Regional geopolitics

[Haykakan]

Re: Regional geopolitics

This was a pretty interesting read especially the last part of it.

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg505677.html

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

This was a pretty interesting read especially the last part of it.
http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg505677.html

Agree. All of the last commentary is correct. Also it is correctly mentioned that all the military deals between Azerbaijan and Russia is meant to keep Azerbaijan from becoming as anti Russian as Georgia. In my opinion a first look into this will give someone thoughts that "Azerbaijan becoming anti Russian is good for us. But at deeper thoughts, it will be very negative, because if Russia looses controll over bacu so will we loose any possibility of any military equilibrium with Azerbaijan. 4bln is 4 bln. In western armaments it will be an impossible to match danger for us, no matter how much arms Russia supplies to us. And mentioning of transit route for central Asian oil and gas, Azerbaijan has too many reasons of becoming a full western partner. Bu as it says above, it does not hurry yet. Wy? Because Bacu fully understands the value that Armenia will present for Russia then. It is us, who are not sure in lot of things. Artsakh conflict and possibility of loosing another war is sitting like a chocker in baku's throat. Does not let it utilize it 's transit advantages and geopolitical true orientations . Russia knows this too .

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

First cargo of disputed Kurdish Iraqi oil delivered to Israel
DEBKAfile June 20, 2014

The Liberia-flagged SCF Altai tanker docked at Ashkelon port early Friday and began unloading crude, according to a port source. This may be the first sale of oil by the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) through a new pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, which was built to bypass the Iraqi national pipeline. This trade is bitterly disputed by Baghdad, which has threatened legal action against buyers. Israel has not confirmed whether it is buying the oil for its own use or storing it for transfer to another destination.
DEBKAfile reports that Israel sympathizes with the KRG’s aspirations for greater autonomy and economic prosperity independent of Baghdad and is a willing helper. Emboldened by its army’s takeover of the oil city of Kirkuk against the advancing ISIS forces, the Kurds plan to export this new source of oil through their own outlet, since the Kirkuk outlet was sabotaged. The transfer via Ceyan to Ashkelon was eased by the greatly improved relations between Ankara and Jerusalem in recent weeks.

[haysip]

Re: Regional geopolitics

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Turkey Objects To End Of NATO Patriot Deployment
June 24, 2014,
by Joshua Kucera

NATO is reportedly looking at ending its deployment of air defense units on the Syrian border, prompting objections from Ankara.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that the U.S., Germany, and the Netherlands are considering ending their deployment of Patriot missile batteries by the end of the year. The systems were deployed in January 2013 in response to the intensified fighting there. The fighting, of course, has not died down, but the threat of a chemical attack has diminished. That, in combination with the fact that the soldiers from Germany and the Netherlands who operate the systems have been overstretched by the long deployment, have led to the reconsideration of the mission, Der Spiegel's sources said.

But Turkey isn't ready for them to go. “Turkey thinks that such a move doesn't serve relations between allies,” one Turkish foreign ministry official told Today's Zaman. Another diplomatic source told Hurriyet Daily News, "At a moment when there are serious security problems [in the region], a decision to withdraw these systems from Turkey would be inappropriate and unsuitable to the [values of our] alliance."

And German officials have denied the report. A German military spokesman told reporters that there have been routine reviews, and that the most recent one "concluded that the level of threat had been decreased with the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons but, on the other hand, the rest of the risks remained unchanged" and that "if they would need us, and if there would be a demand, we can extend the mission for another two years." A report from last year on the U.S. Patriot operators in Turkey, though, noted the strain of the deployment. From the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes:


While the Americans’ primary mission is to defend Gaziantep from ballistic missiles, the unit keeps its eyes out for any aerial threat to the city of 1.5 million. That means 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operations, troops say. The unit’s heightened state of alert requires round-the-clock duty, an unprecedented pace of work for an air defense unit, according to troops assigned to the battalion.

The primary challenge is keeping all the pieces working under the heavy strain. Each Patriot launcher — there are 12 on site — comes with its own high-powered generators that are unaccustomed to around-the-clock activation. That has meant long hours for unit technicians, whose deployment has been marked by a constant monitoring, tweaking and cleaning of the system to keep it up and running.

And that's the U.S., which presumably has more Patriot operators to go around (the U.S., Germany, and the Netherlands have each been operating two Patriot batteries in Turkey). Anyway, Der Spiegel said that its sources said a final decision would be made by the upcoming NATO summit in Wales.

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Nato steps back from giving Georgia full membership of alliance
Republic gains only possibility of 'cooperation' deal amid fears of some Nato members that full tie-in would antagonise Russia
Reuters in Brussels
theguardian.com, Wednesday 25 June 2014 11.20 EDT

Sean Smith for the Guardian
Georgia's hopes of achieving full membership of Nato were set back on Wednesday as the alliance vowed to stop short of approval, avoiding possible confrontation with Moscow over an expansion to Russia's neighbours.

