No Fly Zone Enforcement

There has been some talk about how the US might enforce a no-fly zone by shooting down any Russian aircraft that violated it.  It would not work quite that way.  Upon detecting a Russian aircraft in the no fly zone, the US fighters would radio it, on guard frequency, and order it out of the area.  If the Russian complies, all is well and good.  If it does not comply, the US fighters would follow up with the traditional shot across the bow.  And possibly some hot rod flying to scare them off.  Only after all that fails would shooting start for real.  

Another question.  Would shooting down a single Russian fighter be enough to kick off nuclear war?  During the Cold War, the Russians shot down several US recon aircraft.  We sent diplomatic nastygrams to the communists, but we didn't threaten war over a single aircraft.

Taiwan is different from Ukraine.

The TV has been talking up China’s threat to invade and conquer Taiwan, comparing it to Ukraine.  There is one big difference between the two.  There is a 120 mile wide strait between Mainland China and Taiwan.  It’s blue water, deep enough to float air craft carriers.  Chinese army has to cross this strait by ship.

  Up until Biden, the US promised to defend Taiwan by the US Navy steaming into the Taiwan Strait and sinking the Chinese invasion force.  Today, a lot of people, me included, fear that Biden lacks the courage to back up 70 years of American promises and order the US Navy into action.  We fear Biden will chicken out in the clutch.

   To prevent this disgraceful action, every American needs to get to the polls in November, and vote a straight Republican ticket. 

 

Shelling a nuclear power plant is craziness

 Apparently the Russians want to do Chernobyl all over again.  Shelling a running nuclear power plant is asking for another Chernobyl.  A nuclear plant needs a lot of stuff working to keep it running safely, the cooling system, the fire fighting equipment, the control room, electric power to move the control rods, and more.  Shelling the plant is likely to break something essential.  

   If they just want to control who gets power, and turn the lights out on the Ukrainian resistance, all the Russians need do is surround the plant, wait for the operators to get hungry, and offer them food if they come out and turn the place over.  Shelling is no part of this. 

Big Molotov Cocktails.

 Back in high school I knew a boy, Hungarian boy by the name of Tom Beyargin.  He had been active in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Russians.  Hr had gotten out of Hungary just a day before the Russians closed the western border of Hungary.  He told some hair raising stories about resisting the Russians in Buda Pest.  

  The Hungarians would lay down ordinary pie pans, upside down, across the city streets.  The pans looked just like land mines.  No tanker is going to drive his tank over a land mine.  The Russian tanks would stop and a tanker could get out to look the things over.  There was usually a Hungarian with a rifle on street level to deal with him.  Meantime a Hungarian would heave a gallon jug sized Molotov cocktail out a 3rd or 4th story window.  Since the tanks were stopped it was easier to hit them.  A gallon of gasoline was enough to set any kind of tank on fire.  After a few days of this and the tankers became extremely reluctant to drive down any city street.

Dumping Putin

 The Russians would have to do it of course.  The Russian power structure, Army Generals, Politburo people, industrialists, the heavy duty kind of people, would have to become convinced that Putin was driving Russia into a disaster.   Then should enough of them get together they could force Putin out of power, the way they did Khrushchev years ago.  It could get touchy.  Should Putin catch wind of this, he would order everybody arrested.  

We probably would not know of a move to remove Putin until after it happened.  Unless we have another deep sleeper agent in the Kremlin, like the famous Oleg Penkovsky, we would not hear.  Planning to remove the head of state is high treason and would only be done in the deepest of secrecy.

State of the Union

 It went on past my bedtime and ran for ever.  I noticed a lot of empty seats in the House chamber.  Used to be, every seat was full and the room was jammed.  Not so much last night.  Biden didn't say much of substance, although he read well off the teleprompters.  Only two cases of lost train of thought that I noticed.  Not too shabby for Slow Joe.  He never spoke about getting oil production back up.  Most of what he said was either motherhood and apple pie, or the party of more free stuff promising more free stuff.  He wanted to lower drug prices but he never mentioned the sure fire way to make that happen, namely allow import duty free of drugs from any decent first world country, Canada, the EU, Japan, etc.  Republicans need to campaign hard to win the Congress. All American voters need to go to the polls in November and never vote for a democrat again.  We have seen how badly democrats have run the country this last year of Biden.

A no fly zone for Ukraine.

 There is a blond young woman from Ukraine in Washington.  Her English is excellent, she is pretty and she sounds like a very effective spokeswoman for Ukraine.  She was asking for a no-fly zone to keep the Russian air force out of the fighting.  Sounds nice.

  Trouble is having the US Air Force enforce the no fly zone could lead to war between us and the Russians.  We have made it a point to avoid that ever since the end of WWII.  The old Soviet Union was nearly as big as we were, and they had nukes.  After the Soviet Union failed, new nations formed out of the old Soviet Union wanted out of the Union.  About a third of the old Soviet Union escaped, so Putin is running a much smaller country that would be easier to defeat.  But, they still have a lot of nukes, and they would probably use them on us before they would accept defeat.  And we would likely retaliate and things go down hill from there. 

    Anyhow I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to declare and enforce a no fly zone in Ukraine.  Too dangerous.   We should stick with supplying SAMs, Stinger and Patriot.  Stinger is shoulder fired, which means it has to be fairly light.  However, light as it is, Stinger had enough punch in Afghanistan to bring down anything the Russians were flying.  Little to no training is needed to use Stinger; it is a point and shoot system.  Patriot is a bigger and fancier system.  It has a tracked vehicle to carry the missiles and the radar.  Crews need probably a week of training before they can make Patriot perform.