western europe

The possibility of the UK avoiding the 1965 aircraft cancellations has been discussed ad nauseam. I don't propose to get into it here - assume a collective delusion of the UK government, the discovery of a massive gold deposit, or intervention from extra-terrestrial intelligences, as you see...

Although the excellent AH1 Cobra was deployed to Europe in the 1970s and received TOW missiles to help it kill Soviet armour, noone else in NATO could afford it. That left W Germany sticking six HOT missile launchers on its Bo 105 light observation helicopter and the British Army SS11 missiles...

Hi, just rediscovered in my shed a Majorette toy from the 80's? It did come on a fairly basic low-loader. I think I purchased 2 of them at the time at pocket money price in a general store. Only a couple of inches long. Pop out wings presumably so the transport vehicle it was on could drive...

Since Franco's death Spain has become a key player in the EU and NATO. Reading how the dictator resisted attempts to have Spain play a more active role in WW2 alongside Germany and Italy got me wondering. Franco decides that Gibraltar is worth the risk of joining the Axis. As a result in 1945...

The US deployed Matador cruise missiles to Europe and then replaced them with Mace. With the arrival of Pershing 1 Mace was withdrawn. The West German Air Force received Matador but not Mace before getting Pershing. Was West Germany the only country offered these systems?

For all the issues Falcon had in Vietnam, it has to be remembered that unlike Sparrow and Sidewinder, every Falcon kill was an impact kill, implying that on those occasions when things actually worked, it might have been the better missile. AIM-4H was in development to sort out Falcon's worst...

The third season of this series will be looking at the story of the Space Shuttle, before that will be a live show with Shuttle astronaut Kay Hire. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fnsr4s?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

A YouTube series covering 'Numbers Stations' quasi-mysterious shortwave stations, which are widely suspected to be used by various intelligence agencies to contact agents in the field. This series is covering the stations one at a time. When they were more common (In the 1970 - 2000s) time...

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/at-euronaval-defense-firms-dive-deep-into-seabed-warfare-platforms/

In the late 1950s the US deployed a bewildering range of tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe. The US Army had its spectacular 280mm atomic cannon mounted between two trucks. It then had smaller 8" warheads for the M115 howitzer which were made available to the UK and other NATO allies...

So I was reading " concorde and the Americans" and one of the things that caught my eye was that neither Britain or France were each others first choice. Britain originally wanted to work with America inorder to build the first supersonic jet, but the Americans were set on there mach 2.7 speed...

Who would it effect western tank design? Now for those that don't know heres a thread that tanks about the T-74 https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/project-101-t-74-and-rival-70s-soviet-tank-projects-object-450-480-225-226-780.8240/ But he TLDR is that the T-74 was one of the contestants...

The Soviet Navy evolved anti ship missiles for its warships sooner than the West because it was faced with NATO's large surface fleets and their aircraft carriers. The spur to Western nations seems to have been the arrival of new Soviet large surface units in the 60s and the sinking of an...

i found cute looking aircrafts that were small military planes that some were built some were projects only and here they are: the first one is the fouga cm195: was a 1950s franco-spanish light bomber/attack (based off the fouga cm170 trainer) made in france designed by spanish...

While the size and importance of France's armed forces in 1914 and 1939 is well understood, their importance since 1945 does not seem to be appreciated. Until the creation of West Germany's Bundeswehr at the end of the 1950s it was France that bore the brunt of providing the largest West...

Few years before I came over a unique HOT missile launcher mounted on a rover. Known as HOT ATLAS, it is the only man-power operated HOT launcher, service in Moroccan Army. Any further info or pics about it?

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...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/15/22284000/jaguar-land-rover-electric-cars-i-pace-2025

After the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 the US replaced its land based medium range ballistic missiles in Europe. While the Minuteman ICBM was the main national deterrent system, the role of countering Russian missiles aimed at Western Europe was taken on by Polaris (later Poseidon) submarines...

... instead of re-inventing the wheel in the 70's. The idea is to blend together, Zumwalt "cheaper decks" (SCS / VSS / CVV) and the too few carrier designs from Europe. To bolster NATO fleets on one side, and the USN on the other - more flattops on both sides of the Atlantic. That is...