Officials said Nato's summit in September would not sanction the formal step to membership. But Nato members agreed in principle to draw up a "substantive package" of cooperation with Georgia that would help it move closer to the alliance, said its secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008 and some Nato members fear that starting the formal process for full membership could provoke Russian retaliation. Welcoming Georgia into the alliance would mean Nato could be obliged to go to its defence in the event of another war with Russia.

Russia, which has said that its annexation of Crimea in March was influenced by Nato's expansion into eastern Europe, has made no secret of its opposition to Georgia joining the alliance.

The question of whether Georgia should be invited to join the programme has been controversial since the debate split the alliance during the summit in Bucharest in 2008.

At that time Nato members, led by France and Germany, rebuffed US demands that Georgia and Ukraine be allowed into the membership action plan (a programme of advice, assistance and support tailored to countries wishing to join the alliance) while promising the countries would be able to join one day.

Months after the Bucharest summit Russia fought a five-day war with Georgia and later recognised two breakaway provinces as independent nations. Ukraine later dropped its goal of Nato membership.

Although Rasmussen insisted on Wednesday that Nato's door remained open to new members and that no other country had a veto over enlargement, Nato diplomats said the standoff over Ukraine did influence the debate.

Some allies, particularly in the Baltics and eastern Europe, said that Nato should send a strong message to Moscow by giving Georgia a formal membership action plan.

Montenegro's hopes of receiving an invitation to join the alliance at the summit in September, being held in Newport, Wales, were dashed too, with Nato delaying a decision on whether to admit the small Balkan country until next year.

The Georgian foreign minister, Maia Panjikidze, said she was not disappointed about the lack of an invitation. "Georgia will get a very concrete package and it will help Georgia's further integration into Nato and will bring Georgia closer to … membership," she told Reuters in Brussels.

[Haykakan]

Re: Regional geopolitics

CSTO AVIATION FORCES WILL BE FORMED BY YEAR'S END - SECRETARY GENERAL

June 25, 2014 | 15:51

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Aviation Forces
may be formed by end of the year and, also, special forces will be
formed within the organization--in which Armenia is a member--to
combat cyber threats.

CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha told the abovementioned to
Belta news agency of Belarus.

"We realized that means are necessary to transport the forces, which
are formed within the CSTO and are members in its troops, to their
place of operation. That's why it was deemed appropriate to form
the CSTO Collective Aviation Forces," Bordyuzha said, reported RIA
Novosti news agency of Russia.

The CSTO chief added that the objective of the CSTO Special Operations
Forces will be to ensure assistance to the armed unit's activities
within the organization.

"Such special subdivisions can counter cyber attacks," Nikolay
Bordyuzha noted.

News from Armenia - NEWS.am

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Was Kalashnikov`s AK a Schmeisser???

http://newslanc.com/2013/12/30/kalashnikovs-real-story/

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Was Kalashnikov`s AK a Schmeisser???

http://newslanc.com/2013/12/30/kalashnikovs-real-story/

This is a post from forgottenfirearms.com
When people see the AK-47 and the StG-44 side by side an know nothing about their internal mechanisms, the nearly universal assumption is that one is a copy of the other. The overall layout of the two rifles is strikingly similar, and one would reasonably make the assumption that Kalashnikov got his hands on a captured StG and simply rebuilt it in 7.62×39. This is, of course, not true.


AK-47 and StG-44
When presenting the same pair of rifles to a person who has a basic understanding of how they operate, you get a different reaction. They look similar because form follows function, and since one has a tilting bolt and the other has a rotating bolt they are actually unrelated. In some cases, you will get the counterclaim that if Kalashnikov copied anything, it was an American M1 Garand. This is also not quite an accurate claim.

So the question is, what is the true relationship between the AK and the StG?

Information on the question is held pretty close to the chest in Russia, so most of what I’m suggesting here is speculation…but I think the circumstantial evidence paints a pretty clear picture.

Let us first recognize that when the AK was being developed, the Great Patriotic War was only just won. Conditions on the Eastern front where the USSR and Germany had been fighting were horrific on a scale not remotely matched by the Western front of France and Italy. It would have been politically unthinkable for the government to publicly acknowledge the superiority of pretty much anything German. It is only in recent years that Kalashnikov has finally acknowledged receiving even the slightest assistance from German engineers (Schmeisser, specifically).

However, we know for a fact that at least four important small arms designers were brought into Russia after the war to work, having been given offers they couldn’t refuse (the US, UK, and France did the same thing to any important Germans they could get their hands on, of course). These four men were Schmeisser (primary designer of the MP-28 and StG-44), Horn (working on a simplified assault rifle at the end of the war), Barnitzke (designer at Gustloff, responsible for the VG1-5), and one of Barnitzke’s assistants. Schmeisser never spoke about what he did in Russia (and died in 1953), but Barnitzke did talk a little after returning home to Germany. He would not say what he did, but reported that his office from the Gustloff plant was moved whole to Russia and reassembled in perfect detail, right down to the placement of his pencils on his desk. Only the view out his window was different.

