ran

This, fellow frenchmen, please shut up

Hungarian Turan ? couldn't say which version though.

good job It was to be fielded in late 1940, it's the next generation french armored car that never was. 600 were ordered but the events simply killed it. It can be seen as the EBR's daddy in its concept and the technical choices that were made.

Hmmm, nah, you got the nationality right though.

What is this ?

looks spanish to me -edit- I was wrong, it's more likely to be eastern european, surely not russian, but it reminded me of some field expedient AFV's build by the spaniards in the 30's. After some research it appears to be a czech made skoda PA-II

Sorry but this is completely untrue, What makes you believe that there are cars burning every night here? - So does the media make you believe that France is turning into a mess? Overall, such problems are pretty rare and unusual, which doesn't differ from other neighbour-countries. Since the last major problems that happened in the suburbs, things calmed down. regards, TB Erm ... this happens regularly, not on the scale of the riots (I'd be tempted to say "insurgency") naturally but it happens. We're pretty far from a civil war though.

None of the AMX 50 prototypes gave way to serial production. The cost of such a program was too mportant for post-war France. It was an ambitious project to equip the french cavalry with a tank rivaling the russian heavies of the time. What's the most striking from the pictures of the AMX50 protoypes is the way the french engineers inspired themselves of the technical solutions adopted by the german and russian tank designers. This was ment to be the EBR's and the AMX13's big brother (which explains the choice of an oscillating turret pattern for this beast too). I wonder what could be now had those been fielded. There's an exemple in perfect condition at the Saumur tank museum and it is really impressive. What killed it was the progresses made in matter of penetrating ammunition rendering its armor obsolete and its gun overkill. Instead of pursuing the developpment of this monster, focus was put on the '13 and the next generation tank which at that time was the AMX30. For a while, our cavalry had to settle for american built M47's and light AMX13's (which formed the bulk of our units). I'd say you both won so it will be to whoever's the fastest in posting another pic.

the teacher from south park had a similiar saying Always heard my father saying that on the topic of females in combat units

I knew that your armed forces were using CVR-T as sov-block tank ersatz but wasn't sure. I don't think the british landforces use tracked-turretted 120 mortars. All I had to do was to check CVR-T variants and applications in my head that could correspont to what was shown. A really hard one now, and I mean it (Hellfish might recognise it but I forbid you to post the answer ) And I can find even harder and obscure too

Some kind of training opposing force vehicle based on the CVR-T, either Salamander or Sturgeon. It cannot be a scorpion due to the barrel, it's way too long and way too fat, and I doubt it's a cover for the barrel of the RARDEN which would be mounted on a scimitar. And it's covered with all kinds of shit. After somme googling : <a href="http://www.defenceimagedatabase.mod.uk/fotoweb/Preview.fwx?position=9473&archiveType=ImageFolder&sorting=ModifiedTimeAsc&search=&fileId=82009AFCAB28BB7B4818188E6EE0F5842527F21A9EA60BCB068E1C97D7AA43F0BA877BF55CF600ED1D3DB01BD3 91466305537D71572956BF05537D71572956BF1B1FF6BA91579F50513741741DE1AE2BF7B439EE3BC281C08747 35A195B08958105D648702B39E9B664A3F2AFFA38E006F6E8397A08D6664B7805B293EAE16FB" target="_blank">http://www.defenceimagedatabase.mod.uk/fotoweb....EAE16FB</a> So I guess it's a Sturgeon.

Too many whisky induced hangovers to like the thing. I have no knowledge whatsoever about this alcohol, I just settled for some clan Campbell or Jack Daniels back in the days. Now if I have to drink a strong alcohol, it's local fruit spirits, vodka, slivovice (upon availability) or raki (same).

That's only a subjective perception While not sounding as aggressive, you can really make somebody feeli like a piece of shit if you stress the right words and syllabs That instructor giving the slaps had a few ellocution problems Paratrooper course, once done with the final (I think) combat march, the instructors felt like rewarding the guys with a little bit of alcohol. Stupidly, the instructors left the remaining alcohol within the soldiers reach, some found it and thus prolonged the party a bit ending up dead drunk. The section is given the order to empty their canteens to see who has wine in them, one of the drunk guys is sent to "the gnouf" (prison) for a few hours to sober up a bit. Instead of laying down the packs and the gear and just chill out for a bit, the trainees section gets ordered to take their gear and proceed to another combat march as a punishment. A girl apparently can't hack it (I've been told that she was in the middle of her PMS and didn't have the opportunity to take care of that particular part of her body as a woman normally would, thus causing the discomfort). She's brought back to the camp by car and sent to the unit's medical antenna. The exchange between the instructor and the drunken guy is quite funny. "Are you drunk ?" "No, chef" -slap- and bis repetita, until the drunkard finally breaks in and admits being drunk. Lack of judgement from the instructors, lack of maturity from the guys, lack of the usual three part playset usually found on soldiers for the lady. There goes the joke around here : "would you really trust something that bleeds for 5 days without dying ?".

The main difference is that they attacked our soldiers. The governmental forces attacked guys who were originally there on the express demand of the Ivorian head of state who is normally the head of the local armed forces. A plauseable ongoing theory in some circles is that certain people of Gbagbo's close military staff wanted to strike with a strong blow the french comittment to Ivory Coast which at the time kept the Ivorian governmental forces on the backburner against the rebels due to the buffer zone installed between the two opposing parties. To say wether this is true or not is impossible for me. The whole deal about the bombing and the represails is shady though. While if you dig up old forum archives I was totally supportive of the said represails against the Ivorian AF I would now relativise this support. There's still an ongoing enquiry to know the what/who/why of several elements of the affair. I wouldn't say that it was a simple "stick nose in own poo" punitive action but something much more intricate. The pilots are still in the nature while they could have been caught on that fateful day, the Ivorian responsabilities are yet to be known etc...

