PenguinSix

Following the Russian invasion of South Ossetia, US military officials headed over to Georgia to do a thorough review of the Georgian military. The report, leaked to the NY Times, paints a rather unflattering picture of the military in Georgia. Georgia’s armed forces, the report said, are highly centralized, prone to impulsive rather than deliberative [...]

The New York Times is reporting that Georgian military officials are already planning for the next war, with a military shopping list that includes some higher technology weapons. Pentagon officials are reviewing the lists but have yet to make any decisions just yet. Defense officials in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, said that at a minimum [...]

You may remember a few years ago a Russian plane crashed because an air traffic controller in Switzerland issued some incorrect orders. You may also remember that a Russian father who lost his children in the crash travelled to the tower later and slashed to death the air traffic controller he found. Victor Kaloyev was [...]

The USCGC Dallas will soon be in Georgia A US Coast Guard cutter will be arriving in the Georgian port city of Poti despite the presence of Russian forces throughout the outskirts of this Georgian city. Russians have called this plan ‘devilish’ and the amount of aid being delivered comparable to what you could buy [...]

Changing her tune? Der Spiegel is noticing a change in Germany’s relationship with Georgia in light of the Russian invasion last month. Never a warm ally of Georgia and not a fan of NATO membership, it now seems the Russian’s have overplayed their hand such that Angela Merkel is now being forced closer to Georgia [...]

Humanitarian aid ship By now you’ve probably heard the USS McFaul has arrived in port in Georgia as part of a three ship convoy of humanitarian supply ships. What I didn’t know until checking the website of the vessel is that both the Captain and Executive Officer on the McFaul were graduates of Ohio State. [...]

This is not Georgia despite the similarities. Russian tanks smash over the border into a satellite state. NATO at a loss to explain why or how, or more importantly, what to do about it. You think Georgia / South Ossetia was the first time this has happened? Not hardly. This week is the 40th anniversery [...]

We’ve been questioning the ‘2,000 dead’ claim by Russian media, and to date they haven’t come up with any reliable numbers about just how many were killed in South Ossetia. It does appear clear the Russian media was way out of the ballpark with the claim of 2,000 dead, by a factor of about 40 [...]

The Washington Post attempts to put together a timeline of how the Russia-Georgia war started. It gives a pretty good outline of some of the pre-war duels that took place before the introduction of armor units. Like any battle, there is a definite fog of war that shrouds the events. We may never know the [...]

Poland doesn't look like this, but this is the missile they are getting. Russia is up in arms and threatening to ‘punish’ another former satellite nation for daring to go against the Russian views of the world. Under a deal signed yesterday, Poland will host 10 missile interceptors designed to knock out short-range ballistic missiles [...]

It's not a tank but it can still hurt you. The London Times is reporting on a new offensive launched in the Dafur region of the Sudan. 300 ‘technicals’ (militarized civilian vehicles) are on the move in a major push in Northern Dafur. Oil companies have been asking for this area to be pacified so [...]

Commentators are starting to pick on Barrack Obama’s missteps in his statements regarding the Russian / Georgian war. Obama has issued three statements while on vacation in Hawaii, with the first one being a wishy-washy calling for restraint on all sides, but then taking a grade-school level jab at McCain’s policy because one of his [...]

Computer engineers from another former Soviet republic are rushing to the aid of Georgia, armed not with weapons but with computers. Russia and Georgia are engaged in a ‘cyberwar’ of sorts attacking each others networks and websites, and now some computer networking engineers from Estonia are rushing to aid their Georgian colleagues who are dealing [...]

With the whole world calling Russia a ‘big brother’ getting unfairly involved in someone elses fight, you’d think the government their would have thought of some better wording than ‘punishment’ to describe their operations in South Ossetia. President Medvedev was given permission to speak by Putin announced that Russian forces would cease operations, though under [...]