Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[OUTLAW 09]

Does the mere fact of repeating someone else's story verify its truth? If so, then the truth of the fairy tales of the Brother's Grimm must be indisputable.
Who, by the way, is this expert, Alexei Savich, that the AFP post cites?

wm---and who is this person typing this response Alexei Savich or a UK citizen---the question and your responses can always be twisted which ever way one decides to take a response that is the freedom on this particular blog--come over to the other site and see if your responses get attention for yourself.

The article and video by the way has been both confirmed to have actually been recorded when it was, and reflects heavy aircraft movement by type by both the Washington Post editors as well as the NYTs and has been picked up by the German news media der Spiegel.

So wm who really cares whose name is on the article for that matter we could use yours if you would like.

Did in fact the video confirm or deny an event is the question and who really give a flip about the name.

[wm]

wm---and who is this person typing this response Alexei Savich or a UK citizen---the question and your responses can always be twisted which ever way one decides to take a response that is the freedom on this particular blog--come over to the other site and see if your responses get attention for yourself.

First I do not have a clue who the guy is. The name I offered up, Alexei Savich, is cited as an aviation expert by the AFP article you placed such stock in as a verification. I would like to know his bone fides as an aviation expert. Second, I would appreciate your being a little more explicit about which other site you would like me to come over to. The Internet is a pretty big place.

The article and video by the way has been both confirmed to have actually been recorded when it was, and reflects heavy aircraft movement by type by both the Washington Post editors as well as the NYTs and has been picked up by the German news media der Spiegel.

The article and video have confirmed nothing as far as I can tell. I've looked at open source satellite imagery of military airfields in Crimea dated 2014. Those airfields had significant numbers of Soviet-era combat fighter aircraft as well as larger aircraft. (I'll admit my "squint" skills have atrophied so I'm not sure what they all were, and I did not have a light table to look at them as closely as one might like.) For all I know the videos and reports you cite are just people seeing those aircraft flying around to get ready for some kind of flyby for Putin on Friday.

The following account, from page 43 of John Prados' [I]The Soviet Estimate[/I, details the source of the 1950's "bomber gap" and is rather instructive I think:

The Russians scheduled another flyover for their Air Force Day ceremonies . . . . [T]he US air attach to the Soviet Union , Colonel Charles E. Taylor, went out to Tushino to watch the air parade. It appears that the Soviets . . .execute a deceptive flyover. Taylor saw first ten then eighteen Bison jet bombers fly past the reviewing stand . . .. The flyover was deceptive because the Soviets evidently pressed into service every available Bison and then had the first serial of planes circle, out of sight of the reviewing stand, to make a second pass overhead.

For confirmation, here from Wikipedia, is an alternative report, citing a completely different source,

Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, then flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and flew past the stands again with eight more, presenting the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts extrapolated from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judging that by 1960 the Soviets would have 800.[5]

[5] Heppenheimer, T. A. (1998). The Space Shuttle Decision. NASA. p. 193.

So wm who really cares whose name is on the article for that matter we could use yours if you would like.

Did in fact the video confirm or deny an event is the question and who really give a flip about the name.

A good analyst cares whose name is on a report because source evaluation is a significant part of analysis. An IIR was (and I presume still is) evaluated in terms of the source and the content. The need for both should be obvious: a good source can be deceived and thus report as true something that is false, as the story above makes poignantly clear about Col. Taylor.

[OUTLAW 09]

First I do not have a clue who the guy is. The name I offered up, Alexei Savich, is cited as an aviation expert by the AFP article you placed such stock in as a verification. I would like to know his bone fides as an aviation expert. Second, I would appreciate your being a little more explicit about which other site you would like me to come over to. The Internet is a pretty big place.


The article and video have confirmed nothing as far as I can tell. I've looked at open source satellite imagery of military airfields in Crimea dated 2014. Those airfields had significant numbers of Soviet-era combat fighter aircraft as well as larger aircraft. (I'll admit my "squint" skills have atrophied so I'm not sure what they all were, and I did not have a light table to look at them as closely as one might like.) For all I know the videos and reports you cite are just people seeing those aircraft flying around to get ready for some kind of flyby for Putin on Friday.

The following account, from page 43 of John Prados' [I]The Soviet Estimate[/I, details the source of the 1950's "bomber gap" and is rather instructive I think:



For confirmation, here from Wikipedia, is an alternative report, citing a completely different source,




A good analyst cares whose name is on a report because source evaluation is a significant part of analysis. An IIR was (and I presume still is) evaluated in terms of the source and the content. The need for both should be obvious: a good source can be deceived and thus report as true something that is false, as the story above makes poignantly clear about Col. Taylor.

wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.

[wm]

wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.

If you reread the last paragraph in the post that led to the above response, you will note that I spoke about the analyst doing source and content evaluation.

BTW, one wonders why the language in your blog posts is so much more coherent than what is displayed on SWC threads. Do you have a ghost writer?

[kaur]

Fuchs, pluralism is ok until it may paralyze system. If I'm reading this kind of overviews I become little bit scared.

Mrs Merkel, with her habitual reserve, has taken no clear stand but is believed to sympathise with the more robust American view of Mr Putin. Her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is a Social Democrat and former protg of Mr Schrders, and thus closer to the Russlandversteher. But even he seems to have grasped that Ostpolitik now looks naive and risks undermining Germanys transatlantic and European alliances. Voices on both the right and the left (mainly in the Green party) back a tougher line on Russia.

However, both Mrs Merkel and Mr Steinmeier also have German public opinion to contend with. And here recent polls show the extent of German ambivalence. One finds a majority opposing sanctions on Russia. In another, almost half of Germans yearn for a middle way between Russia and the West, with a clear majority in eastern Germany in favour of this.

This German self-identification as in some sense equidistant between the West, particularly America, and the East, especially Russia, has a long tradition. Historians refer to its 19th-century version as the Sonderweg (special path). West Germanys first post-war chancellors, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, tried to end the ambiguity by anchoring the new country firmly in western Europe and the Atlantic alliance, as it still is. Yet since Ostpolitik in the 1970s and reunification in 1990 the earlier sentiment has returned.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe...-understanding

[Fuchs]

Merkel's only policy is "preservation of power". There's nothing else.
The crisis has little potential to kick her out of office, so don't expect anything drastic from her, for doing nothing is her default stance (she's a German post-Erhard conservative, after all).


In the end, the Ukraine is not an allied power and lost a region which overwhelmingly preferred secession.

Besides, the football world championship launches in a few weeks. This means no politics or policy is going to happen for weeks. The bi-annual re-awakening of German nationalism during such (world and European) football championships isn't going to affect foreign policy either.

The priorities would be different if the Ukraine was in NATO or the EU, that's for sure. The Bundeswehr would now be in the Ukraine with much more forces than in the symbolic deployments such as the one to Turkey.

[kaur]

What is the solution to Russia question? Russia under Putin has grabbed land from neighbouring country, has been fooling under insane propaganda screen his own people, his neighbours, European Union, whole world. Business as usual?