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  1. Simon

    British and commonwealth rocket development

    I'm going to rain on the parade and argue that the idea of a Commonwealth programme, at least in terms of joint development, isn't really likely. IIRC until modern times the UK outstripped the other members in terms of GDP so any contributions wouldn't be great, and not provide the sort of...
  2. Simon

    TL: UK Overseas Regions [Redux]

    There's also the factors such as it meaning more teams during international competitions and it allowing them to form a blocking majority in the IFAB.
  3. Simon

    TL: UK Overseas Regions [Redux]

    One of the problems with the English regions is that the South East really reaches up too far north around London and the East comes too far west. Martin23230 has in past threads made a good argument, based on general geography and current local organisational set-ups, for the creation of a new...
  4. Simon

    British and commonwealth rocket development

    I know I've suggested RATOG in the past as an alternative to the catapults envisioned in Air Ministry Specification P.13/36 here and over on Secret Projects, not sure if it might have been me or someone else. Funnily enough I ran across something in a back-issue of Aeromilitaria related to this...
  5. Simon

    European NATO Army alternatives: 1950 - 1990

    Difficult as very few countries would be willing to see defence spending being sent abroad negatively affecting the balance of payments, plus running down domestic manufacturing capacity with memories of WWII still fresh and the Korean conflict ongoing. Best I can think of is picking a model and...
  6. Simon

    Wank a Company, or Industry

    That's difficult. It was run hard during WWII, then post-war was nationalised before being returned to former owners a short time later. Even once it was privatised governments still maintained a massive amount of control over the industry e.g. how much steel could be sold for, who could buy how...
  7. Simon

    British Rail sanity options : 1948 - 2000

    Considering privatisation Thatcher never touched the railways and IIRC Major seemed to be thinking back to memories of the Big Four when he started it, but we ended up instead with Railtrack, the ROSCOs and the franchises. Large directly state-owned businesses weren't exactly in vogue during the...
  8. Simon

    British Rail sanity options : 1948 - 2000

    How much earlier could we potentially drag the introduction of the InterCity 125? As I understand things it was the in-house design favoured by the 'traditionalists', largely packaging together already existing technology. The main question seems to be the engine. That… sounds like a real...
  9. Simon

    EE Lightining what-if thread

    Yeah that's pretty much what I go for as well. It's a nice looking aircraft. English Electric P.8 Proposal The RB.106, as I understand things Thames being an Internet invented name, is an interesting one. The aim was for a drop-in Avon replacement generating thrust of 15,000 lbf dry and...
  10. Simon

    What other countries could have been 'Koreanized'?

    Or more successful before then such as the Fifth Encirclement Campaign, a victory there would see the communists largely crushed and unable to be much of a major future threat. Depending on how relations between China and the USSR are you could see the latter supporting the formation of a...
  11. Simon

    What did the US plan for Korea before the Korean war broke out?

    Depends on what Sino-American relations are like, even were the KMT to win the civil war there's no guarantee that China would be friendly or pro-West. Japan also has the advantage of the US being able to station occupying troops there, it being an island, and local politics being generally...
  12. Simon

    Obscure buffer states as modern nations

    In the same region one idea I had previously was an earlier independent Danubian Principalities. In the latter part of the Crimean War the Austrian Empire is able to successfully float the idea of turning Moldavia, Wallachia and Northern Dobruja into a neutral state similar to Belgium. The...
  13. Simon

    The PANAVIA Tornado is still born?

    Well deep is a subjective term, and railheads can be various distances from the borders and starting front lines. That's why I was curious about whether any actual distances had been considered, without even a rough specification of being able to carry X armament Y distance we're left guessing...
  14. Simon

    The PANAVIA Tornado is still born?

    Development of the Tornado started at the end of the 1960s, some of the earlier BAe designs that eventually led to Eurofighter date to the mid-1970s. It's tricky but perhaps government releases some R&D funds to help smooth things over? When you write interdiction what sort of range are you...
  15. Simon

    Bulwark, Tiger and Blake to the Falklands

    The other half of the reason for the raids was to make the Argentine junta realise that if the UK could hit the Falkland Islands with strategic bombers then they could also hit the mainland, which caused them to modify their deployments. IIRC to the embarrassment of the RAF it was apparently a...
  16. Simon

    The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

    Interesting. So even if they still didn't camouflaged the missile sites but had placed guards on the weapons bunkers the Americans would have – correctly – assumed that nuclear weapons were already there. That's going to add a wrinkle to things. Thanks.
  17. Simon

    The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

    The version I heard was that the Soviets built the missile bases using the same standardised plans as from Europe which helped with identifying them, but the General in charge of the warheads didn't follow normal operating procedure of posting guards on the storage areas so the Americans assumed...
  18. Simon

    HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious Converted Earlier?

    Have Japan and the US be allowed to covert two capital ships into aircraft carriers as a way of maintaining balance between them and the UK? I might be reading things wrong but these ships would come under the 20 year replacement rule, so the UK would have a potential advantage but not a...
  19. Simon

    The US Armed Forces adopting the F5 in a large scale manner intended for combat use

    Sure you do. Facing opposition armed with muzzle-loading muskets if I'm given the choice between having rifles or machine guns for arming my side I'm choosing the machine guns as it will likely be so overpowering that it means fewer casualties and needing to use fewer men. "Whatever happens...
  20. Simon

    F-35 program was cancelled

    Would the F-22 be cancelled if the F-35 was? As I understand things they were trying to replicate the high-low mix of the F-15 and F-16 respectively. They could just buy more F-15s but there'd been such a song and dance made about low observability (stealth) that I'm not sure how viable that...
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