Seems like you people are sliding offtopic and feel like opening a big fat can of worms. Conflicts in the balkans are still too new to be discussed in a level-headed, mature manner it seems.

You might already know about this website but it's a good start: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1200&l=1 There are several lists of ongoing armed conflicts on various defence websites and even wikipedia, they're worth what they're worth though and sometimes don't cover all the conflicts and crises either due to lact of updates, selection criterias or even sometimes political agendas. There's a lot of openly accessible ressources out there.

I'd rather leave that kind of conjectures to the country fair gypsy's crystal ball. One should not just sit down and think about the things that could come but should stand up and act in such a way that only the best or at least better of these things happen. I do not wish for a military conflict to happen anywhere. The most sensible course of action is just to stay ready if it happens, to try to defuse crises or assist within you own possibilities in defusing them. (don't you people think that I suddenly became a pot smoking peacenik though) Quite a few people in this thread sound more like gypsy readers than sensible beings with an interest in geopolitics. I don't want to offend the original poster, but this kind of approach is somewhat naive (that's the opinion I have when I read the title and some comments posted by a few other members here) and makes some of you people sound like teenagers who are bent on seeing some war porn on 24/7 news channels or eager to accomplish their wet dream of wearing a uniform and to be aired on the aforementionned news broadcasts. History is only written once the party has ended. The only thing that can seriously be done is to list and assess potential areas of conflict without placing any "bets" on where it's going to explode first because we simply don't know and we're bound by the uncertainity of our future, of the events that are to come. Mankind in one place of another has been at a constant state of conflict for roughly the last three decades. The question is not really to know where and when the next real time war movie will start but how to prevent actual and potential crises from escalating and pushing us a little bit farther into global mess.

Been re-reading some novels by Bernard Werber. Really few books have been translated in english. Just got done with "Les thanatonautes". He's renowned woth his series about ants. Sci-fi/fantastic novels anchored in everyday realities and actual scientific discoveries along with some philosophy and theology. A lot of his writings take original styles. http://www.bernardwerber.com/ http://www.bernardwerber.com/jeux/jeu_nouslesdieux.html A video game in preparation actually inspired one of his book series. He's the director of a movie inspired by his own works that will be released in april.

yup, but in the end it's the pilots who had the hands on the red button/trigger/whatever. I find it astonishing yet that a pilot made a mention of flatbed ZIL157's.

We may not be fighter pilots experienced with CAS duties but some of us are or were among the ones walking under the skies those are flying in. You might understand the concern some ground troops have when heavily armed planes fly over their heads It's a fact that mistakes were made, deadly ones.

The main problem IMO is the concept of reserve pilots as after all the National Guard is a reserve force.

Baffling, what are these guys taught ? Orange rockets ? Sniffed too much paint fumes and feeling like you're in a Looney Tunes cartoon with big bad red/orange rockets and dynamite sticks? Let me guess, WB's Coyote contributed to the iraqi army's debacle. The only thing I could think of on an armored vehicle other than an oldschool IR/IFF panel in those color tones is the yellow paint of some training missile containers on former WP SAM systems or some third world military carnival they call parade where they show off vintage BM 13's painted in funky colors. So we apparently got flatbed trucks moving around orange rockets... I could think of training ammunition once again, but would you carry that kind of cargo on an open flatbed truck ? What made this convoy so important (bear in mind that it was mostly made of soft vehicles in the eyes of the pilots) ? Especially considering the area of operations and the forces in presence ? I'd say that while it's a blatant show of incompetence on the side of the pilots and the FAC, it's bound to happen in such conditions. That is no excuse on the side of the pilots though. Guess who's who. Seems like a bad habbit on the american side. No excuses to be found there. Friendly fire is bound to happen during intensive combat and/or rapid advance but there are certain limits. I remember the british tornado downed by a patriot SAM back in 2003 (and possibly an F18 too) and the bombing of a US-Kurd convoy in Kurdistan in april that year by an american plane. A small saying : "US air power ? Duck and cover !" -edit-Had a look at the vid, those A10's look like they're flying pretty high for what they're tasked with, this may have already been pointed out though.

you're soooooooooo dead beware of little surprises under your car or in the mail j/k

She's unfortunately taken atm (by a 2nd year Master history student specialising in contemporean conflicts who becomes a real pain in the ass as soon as he feels like asking me questions about stuff, I'm sure he's with the sister just for that, to piss me off it could be worst though, he's not some kind of dirty punk even though he has odd musical and clothing tastes). Back to second life : There were the sims already, with people getting badly addicted too and now we have that, I think that what we see among people who play these games is the expression of the new plague of this century in developed countries (no, not AIDS ... I don't think these nerds help spread it anyway) that is mental disorders, keeping it general here, but the ammount of schizophrenic, depressed, anxious and generally fucked up youths is pretty high these days (that impression could just come from me being old and all that but heh).

You´re married ! The ladies don't have to know about that to play with my long hard non-virtual ... hmmm baguette, anyway : That second life is really stupid, followed some of the coverage on Something Awful. The concept is just sad and scary at the same time. When seeing that kind of stuff, I'd be tempted to do as The_Shadow said, to unplug the comp and leave for a comfy place away of this idiocy. -edit-: and btw, nothing in the contract I signed forbade me from doing some innocent flirting with members of the opposite sex, and I live in a university city (read : a place where there are shitloads of cute young female college students, and some foreign ones at that! these days for god's sake! And naturally nothing except duty and self-preservation will prevent me from drinking!