So what did these German small arms designers actually do for the USSR? They must have been put to work in the fields of specialty; anything else would be too wasteful even for Stalin to consider. And yet the only small arms development that took place at the time was the AK. The AK was the winning choice form a competitive field of several assault rifle designs, and so the Germans may well have been assigned to helping with some of the other designs initially. Once the winning rifle became clear, though, they would have been put to work on it.

One area of specialty where the Germans were far ahead of Russian engineers was complex metal stamping. Virtually all the late-war German small arms designs were primarily constructed of stampings, and complex ones to boot. Look at the details in the stamped receiver of an StG-44 (or MkB-42), and compare them to the very simple parts that comprised the PPS-43 submachine gun. The AK would not require as much detail as the German guns, but it would require more expertise that the Soviets had on hand. And this is where I propose that the legacy of the StG-44 had its impact on the AK. Not in initial design (which Kalashnikov has said was heavily influenced by the M1 Garand’s trigger mechanism and rotating bolt), but in its refinement and manufacturing.

If we look at the change between Sergeant Kalashnikov’s initial 1946 experimental model (which did well enough to win the selection contest) and the first production version of the AK-47, we see the influence of German experience.


Kalashnikov prototype AK-46 rifle (photo from Max Popenker)

Production Type I AK-47 rifle (photo from Max Popenker)
The receiver design changed significantly between these two, but look closer at some of the other details. The early gun had a separate gas piston, and a smooth gas tube, while the production design used a piston integral to the carrier and a ribbed gas tube for a better strength:weigh ratio. Both of these are features from the StG, and were definite improvements. I don’t have any knowledge of how the trunnion or barrel extension of the 1946 gun was fitted to the receiver, but by the first production models it had changed, and was very similar to the StG.


AKM and StG-44 trunnions – both use pressed-and-pinned barrels, and both are nested inside a stamped sheet receiver. The StG is held in place by the receiver being pressed into grooves, while the AK is riveted into the receiver (a better solution).



AKM and StG-44 gas tubes – both use pressed-in ribs for strength and both are detachable parts.

AKM and StG-44 gas pistons – both are integral to the bolt carrier, have a fixed charging handle, and are mounted above the barrel.
I’m using AKM parts in these photos because I don’t have Type I AK parts on hand to photograph – but with the exception of a cosmetically-different trunnion on the Type I AK, they are basically identical.

The German assistance resulted in improvements like these, and I expect with a lot of the factory tooling design needed to put the gun into mass production. There were still problems getting the process going, as the initial stamped receiver design ended up being difficult for the factories to get right, and had a very high scrap percentage. For this reason production was changed to a milled receiver in 1949 until the stamping difficulties were finally resolved and stamped production restarted in 1959. By that time, the USSR had finally developed its own native stamping expertise, as show by the followup PK machine gun design, using a stamped receiver significantly more complex than the AK.

I’m sure there are some folks reading this who have more detailed knowledge of the AK development process than I do, and I would be open to corrections of anything I have gotten wrong.

[Hakob]

Re: Regional geopolitics

To this I can add that the first assault rifle in the world was designed by Russian armorer Vladimir Fyodorov in1915 for czarist army, known as Fedorov avtomat. It is very interesting that mr Tsukerman has not mentioned this and the fact that Kalashnikov designed his rifle in the same shop in city of Kovrov as Fyodorov did 20 years earlier.
Fyodorov did recognize the necessity of new interim cartridge by using 6.5x 50 Arisaka instead of Russian 7.62x54r because heavier cartridges damaged firing mechanisms quickly. Any way 4000 were built for army.
One comparing AK 47 to Stg44 should notice that AK piston and sights resemble more to SKS then Stg44.
SKS or Sergey Simonov rifle was designed in 1943 the same time that STG was. So there can be no word that STG 44 or any German has influenced it.
Soviets started developing 7.62x 39 cartridge in mid 1930s most likely the result of Fedorovs work . The German STG uses 7.92x33 cartridge. Much less powerfull.
I own SkS, AK47, M1 Garand, M16 etc. I also have shot STG and Arisaka . Nothing compares to AK47.
The only resemblance of AK to STG is the stamped receiver and cover. And it is evident that that is the contribution of Germans in manufacturing process. The internal mechanism of AK and Sturmgewehr are totally different.
This article by Tsukerman(an j e w) is total nonsence. One has to own or shoot many pieces. From German jaeger to English flintlock to Pennsylvania rifles to 1862 Springfield, from first rifling to French Minni ball to sharps carbine to enfield trapdoor to know that the advancement and innovations of arms worldwide are intermixed and influenced from one another for all countries.
Then one can have an opinion of Michail Kalashnikovs brilliance.