientDeleteProhibitedDomain Status: clientTransferProhibitedDomain Status: clientUpdateProhibitedRegistrant ID: MONIKER190258Registrant Name: DARVA DEGEN DEGENRegistrant…

Whilst checking in on latest Kenyan Armenian Czech Indian mercenary news, I stumbled on this. Italy has a space research and rocket launch site in Kenya. Who knew?

It’s been reasonably widely reported that the British and US governments have fallen out about the terms of British participation in the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35 or JSF) project. The RAF and Royal Navy are planning to buy a considerable number of the aircraft’s STOVL (Short Take-Off Vertical Landing) variant as the eventual replacement for…

Just been given a copy of Georgina Ferry’s book on LEO, the pioneering family of business computers developed by Lyons in the late 1940s. I was broadly aware that they had been a long way ahead of everyone else, having been the first company to use a computer to do anything useful and also having…

The problem that caused some 2005 archives to render in tiny text should now be solved.

Does anyone else remember the rigged treason trial of Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai? The state’s case turned on tapes prepared by a so-called “political consultant” named Ari Ben-Menashe, who had filmed himself talking about a coup near Tsvangirai and then provided the tapes to the prosecution. It turned out that Ben-Menashe was an egregious…